The New Yorker:

The world’s richest man and its most powerful leader channel their inner middle schooler in a breakup for the ages.

By Susan B. Glasser

Shamelessness, defined as brazen disregard for that which might deter anyone else, has always been one of Donald Trump’s superpowers. It’s part of the alchemy by which he can ignore his own defeats, reverses, missteps, and absurd overpromises, and pretend that they either never happened or were actually proof of great success. On Wednesday, the President faced a barrage of ominous developments that might have fazed another leader—a worrisome jobs report, losses in federal court related to four of his signature policies, an increasingly vituperative public breakup with Elon Musk. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office determined that Trump’s marquee legislative effort, the “One, Big, Beautiful Bill,” would add an estimated $2.4 trillion to the U.S. budget deficit over the next decade—a conclusion that only fuelled Musk’s recent attacks on it. Musk, who first broke with Trump last week over the measure, has, in recent days, urged members of Congress to “KILL the BILL,” calling it a “disgusting abomination.” So what did Trump do in response? Escalate, of course. On Wednesday evening, he announced three of his most controversial executive orders yet—barring new international Harvard students from entering the country, ordering an investigation into a crazy conspiracy theory that Joe Biden’s aides usurped the President’s powers to issue decrees by autopen, and banning citizens from twelve countries, mostly in Africa and the Middle East, from travelling to the U.S. The day, as with so many already in Trump’s second term, was a news anchor’s nightmare.

Amid so many headlines, you might have missed that Trump also spent an hour and fifteen minutes on Wednesday on the phone with Russia’s President, Vladimir Putin, in a call that went so poorly that Trump’s subsequent account of it included two startling disclosures: first, “immediate peace” between Russia and Ukraine was not going to happen, and, second, Putin stated “very strongly” that Russia will retaliate in response to Kyiv’s daring surprise attack earlier this week on its strategic bomber fleet. Trump’s post about the call appeared on his Truth Social network at 1:56 p.m. on June 4th, and perhaps history will record that as the moment when one of Trump’s most flagrantly impossible campaign promises finally flamed out—his pledge, oft repeated, to instantly end the war in Ukraine.

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