Trump adds $1 trillion to the national debt in record time and S&P Global underscores its own irrelevance by maintaining the U.S. AA+ credit rating

 Trump tariff revenue expected to offset tax bill impact, S&P says in U.S. credit rating hold

... "We could lower the rating over the next two to three years if already high deficits increase ..." lol.

 These people are afraid of Trump.

They don't want to be singled out for Trump's daily Two Minutes Hate.

They don't want to be the next Jerome Powell, or Lisa Cook, or Volodymyr Zelensky.

Meanwhile year to date the Trump deficit is running $112 billion ahead of Biden's last deficit. DOGE so-called spending cuts and Trump Tariffs have done nothing to reduce it.

 

 

 

Zelenskyy got the guy back good and hard who shamed him for not wearing a suit to the White House last time

 

What really buzzed the Alaska summit

 

Zelenskyy again says Nyet lol

Like everyone expected, except for Donald Trump, who has never been to Realville.

Zelenskyy rejects Trump’s proposal that Ukraine could swap territories with Russia

 

... "Ukrainians will not give their land to the occupier.” ...

 

Meanwhile . . . 

 

 

It's stupid for Trump to riff off today's producer price report and call Jay Powell names because the number is likely to be revised higher, and besides, that's just poor form, old boy

 

 May 2025 core producer prices, aka core wholesale prices, were reported today up 3.02% year over year. That will doubtlessly be revised up, especially as we get farther away from May.

Today's chart indicates April was up 3.18% yoy, but was originally reported at 3.1%. The latter was already rounded up, but the former rounds up to 3.2%. We'll see if that gets revised higher in coming months as well.

March was up 3.91% yoy we are told today, but originally it was reported at 3.3%.

February was up 3.74%, but originally reported at 3.4%.

January was up 3.92%, but originally reported at 3.6%.

December was up 3.74%, but originally reported at 3.5%.

The average up revision, including April, has been 0.3. 

Be that as it may, we have in the May report nine consecutive months with core producer prices up in excess of 3% year over year.

Meanwhile for the nine years 2012-2020, the average increase was 1.62% yoy. I don't call producer prices rising at a rate 85% higher than that in May 2025 good news. It may be "less bad" news, but that doesn't make it good news.

Trump's a jerk to Powell. Vance is a very polished jerk. Remember his treatment of Zelenskyy? Stephen Miller is a jerk to Rand Paul. If you've seen the Trump cabinet in action, many of whom are political losers, you've seen even more insulting jerks. They may be descendants of the people of Jerkola for all I know, but I can only speculate.

 

 

  

 

Suits for thee Zelenskyy, but not for me

 

Latest Trump minerals deal with Ukraine carves up the invaded country between Trump and Putin even worse than before

 

Trump's minerals deal with Ukraine is an expropriation document, demanding half of its oil and gas, almost all of its metals, and now also much of its infrastructure in reparations.

Black radicals want reparations from whites. The radical Trump wants to gobble up most of Ukraine.

Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, here:

Donald Trump is holding a gun to the head of Volodymyr Zelensky, demanding huge reparations payments and laying claim to half of Ukraine’s oil, gas, and hydrocarbon resources as well as almost all its metals and much of its infrastructure.

The latest version of his “minerals deal”, obtained by The Telegraph, is unprecedented in the history of modern diplomacy and state relations. ...

It dovetails with parallel talks between the US and Russia for a comprehensive energy partnership, including plans to restore West Siberian gas flows to Europe in large volumes, with US companies and Trump-aligned financiers gaining a major stake in the business.

The revived gas trade would flow through Ukraine’s network, and later via the Baltic as the sabotaged Nord Stream pipelines are brought back on stream. ...

Prof Riley said: “It is not compatible with EU membership, and perhaps that is part of the purpose. I have to wonder whether the real intention might not be to force Zelensky to reject it.” ...

Germany’s Bild Zeitung said talks have been underway for weeks in Switzerland to reopen the Nord Stream 2 pipelines, conducted secretly by ex-Stasi agent Matthias Warnig and Mr Trump’s envoy Richard Grenell, a man known for his Kremlin sympathies.

The terms would give US contractors operational control and a fat revenue stream, creating money out of “thin air”. A cynic might call it a legal “donation” to Mr Trump’s circle by the Kremlin.

“There is talk about Nord Stream. It would be interesting if the Americans put pressure on Europe, to make them stop refusing our Russian gas,” said Sergei Lavrov, Russia’s foreign minister. ...

All evidence so far is that Trump & Putin Inc is a perfectly harmonious joint venture.

 

Russia repeatedly violates ceasefire on Ukrainian energy infrastructure

 Zelenskiy says Russia hit Ukraine’s power infrastructure, US should react 

President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said on Thursday Russian artillery had damaged Ukraine’s energy infrastructure in the front-line city of Kherson, two days after the U.S. announced that each side had agreed to a truce on energy strikes. ...

Russia, which launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 and now holds about 20% of the country, contends that it has observed an energy strike truce since March 18. Ukraine says Russia has attacked eight Ukrainian energy facilities since that date. ...

The incompetence of Signalgate comes on the heels last month of a Tass News Agency journalist gaining access to the Oval Office meeting with Zelenskyy

It's all part of a pattern of incompetence which includes Elon Musk firing people indiscriminately and then having to scurry and rehire people in critical positions who never should have been fired in the first place.

 Amateur Hour 2.0

 

I'll bet Witkoff is lying: Let's see the letter

 

Steve Witkoff: Zelensky Sent A Letter To Trump, "He Apologized For That Whole Incident That Happened In The Oval Office"

Andrew Sullivan: The point is the abuse, whether it's Canada's Trudeau, Mexico's Sheinbaum, Germany's Scholz, Ukraine's Zelensky, or the S&P 500

 

Trump doesn't really believe in the tariffs, that they'll do anything one way or another. They are simply the readiest instruments which demonstrate his power, and the daily reminder to all and sundry that he is the king, Mad King Ludwig II of Bavaria reincarnate.

 

Trump says he’s not even looking at stock market, tariffs will make U.S. ‘very strong’ 

Trump ‘an agent of chaos and confusion,’ economists say — but a U.S. recession isn’t in the cards yet

So long, Trump bump: Tech stocks wipe out last of post-election gains 

 

Trump rejects pleas from business for more clarity on tariffs: ‘They always say that’ 

 

... Bartiromo interjected: “That’s not clarity.” ...

 

The Bully In His Pulpit

 

... Canada and Mexico are best understood as the baby in the playpen [whom Trump pelted with stones when he was five or six]. Trump himself re-negotiated a trade agreement with both in his first term. Have they violated that deal? No. Have they refused to cooperate on fentanyl and illegal migrants? No. Has Mexico reduced the pressure on the Southern border to almost nothing. Dramatically. Is there anything they can or could do to please Trump? No. The point is the abuse. And like all abusers, Trump constantly shifts what he is demanding, gaslights, threatens, charms, attacks … so that you begin to realize there is nothing you can do except wait for his mood to change. Welcome to monarchy. ...

Andrew Sullivan throws the title of a recent book by Hillarycon Rod Dreher in his face, who is now at the heart of this new authoritarian Trump presidency through his friendship with J. D. Vance

Dreher has succumbed to the abuse of Trump. He lives by lies. He thinks Zelenskyy was the bad guy in the Oval Office.

Sullivan has not succumbed to our "sociopathic president":

 ... What the world saw last Friday was the same, central Trump dynamic: the leader of a smaller democracy that has withstood three years of brutal attack by a far larger dictatorship ... was still publicly humiliated, because he dared air his concern of no security guarantees against Russia. “Just say thank you,” Vance harangued him. “Have you said thank you once?” I cannot recall any visiting head of state who has ever, ever been thrown out of the White House the way Zelensky was. Why? Because he did not submit.

... The challenge for liberals of all stripes is a familiar one in dystopian democracies and rigid dictatorships: Live not by lies. Keep your grip on reality. Avoid the propaganda now washing down on you like torrential rain. Find a refuge, as I did on Wednesday — a place where eternal truths remain, or where free thinking can endure (Spinoza is a role model, which is why the Dishcast discusses him this week).

Avoid hysteria, which Trump wants and exploits. But avoid also being co-opted by a single one of his lies, to see clearly, and to speak simply. Read those you disagree with; get off most social media; choose doubt over certainty; restraint over impulse; resist this authoritarian and irrational moment by refocusing above all on the simple truth, as best as you can, and fighting all those on both extremes trying to annihilate it. ...

Here.

It's a magnificent essay which everyone should read.

Rod Dreher was a Hillarycon in 2016 because of, wait for it, The Madness of King Donald. And so was J. D. Vance.

It's pretty obvious to everyone now that Trump turned off Ukraine's security umbrella in the hope that Putin delivers a strike which kills Zelenskyy

 The Times of London:

 

Some people just don't know how to dress when visiting the White House

 

Inquiring minds want to know if J. D. Vance ever apologized to Donald Trump for calling him America's Hitler

 

Putin launches ballistic missile at hotel in Zelenskyy's hometown, kills four after Trump turns off warning technology

Russian strike kills 4 in Ukraine amid US aid, intelligence freeze

 ... Ukraine's air force reported 112 drones and two missiles launched into the country overnight, with 68 drones shot down and 43 lost in flight.

The air force reported damage in the Kharkiv, Sumy, Odesa and Dnipropetrovsk regions.

In Dnipropetrovsk, a ballistic missile hit a hotel in the city of Kryvyi Rih -- Zelenskyy's hometown.

"A ballistic missile struck an ordinary hotel," the president wrote on social media. Four people were killed with more than 30 others injured, he added. The attack came shortly after a group of foreign humanitarian volunteers checked into the hotel, Zelenskyy said. None were hurt.

Sources told ABC News that two U.S. citizens were among the volunteers who survived the strike, working for the Charity fund Freedom Trust and Ukraine Relief organization. ...

U.S. intelligence sharing with Ukraine had allowed Kyiv to give warnings to targeted areas ahead of Russian drone and missile strikes, tracking Russian aircraft taking off, drones being launched and missiles being fired. ...

 

Polling from Rasmussen Reports shows Trump taking a nosedive after Friday's disastrous crucifixion of Zelenskyy in the Oval Office

 

Rasmussen Reports Trump Approval Index tanked to -5 on Fri Feb 28th & as low as -7 on Tue in the wake of the disastrous Oval Office meeting with Zelenskyy. People don't like seeing ugly from POTUS & VPOTUS. Massive damage control by surrogates all weekend has failed so far.

Yeah, he didn't really though: It was a no apology apology

 Zelensky expresses regret for Oval Office spat with Trump

... "Our meeting in Washington, at the White House on Friday, did not go the way it was supposed to be. It is regrettable that it happened this way. It is time to make things right. We would like future cooperation and communication to be constructive," Zelensky wrote on X. ...

Yeah that worked out great for Afghanistan, might as well try it for Ukraine omg

Cue record needle scratching across the record here.

 

Trump's grifting, shape-shifting billionaire crypto czar David Sacks calls Zelenskyy a grifter lol

 

 David Sacks, a Jewish South-African, is another one of Trump's end-run-around-the-rules appointees like Elon Musk.

Like Musk he is one of Trump's "special government employees" who was not confirmed by the US Senate and who has not divested from all of his private business activities while he influences federal government policy. There is no government oversight of David Sacks.

Sacks licks his finger and checks the wind direction like the rest of his parasitical tech bro friends. He has made large political contributions in the past to the campaigns of both Mitt Romney and later to Hillary Clinton, as well as to RFK Jr., among others.

Like J. D. Vance, he believes in nothing very much except what's good for himself and his friends. "They are very rich people who want to buy political power", according to Edward Luce (below).

Sacks spews a litany of falsehoods about Zelenskyy and Russia's invasion of Ukraine here in an interview with the numbskull Jesse Watters. He has stated that Ukraine provoked the Russians to attack in 2022, a belief which Republicans booed last summer because it isn't true, according to Edward Luce of The Financial Times, who was there:

Sacks said on the opening night of the Milwaukee Republican convention, which I am also attending, that the US “provoked” Russia to invade Ukraine. As much as Sacks denies strenuously that he was booed by delegates. I beg to differ. The sceptical reception to Sacks’ Putin-friendly diatribe was the least unreassuring moment of what is the most dystopian political convention I have witnessed.