Today in Politics, Bulletin 194. 8/25/25

… Trump held 3 press events in the Oval Office today, the first one to announce a series of executive orders headlined by his intention to have DOJ prosecute people for burning flags, the 2nd one with the new president of South Korea, and the 3rd one with AG Pam Bondi about a cartel prosecution. He took questions for over an hour with a visible dark bruise still on his hand, but was not asked about it. Again.

… On his new flag burning order: “The people in this country don’t want to see our American flag burned and spit on. They’re bad people that are trying to destroy our nation. You burn a flag, you get one year in jail. And it goes on your record. When you burn the American flag, it incites riots.”

… Trump’s WH Staff Secretary Will Scharf then chimed in to make it clear that this order doesn’t exactly do what Trump claims, since the Supreme Court ruled years ago that burning a flag is protected free speech: “What the executive order does, sir, it charges your DOJ with investigating instances of flag burning. And then where there is evidence of criminal activity, where prosecution wouldn't fall afoul of the first amendment it instructs the DOJ to prosecute those.”

… In other words, this is going to be a situation where if you burn someone else’s flag or damage someone’s property you will be prosecuted. Just like you can be now. But it will still be legal to burn your own flag. This is just another BS culture war distraction.

… Trump then claimed that everyone in Europe loves him: “Our nation now is the most respected nation anywhere in the world. Europeans respect your president. They call me the president of Europe which is an honor.”

… Trump bragged about the World Cup trophy he was given as gift that is now on his desk: “This is a solid gold trophy. They know how to get to me.”

… This is was literally a scene from the latest South Park episode that he just reenacted in real life. Unreal.

… Trump was asked about sending the National Guard to Chicago: “I have a slob, like Pritzker, criticizing me. They say he's a dictator, he's a dictator. A lot of people are saying maybe I like dictators. I'm not a dictator. I'm a man with great common sense. I'm a smart person. We hate to be treated horribly by bad politicians, like a guy like Pritzker, he ought to spend more time in the gym. He is a disaster.”

… Pritzker at a press conference today: “To the members of the press who are assembled here today and listening across the country, I am asking for your courage to tell it like it is. This is not a time to pretend here that there are two sides to this story. This is not a time to fall back into the reflexive crouch that I so often see, where the authoritarian creep by this admin is ignored in favor of some horse race piece on who will be helped politically by the president's actions. Trump wants to use the military to occupy a US city, punish his dissidents and score political points.”

… Stephen Miller was in the Oval Office and said this about Trump’s military occupation of DC: "For the first time in their lives, they can use the parks, they can walk on the streets. You have people who can walk freely at night without having to worry about being robbed or mugged. They are wearing their watches again."

… CNN’s Daniel Dale: “Trump false claims about DC this morning: It'd been ‘years’ since DC had a previous 11-day murder-free stretch. (The district had a 16-day murder-free stretch *this* year). Crime in DC was ‘at its all-time worst’ under Biden. (It had been nowhere even close to its ’90s peaks). ‘95% of the people here want us’ (WaPo poll found 79% opposition in DC to the fed takeover). “For 11 days you don’t have crime” (there’ve been hundreds of crimes in DC during the fed takeover, though it is down, even with the murder-free stretch).”

… Then Trump talked about crime in LA: "Beverly Hills - I have friends, they leave their trunk open for their car because they know they're going to be vandalized. They don't want the trunk ripped off in order for them to steal what's in their bag. They leave their doors open so when they go in to steal the radio or whatever they take, they don't rip off the door. They leave the doors totally open so the criminals, when they go and open the door, they don't have to break the windows and kill the car."

… This is another BS story he has told for years.

… Trump then grumbled about his war of words yesterday with MD Gov Wes Moore (which he started), and claimed that Moore once privately told him "Sir, you're the greatest president of my lifetime."

… Moore responded on X with this post: “lol”. As of this posting, Moore’s simple response has 5.5 million views and 125,000 likes on X.

… Trump then talked about his big plans for lowering drug prices - another outlandish claim with no specifics as usual: "I'm going to be reducing drugs prices by 1,400, 1,500 percent."

… I guess that means the govt is going to pay us to take drugs. He didn’t give a time frame for this happening, so I would assume two weeks.

… Trump then said that his order killing solar and wind projects underway with funding from Biden’s CHIPS act, which seeks to replace clean energy with fossil fuels, is a good thing: “We have more oil gas, and coal than any other country by far. For whatever reason, god was very good to us. We started to use wind. Wind doesn't work. We started to use solar panels that took over all the land where a farmer said, ‘What happened to my land?’”

… Rep. Seth Magaziner (D-RI) responded: “Rhode Island is the Saudi Arabia of offshore wind. Blocking clean energy from the grid kills American jobs, raises Americans’ electric bills, and is a great way to lose the AI race to China.”

… Magaziner then addressed EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin’s comments yesterday that they killed the remaining funding for a wind turbine project in RI: “This is in my district. Let’s set the record straight: This America-last action by the Trump Admin is blocking clean, American made energy from the grid. The project is 80% complete, 45 turbines already built, enough to power 350k homes below current market price.”

… Trump was asked whether he is going to ban students from China, which Charlie Kirk and many other right-wingers have been calling for: “We are going to get along good with China. I hear stories about not allowing the students - we are going to allow the students. It's very important. 600,000 students.”

… First no Epstein files, and now MAGA has to process this. Sad!

… The new president of South Korea was then brought in, and Trump was asked about the post he made this morning about the country: “WHAT IS GOING ON IN SOUTH KOREA? Seems like a Purge or Revolution. We can’t have that and do business there. I am seeing the new President today at the White House.”

… Q - Could you talk about your post on South Korea - what were you referring to? Trump: “I heard there are raids on churches over the last few days. They went into our military base. I heard bad things. I don't know if it's true or not.”

… The South Korean president, who does not speak English, then gave a very long answer that there is an investigation that has been ongoing after the former president’s coup attempt, and said that no US military bases have been searched. He mentioned that the legislature appointed a special prosecutor and our orange buffoon then interrupted and asked if his name was “deranged Jack Smith.”

… The South Korean president had a mystified ‘WTF’ look on his face when Trump interrupted to gripe about Jack Smith in the middle of his response to a coup investigation in South Korea.

… Guardian broke a wild story that JD Vance attempted to get in contact with a potential Ukrainian presidential challenger to Zelensky after the debacle in the Oval Office back in March: “There was a flurry of telephone activity at the Ukrainian embassy in London. JD Vance’s team was on the line and wanted to set up a call with Valerii Zaluzhnyi, Ukraine’s ambassador to the UK and formerly the commander in chief of the army. The VP had been instrumental in provoking the confrontation between Trump and Zelensky in the Oval Office, from his perch on an adjacent sofa. Now, Vance and others in Trump’s orbit were apparently sounding out potential alternatives to the troublesome Zelensky.”

… “Vance’s team ‘tried various diplomatic and other channels’ to get through to Zaluzhnyi. Zaluzhnyi, after consultation with Zelensky’s chief of staff, refused to take the call. The episode was reflective of the political tightrope that Zaluzhnyi has walked since Zelensky dismissed him as army chief last Feb and dispatched him to London. On the one hand, accustomed to working within a strict military hierarchy, Zaluzhnyi remains loyal to the govt he serves. On the other, many see him as Ukraine’s natural next president, and are pushing him to launch a political campaign.”

… “For Zaluzhnyi, whatever bad blood there was with Zelensky, siding with the Trump team against his own president was not an option. He met Zelensky at the airport in London, and posted on his social media channels a photograph of the two men shaking hands. ‘The road ahead won’t be easy, but together, we will overcome every challenge,’ he wrote. It was a demonstrative show of unity at what was one of Ukraine’s lowest moments since the start of the full-scale invasion.”

… A source close to Zaluzhnyi: “A lot of his supporters didn’t understand why he did this. But it was his principled position: Ukraine has been humiliated and we have to be united.”

… Disgusting and slimy move by Vance outed by the international press, once again making us like despicable fools to our allies.

… Rep. Brendan Boyle (D-PA) talked about Republicans using Vance as their point man to travel the country and sell people on their budget leading up to the midterms: "JD Vance is a phony and a fraud, and he doesn't have Trump's weird sort of charisma. So as a Democrat, I find it very helpful that someone who has the charisma of cardboard is out there pushing the bill."

… Rep. Jared Moskowitz (D-FL) on Trump continuing to do nothing to Russia despite making numerous promises to impose new sanctions: "Just treat Russia like you're treating Washington DC, or how you treated Greenland or Canada when you came into office. Where is that President Trump with the Russians? It seems like he's tougher on Chicago than he is dealing with Putin."

… It hasn’t taken long for Jared’s father Charles Kushner to cause an international incident after his appointment as US Ambassador to France. Kushner has been summoned by the French govt to appear before the foreign ministry after a letter Kushner wrote accusing the France of antisemitism. Kushner accused Macron's govt of fueling antisemitism by announcing it will recognize a Palestinian state. The letter echoed a similar statement issued by Israeli PM Netanyahu which suggested Macron was stoking antisemitism.

… Kushner: "I write out of deep concern over the dramatic rise of antisemitism in France and the lack of sufficient action by your government to confront it. In France, not a day passes without Jews assaulted in the street, synagogues or schools defaced, or Jewish-owned businesses vandalized. Antisemitism has long scarred French life, and it has exploded since Hamas’s barbaric assault on Oct 7, 2023."

… The French Foreign Ministry issued a statement: "France firmly refutes these latest allegations.” They said Kushner's letter was "unacceptable," and "counter to international law" as diplomats are not permitted to criticize the domestic policy of other nations.

… Rep. Nancy Mace helped fuel a hoax that there was a school shooter at the Univ of South Carolina yesterday and posted a video of a student claiming that he was the suspect. She claimed that he was carrying a rifle, which turned out to be an umbrella. There also was no school shooting.

… I was watching her posts in real time, noticed that she deleted the one accusing the kid, then saw the whole thing was a hoax and posted a screen shot of her deleted post. Several media outlets subsequently picked up on the story today. Mace never apologized for falsely accusing the umbrella carrying man of a mass shooting.

… Thanks again for reading, subscribing, and sharing my work. As Ben and Brett say often, without you none of this is possible because we are completely independent with no corporate sponsors or billionaire investors. If you missed yesterday’s Bulletin, you can find it here.

… The Telegraph: “America’s jobs market is bracing for a ‘Trump slump’ as the president’s tariffs and immigration crackdown hammer businesses, economists have warned. Over the next year, the US economy will add just 690,000 new jobs – 64% less than the 1.9 million added across 2024 before Trump took office, according to a forecast by Capital Economics. Jobs growth of 690,000 would roughly match the