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1 day ago | 
thedailybeast.com | Michael Black
I admit it: I’m a dumb, average American. The product of an average high school and a college dropout. But, you know, I read and stuff. And I thought I knew a little something about America. Nope. Turns out, I’m an idiot. For decades, I was under the mistaken impression that presidential bribery is one of them fancy “high crimes and misdemeanors” I learned about in Social Studies.
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1 week ago | 
thedailybeast.com | Michael Black
Trump made headlines this week for going all Marie Kondo on the American economy—and I am here for it.
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2 weeks ago | 
thedailybeast.com | Michael Black
You ever rent a car? I do, all the time. And every single time I’m furious when I get the bill because there’s always more charges—many, many more charges—than I’d anticipated. Concession fee recovery. Vehicle licensing cost recovery. Customer facility charge. State tax. And on and on. By the time you’re done, you might end up paying up almost double the stated rental cost. You might have a problem with all the extra charges, but at least you know what they are.
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3 weeks ago | 
thedailybeast.com | Michael Black
A lot of people are clowning on Pete Hegseth for being an unqualified, incompetent, hard-drinking idiot who should never have been trusted to lead a softball team, let alone the world’s largest military. I am not one of those people. As our Secretary of Defense’s job hangs by a thread, I come to praise Hegseth, not to bury him. Here is a man who has demonstrated that one not need talent, nor discipline, nor intellect to rise to this nation’s greatest heights.
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3 weeks ago | 
thedailybeast.com | Michael Daly |Michael Black |Janna Brancolini |Kenneal Patterson
The Trump administration’s five-page extortion letter threatening to withhold federal funding for Harvard if the university does not comply with onerous ideological demands was addressed to its president , Dr. Alan Garber. It was also addressed to the most senior member of its board of governors, Penny Pritzker. Pritzker is also widely viewed as the dominant member of the ultra-wealthy Pritzker family that was Donald Trump’s partner in his first big real estate deal in Manhattan back in 1975.
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3 weeks ago | 
thedailybeast.com | Michael Black |Kali Holloway |Anthony Fisher |Lauren Lewis
Harvard said no. No to government minders, no to intellectual dishonesty, no to conservative DEI. In a forceful letter of rebuke to the Trump administration’s threat to withhold federal money from the university if it does not acquiesce to a series of “ham-handed” demands—including government audits to monitor “ideological capture”—Harvard president Alan M. Garber basically told the government to f--k all the way off. He said it in a more Harvard way, but that was the message.
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1 month ago | 
thedailybeast.com | Michael Black
Welp, things are bad. It’s not a huge surprise. A lot of people said things were going to be bad if we elected this turd. We did it, anyway, and here we are. No reason to list all the bad things, as I have limited space and you have limited patience, but when the phrases “stock market crash” and “why did the DOGE bros fire grandma?” are in vogue, chances are high that things are not quite as sunny as we were promised they would be in this, our new golden age.
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1 month ago | 
ca.news.yahoo.com | Michael Black
Welp, things are bad. It’s not a huge surprise. A lot of people said things were going to be bad if we elected this turd. We did it, anyway, and here we are. No reason to list all the bad things, as I have limited space and you have limited patience, but when the phrases “stock market crash” and “why did the DOGE bros fire grandma?” are in vogue, chances are high that things are not quite as sunny as we were promised they would be in this, our new golden age.
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1 month ago | 
thedailybeast.com | David Gardner |Michael Black
Brandishing a board with a list of winners and losers, Donald Trump sold his Liberation Day tariff plan like a Hollywood game show host. The spray-tanned president, his hair lacquered into place, gesticulated and bragged as he unveiled the numbers matching his international contestants. Leaders from around the world watched along with the viewing public as Trump finally revealed the tariff percentages that he planned to use to enforce his trade revolution.
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1 month ago | 
thedailybeast.com | Michael Black |David Rothkopf |Tim Brinkhof
I write on Liberation Day, just hours before our president unveils new tariffs which will either unleash a new Golden Age or splat the United States against the global economy’s windshield. While I cannot say with total certainty which of the two scenarios is likelier, I’m inclined to believe actual economists over Stephen Miller—but that’s just because I tend to value the opinions of people who know what they’re talking about.
