To What End? Understanding Trump’s endgame Dan Rather and Team Steady May 27 Credit: Getty Images We have talked early, often, and a lot about the chaos being wrought by Donald Trump. Every day we wake up to yet another norm-destroying executive order that thumbs its nose at checks and balances and continues to feed the administration’s everything-at-once offensive. We have called out Trump’s contempt for the rule of law. We have conveyed his disdain for those he believes are less than. We have pointed out the ineptitude of his Cabinet. We have exposed his blatant corruption. We have criticized his gutting of the executive branch. We have explained what tariffs will actually do. We have condemned his take-from-the-poor-to-give-to-the-rich policies. And we will continue to do so, because we know he won’t stop. But today let’s look at why, because all of this adds up to what? It doesn’t fully or even partially make sense. Why burn down the house while you’re standing in it? First, Trump has a clear agenda. It is about garnering power. And with the absolute power granted to him by a pliant Supreme Court and a subservient Congress, he is, in his mind anyway, King of America. But power alone is not the endgame. He is using his power to amass enormous personal wealth and enact revenge. Trump believes the one who dies with the most toys wins, and he is determined to win. He wants to be rich, very rich, even richer than he is today. On paper. And in real life. Trump and his family have, according to The New York Times, “monetized the White House more than any other occupant.” And he’s been back in power for only four months. He wants to move up on Forbes’ list of the richest people in the world. And if he can’t quite make the top 10 — he’s currently 319th — then he wants the people at the top to be beholden to him. Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and Mark Zuckerberg are the top three, so he’s checked that box. His desire for more wealth has become even more brazen and unapologetic. He is openly using the power of the White House to get richer. And daring anyone to question his actions. Unquestioning fealty is the bare minimum. Lying for him moves you to the top of the class. But if you question him, you are considered an enemy, which brings us to his second agenda item: vengeance. Trump has his run-of-the-mill enemies: politicians who have opposed him, judges who have thwarted him, lawyers who have sued him. But he has expanded the list to include most of American higher education and charities doing the work the government used to do. So you have a narcissist who can’t get rich enough with an unending capacity for sycophantic flattery and an unhealthy sense of entitlement. This explains a lot, but by no means all, of his policy choices. Because Donald Trump can’t be bothered with much of the day-to-day governing — he famously doesn’t like briefings — he’s tapped a triumvirate of lieutenants to deal with the boring stuff: Russell Vought, head of the Office of Management and Budget; Stephen Miller, his deputy chief of staff; and Elon Musk, though he is now supposedly stepping away from his government role. These three have spent the past four months doing everything in their purviews to destroy the government as we know it, doing things that make no sense, upending policies and programs that work. Like the Federal Emergency Management Agency. Trump and Co. are trying to get rid of FEMA. So what happens when the next deadly hurricane hits? We already know from recent tornadoes and other storm disasters: slowness and inefficiency, when help comes at all. While Trump picked them, these three quickly recognized that their boss does not sweat the small, medium, or even large stuff. They were given carte blanche to do as they see fit, and none has held back, all with varying degrees of arrogance. Musk took a chainsaw to the federal bureaucracy with disastrous effects. He believes artificial intelligence is the future and humans doing jobs is an obsolete concept. So he got rid of as many of the humans as possible, believing he and the other tech bros will fill the need. Miller is the architect of the administration’s xenophobic immigration policy. He has utilized antiquated statutes and unleashed a torrent of policy changes, hoping some court, somewhere will rule in Trump’s favor. Miller is a racist zealot who wants to purge the country of most if not all non-white immigrants. He has said, “America is for Americans and Americans only.” Vought is the stealthiest of the three and arguably the most dangerous. He is the author of the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025, which became the blueprint for Trump 2.0. Vought is now in the perfect position to implement it, from the inside. He is a true believer patiently playing the long game. He is a so-called Christian nationalist who believes government workers are a villainous liberal cabal intent on pushing a far-left agenda. He recently told Tucker Carlson, “We have to solve the woke and the weaponized bureaucracy.” His goal is to purge said bureaucracy and replace it with an army of other Christian nationalists. And he doesn’t want to be nice about it. “We want to put them [bureaucrats] in trauma.” Trump, Musk, Miller, and Vought do not believe in the concept of government as an altruistic force to help those in need. They believe in using the levers of power to secure their own agendas. Sometimes those agendas align, but even if they don’t, the means are the same: tear it up, burn it down, and bury the United States of America we have known. James Madison said, “If men were angels, no government would be necessary.” Men aren’t angels. Especially the ones now running and ruining our country. To support my team’s efforts to protect our democracy through the power of independent journalism, please consider joining as a paid subscriber. It keeps Steady sustainable and accessible for all. Thank you. No matter how you subscribe, I thank you for reading. Stay Steady, Dan

Carole King A Reason To Smile Dan Rather and Team Steady May 25 Credit: Getty Images When we started A Reason To Smile more than four years ago, we had no idea how sorely we would all need a weekly respite from the deranged, whiplash-inducing, march toward chaos we are all living through. And I mean “we.” I always look forward to your comments, so please keep them coming. Now to this week’s reason to smile … 52 years ago tomorrow, on a cool, overcast day, Central Park hosted one of its first free popular music concerts. The concert giver was legendary singer-songwriter Carole King. More than 100,000 showed up for King’s return to her native New York after moving to L.A. We’ve chosen one of King’s other songs, but if you have an hour or so to spare, I recommend watching that concert, which was made into a documentary: “Carole King: Home Again.” It is streaming on PBS. It also gives you the added advantage of supporting your local PBS station, which can really use the help right now. All of the wonderful arts programming produced by public television is now in jeopardy because of the misguided presumptions of the current administration. King began her career as half of a songwriting duo with her husband at the time, Gerry Goffin. She never intended to become a performer, but after splitting from Goffin, she was encouraged to do so by music producer Lou Adler. Good advice. Her second album, “Tapestry,” released in 1971, was a massive critical and commercial success. Of all the hits on the album, I am partial to King’s own version of “Natural Woman,” which had been a huge hit for Aretha Franklin several years earlier. This recording is from a concert tour decades later that King dubbed “Welcome to My Living Room.” She thought of the idea after spending time in a lot of other people’s living rooms while campaigning for Hillary Clinton in 2016. If you want to enjoy all the songs chosen for A Reason To Smile, you can listen to this Spotify playlist, which is updated weekly. If you are able to, please consider supporting my team, who make pieces like this possible. No matter how you subscribe, I thank you for reading, watching, and listening. Stay steady, Dan

One Big Bad Bill Johnson is trying to sneak the shocking details past us Dan Rather and Team Steady May 19 Credit: Getty Images Donald Trump and his MAGA buddies in Congress are attempting to slip one by the American people. The mega-spending bill that Trump calls “one big, beautiful bill” is 1116 pages long, contains huge spending and tax cuts, and was dropped on the U.S. House of Representatives just seven days ago. The first committee vote was taken on Sunday night, in case you missed it. And many Republicans hope you did. Speaker Mike Johnson is pushing for a vote on the massive domestic policy bill by the end of the week, in time for Memorial Day. Someone needs to call a timeout, or this massive remake of the federal government could be a done deal faster than you can say three-day weekend. The incredibly short timeline is no accident. Trump and Johnson don’t want to give anyone time to read the fine print. Because then folks would know that the bill would cut $625 billion from Medicaid, pushing more than 8 million of our most vulnerable from its rolls. People would also be aware that cuts to the food stamp program would target families with children, seniors, and veterans. Voters would find out that someone making less than $15,000 a year would see their federal taxes increase by 74.3% by 2031. That is not a typo. Trump claims all of these cuts are necessary to make his $4.5 trillion tax cut for billionaires and corporations permanent. Now you understand the reason for the rush. Get it signed, sealed, and delivered before the ink is dry, and Americans will be none the wiser. Though it will still have to be reconciled with the Senate bill. The timeline is so short that the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) has not had time to fully vet the bill and produce estimates of its budgetary impact. How can lawmakers read, research, and debate the bill in mere days? They can’t. Even with the absurdly short timeline, Johnson is facing opposition from both ends of his party. Four hardline fiscal hawks stalled the bill in committee but ultimately allowed it to move to the full House. They didn’t vote in favor of the bill; they just voted “present.” This does not bode well for the speaker, who will have to make significant concessions to appease the hawks and get them on board. But every concession he gives them will likely mean a “moderate” Republican will balk. Republicans have only a seven-vote majority in the House. Those less radical Republicans know the spending cuts and tax giveaways are deeply unpopular. Though the cuts are being framed as a way to root out “waste, fraud and abuse,” most Americans aren’t buying it. They strongly oppose cuts to entitlement programs like Medicaid. They do not favor big tax cuts for billionaires and other very wealthy people. Where is the president on all of this? For a decade, Trump has repeatedly said he would not cut Social Security, Medicare, or Medicaid. As recently as May 4, he said he would veto any bill that included Medicaid cuts. He has been mum on the topic since. The “big, beautiful bill” dubbed the “big bad billionaire bill” by the Democratic Women’s Caucus has the potential to hurt the overall economy too. The CBO determined that the tax cuts will add at least $4.6 trillion to the national debt, causing Moody’s to downgrade the U.S. credit rating over the weekend. This change could affect the markets and the interest rate the U.S. government can get to borrow money. The consequences of some of Trump’s executive orders are now affecting real people in real time. First, the tariffs. Over the weekend, Walmart, the retail version of the canary in the coal mine, said it would be passing on price increases caused by the tariffs to Walmart shoppers. This incensed the president, who jumped on Truth Social to yell at the country’s biggest retailer, insisting that Walmart should, “EAT THE TARIFFS and not charge valued customers ANYTHING. I’ll be watching, and so will your customers!!!” And with one social media post, Trump finally admitted what he’s long denied — tariffs raise prices. The Budget Lab at Yale estimates the average American household will pay an additional $2,300 a year. Walmart capitulated, sort of — saying it would pass on just some of the increased costs. The specter of higher prices and inflation has pushed consumer sentiment to its second-lowest level ever. While the rich are about to get even richer, the rest of America is forced to suffer because of decisions made by the president. The effects of staffing and budget cuts made by Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency are becoming more pronounced. As tornadoes bombarded Kentucky over the weekend, the state’s weather office scrambled for staff. The office in Jackson, Kentucky, no longer has overnight forecasters after DOGE cut hundreds from the National Weather Service. And that’s just one area of one state. Coming soon: hurricane season, on June 1. A single week has produced a plethora of unpopular policy, courtesy of the Trump administration. And now we have the alarming announcement of President Joe Biden’s cancer diagnosis. One would hope that, even in this highly toxic and divisive political environment, people would be decent, at least in the short term. But not even 24 hours after the news broke that Biden has aggressive prostate cancer, MAGA rancor is ratcheting up. After all, they need to gin up a distraction from all the bad news for which they are responsible. Donald Trump Jr. was one of the first to make accusations. “What I want to know is how did Dr. Jill Biden miss stage five metastatic cancer or is this yet another coverup???” he posted on social media. Apparently he doesn’t know that Dr. Biden is a Ph.D., not a medical doctor. Benny Johnson, a far-right influencer, called Biden’s cancer diagnosis “the most dangerous cover-up in the history of the presidency.” Should we explain Watergate to him? The news will most certainly reopen the case against Biden’s decision to run for reelection. And Republicans are all too happy to force that distraction. But if Democrats want to stop this administration’s embrace of authoritarianism and destruction of the rule of law, they need to focus solely on fighting Trump and his weekly chaos. And pay close attention to the fine print. Steady is free. To support my team’s efforts to protect our democracy through the power of independent journalism, we hope that those of you who are able will consider joining as paid subscribers. That keeps Steady sustainable and accessible for all. Thank you. No matter how you subscribe, I thank you for reading. Stay Steady, Dan