The Weekly WTF: Bailouts for criminals

Trump tests how much corruption Republicans can handle. Plus, corporate "measurers" are toast and typos are in.

THIS STUFF ACTUALLY HAPPENED:

Trump criminal fund. These are historic times! A new scheme by President Trump to give taxpayer money to convicted criminals and absolve himself of tax liability is “one of the single most corrupt acts in American history,” according to a government watchdog group. It’s not every day you get to experience such unprecedented events!

The Trump plan is a new fund of $1.8 billion to compensate Trump supporters who marauded through the US Capitol on January 6, 2021, along with others Trump wants to reward for their loyalty (to him, not the country). Another part of the deal is immunity for Trump, his family, and his “affiliates” for any tax evasion they may have committed. Ever.

The whole plot is so galling that it may finally have set the limit for how much corruption Trump’s fellow Republicans are willing to tolerate. Some prominent GOP senators are pressuring Trump to cancel the slush fund by delaying action on immigration legislation Trump wants, and possibly on other priorities. Congress could also pass a law prohibiting Trump from doling out the money, but he could veto it. Plus, Republicans want to avoid a vote that puts their most vulnerable members on record opposing Trump.

[Trump says to hell with affordability]

Two things matter: One is whether Congressional Republicans will actually grow a spine and start to buck Trump in material ways. Be skeptical. The other is whether Trump has lost all interest in governing and is now willing to burn every bridge if it serves his own personal interests. It increasingly looks that way.

If you want to know the details of the Trump criminal fund and why it may actually be legal, Lawfare offers this thorough breakdown.

How to lose by winning. Trump has vanquished some foes within his own party by endorsing challengers who are defeating sitting members of Congress in Republican primary elections. So Trump gets revenge on people who voted to convict him of impeachment or opposed him in other ways, such as Sen. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana and Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky. Both recently lost primaries to Trump-backed opponents, ending their Congressional tenures. Trump has also endorsed the far-right Ken Paxton over the more moderate John Cornyn in the Texas Senate primary, endangering Cornyn’s reelection odds.

So Trump remains the don within his party. But the MAGA candidates he’s helping elect will be weaker candidates against Democrats in the November general elections, and that could ultimately tip the Senate to Democratic control. If Paxton ends up as the Republican nominee, in Texas, for instance, a Democrat could actually win a Texas Senate seat for the first time in nearly 40 years.vThat’s another reason Senate Republicans are growing furious with Trump. So yeah, maybe Trump is giving up on governing because personal revenge is sweeter. Punchbowl News has this nice summary of the situation.

[5 things to know about the midterm elections]

The Democrats still suck. Trump has spotted the Democrats an 8-0 lead in the seventh inning, and they’re cruising to an easy win, right? Um, no, not at all. Dysfunction remains the Democrats’ most prominent feature, underscored by the publication of an overhyped “autopsy” of what went wrong when Kamala Harris lost the 2024 presidential election to Trump.

You or I could have written a better report. Harris lost because Joe Biden never should have run for reelection and he bailed out too late. Harris was a mushy candidate who might not have even been the nominee if there were a normal primary election process. And the Biden-Harris record of high inflation and out-of-control illegal immigration was a loser to start with.

Anyway, don’t waste any time reading the Dems’ own analysis of what went wrong, which even Democrats are mocking as vapid. The main takeaway is that the Democratic Party remains leaderless and rudderless. It can make gains in this year’s midterm elections simply because of Trump’s plummeting popularity. But we still have a huge political problem: Neither of the two political parties represents the practical sensibilities of a huge part of the electorate, maybe even the majority.

[Voters hate both parties more than ever]

Send a wedding postcard! Donald Trump, Jr. is getting married this weekend in the Bahamas. His father might be too busy to attend. “This is not good timing for me,” Trump explained on May 21. “I have a thing called Iran, and other things.”

Trump also has an Air Force 747 that can take him wherever he wants and cut every air-traffic control line. It will be Don, Jr.’s second wedding. Trump Sr. has been married three times. Maybe weddings are no big deal in the Trump family. Trump will catch the next one.

Just quit now? Matthew Prince, the CEO of tech company Cloudflare, wrote a remarkably candid essay in the Wall Street Journal on May 20 explaining which employees he’s replacing with artificial intelligence. The safest workers, Prince said, are “builders” who create products and “sellers” who bring in the revenue. The most vulnerable, he said, are “measurers” who analyze processes, including auditors, marketers, operations analysts and a lot of middle managers. Cloudflare recently cut 20% of its workforce, and “the vast majority of those we laid off were measurers,” Prince said. Consider yourselves warned, measurers.

To err is human! Written typos and other mistakes now count as signs of authenticity—as in, proof that AI didn’t write this. That’s the conclusion of an Atlantic essay claiming that people are deliberately making catchable mistakes on resumes, dating profiles and social-media posts to demonstrate that a human actually composed the material. How kwaint.

[I asked AI for investing advice. It’s pretty good]

Energy crisis, whatever. Trump’s latest stance on the Iran war he can’t end is he’s in “no hurry” to make a deal with Iran and get oil flowing through the Strait of Hormuz again. It’s only oil, after all, and we’ve got plenty of that right here in the US of A. But Trump is still too busy to make Junior’s wedding.