Open Tabs: Dynasty
The Trump family digs in on self-dealing, election-rigging, and—possibly—war with Iran.
State of Play: Long-Term Problems
There are a lot of reasons to feel good about the midterms, and provisionally, the 2028 presidential. But buried under all the real news today—a brewing war, the arrest of the former Prince Andrew, midterm drama of all kinds—are some alarming reminders of the durability of the problem we’re facing: not just Trumpism, but the actual Trumps themselves, and their trailblazing kleptocracy.
Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump sat for an interview with CNBC’s Sara Eisen on the sidelines of the “World Liberty Forum,” a shakedown of the financial industry crypto conference they held at Mar-a-Lago yesterday. Eisen asked them about the revelations about an Emirati sheikh’s purchase of a 49-percent stake in the Trumps’ crypto company before the administration decided to give the UAE coveted access to the world’s most advanced AI chips. The Trumps brushed it off as a political attack. “My father had nothing to do with it,” Don Jr. said, adding a denial that the investment was related in any way to the chips deal. “They tried all this nonsense the first time around. Frankly, it’s gotten old.”
His brother Eric picked up the thread, repeating the family’s long-running claim that all the big banks dropped them as customers for political reasons, and pointing out that “half of the very executives that called us back in those days to cancel us are actually in this room right now.” He went on: “For a long time, they fought it, and I think at this point they realize they can’t fight it.” In the literal sense, he was talking about mainstream acceptance of crypto. But it was impossible not to hear it as a reference to the financial world’s acquiescence to the family’s pay-for-play schemes, and how the melding of political power and personal enrichment has, in effect, become the new family business—one they’re not intending to give up. “The train has left the station,” Eric said.
It’s heading to a polling station near you. Just a day before, Eric Trump’s wife, Lara, the former RNC co-chair, singer, and potential Senate candidate, confirmed in a podcast interview that running for office, “interests many of us in our family. I know the Democrats will love to hear that, that it may not end just with Donald Trump.” Her brother-in-law, Don Jr., put it more ominously to CNBC: “We [aren’t] willing to sit in the corner and curl up in a ball and die, like they would love us to do,” he said. “That’s not how we function. That’s not how we operate. And you can see that, whether it’s my father or us. That’s never gonna happen.”
What We’re Watching
We’re all just back from PSA’s tour in New Zealand and Australia, which was an incredible experience. Huge thanks to everyone who came out! Farrah and Saul held down the fort in LA; the rest of us are dealing with serious jetlag. Today I learned that Jon drinks a five-shot americano every morning. Still, you can expect some grogginess in tomorrow’s show. Here’s what we’re looking at for topics:
Trump in Georgia
Trump is traveling to Rome, Georgia today, ostensibly to talk about affordability. But Georgia, of course, is the center of his Big Lie mythmaking. Rome also happens to be in the congressional district being vacated by Trump superfan-turned-superfoe Marjorie Taylor Greene. How much is he really going to be able to get himself to talk about prices?
On Tuesday, Trump’s top aides met privately to get on the same page about the fabled affordability message. Trump himself did not attend, but apparently they settled on their alleged success in lowering drug prices as the message for Republicans to run on this year.
That, and blaming Joe Biden. Here’s JD Vance on Fox News after the meeting, according to Playbook: “We're still digging out of the hole the Democrats put us in … I think the question we're going to put to the American people is, do you want to give the government back over to the people who frankly burned down the house.”
Whatever Trump says, we’ll be watching, and we’re likely to clip it, and cover it in this afternoon’s taping.
Texas and Midterms
We’ll get into the dustup around Texas congressional candidate James Talarico’s canceled appearance on “The Late Show.”
If you missed it, Stephen Colbert said on the air on Monday night that he had been told by CBS to cancel a planned interview with Talarico, under pressure from Trump’s weaponized FCC, which lately has been making a lot of noise about the so-called equal time rule.
Colbert went ahead with the interview for the show’s YouTube page, where it’s now at 7.6 million views and counting—and fueling a fundraising surge for Talarico—as CBS, the FCC, and Talarico’s main opponent, Rep. Jasmine Crockett, loudly argue that Colbert and Talarico are framing the incident as something that it’s not. We’ll explain the actual blow-by-blow and then get into whether it matters, and why.
We may segue from there into a broader discussion of midterms news and strategy, including Hakeem Jeffries’s push for Maryland to redraw its congressional map, Meta’s announcement that will pour $65 million into electing pro-AI candidates, this Axios story on GOP concern about voter turnout, and the Times on the new push against noncitizen voting.
Iran
Hoping for everyone’s sake that this topic falls out of the rundown for lack of new developments, but the reporting suggests that actual war might be imminent.
By definition, no one who’s commenting publicly knows what’s going on, and this could all be strategic leaking designed to put pressure on Iran to cede ground in ongoing diplomatic talks. Iran has asked for two weeks to come back to the table with an updated proposal, but the White House won’t rule out acting before then.
The headlines are scary. “The Trump administration is closer to a major war in the Middle East than most Americans realize. It could begin very soon,” per Barak Ravid at Axios, saying that Trump is considering a “weeks-long” campaign carried out jointly with Israel.
CNN and others are reporting that a first strike could happen as early as this weekend. According to Journal, the US has mustered our biggest accumulation of warplanes in the Middle East since the Iraq invasion. It could be posturing. But then, we saw what happened with the Venezuela buildup.
Bad Things Happening to Objectionable People
Somewhere in the show—I’m not sure where—we’ll note two eye-opening personnel updates from MAGA world.
Tricia McLaughlin, the DHS spokesperson who is often the first into the fray blindly defending the cruel excesses of the mass deportation campaign, is leaving her job.
Democrats are calling for the resignation of Florida Congressman Randy Fine, whose latest provocation is a Twitter post saying: “If they force us to choose, the choice between dogs and Muslims is not a difficult one.”
Open Tabs
Three other stories weighing on my mind this week:
