Round-up: More Epstein fallout. Ukraine weapons. Will Trump fire Powell?

Analysis of the week's events

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More Epstein fallout

Trump’s Jeffrey Epstein problems don’t seem to be going away, which led me to a few thoughts about what it all means.

This is the most significant dissent that Trump has ever faced from within the MAGA movement. And it’s particularly jarring because we’re used to MAGA commentators going to any length necessary to distort the truth in order to protect Trump.

Trump’s disconnection from reality means that to be his supporter is to constantly have to debase yourself by claiming that something is black when everyone can see that it is white. The fact that the MAGAsphere is refusing to do that in this case is telling.

One thing it tells me is that Trump is losing his political capital. This is his last term - he can’t run for the presidency again. And so, perhaps subtly at first, the costs of opposing him get smaller and smaller the closer we get to January 2028, when he will leave office.

The MAGA movement that Trump created will outlast him. It is full of individuals and organizations with their own futures to look to. Charlie Kirk is 31 years old. Laura Loomer is 32. Trump created these people, but now that they exist, they have their own connection to a slice of the American populace.

They want to shape the future of that movement and claim leadership of it. And we’re seeing for the first time that doing so might mean going against Trump.

But there’s also another way of looking at this: that they have the luxury of opposition because right now, it doesn’t really cost Trump anything.

Republicans have unified control of government. Congress is completely supine. The Supreme Court will give the regime pretty much anything it wants. The Democrats are rudderless. The midterms are over a year away - a lifetime in normal politics, and ten lifetimes under Donald Trump.

I certainly think that this could harm the GOP in the midterms if it drags on. But I would also expect the movement to close ranks as they approach. One thing that MAGA does amazingly well is message discipline - distorting reality in order to present a united message. The Epstein controversy is a glitch in their Matrix, but I’m not sure it’s a terminal one.

Ukraine weapons

It’s good news that Trump has decided to make a gesture of support towards Ukraine with his weapons announcement this week. But be careful not to get too excited, because it’s not really clear what has actually been agreed.

This announcement had all the usual hallmarks of a Trump “deal”: a lot of optics and very few details. The attention-grabbing part is that Ukraine will get more Patriot missile defense batteries and unspecified missiles and ammunition. But when exactly it will get them, and where from, remains a mystery.

The United States doesn’t want to actually give its own Patriot batteries to Ukraine, because it doesn’t have enough. It needs them in the Indo-Pacific and the Middle East, and it’s just not that committed to Ukraine.

So the outline of the deal is that Europe will give its Patriot batteries to Ukraine, and then it will buy more from the U.S. defense industry. Trump is able to present this as a win-win - it means the batteries go to Ukraine, the U.S. doesn’t deplete its own stocks, and U.S. defense companies make some money.

But there are a lot of unknown factors here. Which countries will provide the Patriots? How many can they give? And how long will it take to replenish their stocks?

The answers to these questions are: unclear, not that many, and a long time.

Take Germany, for example. Shortly after the “deal” was announced, Trump claimed that German Patriots were already on their way to Ukraine. Germany then denied this and said it only has six left and can’t give any more to Ukraine without weakening its own defenses in an unacceptable fashion. As I’m writing this, some meetings are scheduled to discuss it next week.

Even if Germany and few other countries send all of their Patriot batteries to Ukraine, it’s hardly going to transform the war effort. Kyiv will be better able to defend its cities against aerial bombardment, which is a good thing. But not much else is going to change.

And then there’s the fact that all this really amounts to is moving a fairly scant quantity of existing resources around in Europe. It’s a shell game. The more of its own stockpiles that Europe sends to Ukraine, the less they have to defend themselves. They only have a limited amount of money to buy more batteries from the United States, which cost about $1bn. A single missile, of which dozens might be fired weekly, comes in at about $4m.

All of this is why there’s really no substitute for a big, new U.S. weapons package backed by substantial funding from Congress. But there seems little chance of that happening - and the current one, passed by Biden, will run out later this year.

So with this deal, as with most involving Trump, it’s best to read the small print.

Will Trump fire Powell?

Trump has once again floated the idea of firing Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell, who he thinks should be cutting interest rates much more aggressively.

This is a story as old as time. Presidents want low interest rates because it gives a short term boost to the economy which will make them popular, whereas Fed chairmen instead see their primary job as to control inflation - which can skyrocket if interest rates go too low.