July 25, 2026 ~ Vol. 60
Picking a topic to write about was exceptionally hard this week because there were far too many stories to comment on. I would start to collect some ideas about something that someone in the current administration had done - usually our President - and then a new story would make the headlines that made the first idea seem unimportant. Today you could be reading about how Trump glorified his dear departed friend, Senator Lindsey Graham, where we would explore the ebb and flow of their relationship over the last decade. Ten years ago, during Graham’s brief run for the presidency, he called Trump a “jackass” and a “race-baiting, xenophobic religious bigot”. He famously suggested that if the GOP nominated Trump it would “destroy us (the Republican Party)—and we would deserve it.” Indeed. It was one of the very few times that I agreed wholeheartedly with the good Senator. In 2015 I had assured our office’s clients that there was absolutely no chance that the GOP would nominate this reality-show-celebrity-real-estate-huckster as their candidate, and everyone should just chill because there was a zero percent probability that it would ever happen. Prescient, eh?
I was then what came to be known as a Never-Trumper, an opinion forged not from political experiences, but from Trump’s business history and trail of law suits and bankruptcies and defaulted loans and failed investments. Senator Graham was also a Never-Trumper back then (for about a month, and then again for about one day after the Jan 6th insurrection), along with the likes of Ted Cruz and pretty much every other Republican until they were suddenly faced with the dictum of bending the knee—or facing the sword. Few would voluntarily wield their sword against Trump and his new MAGA horde. You can count those who did on one hand - Adam Kinzinger and Liz Cheney certainly did. Mitt Romney was the one and only Republican Senator that voted to impeach Trump in both 2020 and 2021. Lisa Murkowski did vote to impeach Trump in the post-insurrection 2021 impeachment trial. There were a few Representatives like Ben Sasse, who poked their heads up and said something before they exited the political stage, but for the most part the Republican Party just rolled over and accepted the new leader and new norms. No more balanced budgets, no more “U.S., leader of the free world” with a network of strong alliances. It amazes me that so many of these pols, literally hundreds, have pirouetted 180 degrees from their life long political beliefs and stances and “deeply held” convictions just to be able to stay on the political stage with Donald Trump. I would like to think that if faced with that choice I would have found a new party—or a new career. But that’s all too upsetting to write about so I’m not going to do that.
I thought I should write about Trump getting cropped out of the official FIFA photo of the World Cup Spanish championship team after FIFA President Gianni Infantino (he who awarded Trump the first ever FIFA World Peace Prize) ushered Trump from the set - and out of the shot. You can’t really write an article about that buffoonery, can you, even if it is the President of the United States in the photo—or not.
The photobombing episode wasn’t the President’s first foray into FIFA / World Cup affairs this month. He embarrassed himself and the US team and the country writ large by inserting himself and the office of the President of the United States into a disputed “red card” decision made by an official, which would have resulted in a star US player, Folarin Balogun, being benched in what turned out to be the US team’s last match, against Belgium. Trump insisted that FIFA review the penalty call, which they of course then reversed, which resulted in the un-red-carded striker then being allowed back on the pitch where he proceeded to score exactly as many goals as he would have scored from the bench - nil. And what would the world have thought if the US had actually won that match after the President of the United States intervened to overturn that official’s call and lift Balogun’s suspension? But that story was also just too sordid and embarrassing and upsetting to write about so I decided not to do it.
(If I did write about it I would have to mention that Balogun, the “beneficiary” of Trump’s intervention, is a US “birthright citizen” whose parents were in the US vacationing at the time, visiting from Nigeria - you know, one of Trump’s “S-Hole” countries.) For the most part, the World Cup was a welcome distraction from the headlines coming out of Iran and Ukraine and Washington.
Another headline that was hard to ignore was an update on the Trump family crypto empire, and the staggering amount of money that the Trumps have shoveled into the family coffers at the expense of their followers.
This Trump-Crypto story is a real head-scratcher for me, particularly when viewed through the prism of my former occupation as an investment advisor. Is this actually happening? And no one is going to jail? Putting aside for the moment the fact that crypto currencies like Bitcoin have zero intrinsic value, or any unique utility when compared to other currency alternatives—other than the secrecy of ownership (popular with drug dealers and other ne’er-do- wells), but Trump-branded crypto-currencies add an entirely new dimension to the absurdity of this crypto marketplace. Astonishingly for me, his followers seem to still be blinded by the fantasy of the pitchman’s promised riches, all promoted from behind the seal of the President of the United States. There ought to be a law. Actually there is a law, and there is possibly going to be another one—the “Clarity Act”, currently bouncing around in Congress, which purports to prohibit government employees (or their spouses and employees) from issuing their own crypto currencies. Democrats object to the current draft of the legislation in part because it calls upon Trump’s Justice Department (read Acting AG Todd Blanche) to enforce the legislation, while the administration has redirected crypto currency oversight and enforcement priorities at the SEC and the U.S. Attorney’s office in the Southern District of NY. What could go wrong?
I object to anyone in government promoting crypto currencies because I have folders full of worthless currencies issued directly by actual banks prior to the establishment of our national Federal Reserve currency, backed by the full faith and credit of the United States following the banking crisis of 1933. I used the old bank notes to decorate my office walls. We have tried this before. It works until it doesn’t. I’ll pass, thank you.
Trump was once a crypto skeptic, but he came around to the new “opportunities” that cryptocurrencies offer, especially if your forte is branding and marketing. The extent of Trump’s fondness for the opportunities in Trump branded crypto coins ($TRUMP) was disclosed this month in his annual financial disclosure statement filing, which revealed that his family has pocketed hundreds of millions of dollars from issuing their own branded coins, along with their ownership interest in a crypto exchange (World Liberty Financial), which brought the family’s take to over $1 billion last year—all businesses that the President promoted on his own social media platform, Truth Social. Investors in the coins lost over $3.8 billion, as the price of the Trump coins plummeted from $75 to $1.76. Trump introduced his first branded crypto-coin exactly three days before his inauguration, to memorialize the event, no doubt, but primarily to capitalize on it. The story is much too upsetting to write about again, but I did write about it when Trump first introduced this scam, err, “investment opportunity” to his followers. At the time I also predicted that this particular grift will be Article One in the Articles of Impeachment that will surely follow any midterm change in Congressional leadership.
There were so many other headlines this week, any one of which would have dominated a news cycle for days in years past. Now they last as long as it takes to read the headline, because a bigger story, about an even bigger scam, is already making news. One such headline lasted for a few hours of the news cycle this week—the announcement that Trump - via his media platform, Truth Social—was going to charge premium pricing to select individuals and companies who would be given advance notice about his White House edicts, via advance Truth Social posts, before the uninformed rest of us were notified of said edicts. Not only is Trump not ashamed of his intentions to disclose insider information, he is announcing the fact that he is going to sell it on the President’s own social media platform! Of course he is. Obviously, this is just another story too upsetting to write about this week.
Canadian wildfires are once again flaring up and impacting our weather patterns in the lower 48. Climate change is a major driver, although science does distinguish between broad trends and individual fires, which may have other localized contributing factors. Trump and Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney are back at it, with Trump pointing to Canada’s land management practices as the culprit, citing forest fuel buildup (Trump wants the first floors swept regularly). Climate scientists overwhelmingly agree that climate change has loaded the dice to create the conditions increasing the likelihood of extreme fire weather in Canada.
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This week NCPR’s Catherine Wheeler examined how climate change is impacting the north woods right here in the Adirondacks:
How should the Adirondacks prepare for wildfires as the climate changes?
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It might be worth reminding folks at this point that one of the players in this Canadian climate change / wildfire story believes the science of climate change (that would be Mark Carney) and one of them thinks that climate change is a hoax (guess who). Trump’s response was as predictable as the sun rising, punishing Canada for their bad behavior by assessing a new 50% tariff on some specific Canadian exports. When the tariffs were imposed, the stated reason given for the tariff was a retaliation for unfair trading practices by the Canadians. But - on July 17, Trump had threatened these tariffs specifically over wildfire smoke, posting that the US had been “invaded” by dirty air from Canadian wildfires and that pollution costs “must of necessity be added” to Canada’s tariffs, blaming what he called Canada’s “willful negligence” on forest management.
But when the actual 50% tariff proclamations were signed three days later on July 20, administration officials told reporters that those tariffs were not related to the wildfires — the official justification was now trade discrimination over autos, dairy, and alcohol. My guess is that someone reminded Trump that the Supreme Court had already declared his prior arbitrary tariff policy unconstitutional and that he might want to find an actual “trade” reason for the new one. In the meantime, that new Canadian hockey stick that you have been eyeing will probably cost you about 50% more.
Headlines updating recent events in Iran are, more often than not, the most difficult to read, and to process. According to the White House, we have already won, or we will win imminently because “the Iranians are begging to negotiate”, or we are continuing to bomb Iran until their nuclear capabilities—the same capabilities that we have already obliterated, twice—are actually obliterated. One story this week disclosed an Israeli Intelligence report stating that Iran had moved centrifuges and part of its stockpile of enhanced uranium, One would have to assume this is the same stockpile that we had already totally obliterated, according to Trump.
Oil tanker traffic in the Strait of Hormuz was still at a standstill as Iranian drones continued targeting tankers attempting to navigate the channel. The price of oil eclipsed $100 per barrel on Thursday as Houthi rebels allied with Iran targeted two Saudi tankers transiting the Red Sea, an alternative route for shipping Middle East oil.
As the unresolved war in Iran continues to spread beyond Iran with little movement towards resolution, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth spoke to the press for the first time in months. At the briefing, Hegseth introduced a new initiative to enhance the capabilities of our fighting forces—testosterone screening. Seriously. This was the purpose of the briefing.
When asked about what conditions Hegseth was looking to address with the new policy, the Pentagon referred to Hegseth’s remarks in the video that mentioned keeping troops “strong, resilient and capable” and that the rigors of the modern battlefield demand “maximum psychological and mental readiness.”
You can’t make it up.
I suspect that at this point most of us will be happy to see a settlement with Iran that comes close to the JCPOA Agreement that had already been negotiated by the Obama administration in 2015. Trump tore up that agreement in May of 2018, because… Obama. At that point in time the Strait of Hormuz was open, Iran was subject to regular inspections of their nuclear facilities, and a gallon of gasoline was $2.90.
Fourteen weeks until the midterms.
More reading about our relationship with Iran:
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