Yesterday we reported that Vice President JD Vance had said his planned meeting with Attorney General Pam Bondi, Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, FBI Director Kash Patel, and White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles to discuss the ongoing coverup of the Epstein files was fake news. Well, it turns out, he was lying: They held the meeting anyway, but at the White House rather than at the VP’s residence. So they lied about their secret meeting about lying about the Epstein files. Happy Friday.
A Conversation with Andry
by Tim Miller
What happens to a man after he’s been resurrected from hell?
When I talked to Andry Hernández Romero earlier this week, he tried to answer this question. Andry explained why he wanted to come to America. How he was treated in our hands. The disgusting and unconscionable abuse that he was subjected to an infamous Salvadoran prison. His hopes for freedom and so much more.
The entire discussion was remarkable because he is remarkable. Not just his sense of humor and unshakable faith in God in light of all that has happened. But, most of all, his empathy and mercy for those who were responsible for his persecution.
It’s hard not to contrast Andry’s mercy and forbearance with the small, sad grievances that dominate America’s political life today. Our current regime is powered by anger at a hundred perceived sleights: too many brown people at Harvard; a book with gay penguins; a swimmer who didn’t get the 4th place trophy she felt she deserved; having less than the Joneses.
Half of America fetishizes and perseverates in its discontent over these sleights. How dare they make a movie where the fictional mermaid is a black girl!
Meanwhile, the guy who came to America looking to make a life for himself is locked away in a foreign dungeon because he had the wrong tattoos. He was tortured, raped, and left for dead. He wasn’t even allowed the dignity of a call to his mother.
This avalanche of trauma was piled onto him because the luckiest people in the history of the world were convinced that the immigrant down the street might eat their cat.
And how does Andry react to his mistreatment? Here’s what he told me:
And what I can say to the people, to President Trump, and to everyone watching this podcast is, let’s be more empathetic, let’s be more, more humane, knowing that we can’t make firewood from a fallen tree. . . . Let’s be more empathetic and not destroy others, because no one likes to be talked down to, let’s not kick a dead horse, because, it’s easy to speak badly of someone, but we don’t like people talking badly about them. So, as a relative told me, everyone is going to throw stones at the tree that bears fruit.
What a remarkable sense of grace. It’s unimaginable, really, to have been treated like a feral hog by the most powerful man in the world and still manage to summon this generosity and forbearance.
The most moving part of our conversation was when Andry talked about the bonds he created with the other prisoners who were kidnapped with him. How he made plans to do the hair and makeup for the weddings of some of the men who were in cells at CECOT and are now planning their renewed life.
The way his face lit up and the love with which he discussed his fellow prisoners reminded me of the only other time I had the chance to hear directly from survivors of political internment.
I was in Sioux City, Iowa, working as a baby PR flak for John McCain. I had the unimaginable privilege of staffing McCain for a joint interview with Bud Lee, a fellow survivor of the Hanoi Hilton. They sat in a dark hotel ballroom, lit only by the local news box lights. I sat in the corner, rapt as they regaled the reporter with stories from the prison and from their escape.
Throughout the interview McCain was effusive talking about Lee and the others whom he would speak to through Morse code while he festered in his cell. At some point in the interview, his jocular demeanor changed, but only for a bit. He became reverent. He said that he learned everything he knew about character, about patriotism, about living a life with honor from Lee and the other prisoners who, in McCain’s telling, showed more bravery than he did.
Talking to Andry eighteen years later, I thought about McCain and how these two very different men were made of similar stuff. Resilient. Brave. Gracious.
The difference is that in Andry’s case the captors—the tormentors—were not a distant, unknowable enemy. It was us.
This stain on our nation will linger for generations. But instead of focusing only on the stain—the grievance—I hope that as McCain learned from Lee we might learn from Andry.
That we might reflect his character, his honor, and aspire to be trees that bear fruit.
Watch the full interview here.
Support Immigrant Defenders who fought for Andry’s freedom here.
Democrats, Don’t Forget the Economy
by William Kristol
I try to avoid the temptation to engage in economic forecasting here at Morning Shots. If I were to do it, it would be worth what you’re paying for it. [Editor’s Note: Like many of the best things in life, this newsletter is free.]
But I do think I can take a shot at summarizing the actual state of the economy: Basically stagnant, and quite possibly slowing. After all, that’s what last week’s employment data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics suggested. It’s presumably why Trump freaked out about it. But firing the commissioner won’t increase economic growth. And the belief that Trump can create economic growth and well-being—which has been such an important part of his political success—is fading.
Trump’s approval rating on the economy is now no stronger than his overall approval rating. As Jay Campbell, a Democratic pollster at Hart Research put it, “What seemed [in his first term] to be keeping President Trump’s overall approval level from really dropping down was the strong economy and the credit that he got from the public. He cannot rely on that at this point.”
He can’t rely on getting credit for a strong economy because it’s really not that strong.
The gross domestic product has grown at a mere 1.25 percent annualized rate so far in 2025, down from 2.5 percent in 2023 and 2.8 percent in 2024. Unemployment stands at 4.2 percent, the same as a year ago. Even Trump’s beloved stock market is not particularly strong! The Dow Jones Industrial average closed yesterday at 43,968. It stood at 43,448 on inauguration day in January.
Meanwhile, the annualized inflation rate is stuck at 2.7 percent. Trump likes to claim that gasoline prices are going down, but they’re not. Retail gas now averages around $3.25 a gallon, up a bit from $3.20 a gallon when he took over. And ground beef is considerably more expensive than it was, now selling for an average of $6.12 a pound, up from $5.60—due in part to Trump’s tariffs. (We import a lot of beef, including from Brazil, so we’re all paying for Trump’s embrace of his fellow coup-plotter Jair Bolsonaro.) Your Labor Day cookout is going to cost more than it did a year ago.
We’ll see where all this goes. But there’s no reason for Democrats not to amplify the thought now that Trump is underperforming on the economy.
Where does the mediocre economy rate as an issue?
The Epstein coverup is—and should be—a very big issue. It does particular damage in causing doubts among some in Trump’s MAGA base. Democrats should be the party that’s vehemently against covering up sex trafficking scandals.
Medicaid cuts, and Trump’s assault on worthwhile government programs in general, are of course also an important issue. Democrats should be the party that defends a robust role for a well-functioning government—one that supports, for example, scientific research.
But if the Epstein scandal hurts with MAGA voters, and defending government programs helps reinforce support from Democratic voters, the economy can be particularly helpful with swing voters, and with Trump’s more ambivalent voters. His ability to produce a strong economy is at the core of his message to his “respectable” supporters. Weakening that claim would weaken him politically.
In every meeting that I’m in with Democrats, someone quotes James Carville: “It’s the economy stupid.” But I’ve got to say: Democrats talk a lot about talking about the economy. But they don’t actually talk about Trump’s faltering economy as much as they could.
Once upon a time, Democrats were a party of economic growth. As JFK put it in 1960, “let’s get America moving again.” It wouldn’t be a bad thing if more Democrats echoed that sentiment today.
AROUND THE BULWARK
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Trump’s Tariffs Won’t Spare Even the ‘American Made’… In Press Pass, JOE PERTICONE takes a look at how tariffs are impacting American companies. He also dives into Senator Bill Cassidy’s disappointments.
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The DOJ Has Lost Their Damn Minds… GEORGE CONWAY joins SAM STEIN to break down the chaos around Trump and his allies—from DOJ’s strange Epstein scrambling to Texas’s redistricting fight, Tulsi Gabbard’s document dump, and Trump’s alleged meddling in the New York City mayoral race.
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What USAID’s Absence Looks Like on the Ground… ANNE APPELBAUM joins TIM MILLER to discuss what the vacuum in foreign aid looks like thanks to Trump, Musk, Rubio and DOGE.
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The Democratic Youth (er, Young Adult) Movement Arrives… LAUREN EGAN reports in the latest edition of The Opposition how the party in need of generational change is witnessing it.
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Infamous Groyper: 1, Tucker Carlson: 0… In a bizarre tiff over who was a secret CIA operative, the ex-Fox News bigwig was bested by the former basement-dweller, as WILL SOMMER documents in False Flag.
Quick Hits
MAKE AMERICA GRIFT AGAIN: You may wanna sit down for this one: Donald Trump appears to be on the take, even going so far as to turn over Medicare policy to the highest bidder. Here’s a new New York Times story about how one medical executive managed to change reimbursement policy after putting $5 million directly into Trump’s pocket.
Oliver Burckhardt came prepared for the dinner that President Trump hosted for a small group of major donors at his private Mar-a-Lago resort in South Florida on March 1.
A week earlier, one of Mr. Burckhardt’s biotech companies had donated $5 million to MAGA Inc., a pro-Trump political committee, that paved the way for him to attend the event.
At the dinner, Mr. Burckhardt got a chance to speak briefly to the president and other guests about himself and the work of his company, Extremity Care, which makes pricey medical products including paper-thin bandages made of dried bits of placenta . . . He also brought copies of a flier urging the Trump administration to reverse a plan to restrict Medicare reimbursement for the bandages . . .
The next morning, Mr. Trump posted the flier on his social media site.
About one month later, the Trump administration announced it would delay until next year the Biden administration plan to limit Medicare’s coverage of the bandages . . .
As unlikely as it sounds, the blatant corruption escalates from there.
THANK YOU FOR YOUR SERVICE: As part of Donald Trump’s and Pete Hegseth’s plan to drum willing and experienced soldiers, sailors, airmen, marines, and guardians out of the military, the Air Force is now reportedly going to deny all transgender airmen with between 15 and 18 years of service early retirement benefits.
In the military, 20 years of service is considered a full career. By that point, a service member has a fully vested pension and access to military healthcare for the rest of their lives, plus other benefits. In addition to patriotism and a sense of mission, those perks are part of why people join the military in the first place. Now, in all likelihood, fewer will.
When Trump first announced his zero-trans policy, Lt. Col. Will Selber wrote in The Bulwark:
When I read the memo announcing the Trump administration’s new zero-trans policy, I couldn’t help but think of those airmen I commanded . . . and the thousands of others like them who answered the country’s call when others wouldn’t—who stayed in service after Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth left for civilian life, who stayed after I retired, who are still there now, doing the dirty, dangerous, unsung work that keeps the country safe. . . .
Thank you for your service indeed.
THE DEFINITION OF INSANITY: As the old saw has it, the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu has another word for it, though: strategy. Yesterday, he announced—reportedly against the advice of the leadership of the Israeli Defense Forces—that Israel would retake military control of the roughly 15 percent of the Gaza Strip not currently under occupation, including Gaza City and Khan Younis.
That plan was apparently modified by the security cabinet, which approved a more limited operation just in Gaza City.
The goals of the new offensive, which is expected to take five months, are not clear. Per the New York Times:
On Friday, after the meeting, Mr. Netanyahu’s office said the security cabinet had adopted “five principles for concluding the war,” including disarming Hamas, bringing back the hostages, demilitarizing Gaza, establishing Israeli security control over the enclave and setting up “an alternative civilian administration that is neither Hamas nor the Palestinian Authority.”
Netanyahu’s definition of victory isn’t ridiculous: retrieving the hostages and establishing peaceful civilian governance in Gaza to prevent another October 7th. But he has no plan to achieve those goals. Instead of doing the hard diplomatic work of creating a post-Hamas future for Gaza, he’s reverting to what he already knows the IDF can do, which is destroy Hamas and its infrastructure—along with lots of Gaza and Gazans.
In response to the new offensive, large protests erupted across Israel. After all, while most of the price for Netanyahu’s dithering incompetence will be paid by Gazans, some of it will be paid by Israeli conscripts and their families—and the remaining hostages.