The Most Historic Trump Story of Last Week

Of the five big news stories of last week, which one will be most remembered by historians? Let’s rank them from least likely to most likely.

“Quiet, piggy”

That was a horrible thing for the President of the United States to say to a [Bloomberg] reporter. If anyone else—from a First Grader to a CEO—said something so vile, there would be consequences. Yes, presidents sometimes snap at reporters. Franklin Roosevelt once told someone to go sit in the corner with a dunce cap. But FDR was usually nice. Trump is usually mean, especially with women reporters. It was outrageous for him to threaten ABC News reporter Mary Bruce with lifting ABC’s license just for asking a question about the killing of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi, who was, according to the CIA, cut up with a bone saw on orders of Mohammed bin Salman, the man sitting at Trump’s side.

“You’re mentioning somebody that was extremely controversial,” Trump said, referring to Khashoggi. “A lot of people didn’t like that gentleman that you’re talking about. Whether you like him or didn’t like him, things happen, but he knew nothing about it. And would you leave it at that? You don’t have to embarrass our guest by asking a question.”

Disgusting. Bloomberg and ABC News issued statements backing their reporters, but that’s not enough. When something like this happens, reporters and their news organizations should get together and demand an apology. If Trump refuses, they should boycott the news conferences. And one of them should say something in real time, rather than just stand there silently. How about: “Why are you so rude, Mr. President?”

Trump needs the legacy media more than people realize. He doesn’t want to just be talking to Fox, Breitbart News, and Newsmax. These bigger news organizations have the leverage that they need to start using. Media is his oxygen, and if he’s denied it, he’ll fold.

Mamdani meeting

Trump is a master programmer, and he understood that flipping the script on the man he routinely called a communist would be good TV. But it was also kind of logical when you think about it. They need each other. Mayor-elect Mamdani needs Trump because he has to have money from Washington, or New York City will be thrust into chaos. And Trump needs Mamdani to latch onto the affordability agenda, which he has to start identifying with if he’s going to have any hope at all in the midterms. Besides, they both genuinely love New York. My guess is that in private, Mamdani learned the Zelensky lesson (adopted by every leader who meets with Trump) and found something to praise, perhaps the Trump family’s record on building middle-class housing.

Even so, I expect this agreement to last less time than the 1939 Nazi-Soviet Pact—the fascist-communist pact, to put it in the context of this strange White House meeting, which ended with Trump telling Mamdani in front of the press that it was OK to call him a fascist. (Mamdani did not give Trump permission to call him a communist.) The Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, by the way, broke down in less than two years, and I give Mamdani and Trump about six months before Trump finds some excuse to go after the new mayor.

In the meantime, if Mamdani can somehow convince Trump not to send ICE and troops onto the streets of New York City, maybe we can avoid the prospect of some knucklehead throwing a Molotov cocktail at someone, which would give Trump an excuse to invoke the Insurrection Act and plunge the nation much deeper into crisis.

Ukraine deal

Speaking of the Russians, this so-called peace plan that Steve Witkoff wrote with the Russians—there’s actually Russian language in there—is a nonstarter. It demands that Ukraine give up territory that Russia took by force and reduce the size of its army in exchange for the kind of vague security guarantee that Russia has repeatedly violated. I don’t think it will be remembered by history because it’s just the opening move in what will likely be an unsuccessful peace effort. If Trump were ever able to ram a treaty down Ukraine’s throat, you can expect that Ukrainian partisans would continue to resist. Trump is making Neville Chamberlain look like Winston Churchill.

The Epstein files

Yes, this scandal will bedevil Trump to the end of his term, but it’s important to remember that there’s not likely to be evidence of law-breaking by Trump, or by anybody else, because the FBI has had these files for a while. If somebody needed to be prosecuted, the way Ghislaine Maxwell was, that would have happened under Biden.

So what we’re likely to see is highly embarrassing material, not just about some people we may not have heard of much yet, but about Trump. That’s why he has been so desperate not to release the files, and why he and Mike Johnson will do anything they can to find loopholes in the new law and otherwise delay things. Trump always says Nixon should have burned the tapes, but destruction of evidence is much harder to do here, fortunately, without some career official (or IT guy) leaking it.

My guess is the big news will most likely involve what Michael Wolff says was called “The Pussy Committee,” which the mainstream media will have to find a euphemism for. (I wish Wolff and I had discussed it here, though we covered a lot of what he knew long before most of the press started paying much attention). “The Pussy Committee” was Donald Trump and Jeffrey Epstein’s jokey interest in pimping for Prince Andrew—finding him women so they could social climb. When the files come out, get ready for Trump to be called “President Pimp.”

“Punishable by death”

The story of this week that I think is most likely to leave a lasting impression when historians write about the Trump Era is that the President of the United States threatened members of Congress with execution for their “seditious behavior” in telling the military that they are not required to carry out unlawful orders. They aren’t. That’s the law. It’s also the right of these members to say so under the Constitution. Real sedition is what happened on January 6.

I’m a little unsure about their timing. Why now? But this was nonetheless an important thing for Senator Mark Kelly, Senator Elissa Slotkin, Representative Jason Crow, and other fine legislators (all veterans of the armed forces or the intelligence community) to get out there. It put down a marker. Conscientious members of the military now understand that if they are asked to do something illegal off the coast of Venezuela, say, or in another context, they can go to Congress for help.

The larger point is that we have never seen anything approaching this in American history. Even the worst despot does not publicly threaten his critics with death. Of course, the story will be infinitely worse if the death threats that these members of Congress are now receiving were to end in violence. But even if they don’t, Donald Trump trying to back off a bit on a rightwing radio show doesn’t cut it. He should be censured by the Senate and the House for what he said.