Reuters (“Netanyahu, Israel’s arch-survivor, set to face voter fury over Iran deal“):

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s hopes of clinging to power in an election this autumn have long been shaky, but the interim U.S. deal with Iran has added yet another complication.

U.S. President Donald Trump ​has opted to end the wars in Iran and Lebanon long before Israel’s goals were accomplished, and Netanyahu’s boast in March that “we are changing the face of the Middle East” ‌looks increasingly empty.

Already facing corruption allegations, domestic political controversies and criticism over security failings in the October 7, 2023 Hamas attack on Israel, he will now face voters’ judgement of his handling of the wars and Israel’s relationship with the United States, its most important ally.

Netanyahu, 76, confirmed this week he intends to stand again in an election that must be called by October.

Opinion polls put his right-wing coalition on course to lose but, in a parliamentary system he has dominated for long stretches since ​the 1990s, few Israelis would entirely discount him weaving together a new government.

However the election unfolds, Israel’s longest-serving prime minister, whom supporters once called “King Bibi”, is already the most consequential ​leader of recent Israeli history and the object of boundless fury to critics.

Netanyahu’s Likud party portrays him as the security hawk who staved off demands for a ⁠Palestinian state while urging attacks on Israel’s enemy, Iran, and its regional proxies. “There will be no Palestinian state to the west of the Jordan River,” Netanyahu said in 2025, adding “for years I have prevented the creation ​of that terror state, against tremendous pressure”.

His hawkish image was dented by security failings before the Hamas attack, for which he has not taken responsibility, and by wars that brought military successes but no lasting victories. Tens of ​thousands of people have been killed in Israeli strikes in Gaza and Lebanon, and Israel’s military death toll is at its highest in decades.

Domestic critics say Netanyahu focused security away from the Gaza border and disregarded Hamas as a real threat.
Although Israelis mostly backed the war in Gaza, many turned against Netanyahu’s handling of it. Some prominent generals and families of hostages were among critics who said he lacked a clear strategic plan.

The killings of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah and Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, were ​celebrated in Israel. But Hamas still controls much of Gaza, revolutionary theocrats still rule Iran and Hezbollah has survived in Lebanon.

“Netanyahu lost the war. Netanyahu did not deliver – at the moment of truth he collapsed,” opposition ​leader Yair Lapid said after Trump imposed a new Israel-Hezbollah truce as part of his deal with Iran.

Netanyahu decries such criticism as part of a campaign to diminish Israel’s accomplishments. Warning of a potential nuclear threat from Iran, he ‌said: “If we had ⁠not acted in time and with overwhelming force – we would not be here today.”

I would certainly not count him out. His ability to survive puts the cockroach to shame. He’s headed Likud, aside from a short break after his first stint as prime minister, for well over three decades. And he’s held his current position, which he first held from 1996 to 1999, for all but 18 months since 2009.

Along the way, he’s survived multiple corruption charges, war crimes charges, and spats with multiple American presidents.

Still, while the Israeli public overwhelmingly supported a salted earth approach to the Gaza War, they grew tired of it. Similarly, while they supported his aggressive—and largely successful—approach to Iran, the latest round has clearly been a disaster.

It’s not at all clear, though, who else has the popularity to put together a governing coalition.

The Editorial Board of the FAILING NYT claims “President Trump Lost This War.”

The preliminary deal ending President Trump’s four-month war with Iran is welcome but brings with it hard truths. Mr. Trump made a terrible mistake starting this war. He prosecuted it recklessly and in open defiance of the law. The United States is emerging weaker — militarily, diplomatically and economically — and will pay strategic costs for years to come.

The details of the deal are unclear, but the announced framework suggests that Mr. Trump has won few of the terms he insisted that he would. It is a humiliating comedown for him and the nation he leads.

Since the war began, he has said the United States would achieve “total and complete victory” and that Iran must agree to “unconditional surrender.” He suggested that regime change would occur. He said that Iran would be permitted “no enrichment” of uranium and that “the United States will, working with Iran, dig up and remove all of the deeply buried” near-bomb-grade nuclear material that it already holds.

None of this appears to be true. Iran’s hard-line government remains in place. The specifics of the nuclear agreement will apparently be negotiated over the next two months, but the terms seem likely to resemble those of a 2015 deal that President Barack Obama negotiated and that Mr. Trump canceled in 2018. He described the Obama agreement as the “worst deal ever” and said it put Iran on “a route to a nuclear weapon.” He criticized it for failing to force Iran to stop supporting terrorist groups like Hamas and Hezbollah and for loosening economic sanctions. Yet his destructive war seems likely to leave him with a similar deal.

His biggest achievement in the cease-fire framework is the expected reopening of the Strait of Hormuz to global shipping traffic, which will eventually reduce the prices of energy and other goods. That, of course, is merely a reversion to the prewar status quo. Iran closed the strait in retaliation, to damage the global economy and increase political pressure on the United States. The move worked, and Iran’s leaders now understand that they hold a powerful economic weapon.

The paper’s Iran correspondent, Yeganeh Torbati, contends, “Iran Will Enter Nuclear Talks Feeling Emboldened.”

In the days after Iran and the United States reached a preliminary agreement to pause their war, Iranian politicians, generals, and clerics from a range of political factions described the deal as a victory that showed Tehran’s resilience against a far more powerful enemy.

That is the position Iran’s leaders are pushing even though the country lost a slew of its top political and military figures, suffered a battering to its stock of ballistic missiles and was left with an economy strained even further by a naval blockade.

“Iran has taken a major step toward final victory,” Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, the speaker of the Iranian Parliament who has played a major role in negotiating the deal, wrote on social media on Monday.

As negotiators were nearing an agreement, Sadegh Amoli Larijani, chairman of a powerful appointed council that supervises the work of the government, wrote on social media on Saturday that Iranians had shown a “renewed spirit of resistance” and defeated U.S.-Israeli plans to overthrow the Islamic republic.

Some of the backslapping is most likely aimed at presenting a united front both abroad and at home, where a vocal hard-line minority has protested the agreement as a betrayal of those killed in the war.

The comments also reflect the genuine perception of Iran’s leaders, who can point to the fact that the terms of the agreement, though still not fully known, will fall far short of what President Trump had previously declared as his goals in starting the war: “total and complete victory” for the United States and “unconditional surrender” for Iran.

The style of Iran’s leadership has also changed as a result of the war. Some pragmatic figures, such as the national security official Ali Larijani, were killed, while the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps — the military force that defends Iran’s system of clerical rule — has consolidated power. The long-term impact of those changes is still to be seen, but the shifts raise the question of how willing the military, now even more powerful, will be to make serious concessions at the negotiating table.

Even Trump’s hand-picked foreign policy team is skeptical, according to Axios (“Scoop: CIA director doubts Iran’s intentions on deal, sources say.“):

CIA Director John Ratcliffe told President Trump and other senior officials that evidence gathered by U.S. intelligence agencies raises serious doubts about Iran’s willingness to make the nuclear concessions the U.S. is seeking in any final deal, according to three sources familiar with those discussions.

Ratcliffe isn’t the only skeptic in Trump’s top team. In internal discussions, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth both expressed concerns and raised questions about the memorandum of understanding (MOU) announced Sunday, while Vice President Vance and U.S. envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner advocated for it, according to two of the sources.

There were a series of high-level meetings about the deal between Trump and his advisers in the lead-up to Sunday’s announcement. During those meetings, Trump and his team discussed intel gathered by several U.S. intelligence agencies that showed that the way Iranian officials were discussing the deal among themselves was inconsistent with what they were telling the mediators and the U.S., two sources said.

Ratcliffe and Rubio said that based on that intel, they doubted the Iranians would agree to take the nuclear steps the U.S. was seeking, according to two sources. “The intelligence reflects that the Iranian intentions are not in line with their commitments under the deal,” a source said.

“President Trump listens to all opinions on any given issue — but everyone understands he is the final decision-maker,” a White House official said in response to questions for this story.

Meanwhile, our old pal Benjamin Netanyahu is not on board.

NYT (“Netanyahu Says Israel Will Keep Forces in Lebanon, Despite U.S.-Iran Deal“):

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, in a defiant address to Israelis, suggested on Monday that he did not feel bound by the newly reached cease-fire agreement between the United States and Iran.

“The struggle has not ended,” Mr. Netanyahu declared.

Foreshadowing potential trouble for the peace deal, he said he had no intention of withdrawing his forces from neighboring Lebanon — a key demand of the Iranians during negotiations with the United States. Israeli soldiers there are fighting Hezbollah, a militant group allied with Iran.

[…]

Israelis across the political spectrum have made their dismay at the deal clear, and Mr. Netanyahu, facing a potentially tough re-election campaign later this year, appeared to be sending them a message on Monday.

“I want to make clear: We will remain in the security zones as long as required in order to defend our country,” he said.

Mr. Netanyahu is under pressure from critics who say he has subordinated their country’s security interests to the whims and will of President Trump. The Israeli prime minister has tried to simultaneously present himself as close to the American president and as independent.

“It’s a relationship of partners,” he said. The two leaders often agree and sometimes do not, he said, as “happens in the best of families.”

Even as he distanced himself from the U.S. deal, the prime minister framed the war against Iran as a victory for Israel. If Israel and the United States had not acted, he said, “Iran would already have atomic bombs” and the Israelis would be in “terrible danger of mass death.”

But he struck a different tone about the deal that was agreed to this week.

“This agreement was made by the United States, by the president of the United States,” Mr. Netanyahu said. “That’s his decision,” he said and repeated the statement for emphasis.

He added: “We have our own interests.”

The FT’s Edward Luce (“This time, Trump and Netanyahu have really fallen out“):

Put yourself in Donald Trump’s shoes. It was his 80th birthday and he was planning to cap White House festivities with his US-Iran deal. The agreement nearly unravelled, however, when Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu ordered a Sunday evening strike on Beirut. A flurry of White House calls averted Iranian retaliation. Assurances were given via mediators and the deal was saved. Trump’s late Rome-flavoured cage fight could go ahead.

But Trump was still in a foul mood. “Why did Bibi have to do a fucking attack?” he told Axios. “I was so pissed off. I let him know. He has no fucking judgment. I let him know that.” The answer to Trump’s question is that his Iran deal is likely to be a political death sentence for Netanyahu. He thus has every incentive to reignite Gulf war III. He has bet his own and Israel’s future on getting Trump to bring about regime change in Iran. That bet has exploded in his face.

Wooing back Trump will be a challenge. Going by the adage “fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me”, the US president has grounds to feel burned by Israel’s prime minister. As does the electorate in Israel, which will have a general election by the end of October.

Netanyahu sold Trump and his own public on the idea that, after 47 years, Iran’s theocrats were finally meeting their Waterloo. All Operation Epic Fury required was some lethal targeting and the Iranian people would do the rest.

Rarely has a geopolitical roll of the dice gone so rapidly wrong. Netanyahu played on Trump’s vanity to help convince him to start this war. That same vanity will now be deaf to any future bridges Netanyahu might try to sell. The Israeli leader thus faces an unpalatable choice. Either he submits to a deal that leaves Iran considerably stronger than it was before February 28, or he breaks with the US by trying to scupper the deal. There is little scope here to split the difference. Netanyahu has the 60-day US-Iran negotiating period to figure it out.

Aside from those minor details, the war was a complete success.

While I agree with the general notion that a lousy “deal” (scare quotes oh so very intentional) at this stage of this Iranian misventure is better than maintaining the status quo, I am finding the notion that we are about to sign a memorandum of understanding, an MOU, to be so utterly absurd.

As was correctly quipped in this morning’s open forum, this is not a real plan; it is the concept of a plan.

An MOU is just a non-binding (let that sink in) agreement to agree to talk more later about something. This is no formal peace deal.

Ever since the notion that this little excursion would end with an MOU, I have been having flashbacks to when I worked for a boss who loved him some MOUs. A possible partnership with another institution? Let’s make sure we get an MOU! A potential private partner? Let’s do an MOU!

Invariably, a very vague document to agree, as stated above, to talk some more later, was signed. If at all possible, there was a signing ceremony with a press release. And sometimes local press would attend. It was very exciting, dontcha know. Perhaps I became too cynical for my own good, but it often felt as if the photo for the press release was more important than the contents of the documents being signed (and the road to Hell was paved with unrealized MOU plans of action…).

Granting very much that the stakes of what is happening with Iran are far greater than a potential transfer agreement with a random community college, the process, optics, and skill of the participants here feel all too familiar.

One thing is certainly the same: the main goal here is to have a press event to demonstrate that yes, they are doing something.

There is a real upside, of course, with the Iran MOU, at least in the short term, which is return (hopefully) to some version of the status quo ante. This is important for the global economy, and I guess we will just have to pretend like all the death, destruction, and expenditures were worth it, even as it quite clearly was not.

Here’s one thing I am certain of: a superpower, or even a smaller power, does not launch a war with the goal of signing an MOU. It is absurd, but it is the kind of thing that one might expect from a president who is basically a real estate developer and reality TV star, as guided by a coterie of unqualified sycophants as advisors.

The actual MOU has not yet been released, but the leaked details, if accurate, amount to US capitulation and failure. I do not see a single actual US national security aim being met (killing an 86-year-old leader doesn’t count if the regime remains in power).

The absurdity of all of this is just emphasized by the amazing coincidence of this being announced on Trump’s birthday, just so as to emphasize the reality TV/kayfabe of it all. I half expected the agreement to be signed via DocuSign over the weekend so that Trump could tout that the whole thing was resolved on his special day.

Of the stomach-churning elements of this story is that there are many millions of Americans who will think that a real deal of consequence was reached, and that the US won. After all, that is what the President of the United States is going to tell them.

These are ridiculous times whose consequences we will all be living with for some time to come.

WaPo (“U.S., Iran reach a deal to end fighting, both sides say“):

The United States and Iran have reached a limited deal to end months of fighting, according to President Donald Trump, a top Iranian diplomat and the leader of Pakistan, which has been mediating between the two sides.

“The Deal with the Islamic Republic of Iran is now complete. Congratulations to all!” Trump said Sunday on Truth Social, adding that he had agreed to end the U.S. naval blockade on Iranian ports in exchange for Iran’s reopening of the Strait of Hormuz and a continued halt to fighting.

The two sides plan to keep discussing the limits to Iran’s nuclear program that Trump has sought. They’re scheduled to sign the agreement on Friday. The timing of the announcement on Sunday allowed Trump to celebrate the deal on his 80th birthday.

On Monday, the price of oil, which had soared well over $100 per barrel during the war, fell sharply in response to news of the deal, to about $83. Meanwhile stock markets in Asia rose sharply, with major indexes in Japan and Korea climbing about 5 percent. Stock indexes in Europe were moderately higher.

Some world leaders hailed the announcement of a peace deal as a potential turning point, but Israeli officials and citizens denounced it.

U.S. officials said the deal was in jeopardy earlier Sunday after Israel launched an air strike in the southern suburbs of Beirut, Lebanon’s capital. As Iran prepared a retaliatory strike, Trump publicly rebuked Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for endangering the talks.

“After the Israelis struck Beirut, we were very worried,” Vice President JD Vance said in an interview with Fox News after the deal was announced. “We saw a lot of evidence that the Iranians were going to launch a large number of missiles at the Israelis.”

During what Iran’s deputy foreign minister, Kazem Gharibabadi, said were more than 14 hours of talks on Sunday, the Iranians ultimately stood down. They said the U.S. had made last-minute concessions in return, including speeding up the end of the naval blockade.

“The naval blockade against Iran will end immediately and completely,” Iran’s Supreme National Security Council said in a statement, according to the semi-official Fars news agency.

Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif said on social media that both sides “have declared the immediate and permanent termination of military operations on all fronts, including in Lebanon,” and that an official signing ceremony will be on Friday in Switzerland. Mediators will hold a series of meetings this week, Sharif said.

The deal appeared to leave significant areas of disagreement unresolved and subject to further negotiations, especially Iran’s nuclear program and the wide range of U.S. sanctions that have been imposed on Tehran. Gharibabadi said his government expected to discuss a full lifting of U.S. sanctions in talks he said would take place over the next 60 days, according to IRNA, a state-supported news agency.

AP (“Iran war and Trump orders a stop to the US naval blockade“):

The United States and Iran reached an initial agreement early Monday to open the Strait of Hormuz and further extend a shaky ceasefire in the Iran war, potentially allowing desperately needed oil and natural gas to reach the global market.

Details of the deal were not immediately released and Iran signaled implementation would not start until the signing, which key mediator Pakistan said would occur Friday in Switzerland. It could provide a way to end a war that killed thousands across the Middle East, including the top leaders of Iran’s theocracy, and sparked a historic energy crisis.

[…]

Meanwhile, the deal gives just 60 days to resolve what to do about Iran’s stockpile of highly enriched uranium and its atomic program. That took years to resolve in Tehran’s 2015 nuclear deal with world powers. U.S. President Donald Trump unilaterally withdrew America from that accord in his first term, setting the stage for the tensions that culminated in the war.

“Congratulations to all!” Trump wrote on social media as he celebrated his 80th birthday Sunday with a UFC cage match fight at the White House.

He added, “I hereby fully authorize the toll free opening of the Strait of Hormuz, and, simultaneously herewith, authorize the immediate removal of the United States Naval blockade,” which was imposed in retaliation for Iran’s grip on the crucial waterway.

He soon hedged, however, saying the strait wouldn’t open until Friday’s signing.

Iran’s deputy foreign minister, Kazem Gharibabadi, confirmed the agreement on state television but said Iran would not start implementing it until it was signed Friday. He said the deal followed talks with Qatar, another mediator.

[…]

It was not clear who from Iran would sign the deal on Friday. U.S. Vice President JD Vance told Fox News the White House was still figuring out who would attend: “I certainly plan to be there, but it’s possible the president himself could be there.”

But concern among Republicans in the U.S. already could be seen. They included U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, who described Vance as “the architect of the deal.”

“I am somewhat concerned that Iran’s view of the agreement seems different than what the American negotiating team is claiming,” Graham wrote online.

U.S. Rep. Gregory Meeks of New York, the top Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said Congress would exercise oversight on any accord with Iran.

“We have seen time and again: War cannot change the Iranian regime,” he said.

[…]

The first strike of the war killed Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and Khamenei’s son, Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei, is now supreme leader. He has not been seen in the public since the war began, but his approval was needed for Iran to sign off on the deal.

There was apparent friction inside Iran in the hours before the announcement, as the government warned that division at home over the deal weakened its negotiating position.

The deal likely returns the region to a status that existed before the war, but with Iran having proven its ability to disrupt shipping in the strait. The waterway is crucial to significant shipments of oil, natural gas and related products like fertilizer, and its effective closure rocked the global economy.

Even with a deal, it will take months for oil and gas supplies to flow freely enough for the world’s needs to be met because shipping and insurance companies want to be confident the agreement will last, energy experts said.

Tehran also still has a ballistic missile arsenal and enough highly enriched uranium to build several nuclear weapons, should it choose to pursue them.

Iran has long maintained its nuclear program is peaceful and has not publicly committed to giving up the enriched uranium, which is believed to be buried under three nuclear sites that were badly damaged by U.S. strikes last year.

The U.S. has sought the removal of the enriched uranium from Iran as part of a deal. Russia has offered to take it. But Iran insists it wants to keep the uranium.

The Southern rock band Blackberry Smoke had a song called “One Horse Town” on their 2012 album The Whippoorwill.

The opening stanza captures the essence of rural existence:

In the tiny town where I come from
You grew up doing what your daddy does
And you don’t ask questions, you do it just because
You don’t climb too high or dream too much
With a whole lot of work and a little bit of luck
You can wind up right back where your daddy was

Alas, it also captures the nature of the war effort. We’re pretty much at status quo ante, if not considerably worse off.

The key tenets of the deal, as described:

• Iran will allow free passage in the Strait of Hormuz
• The US Navy is not blockading the Strait.
• Negotiations on the status of Iran’s nuclear program will resume, with each side having mutually exclusive goals

That’s exactly where things stood before the war.

Some things have changed as a result of the war.

Politically:

• The 86-year-old Ayatollah Ali Hosseini Khamenei, several of his family members, and a good number of the senior leadership are dead
• They have been replaced by 56-year-old Ayatollah Mojtaba Hosseini Khamenei, whose health and whereabouts are unknown to us, and a greatly empowered Islamic Republic Guard Corps.

That’s almost certainly a worsening of our position. The elder Khamenei was believed to be in poor health, and the transition plan was thought to be unclear. He’s been replaced by a man 30 years younger, likely more radical to begin with, whose father, mother, wife, and other family members we murdered.

Militarily:

• The regular Iranian army and navy (the Artesh) are believed to have been severely degraded early in the conflict.
• The IRGC has proven more than a capable backup in terms of their ability to shut down the Strait and conduct drone warfare.
• The United States arsenal of exquisite weapons, notably air defense interceptors and Tomahawk missiles, is considerably degraded.

That’s, at best, a wash.

And, as noted in the news reports, Iran has demonstrated that it can easily close the Strait and inflict severe pain on the global economy any time it chooses. Some countries have already pursued alternate routes to get their oil to market. Presumably, that diversification will continue.

Aha! You thought we were done talking about Harlan Ellison! You fools!

Actually, this episode is less about Ellison, and more about the contents of the anthology, Dangerous Visions, which Ellison organized and edited. The book is full of stories from well-known writers, such as Philip K. Dick, Damon Knight, Larry Niven, Poul Anderson, and others, as well as lesser-known authors whose work Ellison decided to promote. Dangerous Visions pursued a new model for anthologies, and is one of the important landmarks in the history of science fiction, speculative fiction, whatever label you want to apply.

But was it dangerous? And what did we think of the stories, Ellison’s introductions to each one, the authors’ own afterwards, and the revolutionary manifesto in Ellison’s introduction? Tune in to find out.

Because Ellison wanted people to submit stories that made readers uncomfortable and stretched the limits of the genre, we discuss of a handful of stories that include mentions of incest and fetishism.

The true face of reality! Organ banks! Transhuman groupies! God! Jack the Ripper! Bigotry against aliens! It’s all here.

Ancient Geeks is a podcast about two geeks of a certain age re-visiting their youth. We were there when things like science fiction, fantasy, Tolkien, Star Trek, Star Wars, D&D, Marvel and DC comics, Doctor Who, and many, many other threads of modern geek culture were still on the fringes of popular culture. We were geeks before it was chic!

For feedback, contact someancientgeeks@gmail.com. You can also find us on Facebook, Reddit, and Bluesky. Also, check out the Ancient Geeks blog on Substack! And if you like what you hear, please tell a friend. Also, we always appreciate a review on the podcast platform of your choice.

Donald J. Trump’s birthday is today, making him America’s second octogenarian president. Naturally, folks are reflecting on the milestone.

AP (“Trump turns 80 with a showstopping spectacle of cage fights at the White House. But big issues loom.”):

President Donald Trump celebrates turning 80 on Sunday with a showstopping birthday spectacle that once would have seemed unfathomable: a cage-fighting show on the storied South Lawn of the White House.

This week, the hard realities of the office have threatened to overshadow the ostentatious UFC mixed martial arts extravaganza, where combatants sealed inside a wire-mesh octagon try to punch, kick, chop and pummel each other into submission.

Trump has found himself boxed into an unpopular and costly war he helped start in Iran. An agreement to end the conflict could be close, but the crucial details are still to be negotiated. Meanwhile, about a mile from Trump’s birthday bash, crews pried the president’s name off the Kennedy Center after a judge ruled naming it after Trump had gone too far.

Regardless, the president will walk out of the White House and be surrounded by Cabinet leaders, top administration officials, Republican lawmakers and 4,000-plus spectators screaming themselves hoarse in a temporary arena under “ The Claw,” a spaceship-like metal arch fitted with lighting, sound equipment and large screens. Thousands more will be watching on big screens from the nearby Ellipse.

“This event is a one of one event, incredible event. I love it,” said UFC chief Dana White, a close friend of the president, during a Friday night hype session at the Lincoln Memorial where pairs of fighters shoved and scuffled for the cameras under the stoic gaze of Honest Abe’s marble likeness.

NYT, (“Trump at 80: A President ‘Really Uncomfortable’ With Aging“):

He stays up late, phoning lawyers and lawmakers, while posting up to 150 times a night on Truth Social. His mornings involve calls with world leaders about the war in the Middle East, or talks with landscapers about replanting a bothersome tree. When he arrives in the Oval Office, his unstructured days unfold like a time-lapse video, with people zipping around him as he stays seated at the center of the frame.

As President Trump turns 80 on Sunday, he is so intent on projecting an image of relentless energy that he has installed a massive, mixed martial arts octagon on the South Lawn to mark the occasion. After watching the fight, Mr. Trump will depart Washington in the middle of the night and cross an ocean for a diplomatic summit in France. It is a schedule that seems devised to ward off questions about age and stamina as he begins his ninth decade.

[…]

Earlier this month, legions of online observers speculated, as they had before, that Mr. Trump was ailing when his public schedule contained no public events for nearly a week, a streak that began just after a physical exam at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center. Three days after that evaluation was completed, the president’s physician, Dr. Sean P. Barbabella, declared in a summary that the 79-year-old Mr. Trump “remains in excellent health, demonstrating strong cardiac, pulmonary, neurological and overall physical function.”

So the oldest president ever to be inaugurated and his advisers spend a lot of time hitting back at people who have drawn a different set of conclusions about his health based on what they believe they can plainly see.

[…]

“The White House doctors are among the most elite physicians in the world, and they have released multiple comprehensive reports confirming President Trump is in excellent health and fully fit to carry out all duties of commander in chief,” Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, said in a statement. “The president proves this himself every single day, taking nonstop questions from a hostile press corps and maintaining a relentless schedule.”

[…]

Mr. Trump is part of a class of Washington politicians who have remained in power even as Americans have signaled concerns about aging leaders. Washington is a part-time home to the third-oldest Congress in history, and if Mr. Trump completes his term at age 82, he will be the oldest president to have held office.

“Somebody at 80 years old just doesn’t have the physical stamina, the mental stamina for that office,” said Rahm Emanuel, a prominent Democrat who is interested in running for president in 2028, and who has called for a mandatory retirement age of 75 for many top federal positions. Mr. Emanuel, who served as a chief of staff to President Barack Obama and a top aide to President Bill Clinton, said that the presidency is especially taxing.

“It ages you in a way that no other stress in your life does,” he said.

Some White Houses have been more aggressive than others at obscuring the truth of an aging president’s condition. As President Joseph R. Biden Jr. physically declined, his aides went to great lengths to obscure the signs of his aging. No one in Mr. Biden’s inner circle discouraged him from trying to run for the presidency again, despite indications that he was growing more frail.

As he ages, Mr. Trump has taken a different approach. He lets the cameras pick up his slumps, swollen ankles and bandaged hand. He continues to take a tall stairway wheeled up to Air Force One, often navigating the stairs carefully. He continues to appear before the news media, fielding questions from friendlier faces and lashing out at journalists who ask him questions he perceives as unflattering.

More often than not, he meanders far beyond the topic he has appeared before reporters to discuss.

The Independent (“The oldest elected US president is turning 80, but it’s not Trump’s age that has medical experts worried“):

President Donald Trump turns 80 on Sunday, following more than a year of exhibiting visible symptoms typical for an octogenarian, including bruising on his hands, swollen ankles and legs, and appearing to nod off during meetings and high-profile events.

Medical experts warn, though, that it’s not so much these obvious symptoms and his age that Americans should be most concerned about, but the conduct and behavior on display during his second presidency.

“It’s not that he’s 80, but let’s not ignore the red flags on the field,” Dr. Henry Abraham, a Nobel Prize-winning professor of Psychiatry Emeritus at Tufts University School of Medicine, told The Independent. “There are people in their 80s and 90s who have all their marbles.”

But Abraham, who stressed he has never examined the president in person and was not offering a diagnosis, is seriously alarmed that Trump has access to the nuclear codes.

“If you just look at everything that he’s said and done, and has been observed doing over, really, decades, certain signs and symptoms emerge which are warning flags regarding the conduct of his presidency going forward,” he said.

“Poor impulse control, poor control over his rage, sleeplessness at night, unrelenting aggression toward his perceived enemies,” Abraham said. “Well, put all that together and give him the nuclear football, and you can see why we’re worried.”

David Smith, The Guardian (“As Donald Trump turns 80, he faces a foe he can never defeat: Father Time. That’s a problem for us all“):

The main Nuremberg trial ended, Winston Churchill warned of an iron curtain descending across Europe, It’s a Wonderful Life received its premiere and, at Jamaica hospital in the borough of Queens, New York, Donald John Trump was born.

It was 1946, also the birth year of George W Bush and Bill Clinton, but on Sunday the current US president celebrates his 80th birthday in a style uniquely his own. Trump will stage a night of cage fighting on the once-pristine White House south lawn as part of events marking the 250th anniversary of US independence.

The blend of visceral bloodsport with political spectacle under metal scaffolding may offer brief respite for a president also consumed with an unpopular war, rising inflation, plunging poll numbers and a foe not even he can bully, bomb or outrun: Father Time.

“Donald Trump has been showing signs of his age for quite some time,” said Tara Setmayer, a former Republican communications director on Capitol Hill. “It’s on display almost daily as he struggles to stay awake during official meetings, he is more irritable and going on rage tangents and throwing temper tantrums when he doesn’t get his way. These are not signs of a well-adjusted adult approaching 80 years old.”

[…]

The physical evidence is increasingly difficult for his aides to conceal, though they aggressively project a narrative of vigour. The president has been photographed with bruised hands and swollen ankles, ailments his medical staff continually brush off as a “slight” issue. He sees 22 medical specialists, an apparent new bar for presidents.

His public calendar has grown notably sparse, dominated by hours of nebulous “executive time” and behind-closed-doors policy meetings. After a flurry of travel early in the year, he has largely retreated to the cocoons of the White House and his clubs in Florida and New Jersey since launching the Iran war in February.

Then there is the sleeping. Trump has increasingly been caught on camera apparently nodding off at public events, most recently at an NBA basketball finals game at New York’s Madison Square Garden. When clips of his shut eyes go viral, his aides claim he was merely blinking or listening intently.

The White House spokesperson Davis Ingle has insisted that Trump remains “the sharpest and most accessible president in American history”. The president himself frequently boasts of “acing” cognitive tests that would have flummoxed past presidents.

But to observers the spin is not only unconvincing but counterproductive. Kurt Bardella, a political commentator and former congressional aide, said: “It’s not surprising that someone who’s on the doorstep of being octogenarian is showing signs of ageing. Father Time is undefeated: that applies to everybody including Donald Trump and I would have more confidence in him as commander-in chief if he would just admit that rather than try to hide it.”

Bardella added: “Hiding it is a sign of weakness. Being transparent, forthright, honest about it would actually be a sign a strength. The fact the White House seems to be going to all these ridiculous and laughable measures to try to convince us that he’s not actually ageing is insulting to American people, it’s idiotic, it reeks of desperation, and it makes everyone believe that there’s more going on than meets the eye. And what meets the eye isn’t that great. Secrecy breeds mistrust.”

It’s noteworthy how little Trump’s age has been discussed compared to his predecessor. While Biden was more physically fit, he was also more gaunt, making him look older. He was also relatively pale, while Trump is famously spray-tanned.

It’s my longstanding view that politicians ought to step off the stage before they become geriatric. It was decidedly not a good thing for the presidency and most of the Congressional leadership to be in the hands of octogenarians a few years back. In addition to the inevitable decline in mental sharpness and energy, people simply lose touch at some point.

But it’s not as though people didn’t know how old Joe Biden was in 2020 or Donald Trump was in 2024. In the last election, in particular, Americans had the option to choose a much younger candidate (Harris is just 61) and did not.

Via the AP: US households, businesses stung by higher energy prices that have pushed inflation above 4%.

Rising gas prices pushed inflation to its highest level in three years last month, a headache for the Federal Reserve and a potential political challenge for the Trump administration as midterm elections near.

Consumer prices rose 4.2% in May from a year earlier, the Labor Department said Wednesday, up from 3.8% in April and the third straight monthly increase. On a monthly basis, prices rose 0.5% last month, after big gains of 0.6% in April and 0.9% in March.

Here’s the chart:

But, never fear, this is actually good news!

To which I can only say: the commercials for the midterms keep writing themselves.

Meanwhile, the population isn’t too impressed:

I will note that the monthly jobs report was better than expected, as per NBC News: U.S. added 172,000 jobs in May, even as inflation squeezed consumers.

Here’s the broader context:

Today’s scheduled initial public offering of SpaceX stock has generated considerable coverage of the company and its founder, the world’s richest man.

NYT (“A Trillionaire?“):

SpaceX, Elon Musk’s rocket-building, satellite-launching and artificial intelligence company, is set to go public today at $135 a share. The company plans to sell 555 million of them. That means SpaceX would raise around $75 billion, putting its valuation at $1.77 trillion, the largest I.P.O. in history.

It could make Musk the world’s first trillionaire. Or it could tank. Some analysts have argued that SpaceX is significantly overvalued. The market could decide that Musk’s an overpromiser and pass on the stock’s high price. (Remember his purchase of Twitter for $44 billion in 2022? The company, now known as X, saw its ad revenue decline by 65 percent last year. Musk folded it into his A.I. company, xAI. Which is now part of SpaceX.)

“It really does feel very much a ‘don’t look at the man behind the curtain’ situation,” one career investor told The Times.

Plenty of people will get rich anyway. One launch engineer who worked at the company for 12 years told The Times he’d earned more than 100,000 shares during his tenure. At $135 a pop, his SpaceX stock would be worth at least $13.5 million at some point today. Even if the price drops by half, he’d still have millions on paper. “The magnitude of this has been ridiculous,” he said.

Or look to Antonio Gracias, one of Musk’s staunchest friends and business allies. He and his private equity firm, Valor Equity Partners, have a $65 billion stake in SpaceX at its target I.P.O. valuation. If the stock soars, Gracias will instantly become one of the world’s richest human beings.

Axios (“Elon Musk’s age of impunity“):

Elon Musk is on the verge of financial immortality: The world’s richest man — and potentially its first trillionaire — has built a sovereign corporate kingdom that is too systemic to fail. And yet, on the eve of SpaceX’s monster IPO, its CEO was hunkered down in his digital fiefdom stoking far-right culture wars with an impunity unmatched in modern corporate history.

Musk’s years in the public eye, marked by serial controversy and an accelerating embrace of white identitarian politics, have inured investors to conduct that would be disqualifying for almost any other CEO. Nothing Musk says or does can dent Wall Street’s appetite for a stake in his future-forging empire. Look no further than SpaceX’s $1.75 trillion IPO, where demand for shares has already vastly outstripped the available supply ahead of Friday’s historic market debut.

Anti-immigration riots erupted in Belfast on Tuesday night after graphic footage of a brutal street stabbing, allegedly by a Sudanese migrant, ricocheted across X. Masked mobs set fire to vehicles, a city bus, and several homes, marching through neighborhoods while chanting “foreigners out” and forcing minority families to flee under police protection.

Musk, who posts near-daily about violence committed by migrants, shared British far-right activist Tommy Robinson’s list of locations to protest against “another invader attack on our people.” “Only by protesting REPEATEDLY and LOUDLY will there be any change!!” Musk declared to his 240 million followers, drawing allegations of incitement from British leaders. Musk’s intervention in Belfast followed weeks of fixation on Henry Nowak, the white British teenager whose murder by a British Sikh man ignited a far-right backlash over claims of “anti-white” policing.

Musk’s anti-migrant activism extends across Western countries, where he suggests elites are intentionally engineering the demographic erasure of white populations — also known as the “Great Replacement” theory. In the U.S., Musk has been relentlessly focused on non-citizen voter fraud, claiming that Democrats are harvesting illegal immigrant votes to create a permanent, one-party state. That includes in California, where he joined MAGA allies this week in alleging, without evidence, that Democrats committed massive fraud in the Los Angeles mayoral primary.

[…]

As Musk’s personal net worth rockets toward the thirteen-figure mark, he has achieved escape velocity from the traditional rules of corporate governance. A decade ago, a CEO amplifying white-identitarian panic at home and overseas would have triggered a board crisis, investor revolt and days of corporate cleanup. Musk does it daily, in public, in real time, on the platform he owns. His companies have become critical infrastructure, and Trump-era politics have shifted the Overton window on the rhetoric of racial grievance.

Amy Gamerman, NYT (“Elon Musk Is Colonizing Earth“):

The gleaming new city checks every box: school, medical center, recreational center, sushi bar. There’s even a dog park with hoops and climbing toys. But you and your dog are not welcome; “Private” warns the sign at its entrance. 

[…]

In this town, almost every communal space is private property. A company controlled by the world’s richest man owns nearly all of it. He shapes its future.

This is Starbase, Texas, the city that Elon Musk built on America’s ragged hem at the southern border as the home for SpaceX, his aerospace and artificial intelligence company. Locals describe a highly secretive environment overseen by a company-affiliated city commission that rubber-stamps Mr. Musk’s vision, a place where even kindergartners are guided by his philosophies. Starbase is the newest manifestation of Mr. Musk’s political power. It is a beta test for a rising oligarchy that seems intent on transforming America from the inside out.

In this town, almost every communal space is private property. A company controlled by the world’s richest man owns nearly all of it. He shapes its future.

This is Starbase, Texas, the city that Elon Musk built on America’s ragged hem at the southern border as the home for SpaceX, his aerospace and artificial intelligence company. Locals describe a highly secretive environment overseen by a company-affiliated city commission that rubber-stamps Mr. Musk’s vision, a place where even kindergartners are guided by his philosophies. Starbase is the newest manifestation of Mr. Musk’s political power. It is a beta test for a rising oligarchy that seems intent on transforming America from the inside out.

[…]

These spaceports will allow Mr. Musk to create his own reality for other people to live in. He doesn’t need Mars. Mr. Musk has already built a colony of his own.

Mr. Musk often cites “Star Trek” as inspiration for founding SpaceX. “We want to make ‘Star Trek’ real, OK?” he said in January. But Starbase bears less similarity to the enlightened wonderland depicted in that 1960s television show than it does to the autocratic company towns of the 19th and early 20th centuries. Like Mr. Musk, the industrial titans of that era built their own private fiefs, not only to cement control over workers, but to realize their vision of an ideal society.

I am not a member of the Billionaires Should Not Exist Club. Or even the Trillionaires Should Not Exist Club. I do not begrudge those who launch society-altering businesses reaping huge profits. They should, however, pay taxes proportionate to their vast wealth and be beholden to the same rules as we peons.

That Musk draws massive investments despite being an open white nationalist and something of a nut is more concerning. Then again, those qualities no longer disqualify people from holding the highest offices in the land. It’s not obvious why a guy running a social media platform, an automobile manufacturer, or a rocket company should be held to a higher standard.

That said, Musk’s seeming impunity is troubling. That he could spend $44 billion on Twitter for the pleasure of essentially burning it to the ground is not a great thing for our society. But, again, we live in a world where convicted insurrectionists roam free.

It’s also problematic, if not unprecedented, for a man to essentially own entire towns lock, stock, and barrel. Nobody is forced to live there, I guess, but it borders on un-American.

“SoCal Sunset”

May 18, 2026

Languna Beach, CA