Letters from an American - February 12, 2025

Episode Date: February 13, 2025

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Music February 12th, 2025. Yesterday afternoon, in a bizarre performance, President Donald Trump hosted reporters in the Oval Office, the formal working space of the President of the United States. As Trump sat quietly behind the resolute desk, a gift from Queen Victoria to the United States. As Trump sat quietly behind the resolute desk, a gift from Queen Victoria to the United States as a symbol of international friendship,

billionaire Elon Musk held center stage. Musk talked to the reporters, wearing a jacket over a t-shirt and a Make America Great Again ball cap, a likely violation of the Hatch Act, which Trump's people routinely ignore, while his young son X wandered around the room at one point exchanging a look with a downcast Trump that observers immediately captioned, you're sitting in my daddy's chair. The event was Trump signing another

executive order, this one essentially putting Musk's Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGIE, in charge of the U.S. government. The executive order, titled Implementing the President's Department of Government Efficiency Workforce Optimization Initiative, provides for an operative from DOGIE to be assigned to every agency, where that operative will be in charge of all hiring and firing. It also puts downsizing in Doggie's hands and establishes that only one new employee can be hired to replace four who leave. Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo noted that these operatives report to Musk, who is clearly operating here as an independent actor whose actions the president blesses after he's found

out what's happened. This is a parallel overlaying of authority over the entire structure of the U.S. government. Trump said that Musk had found billions and billions of dollars in waste, fraud, and abuse, but in fact they have produced no evidence of such waste. Today, Representative Jared Moskowitz, a Democrat of Florida, said Congress has had no information from Musk or Doggie and when asked to produce evidence of fraud, White House press secretary Caroline Leavitt simply listed things that seem to be against the president's policies and his America first agenda. As both the New York Times and the Washington Post reported today,

the big winner from all the cuts to the government has been Musk himself who has eliminated the agencies that were scrutinizing his businesses. On the floor of Congress today, Moskowitz pointed out that Musk's claims to have uncovered waste, fraud, and abuse present a problem for Congress. Led by House Speaker Mike Johnson, a Republican of Louisiana, the Republicans have not yet managed to fund the government for 2025, but rather than trying to pass the 12 appropriations bills necessary before the March 14th deadline for a government shutdown, Johnson is hoping to pass a continuing resolution that will extend funding as a comprehensive package. out that if in fact the government is full of waste, fraud, and abuse, Congress should debate each appropriations bill in detail rather than use a continuing resolution that would perpetuate what the Republicans say is billions of dollars of waste, fraud, and

abuse. Long gone is any pretense that the administration will work to lower prices for ordinary Americans. The Consumer Price Index report out today from the Bureau of Labor Statistics shows that inflation surged in January gaining half a point as the cost of gas, rents, and groceries went up. Egg prices rose 15.2 percent. On Monday Trump levied a 25 percent tariff on steel and aluminum, raising concerns that prices for cars and trucks, as well as appliances and rebar for construction, will also rise. Today, Mitch McConnell, a Republican of Kentucky, published an op-ed in the Louisville Courier Journal warning that Kentuckians can't afford the high cost of

Trump's tariffs which could cost the average Kentucky resident $1,200 a year. Preserving the long-term prosperity of American industry and workers requires working with our allies, not against them, McConnell wrote, and he called for strengthening our friendships abroad. Trump responded to today's report by McConnell wrote, and he called for strengthening our friendships abroad.

Trump responded to today's report by posting on social media, Biden inflation up. The Republicans submitted their budget resolution for funding the government today. It called for cuts of $2 trillion to mandatory spending, a category that includes Social Security and Medicare. Two Republican lawmakers told Meredith Lee Hill of Politico that Republicans expect to cut food aid for more than 40 million low-income Americans. Hill's colleague, Grace Yarrow, reports the House Agriculture Committee is eyeing about $150 billion in cuts to supplemental nutrition programs. The proposal also calls for $4.5 trillion in tax cuts for the wealthy and

corporations and an increase of $4 trillion in the debt ceiling. Today saw a landmark shift in the foreign policy of the United States. Since World War II, the US has stood behind the international organizations that worked to stabilize the globe by creating spaces for countries to work out their differences without resorting to war. Among the principles of those organizations was that bigger countries couldn't simply take over

other smaller countries, and one of the ways countries enforced that principle was through the North Atlantic Treaty Organization or NATO, the collective security agreement in which signatories agreed that an attack on one would be an attack on all. In 2016, Trump's people weakened the U.S. stance against Russia's incursions on Ukraine by softening the language of that year's Republican platform. And Russia worked to help Trump get elected, apparently because Putin believed Trump would look the other way as Russia took not only Ukraine's Crimea, but also significant territory in eastern Ukraine.

Then, in his first term in office, Trump often took Putin's side and threatened to take the US out of NATO. President Joe Biden and Secretary of State Antony Blinken worked hard to strengthen NATO and pull together a strong coalition to back Ukraine when Russia launched a full-scale invasion in 2022. But when he took office just three weeks ago, Trump alarmed observers by suddenly talking about

taking over other countries like Panama and Canada and Denmark's territory of Greenland. Such moves would directly undermine the post-World War II international organizations the US has always championed. They would destroy NATO and the North American Aerospace Defense Command or NORAD, a joint US-Canadian organization that protects North America from aerospace threats and would also rip apart the

Five Eyes intelligence alliance that has joined Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and the United States since World War II. Today it appears that Trump is making good on this threat to turn away from the long-standing policy of the US and toward the foreign policy advocated by Russian President Vladimir Putin. Trump has been talking about demanding $500 billion worth of Ukraine's mineral resources in exchange for continued U.S. support. But today, at the Ukraine Defense Contact Group, a group put together under Biden to coordinate assistance to Ukraine, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth suggested a new U.S.

position. Hegseth echoed Putin's demands, saying that returning to Ukraine's pre-2014 borders is an unrealistic objective and that the U.S. will not support NATO membership for Ukraine, thus giving up two key issues without apparently getting anything in return. He said that Europe must take over assistance for Ukraine as the US focuses on its own borders. He wanted, he said, to directly and unambiguously express that stark strategic realities prevent the United States of America from being primarily focused on the security of Europe. Trump's social media

account, it did not sound like his own words, posted today that he just had a lengthy and highly productive phone call with President Vladimir Putin of Russia. We agreed to work together very closely, including visiting each other's nations, thus offering a White House visit to Putin, who has been isolated from other nations since his attacks on Ukraine. And the Post said they had agreed to start negotiations over Ukraine, although it also specified they had not included Ukraine's president Volodymyr Zelensky in their talk. The Post said that Trump feels strongly the talks will be successful.

The Russian government's readout of the call added that bilateral economic relations between Russia and the United States were also brought up during the conversation, language that almost certainly means Putin wants Trump to lift the economic sanctions imposed after Russia invaded Ukraine that have wreaked havoc on the Russian economy. The Trump administration also swapped US teacher Mark Fogel for Alexander Vinik, a kingpin of Russian cybercrime who operated one of the world's largest cryptocurrency exchanges, facilitating drug trafficking, ransomware, and money laundering. When announcing Fogel's release, Trump was asked if Russia had been given anything in exchange. He answered, not much, no. They were very nice. We were treated very nicely by Russia, actually.

Russia refused to include Fogel, who was wrongfully detained in 2021, in the large prisoner swap of June 2024. Today, the Senate approved Tulsi Gabbard, who has often made comments sympathetic to Russia and who has defended former Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad, who fled to Russia after the Syrian people ousted him, as the U.S. Director of National Intelligence. All Democrats voted against Gabbard and all Republicans voted in favor of her, with the important exception of Senator Mitch McConnell, who said, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence wields significant authority over how the intelligence community allocates its

resources, conducts its collection and analysis, and manages the classification and declassification of our nation's most sensitive secrets. In my assessment, Tulsi Gabbard failed to demonstrate that she is prepared to assume this tremendous national trust. Tonight, France, Germany, Poland, Italy, Spain, and the United Kingdom released a joint statement vowing to protect Ukraine's sovereignty and making it clear that Ukraine and Europe must be part of any negotiations. Letters from an American was produced at Soundscape Productions, Dedham, Massachusetts.

Recorded with music composed by Michael Moss.