MAGA regroups, but much louder thunderclaps are heard*

The undead of MAGA. Reported by Media Matters, 14 July.

By day's end, Biden: 158; Epstein: 8.

Yesterday, Kash Patel's deputy demonizer, Dan Bongino, was back at the former FBI and in a "better headspace," according to CNN. (His future, though, "still in doubt" — as are all futures in fascist infernos.) Friday, when Dan seemed to be a goner, Charlie Kirk fulminated about storm clouds obscuring full disclosure of Epsteinian evils. Wait for it ...

Saturday, Kirk received an urgent phone call from Wolfschanze, after which came this: Behold, he told his five million online followers, mine eyes have seen the surfacing of Pam Bondi-exonerating evidence in email form. So "I’m done talking about Epstein for the time being."

Today's themes from Charlie: "Mass migration from the third world must be stopped. We are committing suicide," and "Massive. Investment is pouring back into America."

But there was more. And the more is precisely what I've expected since the day Trump rather unsuccessfully tried to blow off all the heat raining down. "An Epstein Special Counsel?" is Kirk's "pinned" post. The question mark, extraneous. Trump-Bondi's appointment of a ventriloquist sleuth regarding all things Jeffrey was downright Calvinist predestination — the unstaunchable will behind selected salvation.

It so happens I'm not a "Bannon's War Room" watcher, but I should have been last week. Steve was the first to suggest — the first to do so, I gather — the grime-removal-by-special-counsel route. That was Thursday. Though brilliantly ahead of the tortured curve, still a perplexing 48 hours after Trump, well, kinda screwed up. Such an unfamiliarity to Bannon's MAGA psyche must have initially befogged it.

Why stop with a solitary "investigation"? That question occurred — or so it occurs to me — to Bongino's keeper, Kash, sometime after Steve's belated this-is-some-serious-shit-induced epiphany of a heat-relieving store detective. The Bulwark's Will Sommer writes that "On Sunday, reliably pro-Trump website Just the News reported that the FBI under Patel is operating a sprawling probe aimed at participants in a so-called 'grand conspiracy' of government weaponization."

I shared the "News" link but I'm sparing you the agonizing temptation of reading the story. Or Sommer does, anyway. He explains that the "probe [involves] an impressive variety of government actions that Trump supporters have been mad about—in some cases for the better part of a decade. The grievances touch on everything from the failure to prosecute Hillary Clinton over her email server to former special counsel Jack Smith’s criminal cases against Trump."

That's all fine, dandy too, but for my money it's "Dilbert's" lost soul Scott Adams who has climbed to the apex of What-to-do indispensability. "We should let it go because Trump says to let it go," he says in a half-hour video of what might be the spookiest mind-controlling exercise in human history. "I know there's a lot of disagreement on this topic, but watch how I persuade 98% of you who disagree with me over to my side," says Adams.

A truly intrepid, insanely meticulous watcher of Adams' video is also "into" sparing his readers any gratuitous anguish. One Jay Plemons offers this mitigating shortcut to the cartoonist's otherwise indescribable tangle of psychotic jibjab:

(0:00) Trump's Signaling to Move On

(1:00) Acknowledging the Opposition's View

(2:15) Criminal Issues Require Transparency

(4:31) National Security Issues Demand Secrecy

(5:49) Commander in Chief Decisions and Secrecy

(8:14) America is not a Democracy

(10:26) Why are the Victims Silent?

(12:29) Morality / System Question

(18:33) Political Consequences of Disclosure

(20:05) Ends Justify the Means

(22:10) Debunking the Trump Cult

(26:06) Considering the Victims' Perspective

(27:38) Trust in Trump's Advisors

Wow.

By now you may be wondering where, and what, this post's titled thunderclaps are — those distant sounds ominous to oblivious, preoccupied MAGA and, in the real world, far more threatening to Trump. At last, we get there:

"Inflation accelerated in June," reports the Times via the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Its "data," released this morning, "reflects only the initial impact of Mr. Trump’s global trade war." Furniture, appliances, clothing, gas and groceries all rose in price — "2.7 percent from a year ago, the swiftest pace since February."

The core inflation rate "also shifted higher. Those prices were up 2.9 percent from the same time last year." The swamis of macro inscrutability now labor in unconventional safety when divining tomorrow; they "expect price pressures to intensify over the coming months," adds the Times, "especially if new tariffs the president has threatened against the European Union and a host of other countries in recent days are imposed on Aug. 1 as planned."

No longer must America live in fear of Trump's inflation. It's here. And it has only begun to fight with families' household budgets.

The paper's warning about the heightened danger of potential "new tariffs" is beside the point of pain's arrival. The de facto point was made with tornadic precision by Paul Krugman in early April: "By demolishing the world trading system [Trump] has unleashed chaos. And the whole world will pay the price."

I make this reasonable assumption. Next up from the yet undead Bureau of Labor Statistics: odd-smelling books emerging from where its "analysts" cook their lunch. But that won't stop store prices from visibly, wrenchingly going up, and up. The economy at large, a real downer.

* This piece is cross-posted at my Substack page. Subscribe to be notified of new posts.