Welcome to the weekend edition of the Editorial Board! I’m your host, John Stoehr. Before I get to all the stuff I published last week, here’s a few words about what happened at the White House Friday.

If a picture is worth a thousand words, let’s go with the above one of US Secretary of State Marco Rubio. (Click the headline to see the picture at editorialboard.com.) I think it’s emblematic of the fact that Donald Trump surrounds himself with grown men who are willing to act like little boys if that’s what it takes to make Big Daddy happy.

There’s another way of putting it:

“If he sank any deeper into that couch, Vance would have fucked him.”

I’m going to have more to say about this, today and in the future, with fewer inside jokes (maybe), but first a reminder from yours truly:

The Editorial Board is a daily newsletter for people like you who love their country and the common good. This newsletter is supported totally by readers who want to know more and do more wherever they can. There are no ads. There are no sponsors. It’s just me and you.

I make everything I do available to all, via the Editorial Board‘s website (editorialboard.com), email and social media, especially Bluesky (I post less on Twitter). I make everything available in the belief that good people will recognize good work and do what they can to support it.

I hope you will do that today. Subscribe for the year to save almost 20 percent off the monthly price. If you are already subscribing, thank you, and please consider a tip. All tips go to paying the March rent!

THANKS!

CLICK HERE TO SUBSCRIBE FOR JUST $6 A MONTH!

---

Click here to leave a tip. $10? Thanks!

---

That said, we are no longer The Good Guys.

I grew up in a time in American history when the country took pride in being the savior of the western world, having defeated German fascism and Japanese imperialism, and later, establishing the rules of an international order that maintained relative peace around the world.

To be sure, there were problems with the order, deep and serious problems, not the least of which was America’s betrayal of those rules after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, and the invasion of a sovereign nation (with an evil leader!) that did America no wrong.

But even during the worst of the occupation of Iraq, it was possible to think of America as having strayed from its noble past, from being the shining city on the hill, where the world’s huddled mass longed to be.

Can we entertain such thoughts anymore? 

Yesterday, Trump threw a tantrum. That’s the obvious part. But he did it in such a way to reveal just how much he’s in the tank for Russian leader Vladimir Putin. We are used to thinking that America won the battle between capitalism and communism, before freedom and totalitarianism, but after yesterday’s episode, all that seems naive.

Here’s Huffpost’s SV Date:

On Friday, Trump ranted about the investigations into Russia’s 2016 election interference in response to a question about how he could trust Putin to honor any peace agreement. Trump told reporters that Putin was similarly wronged by the investigations and then inexplicably dragged Biden’s son Hunter and California Democratic Sen. Adam Schiff into his answer: 

“Let me tell you, Putin went through a hell of a lot with me. He went through a phony witch hunt where they used him in ‘Russia, Russia, Russia, Russia.’ You ever hear that deal that was a phony, that was a phony Hunter Biden, Joe Biden scam, Hillary Clinton, shifty, Adam Schiff, it was a Democrat scam, and he had to go through that. And he did go through it.”

We didn’t really win the Cold War any more than we won the Civil War. The enemy just went underground until it was time to strike, turning every story we told ourselves for the last eight decades upside down.

We are now The Bad Guys. 

HERE’S WHAT YOU MISSED LAST WEEK

February 24, 2025
What does public opinion mean to a president who has an army of thugs wielding zip-ties? 
Real or wishful thinking? The “backlash” everyone’s talking about.

February 26, 2025
The Republicans’ Medicaid vote is not a sign of maga civil war 
Liberals and Democrats are misreading Steve Bannon.

February 27, 2025 
Can the Democrats really change Trump voters’ minds? Really?
The answer depends on what kind of liberal you are.

February 28, 2025
The deep state is real. It’s called DOGE
Elon Musk is exercising power no one alive has seen.