Goulash With Paprika 😱 ✡️🌻😱 💣🚀

Cage Matches:  Trump attending an Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) cage match with Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Ivanka, Tiffany, and Don Jr while his designated chump, Vice President Vance, was in Pakistan trying but failing to clean up his Iran mess may be this millennium’s most Nero fiddling while Rome burns moment. Then again, given that the orange one is just a little over one year into this term, a few more of those moments likely lay ahead. Vance and his negotiating compatriots, Trump real estate buddy Witkoff and son in law Kushner, left Pakistan without a deal, depressing but not all that surprising because as more skilled negotiators from prior administrations have learned the Iranians aren’t easy to negotiate with. The Trump team demands, including that Iran give up its nukes and uranium, call off it’s Hezbollah and Houthi surrogates, open up the Strait of Hormuz, were rejected by Iran which countered with a few of its own, including that it get to control the Strait, receive war reparations, and for a ceasefire across the region including in Lebanon where their Hezbollah surrogates are a significant part of the problem. After learning of Vance’s “failure” Trump announced via Truth Social that “Effective immediately, the United States Navy, the Finest in the World, will begin the process of BLOCKADING any and all Ships trying to enter, or leave, the Strait of Hormuz.”  Forget about his earlier promise that the Strait would open on its own, instead think higher prices at the pump but Trump says that’s only for a while so not a bigly deal.

The Blue Danube:  All and all, it’s fair to say that Vance had a hard week since the other purpose of his trip was to rally support for Hungary’s now ex-Prime Minister Viktor Orbán who was trounced in his election by challenger Peter Magyar, whose party won a National Assembly (parliamentary) super majority. Magyar isn’t a liberal snowflake; he used to be a member of Orbán’s Fidesz party but broke away to join the fledgling Tisza party to protest Orbán’s excesses, including his corruption, his trashing of Hungary’s economy, and the pardoning of a former official convicted of covering up the abuse of underaged boys at a children’s home.  Trump, who together with Putin, Tucker Carlson and Steve Bannon, is among Orbán’s staunchest supporters can’t be happy about the Hungarian election results or that Orbán so quickly conceded to Magyar.  As of early this morning Trump hasn’t yet weighed in on the election instead choosing to deflect his rage towards Pope Leo via a long, rambling Truth Social post, in which he attacked the Catholic leader for being “weak on crime,” for calling for peaceful resolutions instead of war, and for saying that immigrants should be treated kindly.  For whacko measure Trump also ranted about how he likes the Pope’s MAGA brother Louis much more than he likes the Pope while also throwing in a few sharp words about how priests and ministers were arrested for violating COVID rules, something that he says that Pope Leo should fear far more than the mistreatment of those murderous, violent immigrants that Venezuela had been sending to the US before the US invasion.  If you are trying to make any of Trump’s utterances make sense, give it up.  They are the rantings of a madman, albeit one with his finger on the nuke button.  The Pope responded by saying he will keep saying whatever he wants to say. Might be worth checking to see if Kalshi or Polymarket are making markets on how long it will take caught in the middle of this maelstrom VP Vance to renounce his 2019 conversion to Catholicism?   

Californication:  Republicans haven’t cornered the market on bad behavior. Over the weekend the bottom fell out for California Congressman Eric Swalwell who for a while looked like he might be the next Governor of California.  Apparently, the seven term Congressman, one-time presidential contender has a number of gnarly skeletons in his closet and by skeletons think sexually abused and/or harassed female staffers, including at least one who he allegedly raped when she was inebriated. The married Swalwell has admitted to misconduct but denies the rape.  Pressured by politicians on both sides of aisle, he has suspended his run for Governor.   What that means for California’s June 2 jungle primary, where only the top two finishers move on to the November election is anyone’s guess but it’s fair to assume that a reshuffling of the primary leaderboard is about to happen. No doubt the pollsters been doing their thing all weekend and will provide some new rankings soon.  Expect lots of new endorsements shortly.  Trump’s Republican supporters have been trying to trash Swalwell who has long been a vocal Trump critic for some time so it’s odd that these skeletons didn’t come out sooner, then again it’s kind of hard for Trump to take the lead in going after others for sex crimes and lots of members of Congress, many who are probably awfully nervous right now, have full closets. In any case, it looks like Swalwell’s problems are having a cascading effect because calls for him to leave the House ASAP are being paired with calls for Tony Gonzales, the married Texas Republican whose girlfriend/staff member killed herself when their affair went belly up, to also be kicked to the curb.

More 💩:  The economy is taking it on the chin and everywhere else. The March Consumer Price Index (CPI) report released on Friday showed a 3.3% annual inflation rate, the highest since April 2024, driven primarily by a 10.9% surge in energy costs due to the conflict in Iran.  That rate doesn’t reflect the upward pressure on oil prices from Trump’s Sunday blockade of the Strait of Hormuz. The University of Michigan’s latest consumer survey also released on Friday showed that consumer sentiment declined 11% early this month to a reading of 47.6, lower than anything seen in the post-World War II era, including during the Great Recession, the pandemic downturn and the inflation that took place afterward.  On the Melania front, it turns out that her unexpected presser was likely a prebuttal to the El Pais publication of an interview of Amanda Ungaro, the long-time girlfriend of her former model agent, Paolo Zampolli.  Ungaro who has since married a green card holder was deported back to Brazil this year while she was in the process of getting US residency papers. Zampolli who remains tight with Trump and Melania, is Trump’s Special Representative for Global Partnerships, one of those jobs you give people to keep them quiet. Also, because he apparently has nothing more important to do, Trump has disclosed detailed plans for his planned garish and huge Potomac River Triumphal Arch while also announcing plans to paint the granite exterior of the historic Eisenhower Executive Office Building next to the White House with a white "magic paint with silicate" that could cause permanent, irreversible damage to the building.  Also, the steel being used for his East Wing ball room project was donated by a Luxembourg based company that not so coincidentally benefited from a cut in steel tariffs that occurred almost simultaneously.