First Draft – 📕 🤪 ‘Not Fun’: Trump Officials Worry This Book Will Send Him Into a Psychotic Rage
An excerpt by two New York Times reporters contained startling details of the Epstein coverup, prompting alarming anger. Elsewhere, AIPAC entered the ring in Michigan's Democratic Senate primary.
On this day in 1963, Buddhist monk Thich Quang Duc publicly burned himself to death in Saigon, in protest of religious intolerance – creating one of the most famous images of the Vietnam War era.
Welcome to another Thursday morning in Donald Trump’s America, Zeteo fans – it’s Swin again 👋. It will never stop being weird to me how much the president of the United States sits in the White House, a place where treaties are signed and war and peace are decided, and devotes a tremendous amount of time to staring at his television, getting egregiously mad. It is also upsetting how much we have to take moments like these seriously, because with President Trump, they can trigger highly consequential actions.
In today’s ‘First Draft,’ we dive right into one such episode of President Flatscreen TV Addict shouting at the Idiot Box – and what it could mean for the world. Plus, AIPAC enters the ring in Michigan for Haley Stevens, Graham Platner’s Democratic primary win in Maine roils all sides in DC, and Iran and the U.S. trade strikes for a second day.
I Want My M(orning Joe) TV…
Our blundering, bloodlusting president woke up on Wednesday and saw the hosts of MS Now’s ‘Morning Joe’ discussing a New York Times excerpt titled ‘Inside the White House Freakout Over the Epstein Files,’ adapted from Jonathan Swan and Maggie Haberman’s soon-to-be-released book, Regime Change.
Before the episode of ‘Morning Joe’ was over, Donald Trump – glaring at his TV, getting madder and madder – was back on his social media app, ranting about the show and its “laughing stock” host for even talking about the Times article. (Trump did not mention Jeffrey Epstein in his online outburst, but sources familiar with his thinking tell me unequivocally that’s what set him off on Wednesday morning.)
Among the embarrassing revelations in the report, the story includes the word “nipple” six times, in remarkable sentences like: “The vice president said he thought the president would be OK with releasing the nipple-related documents, arguing that Trump had been accused of worse,” and: “One official would later describe it as a ‘surreal’ experience to be discussing nipples in the White House Situation Room.”
Objectively speaking, this is unbelievably funny. The nominal leader of the free world – who can’t seem to stop falling asleep in meetings, pointlessly tanking the economy, and needlessly invading countries for his own amusement – is having his elderly brain consumed with rage about a book filled with humiliating accounts of nipples and warfare in the Trump-Vance era.
It’s the kind of comedy that only Paul Verhoeven could have made, except it’s real. And yet… there are people, including some senior Trump administration officials, who will tell you that you shouldn’t be merely laughing this off.
Here’s why…