President Donald J. Trump’s erratic behavior was on display this weekend in two public speeches: one to this year’s graduates at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, New York, and the other at Arlington National Cemetery. While both speeches are traditionally nonpartisan, Trump indicated he would make them partisan when he wore a red MAGA hat at West Point.
The president began both speeches by sticking to a script but then veered off course. At West Point on Saturday, his speech went on for over an hour. He attacked diversity, equity, and inclusion programs and said: “The job of the U.S. Armed Forces is not to host drag shows to transform foreign cultures, or to spread democracy to everybody around the world at the point of a gun,” he said. “The military's job is to dominate any foe and annihilate any threat to America, anywhere, anytime, and any place.” (In fact, the mission of the Department of Defense is “to provide the military forces needed to deter war and ensure our nation’s security.”)
Trump veered off into immigration and a chat about golf, then repeated a story about William Levitt, a real estate developer whose post–World War II housing developments became synonymous with suburbia, that he had told at a 2017 Boy Scout jamboree. On Saturday, Trump talked about Levitt becoming “very rich, a very rich man, and then he decided to sell. And he sold his company, and he had nothing to do. He ended up getting a divorce, found a new wife. Could you say a trophy wife? I guess we can say a trophy wife. It didn’t work out too well, but it doesn’t—that doesn’t work out too well, I must tell you. A lot of trophy wives. It doesn’t work out. But it made him happy for a little while, at least, but he found a new wife. He sold his little boat, and he got a big yacht, he had one of the biggest yachts anywhere in the world. He moved for a time to Monte Carlo, and he led the good life, and time went by, and he got bored and 15 years later, the company that he sold to called him, and they said, ‘The housing business is not for us.’ You have to understand when Bill Levitt was hot. When he had momentum, he’d go to the job sites every night, he’d pick up every loose nail, he’d pick up every scrap of wood, if there was a bolt or a screw laying on the ground, he’d pick it up, and he’d use it the next day and putting together a house.”
After his speech, Trump skipped the traditional shaking of each graduate’s hand, left the ceremony, and flew to the Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster, New Jersey.
At Arlington National Cemetery on Monday, the president veered off into a dig at his predecessor, President Joe Biden, then noted that he, Trump, will be president for the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. And, he added, “Most important of all, in addition, we have the World Cup and we have the Olympics. Can you imagine [if] I missed that four years? And now look what I have. I have everything—amazing the way things work out. God did that, I believe that too.”
Trump’s social media account was similarly inappropriate. His message on Memorial Day—a solemn day to honor those American military personnel who died in service to the country—began: “HAPPY MEMORIAL DAY TO ALL, INCLUDING THE SCUM THAT SPENT THE LAST FOUR YEARS TRYING TO DESTROY OUR COUNTRY THROUGH WARPED RADICAL LEFT MINDS….”
But that message quickly took a turn toward his recurring attacks on judges. Trump claimed that “CRIMINALS AND THE MENTALLY INSANE” are entering the United States “THROUGH JUDGES WHO ARE ON A MISSION TO KEEP MURDERERS, DRUG DEALERS, RAPISTS, GANG MEMBERS, AND RELEASED PRISONERS FROM ALL OVER THE WORLD, IN OUR COUNTRY SO THEY CAN ROB, MURDER AND RAPE AGAIN—ALL PROTECTED BY THESE USA HATING JUDGES WHO SUFFER FROM AN IDEOLOGY THAT IS SICK, AND VERY DANGEROUS FOR OUR COUNTRY. HOPEFULLY THE UNITED STATES SUPREME COURT, AND OTHER GOOD AND COMPASSIONATE JUDGES THROUGHOUT THE LAND, WILL SAVE US FROM THE DECISIONS OF THE MONSTERS WHO WANT OUR COUNTRY TO GO TO HELL.”
In February 2024, almost a year before Trump took office the second time, the country’s 23 Democratic state attorneys general began preparing for a second Trump term. They listened to what he was saying on the campaign trail and read the plans in Project 2025, then wrote potential lawsuits against what he might try to put in place. Once he took office, they hit the ground running, banding together when they could to file lawsuits to bring the president’s unconstitutional and illegal actions before courts.
And they are not the only ones. On Friday, Alex Lemonides, Seamus Hughes, Mattathias Schwartz, Lazaro Gamio, and Camille Baker of the New York Times listed the many lawsuits against the Trump administration and noted that as of May 23, at least 177 rulings “have at least temporarily paused some of the administration’s initiatives.”
Those include cases involving the administration's attempt to fire large numbers of federal employees unlawfully, freeze federal funding required by Congress, refuse to recognize birthright citizenship, hand power to the “Department of Government Efficiency,” dismantle government agencies, take away civil rights from transgender Americans, revoke environmental policies, and use the federal government to punish individuals or organizations.
But it is the judicial orders and decisions concerning immigration that Trump and his administration are most vocally attacking. Their primary focus is on Maryland man Kilmar Abrego Garcia, who was rendered to the notorious CECOT terrorist prison in El Salvador on March 15 in what the administration at first called an “administrative error.” Nick Miroff of The Atlantic recorded that when Abrego Garcia’s family filed a lawsuit to get him returned, lawyers at the Departments of State, Justice, and Homeland Security quietly tried to secure his safety and bring him back to the United States.
But White House officials saw the case as a way to challenge the ability of the judicial branch to restrain presidential power. As Miroff writes, “Abrego Garcia’s deportation…developed into a measure of whether Donald Trump’s administration can send people—citizens or not—to foreign prisons without due process.”
They began to insist—without evidence—that Abrego Garcia was a gang member, a drug dealer, a terrorist, and a human trafficker. Despite orders from courts right up to the Supreme Court to facilitate Abrego Garcia’s return to the United States, they have publicly insisted that Abrego Garcia will never return to the United States. White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller, a white-nationalist nativist, has said that the administration is thinking about suspending the writ of habeas corpus, which would permit the government to throw people in jail without charge or trial. The Constitution specifies that Congress alone can suspend that writ.
Their attacks seemed designed to convince Americans that judges insisting on the rule of law are backing violent criminals. That, in turn, seems designed to encourage MAGA loyalists to threaten judges. And they are. The Wall Street Journal reported Sunday that a security committee at the judicial conference, the body that makes policy for federal judges, has floated the idea of creating an armed security force apart from the current U.S. Marshals Service that operates under the Department of Justice. Judges have expressed concern that Trump and loyalist Attorney General Pam Bondi might withdraw protections from judges who have ruled against the administration.
Conservative judge J. Michael Luttig noted: “It is an extraordinary and unprecedented development in American history that the Nation’s Federal Judiciary would have to consider having its own security force because federal judges cannot trust the U.S. Marshal’s Service under this President and his Attorney General. They cannot trust this president and this Attorney General to ensure their protection.”
He continued: “I had to admit that, given the continuing unprecedented and vicious personal attacks and threats on the federal courts and federal judges by the President, Vice President Vance, Attorney General Pam Bondi, and Donald Trump’s Cabinet and senior White House advisors, I would never rely upon the U.S. Marshal’s Service for my protection, were I still a sitting federal judge. How could anyone?”
— ChristopherBlackwell
He's insane and has lost his marbles. 25th amendment him... 86 him legally!
I'd prefer to do it Constitutionally, but..-greenman
Today King Charles addressed the Canadian Parliament
Posted by Pikes Peak 14115 on May 27, 2025, 4:59 pm, in reply to "He must be removed." ADMIN
Reading and speaking from the throne in English and French.
Our wannabe king can do neither. When he goes off script, it's because he fears trying to actually read what is coming up. While the speech writers dumb it down for him, they don't dumb it down enough.
When trump goes off script, his becomes the speech of a preschooler in the anal stage when everything is about him.
Charles speaks German and Spanish too. Trump speaks prechool anal English. You can look away from a painting, but you can't listen away from a symphony
Everything has to be about dt. He really is like a 3-yr-old, only much more destructive and dangerous in his position.
I still don't get how so many people could be so blind or non-caring as to what is happening right in front of their eyes. How can guys like TW have such a distaste for government, universities or science to such a degree that they just want to throw it all away?? Maybe 'cancel culture' has something to do with it? Maybe they just want to retaliate or create their own 'ideal' culture that they want to force on society and cancel the culture(s) they don't like or agree with? It still makes no sense to get behind someone like trump as their 'ideal' cult/ural leader.
I agree with this guy, a post Harvard professor, who said, ‘None of This is Good for the Jews’... or anyone else for that matter.
This part bears repeating....
"Pinker offers a scathing conclusion on the topic, writing, “The concern for Jews is patently disingenuous, given Mr. Trump’s sympathy for Holocaust deniers and Hitler fans. The obvious motivation is to cripple civil society institutions that serve as loci of influence outside the executive branch. As JD Vance put it in the title of a 2021 speech: ‘The Universities Are the Enemy.’”
Renowned Harvard Professor Steven Pinker took President Donald Trump to task in a scathing essay in the New York Times over the president’s ongoing attacks on Harvard University, including his recent move to ban all foreign students from the school.
Pinker, a famed psycholinguist and public intellectual, begins his lengthy essay by noting that he’s “not been afraid to bite the hand that feeds” and lists his long history of criticizing Harvard as an institution.
“My 2023 ‘five-point plan to save Harvard from itself’ urged the university to commit itself to free speech, institutional neutrality, nonviolence, viewpoint diversity and disempowering D.E.I. Last fall, on the anniversary of Oct. 7, 2023, I explained ‘how I wish Harvard taught students to talk about Israel,’ calling on the university to teach our students to grapple with moral and historical complexity,” noted Pinker over the weekend as he made clear he was early to calling for an end to DEI and has never pulled punches in offering his take on how the school is run.
He goes on to argue that in recent months, Trump has engaged in “unhinged” attacks on Harvard and tries to flip to script on so-called “Trump Derangement Syndrome” – hence the title of his essay: “Harvard Derangement Syndrome.”
Pinker makes clear that he believes some of the criticism toward Harvard over the years has been “earned.” He shows no patience for “cancel culture” and lists off some instances in which he believes Harvard acted wrongly.
He goes on to tear into the Trump administration for cutting billions in funding to the school, including gutting its research. He accuses Trump’s policies of hurting Jewish Americans while claiming to help fight anti-Semitism.
“Mr. Trump’s strangling of this support will harm Jews more than any president in my lifetime,” Pinker writes of Trump cutting off funds, adding:
Many practicing and aspiring scientists are Jewish, and his funding embargo has them watching in horror as they are laid off, their labs are shut down or their dreams of a career in science go up in smoke. This is immensely more harmful than walking past a “Globalize the Intifada” sign.
Worse still is the effect on the far larger number of gentiles in science, who are being told that their labs and careers are being snuffed out to advance Jewish interests. Likewise for the current patients whose experimental treatments will be halted, and the future patients who may be deprived of cures. None of this is good for the Jews.
Pinker offers a scathing conclusion on the topic, writing, “The concern for Jews is patently disingenuous, given Mr. Trump’s sympathy for Holocaust deniers and Hitler fans. The obvious motivation is to cripple civil society institutions that serve as loci of influence outside the executive branch. As JD Vance put it in the title of a 2021 speech: ‘The Universities Are the Enemy.’”
Pinker concludes by offering his reader a robust argument for why government should support public research – historically the key driver of innovation in the U.S.
“And if you’re still skeptical that universities are worth supporting, consider these questions: Do you think that the number of children who die every year from cancer is just about right? Are you content with your current chance of developing Alzheimer’s disease? Do you feel our current understanding of which government policies are effective and which ones are wasteful is perfect? Are you happy with the way the climate is going, given our current energy technology?” he writes, trying to personalize some of the areas of study that Trump has cut.
on May 27, 2025, 2:18 pm
