Greetings and welcome into this milestone 50th performance of the Carnival of Fools! But is it a milestone, really? Must we be slaves to base ten around here? (As far as I’m concerned, the metric system was made solely for Euro-proles and chemists; I’ll exchange my feet for meters only when I exchange my freedom for communism.) And what means a mere 50 stagings of the Carnival of Fools in light of the world we live in, this eternally ongoing theater of the absurd? No, I’ll wait until the big 52 — a year of our lives gone by, wading through the political sump — for any deeper thoughts. Until then, it’s time for more grand entertainment.
Give Peace a Chance
As readers already know, major peace talks in the Ukrainian war are afoot, with Donald Trump first meeting with Vladimir Putin in Alaska at the end of last week, and then with Volodymyr Zelensky in Washington, D.C., on Monday. This time, Zelensky took the advice of a thousand pundits and at least one “sign guy” and chose to wear a suit to the Oval Office — no tie, a very Eastern European look — for his meet and greet with the president and the press. Things went far better than during his disastrous previous visit, with no major public glitches. (He also got a decent zinger in against the reporter who chastised him last time for his lack of formal attire: “You’re wearing the same suit. I changed — you did not.”)
As I said earlier, I am pessimistic about the outcome of these negotiations. I am not, however, entirely hopeless, and my only real observation about the peace talks is how ghastly it is to see so many in our domestic commentariat rooting for failure to the point of practically willing it to happen. Some of these people are simply incapable of reconciling themselves to the reality that, while Russia is not going to succeed in gobbling up Ukraine, neither will it be dislodged from its territorial acquisitions. Others feel their gorge rise at the thought of Donald Trump — “despicable, traitorous Trump,” in their minds — being the one to successfully broker a deal.
Whatever their reasons, they seem to have formed a united front in relentlessly predicting the worst, interpreting every diplomatic assay as a failure in advance and every potential peace settlement scenario as tantamount to conceding the whole of Eastern Europe to the Russian bear. (Where were these people when we needed them at Yalta?) I myself have little confidence in people like Steve Witkoff, and Donald Trump manifestly does not understand how Putin’s mind works — students of Russian history have better insight into the man in many ways. But I want this war to end, and for people to stop dying. If your vision of this war ends with the reconquest of the Crimea and the overthrow of Putin, or some other such scenario, it is a fantasy. Here in the real world, if both sides agree to a durable peace — again, I am skeptical — then this is something to root for. It’s not a happy ending, but an ending nonetheless.
Trump Blows His Stack on Mail-In Ballots
Another urgent missive has emerged from the depths of Truth Social, as Donald Trump awoke on Monday morning with a nagging itch to scratch about something Vladimir Putin said to him while both sides were spinning their wheels in Anchorage. Putin — perhaps the world’s leading expert on holding free and fair elections — knows how to get under the president’s skin like few others. (Before their meeting he awarded the Order of Lenin to the mentally ill son of a CIA analyst who enlisted in the Russian army and was immediately sent to die on the front lines against Ukraine.)
In Anchorage, he instead decided to play to Trump’s well-known vanities. He needled Trump about how the U.S. should not have mail-in voting because “everybody knows” the 2020 election was stolen. A day or so later, viral video circulated of a city councilman in the Detroit suburb of Hamtramck engaging in obvious ballot-stuffing in a race he won by 76 votes. The pump had been primed by both Putin and those who dictate viral online trends.
So on Monday morning, Donald Trump let loose with one of the longest rants he has ever written — and I am pretty sure this was penned by the man himself, for reasons that will become obvious the longer you read:
I’m going to lead a movement to get rid of MAIL-IN BALLOTS, and also, while we’re at it, Highly “Inaccurate,” Very Expensive and Seriously Controversial VOTING MACHINES, which cost ten Times more than accurate and sophisticated Watermark Paper, which is faster, and leaves NO DOUBT, at the end of the evening, as to who WON, and who LOST, the Election. We are now the only Country in the World that uses Mail-In Voting. All others gave it up because of the MASSIVE VOTER FRAUD ENCOUNTERED. WE WILL BEGIN THIS EFFORT, WHICH WILL BE STRONGLY OPPOSED BY THE DEMOCRATS BECAUSE THEY CHEAT AT LEVELS NEVER SEEN BEFORE, by signing an EXECUTIVE ORDER to help bring HONESTY to the 2026 Midterm Elections. Remember, the States are merely an “agent” for the Federal Government in counting and tabulating the votes. They must do what the Federal Government, as represented by the President of the United States, tells them, FOR THE GOOD OF OUR COUNTRY, to do. With their HORRIBLE Radical Left policies, like Open Borders, Men Playing in Women’s Sports, Transgender and “WOKE” for everyone, and so much more, Democrats are virtually Unelectable without using this completely disproven Mail-in SCAM. ELECTIONS CAN NEVER BE HONEST WITH MAIL IN BALLOTS/VOTING, and everybody, IN PARTICULAR THE DEMOCRATS, KNOWS THIS. I, AND THE REPUBLICAN PARTY, WILL FIGHT LIKE HELL TO BRING HONESTY AND INTEGRITY BACK TO OUR ELECTIONS. THE MAIL-IN BALLOT HOAX, USING VOTING MACHINES THAT ARE A COMPLETE AND TOTAL DISASTER, MUST END, NOW!!! REMEMBER, WITHOUT FAIR AND HONEST ELECTIONS, AND STRONG AND POWERFUL BORDERS, YOU DON’T EVEN HAVE A SEMBLANCE OF A COUNTRY. THANK YOU FOR YOUR ATTENTION TO THIS MATTER!!! DONALD J. TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA.
If you got through all of that before skipping down to this paragraph, then congratulations — you either have the stamina of a triathlete or the mad hunger for filth of Dracula’s Renfield. I may have both, because I just had to type it out by hand myself — Trump has put his “truths” behind a paywall, so people screencap his announcements now — and I feel utterly exhausted by all of the shouting. Trump’s punctuation has begun to resemble that of a cut-and-paste ransom note, and his by now tiresome “Thank you for your attention to this matter” sign-off has been pompously overextended to the social media equivalent of a signature block.
But lest you think Trump was kidding, he restated his position — a bit less frothily, but no less unconstitutionally — at Monday morning’s Oval Office meeting with Zelensky, taking an “off-topic” (his words) question about it from reporters. He announced that action would indeed be forthcoming, promising “an executive order that’s being written by the best lawyers right now to end mail-in ballots.”
Fools are now arguing about whether mail-in ballots are a good thing or a bad thing. (My position: They are a thing, you cannot wish them away, so deal with them properly.) But since I am not a fool, and can read Article I Section 4 of the U.S. Constitution as well as you can, I know that none of these changes can be commanded via executive order. The Constitution spells it out quite clearly: “The Times, Places and Manner of holding Elections for Senators and Representatives, shall be prescribed in each State by the Legislature thereof; but the Congress may at any time by Law make or alter such Regulations, except as to the place of chusing Senators.” Under the Constitution, Congress may play a role in setting federal election laws, but the states usually take the lead. The executive branch plays no role in this whatsoever.
What the executive branch can do — arguably illegitimately — is lean on states in extracurricular ways, pressuring them to apply a “national” standard. (They can also use various government agencies to litigate against uncooperative states, and one suspects this is coming next.) But there is no lawyer in the world clever enough to craft an executive order that circumvents such a stark reality of the U.S. Constitution, and Trump is powerless here to do anything against states inclined to resist except cast the outcome of their elections into doubt — which is an outcome he is no doubt perfectly happy to settle for.
Sherrod Brown Gives It One Last Shot
Big news out of Ohio, as the Cleveland Browns will now have company in associating their name with repeat losses: Former Ohio Senator Sherrod Brown is once again running for U.S. Senate, this time for the state’s other seat, the one vacated by JD Vance when he assumed the vice presidency. Can you feel the Democratic excitement?
I can’t. My reaction to the news is strictly business: “Well, it’s the best shot they have.” Brown lost his old seat in 2024 to businessman Bernie Moreno, a profoundly flawed candidate, by 3.5 percentage points. Back then he had a familiar aura of incumbency to bolster him in the race, but he nevertheless got swamped by the state’s pronounced Republican lean. Though the credential of incumbency seems to be of declining value in recent times, Brown is going to give the Democrats one last chance to capitalize on his name familiarity while even one Ohio Democrat still retains statewide credibility. (Jerry Springer, alas, passed in 2023.)
It won’t be enough. Were the circumstances perfect — imagine Brown’s 2024 campaign being miraculously shifted forward two years to 2026 — then I could see the Democrats making a real play at clawing back territory from what has now become a red state. Moreno was carried along in large part by Trump’s presidential wave. (Moreno won by 3.5; Trump simultaneously won by 11 percent.)
But appointed Senator Jon Husted (who stepped into Vance’s shoes) is a lifelong Ohio politician ascending the Table of Ranks — speaker of the state house, state senator, secretary of state, lieutenant governor, now U.S. senator — and is not going to be easily ousted. As a textbook “Generic Republican,” with decent statewide recognition and without any particular controversies, he is not going to face the same personal obstacles that Moreno did, and he is running in what can only be described in 2025 as a “Generic Republican” state. Husted might win his race by only somewhere around the same margin as Moreno did in 2024 (I’d take the over myself), but the point is that the timing is now hopelessly out of joint for Democrats in Ohio, as the state slips away from them for the foreseeable future.
Everybody looks foolish prognosticating about November 2026 from the position of August 2025, but I suspect it will not be a good year nationally for Republicans. I also suspect those headwinds against the GOP will not be enough to fell them in states like Ohio, whose demographics have perceptibly altered as the Republicans have become the party of working-class aspiration. Which is why it will surprise me if Sherrod Brown returns to elected office ever again.
Until next week.