I should start out by clarifying that headline. When I say "Trump Is Getting Weaker," I am not referring to the news today that Donald Trump is suffering from problems with the veins in his legs and the bruising on his hands. I speak not of physical weakness, but instead of political weakness. And I'm going to mostly set aside the continuing internecine battle among Republicans over the Jeffrey Epstein files as well, since although the issue has been making headlines for weeks now, there is something much more interesting going on in the background. While Trump flails around desperately trying to somehow pin all the blame over the Epstein files cover-up on Democrats (which isn't convincing anyone), the widening schism within his own party has happened independently from some much larger trends. Democrats are gleefully trolling Trump and the Republicans over the Epstein files fiasco, but no matter what the upshot of it all turns out to be, the fact will remain that Trump is getting a whole lot weaker on pretty much every other issue under the sun. Sooner or later, Democrats should start making some political hay out of this weakness (assumably, after the Epstein files tempest blows over).

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A month ago, the 250th anniversary of what is known as "The Battle of Bunker Hill" was celebrated in Boston. This was the first major battle in the American Revolution (Lexington and Concord had happened earlier, but they were more running skirmishes than a set-piece battle). Every American schoolchild knows (at the very least) this battle's name, and perhaps the legend (probably apocryphal) that the American rebels were told: "Don't fire until you see the whites of their eyes," and that's about it.

This is somewhat intentional, I have to believe, since the battle itself was such a masterpiece of military incompetence, on both sides. The Americans picked the wrong ground to defend, while the British absolutely refused to attack in a way which would have all but guaranteed victory. Neither side really "won" -- the Americans were eventually forced to retreat, but the British suffered incredibly heavy losses, making their "victory" no more than a Pyrrhic one at best.

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House Democrats are moving quickly to capitalize on the growing schism in the Republican Party, hoping to jam a wedge between Donald Trump and his own MAGA base over the Jeffrey Epstein conspiracy theory. Democrats are now the ones forcing votes on releasing "the Epstein files," because they know what an untenable position it puts the Republicans in. They can either vote to release the files or they can (gasp!) vote for the cover-up to continue! You can see why Democrats are having so much fun with it all.

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Representative Ro Khanna seems to be following one of James Carville's pithy bits of political advice: "When your opponent is drowning, throw the son-of-a-bitch an anvil." Khanna announced that today he would be introducing a resolution in the House which would force the Trump administration to release all the remaining files on Jeffrey Epstein.

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Remember when Donald Trump pitched a hissy fit because he didn't like the way a portrait of him looked, in Colorado? He actually made them take it down and create a new painting. So we're wondering if someone's about to get fired in the White House, after they used an official White House social media account to post an image of Trump as (are you sitting down?) Superman. Now, the idea of "Trump as Superman" isn't all that shocking, since both he and all his acolytes operate at the mental level of a spoiled elementary-school-aged narcissist, but what is truly hilarious is the image they used -- because they didn't bother to edit out his gut. It's just sticking right out there for all to see. Usually when Trump has these he-man fantasies he uses fake images with lots of muscles and a ripped body, but this time someone forgot to tell the A.I. program to slim him down. So, as we said, we're anticipating someone in the White House communications department getting unceremoniously booted from their job real soon now. It's kind of surprising they'd even use the Superman theme in the first place, since the MAGA folks all hit the ceiling when the director of the new Superman movie pointed out the fact that Superman is actually (gasp!) an immigrant. And it is highly doubtful that the Kent parents ever bothered to inform the federal government of the fact, so that would actually make Superman an undocumented immigrant. Oh, the horror!

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When the Supreme Court rules, in many instances it issues the final legal word on a particular issue. Congress can always try to legislate changes to the law after such a ruling, but as far as the judicial system is concerned, once the Supreme Court rules all lesser judges must follow their ruling. But this legal finality is not always true, because a Supreme Court ruling can, in many instances, only address one particular legal facet of the underlying constitutional case. The high court sometimes takes this route intentionally, ruling on one legal detail and then returning the case back to the lower courts for further proceedings -- allowing the initially-filed case to continue, just with new technical (and limited) instructions from the Supreme Court about how the lower judges should handle it. And although some saw the Supreme Court's recent decision on Donald Trump's executive order which attempted to redefine what birthright citizenship means in the Fourteenth Amendment as the final legal word, it was not. It wasn't even close to a final decision, since the Supreme Court actually completely ignored the underlying constitutional issue in question. Instead, they used the case to make a sweeping ruling limiting lower-court judges to issue nationwide injunctions which block some move by the president or his administration. By doing so, they overturned a nationwide injunction which barred the Trump administration from attempting to implement his new definition (which would have severely limited the grant of citizenship for babies born on American soil). But they put their order on a 30-day pause, and they left a loophole.

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I have decided that today is a fine day to play hooky.

I apologize for this, but given the niceness of the summer day here and the choice between enjoying it fully and writing a very snarky column, I chose the former. What I would have written about was the gleeful schadenfreude those of us who live in the reality-based world have been feeling at watching those who live in the MAGA world absolutely melt down over the revelation that one of their favorite conspiracy theories has turned out to be just that -- not based in anything other than feverish swamp dreams.

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That headline is somewhat confusing, since it is not actually "Taco Tuesday," but instead merely the day which followed "TACO Monday." The latter, of course, refers to the neologism "Trump Always Chickens Out," which was created to describe exactly what took place yesterday. But it is also applicable to a different foreign policy stance (or "crouch," more like) that Donald Trump has been taking, which he is now threatening to change (but probably won't).

Way back on the day after April Fool's Day, Trump unveiled his "reciprocal tariffs" on the world. Wall Street immediately freaked out, and a week later Trump was forced to put a "pause" on the implementation of such tariffs. This was the original chickening out that gave rise to the new term.

Trump stated that the high tariff rates (which were figured on a completely arbitrary basis) would not go into effect for 90 days. Today, those 90 days are up. Throughout this period, Trump and the White House have been routinely promising an avalanche of trade deals will be announced -- real soon now! "We'll have 90 deals in 90 days," was the main talking point, although Trump at times boasted that they'd been talking to "over 200 countries" -- which is rather impressive, since 200 independent countries do not actually exist on this planet. Either way, big deals were coming! Maybe next week, who knows? Over and over again this refrain was repeated: lotsa deals, you betcha, any day now! Stay tuned!

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Is Elon Musk serious? That question, of course, can be read two ways. The first is sarcastically, as in: "Are you serious?!?" -- which conveys the same concept as stating: "You cannot be serious!" The second way is non-sarcastically, as in wondering: "Is Elon Musk truly serious about starting up his own third political party?" And the easy answer to that is: "Who knows? This is Elon Musk we are talking about, after all."

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Program Notes:

First, as mentioned last week, there will (obviously) be no new Friday Talking Points column today. These will resume next week, though, never fear!

Secondly, you'll have to take my word for this but I had fully intended to write a new column today examining an event which just had its 250th anniversary: the Battle of Bunker Hill. My reason for doing so was obviously spurred by the anniversary, but then it slipped my mind and I missed the actual date (June 17th), so I thought I might squeeze it belatedly in as an Independence Day column.

Unfortunately, I cannot locate the book I was going to use as a reference. I spent a goodly amount of time searching for it today, but even though I had re-read it only a month or so ago I cannot locate it. Right now I am blaming the cat, who may have hidden it somewhere, but in reality it is probably just the fault of my rather dismal filing system for books (which often get misplaced for years at a time, I sheepishly admit). Without this resource, I cannot write the article I really wanted to, so I must postpone it for a later date, with the promise that when I do find the missing tome, I will indeed write the column I have in mind.

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