Wednesday Reads: Trump’s Endless, Boring, Lie-Filled Speech, and Other News

Good Afternoon!!

The Nightmare, by Henry Fuseli

Trump’s speech last night was long and full of lies. I didn’t really watch or listen to it; I had it on TV with the sound muted. I turned it on when I noticed he was lying about Social Security, and then I tuned out again. Here’s what he had to say about the popular program that for 80 years has kept old people from starving on the streets.

Happenings during and after the speech:

NBC News: Democratic Rep. Al Green removed after disrupting Trump’s speech.

Rep. Al Green, D-Texas, was removed from the House chamber Tuesday night after he disrupted President Donald Trump’s joint address to Congress.

Green, who has long pushed to impeach Trump dating to his previous term in office, stood and shook his cane toward the president in the opening minutes of his speech.

Other lawmakers cheered and booed Green, causing further chaos on the House floor as Trump paused. The uproar prompted House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., to read aloud from House rules.

“Members are directed to uphold and maintain decorum in the House and to cease any further disruptions,” Johnson said, an admonishment aimed at Green.

After Green refused to sit and allow Trump to continue, Johnson called for the House sergeant at arms to remove him from the chamber.

“Nah nah nah nah, goodbye,” Republicans chanted as Green was escorted from the room.

Outside the chamber, Green told NBC News that as “a person of conscience,” he believes Trump “has done things that I think we cannot allow to continue.”

What Green yelled at Trump was “You have no mandate to cut Medicaid!”

Trump reiterated his desire to take over Greenland. Politico: ‘Greenland is ours’: Greenland prime minister rebukes Trump pledge to acquire the territory.

Greenland’s Prime Minister Múte Bourup Egede proclaimed that “Greenland is ours” in response to President Donald Trump’s joint address to Congress Tuesday night, where he said the U.S. will get Greenland “one way or another.”

“Americans and their leader must understand that,” Egede wrote on Facebook Wednesday, using the Greenlandic name for the island. “We are not for sale and cannot simply be taken. Our future will be decided by us in Greenland.”

Egede’s remarks follow Trump’s pledge to acquire the territory — despite emphasizing Greenland’s self-determination — during his Tuesday speech.

“We strongly support your right to determine your own future, and if you choose, we welcome you into the United States of America,” Trump said, stressing that acquiring the territory would improve U.S. national and international security.

“I think we’re going to get it. One way or the other, we’re going to get it,” Trump added.

David Kurz at Talking Points Memo: Donald Trump Personally Thanks John Roberts For Keeping Him Out Of Jail: ‘I Won’t Forget It.’

It wasn’t Rep. Al Green (D-TX) being escorted out of the House chamber after his disruptive protest, and it wasn’t the long list of Trump absurdities cobbled together into an endless speech. Nope, it was Trump rubbing Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts’ face in their mutual corruption:

“Thank you again. Thank you again. Won’t forget it,” Trump says while shaking the hand of Supreme Court Justice John Roberts after the State of the Union.

— Anna Bower (@annabower.bsky.social) 2025-03-05T05:18:11.964Z

Let’s stipulate that we’re reasonable people who can see this for what it is: a reference to the Supreme Court’s disastrous ahistoric discovery of vast presidential immunity from criminal prosecution that saved Trump from going to jail.

Trump’s mob boss mentality has led to other moments like this, where he extravagantly highlights the moral and ethical compromises that a sycophant has made on his behalf as a way of demonstrating that they really are no better than he is and of lashing them even more firmly to his side. If they resist, he calls them out for being hypocrites, pointing to their compromised behavior and mocking their previous pretensions to ethical behavior.

But this time Trump did it to the sitting Supreme Court chief justice in public on the floor of the House. Whatever high regard John Roberts still held himself in has been directly challenged in the most excruciating and a dignity-robbing way. Trump has a way of doing that to everyone who comes in contact with him. Roberts had it coming. No pity for him.

Commentary on Trump’s horrible speech:

Jamelle Bouie at The New York Times: Trump’s Revenge Tour Finds Its True Target.

Donald Trump rambled, ranted and raved his way through the 2024 presidential campaign, but he was clear on one point. When he was elected, he would get revenge.

“I am your retribution,” Trump said to crowds of his supporters throughout the campaign.

This was not an abstraction. He had a few targets in mind.

“I will appoint a real special prosecutor to go after the most corrupt president in the history of the United States of America, Joe Biden, and the entire Biden crime family,” he said in 2023.

There were also the judges, prosecutors and politicians who tried to hold Trump accountable for his crimes, both the ones for which he was indicted and the ones for which he was convicted. He refused to rule out an effort to prosecute Alvin Bragg, the Manhattan district attorney who prosecuted the Stormy Daniels hush-money case against him, and attacked Justice Juan Merchan, who presided over the trial, as “crooked.” Trump shared an image that called for the former Republican representative and Jan. 6 committee member Liz Cheney to be prosecuted in “televised military tribunals,” and he accused Gen. Mark Milley, a former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, of treason, calling his actions “so egregious that, in times gone by, the punishment would have been DEATH!”To get his revenge, Trump would turn the I.R.S., the F.B.I. and other powerful parts of the federal government against his political enemies. He would hound and harass them in retaliation for their opposition to his law stretching and lawbreaking.For once in his public career, Trump wasn’t lying. As president, he has made it a priority to go after his political enemies.

You all know the things Trump has done to get revenge in his brief time in office so far. But Bouie argues that Trump’s real revenge target is the American people.

Altogether, Trump has done more to actualize his desire for retribution than he has to fulfill his campaign promise to lower the price of groceries or reduce the cost of housing. A telling sign, perhaps, of his real priorities in office.This fact of Trump’s indifference to most Americans — if not his outright hostility toward them, considering his assault on virtually every government function that helps ordinary people — suggests another dimension to his revenge tour. It is almost as if he wants to inflict pain not just on a specific set of individuals but on the entire nation.

Read the whole thing at this gift link. It’s very good.

By Mark Bryan

Joyce Vance at Civil Discourse: Let’s Be Honest About The State Of The Union.

It wasn’t necessary to watch all of Trump’s speech last night to understand where we are as a country. The state of our union, as I noted Sunday night, is compromised. And that comes as no surprise to any of us. But two moments from last night are worth noting, as markers of where we are.

The Stupid: “I have created the brand new Department of Government Efficiency, DOGE. Perhaps you’ve heard of it. Perhaps. Which is headed by Elon Musk, who is in the gallery tonight,” Trump said during his speech.

Only one problem. That’s not what the Justice Department has been telling judges in litigation involving the Musk-led effort to privatize government. They’ve been doing everything they can to claim Musk is not in charge of DOGE, including telling the judge that a woman named Amy Gleason, who was on vacation in Mexico when they made the representation to the court, is the Acting Administrator. It didn’t take lawyers long to point that out. Trump was barely finished when Kel McClanahan filed a “Notice of New Evidence” in Lentini v. DOGE, one of three cases that have been consolidated to hear claims about DOGE’s legality in the District of Maryland.

McClanahan argued that Trump’s statement about Musk “conclusively demonstrates that expedited discovery is urgently needed to ascertain the nature of the Department of Government Efficiency and its relationship to the United States DOGE Service.” The best outcome for Trump, following his epic foot in mouth, is that Judge Jia Cobb grants the motion to expedite which would make this the first case where pro-democracy lawyers would gain access to information about the inner workings of DOGE, likely a treasure trove that would further underscore the lawless manner in which Trump is acting.

The worst case is that someone gets held in contempt, either civil or criminal. That would open an entire can of worms about how the courts enforce their orders against a Trump administration that has at least suggested it might not comply with ones it doesn’t like. But that fight is, inevitably, coming, and judges don’t like it when parties lie to them, especially when it’s so explicit and when it’s the government doing it, here, rather uniquely, with the president’s involvement.

Hahaha!

Vance also comments on Trump’s behavior toward the SCOTUS justices:

The Corrupt: After his speech, Trump shook hands with people in the room, including the four active Supreme Court Justices who were present in their long black robes. Their tradition of dress is meant to ensure that no one mistakes who they are. It separates them from the political fray, even as they attend. That message, however, was lost on Trump.

The moment was captured on CSPAN. Trump thanks the Justices. He doesn’t say what for, but of course, we all know.

“Thank you very much, appreciate it,” he says to Elena Kagan, whose face is a mask in the moment. Then, he moves on to the Chief Justice. “Thank you again. Thank you again,” he says to John Roberts. Then he awkwardly slaps him on the shoulder and says, “Won’t forget it.” The moment has an almost classic mob boss feel to it in context.

Roberts, followed by Kagan, peels off and leaves without comment and immediately.

More stories to check out:

Wired: Some DOGE Staffers Are Drawing Six-Figure Government Salaries.

Some staffers at Elon Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency are drawing robust taxpayer-funded salaries from the federal agencies they are slashing and burning, WIRED has learned.

Jeremy Lewin, one of the DOGE employees tasked with dismantling USAID, who has also played a role in DOGE’s incursions into the National Institutes of Health and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, is listed as making just over $167,000 annually, WIRED has confirmed. Lewin is assigned to the Office of the Administrator within the General Services Administration.

By Mark Bryan

Kyle Schutt, a software engineer at the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, is listed as drawing a salary of $195,200 through GSA, where he is assigned to the Office of the Deputy Administrator. That is the maximum amount that any “General Schedule” federal employee can make annually, including bonuses. “You cannot be offered more under any circumstances,” the GSA compensation and benefits website reads.

Nate Cavanaugh, a 28-year-old tech entrepreneur who has taken a visible internal role interviewing GSA employees as part of DOGE’s work at the agency, is listed as being paid just over $120,500 per year. According to DOGE’s official website, the average GSA employee makes $128,565 and has worked at the agency for 13 years.

When Elon Musk started recruiting for DOGE in November, he described the work as “tedious” and noted that “compensation is zero.” WIRED previously reported that the DOGE recruitment effort relied in part on a team of engineers associated with Peter Thiel and was carried out on platforms like Discord.

Since Trump took office in January, DOGE has overseen aggressive layoffs within the GSA, including the recent elimination of 18F, the agency’s unit dedicated to technology efficiency. It also developed a plan to sell off more than 500 government buildings.

Although Musk has described DOGE as “maximum transparent,” it has not made its spending or salary ranges publicly available. Funding for DOGE had grown to around $40 million as of February 20, according to a recent ProPublica report. The White House did not respond to questions about the salary ranges for DOGE

Reuters: Exclusive: Judges face rise in threats as Musk blasts them over rulings.

U.S. Marshals have warned federal judges of unusually high threat levels as tech billionaire Elon Musk and other Trump administration allies ramp up efforts to discredit judges who stand in the way of White House efforts to slash federal jobs and programs, said several judges with knowledge of the warnings.

In recent weeks, Musk, congressional Republicans and other top allies of U.S. President Donald Trump have called for the impeachment of some federal judges or attacked their integrity in response to court rulings that have slowed the Trump administration’s moves to dismantle entire government agencies and fire tens of thousands of workers.

Musk, the world’s richest person, has lambasted judges in more than 30 posts since the end of January on his social media site X, calling them “corrupt,” “radical,” “evil” and deriding the “TYRANNY of the JUDICIARY” after judges blocked parts of the federal downsizing that he’s led. The Tesla CEO has also reposted nearly two dozen tweets by others attacking judges.

Reuters interviews with 11 federal judges in multiple districts revealed mounting alarm over their physical security and, in some cases, a rise in violent threats in recent weeks. Most spoke on condition of anonymity and said they did not want to further inflame the situation or make comments that could be interpreted as conflicting with their duties of impartiality. The Marshals Service declined to comment on security matters.

As Reuters documented in a series of stories last year, political pressure on federal judges and violent threats against them have been rising since the 2020 presidential election, when federal courts heard a series of highly politicized cases, including failed lawsuits filed by Trump and his backers seeking to overturn his loss. Recent rhetorical attacks on judges and the rise in threats jeopardize the judicial independence that underpins America’s democratic constitutional order, say legal experts.

This one is for Dakinikat. The Wall Street Journal: The Two-Headed Monster Stalking the Economy Has a Name: Stagflation.

Stagflation has entered the chat.

President Trump’s decision to dramatically raise tariffs on imports threatens the U.S. with an uncomfortable combination of weaker or even stagnant growth and higher prices—sometimes called “stagflation.”

The U.S. has imposed 25% tariffs on Mexico and Canada, and another 10% hike on China following last month’s 10% increase. They “will be wildly disruptive to business investment plans,” said Ray Farris, chief economist at Prudential PLC. “They will be inflationary, so they will be a shock to real household income just as household income growth is slowing because of slower employment and wage gains,” he said.

It is still unclear how long Trump intends to keep the tariffs in place. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick suggested Tuesday afternoon on Fox Business that a rollback could be in the works.

Sentiment indicators and business commentary in recent weeks point to slumping confidence over the threat of higher prices.

By Mark Bryan

China and Mexico are the top two sources of consumer electronics sold at the retailer Best Buy, Chief Executive Corie Barry told analysts Tuesday. “We expect our vendors across our entire assortment will pass along some level of tariff costs to retailers, making price increases for American consumers highly likely,” Barry said. The company’s shares plummeted 13% in the midst of a general stock-market retreat.

Brothers International Food Holdings, based in Rochester, N.Y., imports mangoes and avocados from Mexico and sells fruit juices, purées and frozen-food concentrates to food and beverage manufacturers. New tariffs are forcing the 95-person company to pass on price increases to its customers or accept lower profit margins….

Trump and his advisers have said some short-term pain might be warranted to achieve the administration’s long-term ambitions of remaking the U.S. economy. They have also said their steps to boost energy production could offset higher goods prices.

Nonetheless, tariffs are a particularly difficult economic threat for the Federal Reserve to address. Its mandate is to keep inflation low and stable while maintaining a healthy labor market. Tariffs represent a “supply shock” that both raises inflation, which calls for higher interest rates, and hurts employment, which calls for lower rates. The Fed would have to choose which threat to emphasize.

NBC News: Supreme Court rejects Trump administration’s bid to avoid paying USAID contractors.

The Supreme Court on Wednesday backed a federal judge’s power to order the Trump administration to pay $2 billion to U.S. Agency for International Development contractors but did not require immediate payment.

In doing so, the court on a 5-4 vote rejected an emergency application filed by the Justice Department after U.S. District Judge Amir Ali issued a series of rulings demanding the government unfreeze funds that President Donald Trump put on hold with an executive order.

The court delayed acting on the case for a week. In the meantime, the contractors have not been paid.

In an unsigned order, the court said that Ali’s deadline for the immediate payment had now passed and the case is already proceeding in the district court, with more rulings to come. A hearing is scheduled for Thursday.

As such, Ali “should clarify what obligations the government must fulfill” in order to comply with a temporary retraining order issued Feb. 13, the court said. Ali should consider “the feasibility of any compliance deadlines,” the court added.

Four conservative justices dissented from the denial of the application, with Justice Samuel Alito writing that Ali did not have “unchecked power to compel the government to pay out … 2 billion taxpayer dollars.”

“I am stunned,” Alito added.

The other dissenters were Justices Clarence Thomas, Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh.

One more on the tariffs before I wrap this up. Eric Levitz at Vox: Trump doesn’t seem to know why he launched a giant trade war.