What Happened Today?

Susan Estrich on Mar 1, 2025

The president and JD turned a meeting that was supposed to make nice in the White House into a segment for Fox News as they openly shouted at Ukraine's leader for not being thankful enough for America's aid and Donald Trump's leadership. After Vance accused him of being "disrespectful" by being insufficiently thankful, Trump joined in, telling him he was "gambling with World War III" and was "not really in a very good position."

"You're either going to make a deal or we're out," Trump threatened. "And if we're out, you'll fight it out and I don't think it's going to be pretty." The rest of the visit was canceled. The mineral rights deal, which was supposed to be something for Trump to claim credit for, and a sign of cooperation, never got signed.

Reporters covering the event could recall nothing like it in modern American history.

Welcome to "Fox & Friends" from the Oval Office.

When the camera goes on, that's what this presidency is.

Only some people find that terrifying.

That's the lead story for the day, on top of the usual stories of mass firings, potential Medicaid cuts (how else do you fund the tax cuts), DOGE incursions, judicial rulings and the fact that Republicans commandeered every vote they have in the House to support a budget resolution that can only be funded that way.

There is no Republican resistance to Trump right now. They are muzzling themselves. Everyone got confirmed. Trump treats Vladimir Putin with greater deference and respect than he does the leader of our ally whose free country Putin invaded. And the old Republican foreign policy establishment holds its tongue.

The resistance is coming from governors' offices, state attorneys general and lawsuits. Lawyers in this country are stepping up to challenge the overreach. And judges, federal and state, are stepping up to put the pause if not the hold button on the worst of this administration's excesses.

This is not nothing. It is the product of enormous effort and organization. So to say the opposition is not really doing anything is simply not so.

Still, it feels that way. Party-line votes, while reflecting Democratic solidarity, don't feel like anything other than the overwhelming capture of Congress by Trump.

James Carville, the famed former Clinton strategist, thinks it's fine if Democrats sit back and do nothing and let Trump so vastly overreach that it will collapse from within in months. That may be the default, but it's hard to see it as the best strategy.

The Democratic National Committee filed its first lawsuit against the Trump administration, and this actually made me laugh, although that was clearly not the intended purpose. The suit claims that an executive order would turn the until-now independent Federal Election Commission into an arm of the president and the attorney general. The executive order at issue stated that federal agencies cannot interpret the law differently than the president or attorney general.

"The executive order purports to provide President Trump -- the leader of the Republican Party -- with the ability to order the F.E.C. to take particular positions on any question of law arising in the commission's performance of any of its duties," the Democrats' lawsuit states. Which is all true, the FEC is bipartisan, which is the whole point, although over the course of its tenure, it has been far less effective -- toothless might be a better word -- in rooting out corruption in campaigns and elections than the vehemence with which the Democratic rhetoric would suggest.

Which is my point. Of all the things the Democratic National Committee could choose to sue Trump over -- as its "first lawsuit" -- they choose something that no one but election law junkies knows or cares about. This is the new committee chair's debut? This is what he is being quoted about?

The Democrats have to do better than that.

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