If anyone needed any further proof that everything that Donald Trump touches turns to schlock (or worse), this week's opening of the Great American State Fair certainly provided some. The initial idea wasn't too bad a concept -- have all 50 states send an exhibit to the National Mall, and it would capture the spirit of state fairs held every year across America. Sounds kind of fun, actually.

But, of course, with Trump in charge of it, things didn't turn out as well as they could have. And that's putting it mildly. The whole thing was supposed to kick off with a big concert, but when the musical artists realized it was a pro-Trump event (rather than a nonpartisan celebration of patriotism), almost all of them immediately pulled out. So Trump, in a hissy fit, said that he'd give a speech instead, with the handful of the few musical artists still willing to perform for him also featured.

Trump gave his speech Wednesday night, and it was a very sparsely-attended event, from the photos. One notable video shows people streaming for the exits, while Trump is still speaking. Then opening day of the fair itself was rather rocky, with power outages and other bumps in the road.

When it finally did get up and going, it was (shall we say) less than impressive. The Washington Post wrote a review titled: "The Great American State Fair Feels Rushed, Simulated, And Oddly Sterile." The photos accompanying the article certainly make that case. Here's how the article opens:

The one thing strangely absent at the Great American State Fair, a celebration on the National Mall of America's 250th birthday organized by a group aligned with the Trump administration, is nostalgia. If you're imagining pens full of champion hogs, duck calling or pie-eating contests, quilters and craft sales or a cow made out of butter, there's not much of any of that. It doesn't even have the freewheeling, deliciously tacky Americana of a traveling carnival, those caravans of rickety rides and arcade games that decamp for a few summer nights in town squares or church yards all across America.

There is a garishly illuminated Ferris wheel, a few animals and, when I visited Thursday, an hour-long rodeo display that pitched the sport as a MAGA metaphor for American grit, courage and exceptionalism. But beyond that, it felt like a trade show for Christian groups, tourist boards and the military industrial complex.

Ouch. Part of the problem was the architecture of the state booths, described as: "a fake agora with Doric columns and arched niches painted onto cheap theatrical flats, which look like someone scaled up the photo murals found in a tatty Greek diner that sells gyros, moussaka and heart-bomb platters of pastitsio." Double-ouch.

But here was the most amusing part of the article:

The prevailing diagnosis of this failure of imagination is that it was another rush job. I asked Eric Dowdle, an artist from Utah who paints brightly colored, highly detailed cartoonlike cityscapes full of American icons, how long he had to prepare, and he said he got the call to join the fair a week ago. He was pleasant and enthusiastic and occupied an enclosed booth next to Puerto Rico. He was happy to be there, but it felt like he was squatting in an Auntie Anne's pretzel shop at the forlorn end of a soon-to-be-decommissioned shopping mall.

The weird phantasmagoria of classical architecture may be a symptom of bad or rushed planning, a lack of funds or perhaps the whimsical intervention of one of President Donald Trump's ardent supporters in the beleaguered circle of traditionalist architects. Or, this could all be more intentional. I was reminded of the supposed Potemkin villages created for Russian Empress Catherine the Great by her minister: fake, portable visions of happy locals designed to convince the monarch that everything was for the best in her new, war-ravaged colonial territory of Crimea.

Points for historical reference and current wartime relevance, there.

All of this was overshadowed by the truly big story this week (at least, as measured by the number of articles written about it in the news media), which was the ongoing fiasco of the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool. We wrote about this at length earlier in the week, but we had to add the following, which certainly qualifies as some please-the-Empress-level effusive ass-kissing, from a federal department not generally known for such things. The Department of the Interior (who is ultimately responsible for the Reflecting Pool) posted on social media the following statement:

The advanced nanobubbler technology very effectively killed the algae that has plagued every Lincoln Reflecting Pool reopening -- most infamously Obama's reopening -- since 1922. The Reflecting Pool water is crystal clear, and our National Park Service team is now vacuuming up the dead algae resting on the bottom of some parts of the Reflecting Pool -- just like the destroyed Iranian Navy resting on the bottom of the Persian Gulf.

Wow. That's just... wow. Gratuitous slam on Barack Obama, followed by praising Dear Leader Trump for his military prowess during a war he lost. A royal amount of ass-kissing indeed!

Trump is convinced that everything that went wrong with his rushed makeover of the Reflecting Pool is the fault of "vandals," so the rest of his administration went into overdrive to punish them, even though they are non-existent outside of Trump's swamp-fever-addled mind. Trump threatened 10 year prison sentences for people peeling up the flaking paint at the bottom of the Reflecting Pool, a former three-time Olympian was arrested and held by police for five hours for dipping his hand into the water, and the Park Police have taken to posting laughable videos asking people to identify individual (and no doubt dastardly) "vandals." This is "authoritarianism meets the Keystone Kops," folks.

The best commentary that we've yet read started with a very apt mythological reminder:

The word "narcissist" comes from the Greek myth of Narcissus, which tells the story of a young man so enamored of his image in a reflecting pool that he is unable to look away. He eventually dies from his own egotism and turns into a flower.

It's such a perfect metaphor all around of "everything Trump touches turns to pond scum" that the media has been having an absolute field day. They've even gotten to the navel-gazing point of commenting about how much everyone is commenting on the issue.

In other farcical news, we finally got to see photos of what that tarp still hanging up in front of the Kennedy Center's facade is hiding. Lo and behold, Trump's name has indeed been removed! So that's a relief, at least. The federal judge in the court case is now demanding that the Kennedy Center state its reasons for continuing to cover up the center's nameplate with a giant tarp (which has to be patrolled by security round-the-clock), so we'll see what they have to say about it all in court. A safe bet would probably be that the tarp will stay up until right after all the Independence Day crowds have come and gone.

There was some actual political news this week, in the midst of all the amusing sideshows. Donald Trump seems to be trying as hard as he can to destroy his fellow Republicans' chances of getting re-elected in November's midterms. Here's a good review of the high points of this strategy to date:

President [Donald] Trump says he doesn't care about the midterm elections. He says he doesn't think much about Americans' economic hardship resulting from the war in Iran. And now he is brushing off a landmark, bipartisan bill to lower housing costs in the United States, characterizing the legislation as a matter of "minor importance."

At a moment of political peril for the president and Republicans, Mr. Trump's priorities seem increasingly detached from the concerns of voters and his party. His focus is trained on his own obsessions and pet projects, including his expansive and costly renovations at the White House and around the nation's capital, a topic that he returns to again and again.

To Donald Trump, there simply is no economic hardship in America at all. How could there be, with him in charge? He keeps stating that the word "affordability" is a Democratic "hoax," even though he himself ran on "making America affordable again" during his 2024 campaign. So a bill that is designed to ease the housing affordability crisis just isn't that important to him, since it is tackling a problem that he doesn't believe even exists.

His fellow Republicans are a bit more grounded in reality, however. This bill passed with overwhelming bipartisan support -- a rarity these days -- with a vote count of 358-32 in the House and 85-5 in the Senate. Trump was scheduled to sign it in a bipartisan ceremony at the U.S. Capitol this week, but he abruptly cancelled the whole thing right before it was to take place. He then addressed Republican senators in a closed-door meeting where he got into a shouting match with at least one of them. The upshot of the whole fiasco is that Trump just does not care about his fellow Republicans, and he really could not care less about housing prices. Now nobody is sure what is going to happen with the housing bill (it could pass with or without Trump's signature, or it could be killed... stay tuned!).

Let's see, what else? The talks between Iran and the U.S. aren't exactly going well. The week started off with Trump breaking the agreement (the first paragraph of which states that neither side should threaten the other) in rather historic fashion, warning the Iranian negotiators against closing the Strait of Hormuz again by saying: "You close it, and you won't have a country. You won't even make it back to your fucking country."

A former undersecretary of State for public diplomacy pointed out the breathtaking breach of protocol this was, in an interview this week:

If there is one taboo in the history of diplomacy going back to the Peloponnesian War, is you do not threaten envoys, no matter how opposed you are. And there [Donald Trump] is, threatening envoys.... The number one plank in the Memorandum Of Understanding says both parties must refrain from threats of force. He's already violated that a dozen times.

After the round of talks concluded, JD Vance and Donald Trump both started putting out boasts about all the wonderful things the Iranians had agreed to -- allowing new international inspections of their nuclear sites, using all the money that the U.S. would unfreeze to buy American produce, and several other grand claims of success.

The Iranians responded by saying, in essence, "Uh... no. We didn't agree to any of that stuff!"

By week's end, Iran and the U.S. have now both resumed taking potshots at each other in the Strait of Hormuz. And even a few rightwing media types are starting to sour on JD Vance's handling of the negotiations. Vance is pretty obviously being set up as a fall guy by Trump, in case the negotiations completely fall apart or fail to reach any sort of agreement.

Meanwhile, the Senate finally passed a war powers resolution in an attempt to rein in Trump's war and bring all the troops back home. This was a stinging rebuke to Trump, and he reportedly had a tantrum in a closed-door meeting with Republican senators -- which included a screaming match between Trump and Senator Bill Cassidy. According to one other GOP senator, Trump was "mad as a murder hornet" about the vote.

The Supreme Court handed down a few rulings that will essentially allow Donald Trump to make immigration policy for the most racist reasons imaginable, which brought forth a scathing dissent from Justice Elena Kagan, who called out the majority for being too chicken to even repeat any of Trump's racist comments. So Kagan did so, listing all the ugly and bigoted things he has said about Haiti and Haitian immigrants.

We still have some very momentous decisions left to go, before the Supremes end their term, including their ruling on the birthright citizenship that is clearly and plainly guaranteed to any baby born on American soil in the Fourteenth Amendment, so there's that to look forward to in the next week or so.

 

This week, choosing the winner of the Most Impressive Democrat Of The Week was pretty easy. Because New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani had a big night this Tuesday, as the results of New York's primaries were announced.

Here's the basic story:

The biggest winner of the night in New York was arguably someone not on the ballot: [New York City Mayor Zohran] Mamdani.

Less than six months into his term as mayor, Mamdani put his political capital on the line by endorsing three insurgent candidates over two sitting members of Congress and a retiring incumbent's chosen successor. All three of his picks won, in a signal of strength for Mamdani's political brand and the democratic socialist movement that powered his rise to City Hall.

The Democratic Socialists of America formally endorsed two of Mamdani's choices: activist and PhD student Darializa Avila Chevalier, who beat Rep. Adriano Espaillat, and state Assembly member Claire Valdez, who was nominated to succeed retiring Rep. Nydia M. Velázquez. Brad Lander, Mamdani's third pick, was not officially backed by the group but received significant support from its members and allied organizations on his path to unseating Rep. Dan Goldman.

D.S.A. challengers also ousted at least three moderates from the state assembly, leading Mamdani to proclaim at a returns-watching party: "A year ago was not the end of a political movement. It was a beginning."

Outside of New York City, it wasn't a clean sweep for progressives -- some moderates won their primaries elsewhere -- but in these three races it was more of a general election than a primary (since the districts are so blue the Republican candidates won't have a chance).

The icing on the cake for Mamdani came later in the week, as the New York City Rent Guidelines Board voted 7-to-1 to implement one of Mamdani's big campaign promises: a rent freeze for all rent-stabilized apartments in the city (about a million of them qualify).

All in all, Mamdani had a pretty good week. Which is why he's the clear choice for this week's Most Impressive Democrat Of The Week award.

[Congratulate New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani on his official contact page, to let him know you appreciate his efforts.]

 

In a stunning rebuke to Donald Trump, the Senate this week passed a war powers resolution demanding Trump end the war with Iran and bring all the U.S. forces home again. Democrats have been trying to do this for months, and they finally succeeded -- on a measure that had already passed the House, no less. It won't have the force of law (it's only a resolution, so it doesn't even go to Trump for his signature), but it is a weighty symbolic gesture for the Senate to make.

The final vote was 50-48. Four Republicans crossed the aisle to support it -- Bill Cassidy, Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski, and Rand Paul. Even then, however, it was a razor-thin margin. The victory was possible because of the absence of two GOP senators: Mitch McConnell (who has been in the hospital) and Dave McCormick (who was campaigning with Trump in Pennsylvania when the vote was held). If those two had been present, then the vice president would have broken the tie and the measure wouldn't have passed.

However, with four Republicans crossing the aisle, the Democrats should have been able to muster 51 votes, not just 50. They didn't, for the same old reason: John Fetterman voted with the Republicans.

For doing so (once again), Fetterman receives yet another Most Disappointing Democrat Of The Week award.

[Contact Senator John Fetterman on his Senate contact page, to let him know what you think of his actions.]

 

Volume 847 (6/26/26)

Another mixed bag of a week, as we take a stroll around the political landscape.

 

   "Minor importance"?

Once again, Trump opens his mouth wide and sticks his own foot in it.

"Congress finally passed a bill to help tackle the housing crisis, and it was pretty stunningly bipartisan. Veto-proof majorities in both the House and the Senate passed the bill, with overwhelming support from both Republicans and Democrats. Donald Trump was supposed to sign it this week at the Capitol, but he abruptly cancelled the signing and later said the bill was of only 'minor importance.' So there you have it, folks -- more proof that Trump just does not care about you and your family one bit. He just doesn't. The high price of housing doesn't hurt him in any way, therefore it must not exist. His cluelessness is simply astounding."

 

   That was quick...

The talks with Iran haven't been going well....

"I guess that ceasefire with Iran didn't last too long, huh? We're back to taking potshots at each other in the Strait of Hormuz once again. Has Trump ever been involved with any ceasefire that wasn't immediately broken? I certainly can't remember any...."

 

   Have you met your boss, Marco?

Recognizing irony is obviously not a strong point for our secretary of State.

"This week, Trump officials complained that Iran was being 'misleading' in its statements about the progress of the talks. After Trump and JD Vance came out and claimed all sorts of wonderful things the Iranians had supposedly agreed to, the Iranians contradicted them all and said they hadn't agreed to any of them. Marco Rubio then complained that the Iranians' statements were driven by, quote, domestic politics, unquote. He apparently hasn't realized that everything that Trump and Vance say about it is for exactly the same reason here at home. You know, it's just sad that people worldwide -- including right here in America -- find Iran's official statements a whole lot more believable than the ones made by Trump and Vance."

 

   Forgotten Americans

There's one important thing notably missing from the agenda for these talks.

"What about the Americans wrongfully being held in Iranian prisons? Donald Trump hasn't said one word about them, and apparently they aren't even a subject up for discussion in the talks with Iran. Why is that? Why are we just ignoring these forgotten Americans? Their fate should be addressed with the Iranians and their release as a good-faith measure should be one of America's demands. But so far, nobody's said a word about them."

 

   "R" or "D"? -- that's all that matters

The Supreme Court doesn't care what Trump does, for a very obvious reason.

"The Supreme Court just gave Trump a green light to deport hundreds of thousands of people from Haiti even though his reasons for wanting to do so are blatantly racist. But that's fine with the Roberts court, because they only care about one thing -- the only thing that is important to them in cases involving executive power. All John Roberts and the rest of the conservatives care about is whether it's a Republican in the White House or a Democrat. If it's a Republican, then he should be allowed to do whatever he wants. If it's a Democrat, any flimsy legal rationale will do for why they can't be allowed to do much of anything."

 

   Things would have been different, I bet

Speaking of the Supreme Court's bias....

"A prisoner lost at the Supreme Court this week, which was notable because he was trying to sue over the prison forcibly shaving his head, which went against his religious practices. The Roberts court has consistently ruled in favor of religious rights superseding all other federal laws over and over again, but in this instance they ruled that the prisoner didn't even have a right to sue. But you know what? I bet things would have been different if the prisoner in question was an evangelical Christian or an orthodox Jew instead of a Rastafarian."

 

   Trump speeches getting stale

This one is specifically designed to get under Trump's famously thin skin.

"Did you see the photos and videos from Trump's rally on the National Mall this week? Pretty small crowd, wouldn't you say? It seems Trump's schtick is getting old -- even his own supporters were absolutely streaming out the exits in the middle of the speech. His stale complaints about this, that, and the other just aren't drawing the big crowds that they used to. Oh, well... I guess Trump's 'summer re-run season' isn't enough for even his own MAGA followers."

-- Chris Weigant

 

Follow Chris on Twitter: @ChrisWeigant

Cross-posted at: Democratic Underground