Good morning. It is May 27th. It is a sunnier than expected morning in New York City. The birds are singing. The humidity is supposed to be dropping. And this is your Indignity Morning Podcast. I'm your host, Tom Scocca, taking a look at the day and the news. 

On the front of this morning's New York Times, the lead news column coming out of the long holiday weekend isn't exactly news, but more of just a marker laid down on an important news topic. The headline package itself sort of gives it away. “DELAY IN TARIFFS SPURS NEW PUSH FOR U.S.-E.U. DEAL / TRUMP SETS JULY GOAL / Trade Talks Resume, but Neither Side Shows Signs of Budging.” Right, which is it? Is there a new push or is neither side showing signs of budging? The answer is who knows? The trouble here is that

The tariffs are nonsense. They may be real when they come into effect, but the whole situation is happening outside the bounds of rationality, leaving the Times to try to cram the vaporous effusions of the president's brain into some sort of vessel shaped like economic policy decision-making. Right from the start, the news event is subordinated to an attempt to make measured analysis of something that defies measured analysis.

“When President Trump this past weekend delayed 50 % tariffs on the European Union by more than a month, officials on both sides of the Atlantic billed the move as an opportunity to kickstart discussions and reach a trade deal.” Sure, of course, but the aspirations of the officials don't really matter. They're just trying to find a way to respond to the second major policy fluctuation on the European front of Trump's trade war to have been delivered on a Truth Social post wrapped around the Memorial Day break. But, he really is the president and Congress really has ceded its power to legislate trade to him. And, whatever he ends up declaring he's doing with tariffs will become the actual, if extralegal, policy of the country. And so the Times bravely tries to write about it as such.

“The path toward de-escalation,” the Times writes, “remains fraught. The United States and the European Union still have different priorities, ones that could remain an obstacle to a rapid agreement. And it is not clear that either the demands or offers on the table have changed. The goal is for the two sides to reach some solution before July 9th, when the 50 percent levies are now set to take effect, delayed from the June 1st date Mr. Trump had set when he first announced them last week.”

It's a good moment to remember that a while ago, the Wall Street Journal reported that Trump's tariff announcements were basically being determined by which advisors were able to trap him alone in a room and feed him their opinions until it led him to post something that sounded binding. So the story ends up being remarkably empty and also short for a lead story in the Times. And it also includes at least one outright falsehood as it tries to turn the story of the trade war into something like an intelligible narrative, “Britain and China,” the Times writes, “have managed to strike deals to avert the worst American tariff threats, but progress has been slower for the European Union.” Setting aside the Britain part, which revolves again around the question of whether the President of the United States can make a trade deal when he has no legal authority to do so, but the China thing is just flat wrong. The US-China discussions did not avert Trump's apocalyptic tariff scheme, they deferred it for 90 days, which puts China in the same situation as the EU, only on a bit of a longer timeline. Either way, none of this is what the trade policy is going to be a month from now, because, again, the president, President Donald Trump, is just making up his moves as he dances to the sound of the wind whistling through the holes in his brain. 

Next to that one, on the front is a NEWS ANALYSIS piece. “Allies of Israel Raise Pressure To Cease War / Comments by Trump Reflect Wider Change.” Dateline Jerusalem. “Through more than 18 months of war in Gaza, Israel has faced intense criticism from foreign leaders and aid groups, but has rarely experienced sustained public censure, let alone concrete repercussions from its close allies. Until now. In recent weeks, partners such as the United States, Britain, and France have become more willing to place Israel under overt pressure, culminating in President Trump's call on Sunday for the war to wind down.” Culminating. Hold that thought. The story continues, “‘Israel, we've been talking to them and we want to see if we can stop that whole situation as quickly as possible,’ Mr. Trump told reporters in New Jersey shortly before boarding Air Force One.” But then the story says,

“Mr. Trump's latest intervention came hours before the German government, normally a steadfast supporter of Israel, expressed unusually strong criticism of Israel's expanded attacks in Gaza. ‘What the Israeli army is doing in the Gaza Strip right now? I honestly don't understand what the goal is in causing such suffering to the civilian population,’ said Friedrich Merz, Germany's new chancellor, during an interview broadcast on television on Monday.” That sounds a bit stronger and certainly more bankable than the Trump comments that came before it, which were supposed to represent a culmination of criticism. 

After the jump, the story mentions the fact that Britain, Canada and France all criticized Israel last week. “In a joint statement last week,” the Times writes, “the three countries, which had broadly supported Israel's right to respond to the Hamas-led attack on Israel in October 2023, said the expansion was wholly disproportionate. All three countries warned of concrete repercussions if Israel did not change course. Britain,” the Times writes, “has since suspended trade negotiations with Israel. It also placed sanctions on Israeli extremists, leading efforts to force Palestinians from land in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, one of its most consequential moves against Israeli interests since it dropped its opposition last year to an arrest warrant issued against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Separately,” the Times continues, “France is organizing a conference which will be held in June in partnership with Saudi Arabia to discuss the creation of a Palestinian state, an outcome Mr. Netanyahu has vowed to oppose.” Again, all of that seems rather more substantial than Donald Trump saying, “we want to see if we can stop that whole situation,” which really just seems like more of the same intention-shaped strings of words that have been coming out of his mouth since the campaign trail. 

The other four columns at the top of the page are in black and white. pictures of people rubbing a name on the Vietnam Veterans Memorial and someone dabbing at tears and a pair of boots left there promoting a story inside the paper about how the Vietnam Veterans Memorial remains “a place of unexplainable power. Many visitors say.” I don't know, it both quantifies and personalizes one side at least of the staggering damage caused by the crimes and mistakes of the United States. It seems like it has power because it gets its point across. 

Below that, speaking of atrocities, the Times offers a hand-wringing, dismayed liberal endorsement of the Trump administration's immigration policy. “Journey to U.S. Was Perilous. So Is Trip Home. / Venezuelan Migrants
Risking Their Lives to ‘Self-Deport’” Dateline Puerto Abodilla, Panama. “They climbed onto the boat on Panama's Caribbean coast, around 40 people in all, their belongings stuffed in garbage bags, and their children clinging tight to them for the arduous trip ahead. They were not defying the U.S. government by moving toward the border. They were heading back to Venezuela, doing exactly what American officials want them to do, even though it meant facing threats of robbery, kidnapping, and a dangerous crossing once again. ‘It's like a broken dream,’ said Junior Sobarrán, who, like the others, had fled Venezuela the year before, carrying his infant daughter thousands of miles north and through the treacherous jungle pass known as the Darien Gap. He and his family arrived in Mexico City before President Trump's second term and soon heard the administration's message. ‘If you are considering entering America illegally, don't even think about it,’ Christie Noem, the Homeland Security Secretary, said in a White House video posted in February. ‘If you come to our country and you break our laws, we will hunt you down.’”

 If you're a person who cares about Venezuelan babies, this may tug at your heartstrings. But given that the people who are running this country hate Venezuelan babies and want the worst for them. The story reads like a more literally constructed version of a triumphalist memo that the White House would put out. 

And in an even more direct job of relaying Donald Trump's messages, on page 17, the headline is, “Trump wants trade schools to get funds cut at Harvard.” The story says, “President Trump floated a new plan on Monday for the $3 billion he wants to strip from Harvard University, saying in a social media post that he was thinking about using the money to fund vocational schools. ‘I am considering taking $3 BILLION,’ all caps, ‘of Grant Money,’ initial caps, ‘away from a very anti-Semitic Harvard and giving it to TRADE SCHOOLS,’ all caps, ‘all across our land,’ Mr. Trump posted on Truth Social, his social media platform.”

“The announcement, among the president's Memorial Day social media messages, did not appear to refer to any new cut in funding, but rather to a redistribution of money the administration already announced it had frozen or stripped from Harvard and its research partners. Mr. Trump gave no details about how such a plan would work.” That's because it's not a plan. It's just something he typed while he was feeling especially full of himself. But he is the president and since he's in charge of the country, the paper can't stop pretending that he must also be in control of himself. 

That is the news. Thank you for listening. The Indignity Morning Podcast is edited by Joe MacLeod. The theme song is composed and performed by Mack Scocca-Ho. You, the listeners, keep us going through your paid subscriptions to Indignity and your tips.

Continue sending those along if you can, and if nothing unexpected gets in the way, we will talk again tomorrow.