Last week, Trump lost a case to E. Jean Carroll, to the tune of $83 million. As the lawsuits stack up, they’re starting to actually have consequences. Will it hurt him? Probably not, given his current assets. But he’s not using his money anyway. There are all sorts of Republicans who are interested in giving Trump money to cover his legal bills. One example is a law proposal in Florida to use tax dollars to help pay Trump’s legal bills. (Probably the only thing we agree with DeSantis about is that this proposal is ridiculous.) The fact is that Trump may never feel the full impact of the law, and not because of his prowess or any thing like that. He’s got a nearly endless supply of suckers to pull money from, so as long as the recourse from the law is financial, he’ll be covered by his base. It’ll be interesting to see how many of his “campaign donations” are actually going toward his legal bills. Until we see a criminal consequence, i.e. imprisonment, he’ll be able to do whatever he wants to spend the money to pay the fines for.

We have in the USA this obsession with the charismatic extroverts who have often times questionable qualifications for for leading a country (i.e. Donald Trump). We keep electing these people repeatedly, act appalled that they don’t actually do what they say (ahem, where’s the infrastructure plan DJT said he would deliver?). Now, across-the-board among Republicans, these people blindly love Donald Trump. They claim he’s a Christian (if he is, he’s certainly never acted like one). They claim he’s a man who knows how to get stuff done (I guess if you count tax cuts for the wealthy, then ok). It’s gotten so bad in some red states and areas that preachers openly say that if you are a Democrat, you’ve got a demon inside and they're kicking Democrats out of churches.

This episode is about cults. More specifically, it’s about one cult: the cult of MAGA. Tune in and understand that the radicalization situation is worse than you think.

This week, the House Republicans decided to pass a law Rules issued by the executive branch concerning more than $100 million must get reviewed by the legislative branch. Though unlikely to pass the Senate, this performative legislation is problematic in multiple ways. For one thing, it’s a clear overreach of constitutional authority for the law-making branch to interfere with the executive branch’s operations. If Congress want money to be used in a certain way, then it should say so in the bills as passed. But there’s a second, more nefarious, possibility.

We don't really think anyone is going to take the nomination from Donald Trump, which is a sad thing to say about the Republican Party who back him. Even with DeSantis in the wings, who has old-guard Republicans blowing smoke in his ear, not even MAGA will back him. To be clear, it’s not because he’s too extreme, but because Trump told them not to. DeSantis is kind of losing on all fronts right now anyway. So who’s the next proposed divider-in-chief, courtesy of the Republican Party? The next person to rise on the right will have to come through Donald Trump and a MAGA crowning ceremony.

Tangentially related, we need a lot more infrastructure or laws that help protect us as a society. What MAGA has done is highlight the fact that decorum used to be enough to run this country. Once we we the people that actually majority of people get power back we need to do some serious seriously thinking about how things are going, and put whatever laws in place we need to in order to keep people like Trump on a short leash.

And that’s sad.