Trump Tries To Distract From The MAGA Civil War
The vultures are circling.
Not every Trumpian excess, lie, weird-ass PR stunt, deliberate provocation, or public spectacle of cruelty is a distraction play—but last night’s announcement of a new travel ban and a “Biden investigation” most certainly is.
Trump now swims in a sea of miseries great and small: the early-days blush and titter of his second term has congealed into a slag heap of policy failures, international embarrassments, economic stumbles, and hairline cracks in the instant obedience he expects from his herd.
So he turns to the Roy Cohn Distraction Playbook.
Trump’s reboot of the Term-1 travel ban, laser-targeted at brown countries, serves that purpose and to keep the MAGA base aroused by their fear porn.
However, the “Biden probe” is a transparent media manipulation.
It piggybacks on Tapper-mania. Washington’s fixation on Jake Tapper’s new book about Biden’s mental acuity is still boiling, and Trump wants to keep the story in the media bloodstream.
In MAGA-land, Biden is somehow both a doddering grandpa and a shadow-realm mastermind undermining the America Greatness Agenda for foreign puppet-masters. (If the contradiction seems insane, remember the base has marinated in cable agit-porn long enough to believe six impossible things before breakfast.)
Distraction accomplished…if we let him.
The MAGA Civil War Begins
Did Susie Wiles fire the Fort Sumter shot of the MAGA civil war when she pushed Elon out?
Signs indicate that the fallout may escalate beyond Trump’s control, which has clearly worried Trump. How do you know? He’s not firing back at Elon’s escalating rage.
The Trump-Musk bromance is now a cage match. After being iced from the inner circle, Musk torched Trump’s mega bill as a “disgusting abomination” that would blast a $2.5 trillion crater in the deficit—and he’s promising to open the money spigot against any MAGA loyalist who backs it.
The world’s richest man calling your pet bill “pork-filled” is bad; hearing him do it on your own social platform is worse. Steve Bannon, Charlie Kirk, Ron Johnson, Rick Scott, and Marjorie Taylor Greene have piled on—some demanding deeper cuts, others (Bannon!) flirting with higher taxes on the rich.
This was supposed to be Trump’s victory lap: billionaire giveaways and the opening volley of Project 2025. Instead, it’s bleeding support, July 4 looms, and the big guy has gone radio-silent—a sure sign he smells smoke.
Ukraine Plays Its Cards, Putin Plays Trump
Kyiv just sent a drone swarm 3,000 miles into Siberia, shredding the fairy tale that Putin enjoys total air dominance.
One strike wiped or crippled 41 strategic bombers, the same birds that have been torching Ukrainian cities for two-plus years. Zelenskyy’s people wrote the manual on small-power asymmetric warfare, and Trump’s foreign policy is often characterized by the question, “What does Daddy Vladdy want?”
The moment where Trump, J.D. Vance, and Marco Rubio performed a douchebag kabuki routine in the Oval, mocking Zelenskyy for MAGA cheers and clicks now looks even more cringe and juvenile. It turns out, Zelenskyy didn’t just have cards: he had a Royal Flush. And he did it all without wearing a suit.
Trump is profoundly embarrassed that he was kept in the dark, even though Ukraine knows that Trump and Moscow are in an alliance against them.
MAGA influencers howled with outrage at the strike footage, so Trump sprinted back into Putin’s arms. Optics: Ukraine appears heroic, Putin appears calculating, and Trump appears like the patsy he is.
Golden Age, My Ass
The MAGA sales pitch is “new golden age.”
The data says “brace for impact.”
Job creation is anemic, unemployment just hit 4.2 percent, and NY Fed heavyweight John Williams is openly musing about 4.5 percent, which is the Sahm-rule tripwire for recession. Inflation is re-accelerating under Trump’s tariff fetish, GDP growth is sliding toward 1 percent, and bond traders smell blood.
Actual free-market conservatives are nearly mythical creatures these days, but Trump’s central-planning, tariff fetish, market meddling, and failure to find the promised trillions in DOGE savings is another fissure in the MAGA front.
The holy doctrine of debt and deficits on the economic right is shattered by Trump’s wild spending, and his call this week for an unlimited debt ceiling. Trump’s singular selling point from the start was that he was a great businessman and dealmaker.
How’s that working out?
Iran Is Getting Nukes—Thanks, Trump
Remember when the JCPOA kept Tehran at least a year from a bomb? Since Trump blew it up, the IAEA counts 408 kg of 60 percent enriched uranium—enough for roughly ten warheads. Sprint to weapons-grade: weeks, not months.
Allies are furious, Israel is rattling sabers, oil markets have the yips, and voters wonder why the self-styled tough-guy just handed the mullahs a nuke starter kit. The “Obama nuclear deal” remains a right-wing shibboleth, but it kept the demon corked for almost fifteen years. Tehran and Moscow couldn’t have scripted a better outcome if they tried—and they probably did.
Minor Key Stresses
On the low-key side, the Peter Thiel National Database idea is going over with MAGA like a turd in the cotillion punchbowl. This is a low-key point of growing paranoia and distress on the right. They never thought they’d be the targets of the Palantir Panopticon, and from Alex Jones to Rand Paul, this program is cracking Trump’s loyalists in twain.
”Kash Patel, Pam Bondi, and Dan Bongino are covering up the Epstein Files” isn’t just a paranoid MAGA fantasy. It’s a reality that has the QAnon weirdos wondering if the Deep State has its hooks in the Donald too deeply and they’ll need to find someone else to be The Storm.
There’s Trouble In MAGA City
The distance between reality and Trump is widening, and even the credulous and slack-jawed of his followers know something is deeply, badly wrong. The vultures are circling, pecking, wondering if there are any tasty bits on the shambling corpse of MAGA.
One feud with the richest ketamine and sperm-donation enthusiast on earth, one hemorrhaging mega-bill, one geopolitical chessboard where Trump is the pawn, an economy flirting with recession, and a nuclear crisis bearing his fingerprints—any single item would be a migraine.
Together, they’re a cluster no amount of Diet Coke and Adderall can wash away.
Trump’s go-to move is inventing a new enemy or staging a stunt rally, but when every headline screams disaster, the common denominator is the guy in the red tie.
Poor Donald. No wonder he’s grasping for distractions.
I love this. All the Trump disasters tied up with a neat bow ( except for the immigration disaster which some MAGAts are having second thoughts about). With any luck the stress will be too much and he’ll have a stroke.
They also needed to provide proof of life, since Trump had no public events since Fri. (Did anyone actually see him on Sat & Sun when he supposedly was golfing?)