I answer your Nov & Dec '25 Q&A questions
Answers to this month's Substack subscriber questions
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🗣️ Jay asks: When Donald Trump says that drug prices have come down 500 percent why does not one reporter ask him "What do you mean by that?"
✅ This drives me crazy too. Because “500 percent” in this context is nonsense. Prices can’t come down more than 100 percent. At best, he’s either lying, confused, or intentionally using fake math because it sounds dramatic.
Why don’t reporters press him? A few reasons.
First, access. Some reporters don’t want to be frozen out.
Second, chaos fatigue. Trump lies so often that journalists triage which lies to challenge.
Third, media incentives. Conflict gets clicks, but follow-up math questions don’t always.
And you’re right: the correct follow-up is simply, “What does 500 percent mean?” If he insults the reporter, fine. That’s not a reason to stop doing the job. Journalism isn’t about being liked by a pathological liar.
Recently, Fox News reporter John Roberts did press Howard Lutnick about it, and it did not go well for Lutnick. We covered it on the show.
🗣️ Deborah asks: What do you think the chances are of Trump getting impeached and removed? And Stephen Miller — does he last? Also, why hasn’t the military staged a coup?
✅ Impeached? Possible. Remember that impeachment is the process in the house.
Removed? Extremely unlikely. This is the process of conviction in the Senate in an impeachment trial.
Removal requires two-thirds of the Senate. That means a large number of Republicans would have to vote to remove a president from their own party. There’s no evidence that’s happening.
Stephen Miller lasts as long as Trump wants him there. If Trump is gone, Miller is gone immediately. He has no independent power base. He’s a Trump creature.
As for the military staging a coup, that’s not how the U.S. works, fortunately. The military is under civilian control, and despite Trump’s authoritarian instincts, the institution has largely held that line. Coups happen when militaries see themselves as the rightful rulers. That’s not the culture here, and we should be very careful what we wish for.
🗣️ Patrick asks: How much of the dysfunction comes from media business models, and is there a path to fixing it?
✅ A lot of it comes from media incentives.
Outrage is profitable. Nuance is not. Slow truth loses to fast lies. I am currently writing about these issues for my forthcoming book.
When attention equals revenue, the loudest and most extreme voices win. That’s true on cable news, social media, and even parts of independent media.
Is there a fix? Not a clean one.
Some regulation around platforms would help.
Some audience literacy would help.
Subscription models help a bit.
But there’s no magic switch. The business model of the internet rewards emotional manipulation. Until that changes, dysfunction is baked in.
🗣️ Anthony asks: Is there any way to remove the three Trump Supreme Court justices? And can the next president pack the court?
✅ Removing justices requires impeachment by the House and conviction by the Senate. Same math problem as Trump removal. Not happening absent something truly extraordinary.
Court packing is legally possible. Congress sets the size of the Court. But politically? Very hard.
If Democrats did it, Republicans would retaliate the next time they had power. You’d end up with a 17-justice court, then 23, then 31. At that point, the Court loses legitimacy entirely.
That doesn’t mean the current situation is good. It’s bad. But there are no easy fixes that don’t risk making it worse.
🗣️ Tim asks: How is the Trump administration going to enforce background checks and social media reviews on incoming tourists? Can they?
✅ Short answer: badly and selectively.
They can ask for information. They can flag some people. They cannot realistically review millions of social media profiles in any meaningful way.
What this really does is create fear and arbitrariness. Some people will be delayed. Some denied. Most waved through. And the system will disproportionately target people from certain countries or political backgrounds.
It’s less about security and more about signaling. It says, “We’re watching you.” That’s the point.
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David could answer these questions simply by saying this: when it comes to the filthy rich corporate criminal elite members of the ruling class which would include Trump, the rule of law does not apply to them. This isn’t something that Trump caused because it has been this way for a very long time, Trump just made it worse and he exploited the situation and was able to become dictator of the United States.
In the United States, the White House, the federal courts and Congress is held to the lowest standards of morality and legality. The only people further above the law than they are are the billionaires and the corporations.
David can’t say what I just said because if he told the complete and total truth corporate would remove him from the Internet somehow. YouTube would shadow ban him and other platforms would deboost him.
Corporate media which also includes social media squelches free speech.
There are criminals on the Supreme Court with the worst one being Clarence Thomas and his crimes include insurrection and bribery. We shouldn’t have to pack the court. We should hold these criminals on the Supreme Court accountable by throwing them in prison for the rest of their stinking lives.
The overarching problem is nothing holds Congress, the courts in the White House accountable and this is because these entities do not work for the American people. Our government works for billionaires. We can talk about how horrible Trump is but he’s merely a foot soldier for corporate, same as Congress and same as the courts.
Writing from outside of your country, luckily. Trying to take a broader and longer view. I see several things happening and colliding, several "experiments" if you will.
EXPERIMENT 1:
There is the experiment with a flawed version of democracy. Flawed because it NEVER was "representative democracy" and was set up quite deliberately to be NON-representative. I do not mean for this comment to be anti-American. It is not so much a "comment" as an observation and that is an important distinction.
EXPERIMENT 2:
Secondly, there is the experiment with authoritarian fascism to which you are currently being subjected. I think that you should all be much more terrified of this than most of you are. Unfortunately, this experiment is not bound to fail. That doesn't mean that it will succeed; it "just" means that it will not fail simply because you do not like it. It is, in part, because Experiment 1 was set up the way that it was (i.e., to be blatantly non-representative) that Expetiment 2 is currently succeeding so robustly.
EXPERIMENT 3:
This is an experiment with underlying values and is, unfortunately, at least in a very large part, responsible for the impending failure of Experiment 1 and the impending success of Experiment 2. I guess it could be called "The American Dream" Experiment. The "everyone and anyone can succeed" in the USA, where "success" is defined very shallowly, i.e., materially. Of course this is another outright and blatant lie. It is not and never has been true that everyone and anyone can be "rich" in materialistic ways. For one thing, it is self-contradictory. A values system based on avarice is a system with built-in "safeguards" against health and "prosperity for all".
It appears to me, from outside your country but from a somewhat at least superficially similar culture, that the strength of that impossible goal of becoming richer than the next person in shallow materialistic consumerism is what is fuelling the potential success of Experiment 2.
To turn away from capitalism is so terrifying in your culture, RENDERED so terrifying by those benefitting from you believing the impossible dream, that truly I do not know what it is going to take to shake the USA out of these experiments. Maybe merely finding or "inventing" new terminology so that a "bottom line" of the common good is not seen as the dirty word that I will not repeat here. But whatever it is going to take, you MUST find it and you will have to remain very very strong in order to succeed, in order to turn away from power OVER.
If you interpret the above as "fatalistic", "nihilistic", "anti-American", or un-optimistic, you have not understood what I am urging you to do. Feel free to engage me (and us) in further discussion ... And thank you for reading all the way to the end of this posting.