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The news, in brief …

  • “Baseless”: Trump admin denies involvement in suspicious Iran prediction market bets

    Huge bets on unlikely futures have repeatedly popped up right before Trump announcements about the conflict. Read more.

  • “Damning evidence”: Trump’s DOJ shares memo alleging Trump took docs related to business interests

    The DOJ shared a memo from Jack Smith's investigation into Trump's handling of classified documents. Read more.

Make me smarter …

ICE at airports: Trump’s troll move backfires

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The president of the United States starts every day by watching a hype video of the war in Iran.

NBC News reported on Wednesday that Donald Trump gets a “video update” of the “biggest, most successful strikes” on Iran over the past 48 hours. This shouldn’t come as a shock at this point. The president has lived a hermetically sealed life, insulated from poor business decisions by his wealth and from consequences by a legal system that gives extreme preference to people with that sort of wealth.

While his penchant for McDonald’s has been mocked as a sign of bad taste, it might actually point toward a fear of novelty and any attendant disappointment. Big Macs aren’t going to wow anyone, but they taste the same everywhere and always.

The bubble-boy-in-chief takes what he’s given from the Pentagon’s greatest hits and shares his views on the war’s supposed success. He delivers these takes on a social media platform that he effectively owns, where everyone has gathered entirely to praise him. During his moments away from his phone, he is surrounded by lackeys so spineless that they won’t even speak up when he buys them shoes that don’t fit. His schedule is geared toward keeping him happy, or at least blissfully ignorant of his own unpopularity.

Trump’s frictionless life is no shock to anyone who’s heard him speak. His self-contradicting style is built on agreeing with whoever spoke to him last, avoiding any stress or conflict. It’s a less than ideal trait, arguably, for a world leader. But Trump’s Big Tech boosters want something similar for all of us.

Silicon Valley bigwigs, many of whom either donated to the Trump campaign or have served in his administration, see the messiness of the real world as a problem to be solved. They invest in educational robots and startups hoping to move people from one air-conditioned box to another. Delivery apps and self-contained feeds keep customers clicking and consuming in predictable, prescriptive patterns. The endless scroll whisks away anything likely to upset you enough that you might close your laptop or put down your phone.

The addictive qualities of these extensive mini-worlds have landed platforms like Facebook, Instagram and YouTube in hot water. Courts are starting to take them to task for the effect these bubbles have on children. That hasn’t stopped people like Elon Musk from pushing more sleek, unending loops.

On the same day that Melania Trump trotted out a humanoid robot that could spit equations at children and touted it as the future of education, Musk’s Boring Company announced a partnership with the city of New Orleans. The construction company claims it will build a tunnel through the city’s famously soggy, low-lying firmament: a sealed loop away from the rabble of Bourbon Street.

The vague announcement of this so-called project pretty much gave the game away, sharing plans for a tunnel with no concrete end points or any evident purpose. Sealing people off from the messy world on the city’s surface was the point. As with Trump’s daily schedule of “executive time” and military greatest-hits compilations, the point is to keep people away from the world. Actually getting somewhere is unnecessary.

What do you think? Is it bad to have a president who only sees praise? Would you like something similar for yourself? Sound off in the comments.

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Before you go …

So is this World War III? The term doesn’t mean anything, and that’s a problem

If you're anxious about global conflict, you're not alone. But war is so different now we almost can't see it. Read more.

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