Dana Milbank often writes a comprehensive column about the week’s outrages from Donald Trump. Sunday was no exception, as he catalogued the cringing embarrassments of the lies, misinformation and incompetence of the administration.

Referenced is a column by Rahm Emanuel, former Obama chief of staff, Mayor of Chicago, and Ambassador to Japan: “Republicans have handed Democrats a political gift, if they can take advantage of it. The ‘one big beautiful bill’ should be understood by the public in one phrase: tax cuts for the wealthy, health-care cuts for the many.” IMHO, Emmanuel does a better job of being an articulate and focused national leader than almost all of his Democratic colleagues. T

The Washington Post

Opinion

Dana Milbank

This is just embarrassing

Everywhere I looked this week, I cringed for my country.

May 23, 2025

“Turn the lights down and just put this on,” President Donald Trump commanded his aides. It was time for another Oval Office ambush of a foreign leader, this time South African President Cyril Ramaphosa.

He then narrated a video, which, at one point, showed white crosses lining a roadside, which Trump portrayed as a mass grave for White South African farmers, murdered in what Trump has errantly described as a “genocide.”

“Now, this is very bad. These are the — these are burial sites right here. Burial sites,” Trump said. “Each one of those white things you see is a cross, and there’s approximately a thousand of them. They are all White farmers. … And it’s a terrible sight. I’ve never seen anything like it. Both sides of the road, you have crosses. Those people were all killed.”

Ramaphosa looked baffled. “I’d like to know where that is,” he said, “because this I’ve never seen.”

And there’s a good reason for that: It doesn’t exist.

The video was not of graves at all but of a symbolic protest five years ago. It has been promoted on X recently, including by one overtly racist account in South Africa to which Trump sidekick Elon Musk subscribed. “This is what Elon wanted,” Trump explained.

Trump seemed genuinely to believe that the phony graves were evidence of an actual atrocity — much like when he presented as genuine an obviously Photoshopped image purporting to show the characters “MS-13” tattooed on the knuckles of the wrongly deported Kilmar Abrego García.

But Trump’s confusion went beyond the fake graves: He also confronted his visitor with video of two Black men he portrayed as South African government “officials” saying vile things such as “Kill the Boer.” As South Africa’s (White) agriculture minister patiently explained to Trump, those two men are opponents of the government. Apparently Trump didn’t know that, either.

If all this weren’t awkward enough, Trump, prompted by a reporter, explained why the United States, the wealthiest country in the world, needed to rely on charity from Qatar in the form of that donated 747 (which, it turns out, Trump had solicited): Qatar’s royals needed to “help us out because we need an Air Force One.”

“I’m sorry I don’t have a plane to give you,” Ramaphosa told him.

“I wish you did,” Trump replied. “I’d take it.”

This is just embarrassing — maybe not for our president, who seems incapable of such a sentiment, but for the rest of us. Everywhere I looked this week, I cringed for my country.

Asked to comment on former president Joe Biden’s cancer diagnosis this week, Trump twice remarked that the cancer must have been growing a long time “to get to Stage 9” (there is, of course, no such thing) while also boasting about himself: “I did a very complete physical, including cognitive test. I’m proud to announce I aced it.”

On Capitol Hill, even Republicans are growing embarrassed that a credulous Trump is being outmaneuvered by Russia’s Vladimir Putin over Ukraine. “That guy is stringing President Trump along. We don’t appreciate it,” Sen. Joni Ernst (Iowa) told Semafor. Sen. Todd Young (Indiana) said that “it’s pretty clear to me that Putin has been jerking us around for months.” And Sen. Mike Rounds (South Dakota) remarked that “nobody likes to see somebody try to play the president.”

Vietnam is in talks with the Trump Organization to build a new Trump Tower in Ho Chi Minh City, Reuters reported — a transparent attempt to buy Trump’s favor while it tries to persuade him to drop tariffs he imposed against the country. Vietnam just approved a $1.5 billion golf project by the Trump Organization, and has offered favorable terms to Musk’s Starlink internet service. Closer to home, Trump held a black-tie dinner Thursday night to celebrate the top investors in his meme coin, who have collectively expanded his personal wealth by hundreds of millions of dollars.

Asked this week for his thoughts on the first American pope, Trump turned it into a celebration of himself. The pope’s brother “is a major MAGA fan,” Trump said. “He’s got MAGA and he’s got Trump, and I look forward to getting him to the White House.”

In a “briefing” this week at the White House for young children, press secretary Karoline Leavitt offered a moment of candor when one of the tots asked, “Which is Donald Trump’s favorite president, besides himself?”

“A good question,” Leavitt said, “because it would be, uh, probably, himself.”

Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem, presiding over the administration’s deportation of migrants without due process, shrouded herself in glory this week when Sen. Maggie Hassan (D-New Hampshire) quizzed her: “What is habeas corpus?”

“Well,” Noem replied, “habeas corpus is a constitutional right that the president has to be able to remove people from this country.”

Buzz.

Sen. Andy Kim (D-New Jersey) continued the quiz, asking whether Noem knew which article of the Constitution mentioned habeas corpus.

“No, I do not, sir.”

In New Jersey, a federal judge scolded prosecutors for their “embarrassing” decision to drop charges against Newark Mayor Ras Baraka just a few days after charging him with trespassing at an immigration detention facility. The judge said that after this “worrisome misstep,” the U.S. attorney’s office, run by former Trump lawyer and campaign adviser Alina Habba, “must operate with a higher standard.” But Habba’s office has now filed assault charges against a sitting member of Congress, Rep. LaMonica McIver (D-New Jersey), in the same incident and is threatening charges against two other lawmakers. Trump cheered this banana republic roundup of political opponents, following a similar move against a Wisconsin judge, saying that “the days of woke are over.”

Rep. Nancy Mace (R-South Carolina) introduced a resolution to expel McIver from the House, saying McIver “must be held accountable to the highest standards of conduct in order to safeguard the public’s faith in this institution.” This came a day after Mace upheld those standards in a committee meeting by displaying a nude photo of herself taken by her “predator and rapist” former fiancé. “This naked silhouette is my naked body,” she explained to the panel.

But perhaps the biggest embarrassment was the ugly way in which the House passed Trump’s “big, beautiful bill” full of tax breaks and cuts in help for the poor: during an all-night session on the House floor, following an all-night session the night before in the House Rules Committee.

The frantic rush allowed the Republican majority to pass the gargantuan bill, packed with last-minute provisions to buy the votes of holdouts, before there could be a final assessment of how much the bill would increase the federal debt (somewhere around $4 trillion), how many people would lose their health insurance (10 to 15 million) and at least some of their food assistance (also north of 10 million).

In the absence of such relevant information, the administration filled the vacuum with fantastical ideas. Trump promised that working-class people “won’t lose health insurance.” Leavitt claimed the bill “does not add to the deficit.” Trump further said the bill, which cuts some $300 billion from food stamps, “is going to give everybody much more food.”

The markets weren’t fooled. Moody’s Ratings downgraded U.S. debt, specifically warning about continued high deficits “from current fiscal proposals under consideration.” Bond yields spiked on Wednesday, while stocks and the dollar fell, as a “sell America” sentiment took hold among investors. But lawmakers went ahead anyway in the wee hours, forcing the bill through the House just hours after the final package was introduced, before quitting town for an 11-day recess.

This is no way to run the greatest country on Earth. In fact, it’s embarrassing.

To be sure, “embarrassing” isn’t the only adjective that comes to mind. There’s also “lawless.”

A federal judge this week said the Trump administration had “obviously” and “unquestionably” violated his order requiring detained migrants be given a reasonable chance to challenge their removal. Instead, seven migrants from Mexico, Cuba, Myanmar, Laos and Vietnam were deported to South Sudan, which is on the verge of civil war, on just hours’ notice. The administration continues not to comply with court orders requiring it to arrange the return of other migrants who were improperly deported. Though the Supreme Court made it easier for the administration to revoke the legal status of 350,000 Venezuelan migrants, Trump’s lawyers continue to pile up court losses, most recently in their attempts to shut the Education Department and take over the U.S. Institute of Peace; at least 171 rulings have temporarily blocked the administration’s actions, in the latest New York Times tally.

The Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division abandoned investigations into several police departments over misconduct. Instead, the DOJ is investigating Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson because he touted how many Black people he hired, the Chicago Tribune reports. Justice also agreed to send nearly $5 million in taxpayer dollars to the family of Ashli Babbitt, killed during the Capitol riot as she attempted to break into the House chamber where lawmakers were sheltering.

The Constitution, of course, requires that the president “take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed.” But Trump continues his faithless reign: halting the enforcement of federal rules and regulations he doesn’t like, cutting funds to states that voted Democratic while sending additional funds to Republican states, and combing the federal government for new opportunities for vengeance, particularly against Harvard University.

Trump, in an early-morning post this week, called for a “major investigation” into whether Kamala Harris’s campaign paid Bruce Springsteen, Beyoncé, Oprah Winfrey and Bono. This is on top of legal action threatened or taken lately against other political opponents, including former New York governor Andrew Cuomo, New York Attorney General Letitia James, former FBI director James Comey and the New Jersey officials. When NBC News’s Peter Alexander asked Trump about his Air Force One gift from Qatar Wednesday, Trump erupted and said of the head of NBC News parent company Comcast: “Brian Roberts and the people that run that place, they ought to be investigated.”

After the Biden family disclosed his advanced prostate cancer diagnosis, a senior counselor in the DOJ, Leo Terrell, suggested that Jill Biden should be prosecuted. Responding to an X post claiming the former first lady “knew about President Biden’s health problems” and “still wanted him to run for President,” Terrell wrote: “Elder abuse! Criminal charges??”

Donald Trump Jr. was thinking along the same lines. “What I want to know is how did Dr. Jill Biden miss stage five [sic] metastatic cancer or is this yet another coverup???” he posted, adding that, “without question,” the announcement of the diagnosis was an effort to distract attention from “the fact Biden was running the country as a vegetable.”

His father joined in, saying that “there are things going on that the public wasn’t informed of” — and calling for yet another investigation.

Come to think of it, “paranoid” is another relevant adjective.

At one White House briefing this week, Leavitt gave the first question to a “correspondent” from the outlet ZeroHedge, which promotes far-right conspiracy theories. The questioner asked about one such fantasy known as the “Clinton body count,” which holds that Bill and Hillary Clinton have murdered many people. He then went on to propose that Jeffrey Epstein’s child sex trafficking was done “on behalf of intelligence agencies, and even potentially as part of a blackmail ring with potential ties to the Israeli government.”

Leavitt offered no refutation.

Add “cruel” to the adjectival assortment.

In the Oval Office this week, when asked about the “devastating impact” in Africa caused by the administration’s shutdown of the U.S. Agency for International Development, Trump replied: “Well, it’s devastating.” He went on to complain: “Europe doesn’t help. Europe hasn’t given anything.” (European Union nations collectively gave more in foreign aid than the U.S., even before Trump shut USAID.)

He seemed equally unmoved about the effects of his “big, beautiful bill,” which, the Congressional Budget Office found, would cut the income of the poorest 10 percent of Americans while raising the income of the wealthiest 10 percent — and that was before last-minute changes that accelerated cuts to Medicaid and added new tax breaks favoring wealthy homeowners.

The mammoth bill followed a familiar trajectory toward House passage. Members of the far-right House Freedom Caucus complained that it added trillions to the federal debt. Moderates demanded larger tax breaks and objected to the huge cuts to Medicaid. They called each other names. The whole thing appeared to be collapsing.

To win them over, Trump went to Capitol Hill — and talked about himself, proclaiming, among other things, that he is “a man of God” and that “there’s nobody like me as a fiscal hawk.” Probably none of this persuaded Republican holdouts. But something else did: The White House issued a statement saying any defection would be the “ultimate betrayal,” and Trump delivered similar threats in person. Republicans cowered. It was approved by a single vote, with two Republicans in opposition, one voting present, one absent and one falling asleep in a back room.

Democrats tried to make the majority squirm, forcing votes during a 19-hour Rules Committee meeting on several of the 537 amendments that had been filed. Republicans blocked one amendment limiting the tax cuts to people who earn under $400,000 a year. They blocked another restricting the tax cuts to those who make under $10 million a year. Because the legislation hiked taxes on some, Republicans had to waive their own rule, adopted four months ago, requiring a supermajority for such increases.

The votes of some Republican holdouts had to be bought with special provisions. At the last minute, a $1.4 billion provision deregulating firearm silencers and repealing their sales tax found its way into the bill, at the request of Rep. Andrew Clyde (R-Georgia), a gun dealer.

Another 11th-hour change: The legislation requires that baby trust accounts created by the bill, in which every newborn American child would get $1,000, be officially named “Trump Accounts.”

Unofficially, they should be named “cringe accounts.”

By Dana Milbank

Dana Milbank is an opinion columnist for The Washington Post. He covers the White House, Congress and campaigns -- along with occasional essays about his misadventures in nature. He is a New York Times bestselling author and has written five books on politics, most recently "Fools on the Hill." 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2025/05/23/dana-milbank-trump-south-africa-usaid/