Earlier today, I published the Morning Compass briefing. Here I share a few thoughts on what stood out most. The transcript is below for those who prefer to read.
Morning Comments 🎙️ is a video companion to Morning Compass 🧭, my daily briefing. Both are published in More ✍️. If you find this kind of independent analysis useful, consider becoming a paid subscriber:
You can read today’s full Morning Compass briefing here:
Transcript
It is Monday, June 1, and I want to start with a single sentence from Donald Trump, posted on Truth Social this weekend.
Kuwait reported missile and drone strikes on its territory overnight. The war that Trump started in February is spreading. His response: it will “all work out well.”
That phrase is worth holding onto this week. It will all work out well while oil is at $91 a barrel, up from $70 before the war. It will all work out well while Kuwait, a US ally, absorbs strikes from a conflict it had nothing to do with starting. It will all work out well while inflation is no longer just gas prices — it is now spreading through the entire supply chain. Manufacturing, transport, food processing, logistics. Everything costs more because energy costs more, and there is no quick fix for that.
Trump claimed this week that food prices are falling. The Associated Press fact-checked that claim. It is false. Grocery prices overall are still rising. The AP checked Trump’s claim that food costs are coming down. The overall picture does not support it.
Trump spent months trying to fire Jerome Powell, the chairman of the Federal Reserve. The markets made clear what they thought of that idea, and Trump backed down. Last week, Powell accepted an award. In his speech, he described what happens when central bank independence comes under political pressure. He did not name Trump. He did not need to. Everyone in the room understood who he was talking about.
Trump is also claiming that he is bigger than Elvis. The context: even more artists have pulled out of his Freedom 250 Great American State Fair. That is the MAGA-branded competition to the official America250 anniversary celebration. Martina McBride, Bret Michaels, the Commodores, and others all say they were misled about what they had agreed to. Trump’s response was to post that he has a much bigger audience than any of the performers. He included Elvis in the comparison. Elvis sold over a billion records. He performed for fifty thousand people at a time. He is also dead, which makes the comparison difficult to contest and also slightly revealing about the level of anxiety behind the claim.
In Hungary, Peter Magyar — who defeated Viktor Orbán’s party in last month’s election — is threatening legal action after Orbán’s outgoing administration tried to push through legislation that would limit what the new government can do before the transition is complete. The playbook is familiar. When you lose an election, try to make the election irrelevant.
Today is June 1, which carries a particular weight in American history. In 1921, a white mob attacked Greenwood, known as Black Wall Street in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and burned it to the ground over 18 hours. It was one of the worst acts of racial violence in American history and was suppressed in official records for decades.
In 2020, on this day, police used chemical agents and clubs to clear peaceful protesters from Lafayette Park in Washington so that Donald Trump could walk through and be photographed holding a Bible in front of a church he had never attended. He had just declared himself the president of law and order.
It will all work out well.
I will be back soon.
Morning Comments 🎙️ is a video companion to Morning Compass 🧭, my daily briefing. Both are published in More ✍️. If you find this kind of independent analysis useful, consider becoming a paid subscriber:
