Good morning. It is February 20th. It's cold again in New York City. Temperature won't go above freezing. The Apple weather app and the weather box on the front of the New York Times disagree about whether there might be snow. The Times says afternoon snow and flurries. The weather app says nothing doing. Either way, this is your Indignity Morning Podcast. I'm your host, Tom Scocca, taking a look at the day and the news.

The front of this morning's New York Times is another exception to the usual visual hierarchy of the news. The normal right-hand spot has a triple stacked two-column headline “TRUMP AIMS TO END CONGESTION PLAN, SETTING UP A FIGHT / New York Challenges President’s Order,
and Experts Question Its Legality.” 

But that feels subordinate or equal at best to the uncommon top of the page left side headline running four columns wide.

“Trump Calls Zelensky ‘Dictator’ as Feud Grows.” Underneath that is a four-column picture of Volodymyr Zelensky flanked by the bright blue and yellow of the Ukrainian flag on one side and his Ukrainian presidential standard on the other. With the headline and photo encompassing a pair of stories. On the left, “FLOOD OF FALSE CLAIMS / Ukraine Leader Attacked for Criticizing a ‘Web of Disinformation,’” and next to that is “NEWS ANALYSIS. A Hero to Biden Is a Villain to His Successor / Revisionism Sets Stage for Abrupt Reversal of U.S. Alliances.” Here again, Donald Trump is doing exactly what he gave every indication that he would do, illustrating once again the difference between something being surprising and it being shocking, as Trump repudiates a United States ally in preparation for yanking that country's ongoing military support to cut a deal with the hostile superpower that invaded it.

Or does it really count as hostility once you've decided to go along with it? The characterization of this as a feud between two leaders seems off-key, but that is what the Times goes with. “The simmering feud,” the paper writes “between President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine and President Trump escalated on Wednesday when Mr. Trump mocked his counterpart in a post filled with falsehoods, calling him a ‘dictator without elections.’
His comments came hours after Mr. Zelensky said the American leader had been ‘caught in a web of disinformation” from Russia over the war in Ukraine.’” Zelensky's assessment seems more or less accurate, as long as you don't dive down the rat hole of whether Donald Trump believes anything that comes out of his mouth. What matters is just that he perceives it as useful to say the things he says, to create an alternative story to the obvious one of treachery and surrender.

“The pointed exchange” the Times writes “was set off by a meeting of American and Russian officials to open talks on ending the war in Ukraine that excluded the Ukrainian government. After that meeting in Saudi Arabia on Tuesday, Mr. Trump suggested that Ukraine had started the war, a comment that brought a strong rebuttal from Mr. Zelensky on Wednesday morning. ‘I would like to have more truth with the Trump team,’ Mr. Zelensky said in some of the most overt criticism yet of Mr. Trump and his view of the war in Ukraine.” The Times goes on to write. “The deepening feud threatens to undermine Ukraine’s war effort and further weaken its position in the peace talks that have already started between the U.S. and Russia — notably without Kyiv’s involvement.” Again, that's a freakishly narrow way of looking at it. And every bit as upside down as Trump's own remarks. This putative feud is not threatening to undermine Ukraine's war effort. The United States is undermining Ukraine's war effort. And that substantive conflict is leading to a rhetorical conflict.

How exactly is Ukraine's position at the negotiating table supposed to get weaker than the current situation of not being at the negotiating table at all? While the director of the Russian sovereign wealth fund talks to Secretary of State Marco Rubio about the business opportunities that await once the two countries that matter can get this little Ukraine business out of the way. The accompanying news analysis piece, despite laying out the extent of Trump's public animosity towards Zelensky and Ukraine, likewise continues to treat this as some sort of episode of strange relations rather than the straightforward, ongoing, clearly telegraphed reversal that it is. The Times notes that past presidents have been at odds with their allies at various times, but the Times writes “those presidents still supported the allies' cause while it is not clear that Mr. Trump does. And as with so many things, Mr. Trump goes much further than his predecessors in terms of public vitriol against an ally facing an existential threat, employing the kind of language that presidents rarely use about an ostensible friend.” Right, that's because Trump feels friendly toward Russia and despises Ukraine. The Times quotes Vice President JD Vance, continuing to pretend that there's some way that Ukraine could mollify Trump or modify his behavior toward the goal of blaming Ukraine for what's going to happen to it.

“After Mr. Zelensky complained that Mr. Trump was caught in a web of disinformation,” the Times writes, “Mr. Vance told the Daily Mail[—the Daily Mail—]that such comments would only backfire. ‘The idea that Zelensky is going to change the president's mind by bad mouthing him in public media, he said, is an atrocious way to deal with this administration.’ Because the real victim of the invasion of Ukraine is JD Vance's feelings.” 

Speaking of how to deal with the administration. Back in the usual lead news slot, there is the congestion pricing episode. As yesterday's newsletter touched on, transportation secretary Sean Duffy put out a fake populist letter to governor Kathy Hochul denouncing the supposed harms that congestion pricing had done to the salt of the earth Americans who take their cars into Manhattan, as opposed to the elites who take the bus or the train or the subway.

Not only was the framework nonsense, but even on its own terms, it was wrong. Ever since the tolls kicked in, driving a car in Manhattan has been heavenly. The last two times I got out of town through the Lincoln Tunnel, there was absolutely no congestion on the approach because that is what the tolls are designed to accomplish and have been proven to do around the world. Donald Trump then called himself king. Kathy Hochul then demonstrated that even a Democrat with a long record of fecklessness can easily look good simply by saying no to the administration, as opposed to trying to conciliate people who've built an entire political movement around the impossibility of conciliating them. Vladimir Zelensky does not need any additional reasons to ignore JD Vance. But if he did, he could simply read the last two paragraphs of the congestion pricing story in reverse order. “The New York Times,” the New York Times writes, “reported last month that Mr. Trump was considering killing the program. In recent weeks, the governor spoke to Mr. Trump multiple times about the toll program in an effort to persuade him of its benefits.” Then you jump up to the previous paragraph. “The New York Post was the first to report the existence of the letter from Mr. Duffy to Ms. Hochul revoking certain federal permissions necessary for the tolling program to go into effect.” You spend weeks going through the ritual of negotiating with Donald Trump and after he's enjoyed your groveling long enough, he goes ahead and does the thing he was always going to do and gives the story to the New York Post so Rupert Murdoch can dunk on you about it. 

Below the fold on page one, a story tries to plunge into the impenetrable tangle of exactly what structure and authority underlies Elon Musk's effort to destroy the federal government. “Filings in court create window into Musk team.” That window created by the various people who are suing to try to get the rampaging goons out of their business, is a remarkably greased over and opaque one. “The filings,” the Times writes, “paint a picture of a tightly managed process in which small groups of government employees have swept in and out of agencies, grabbing up data in apparent pursuit of larger political projects. But many questions remain,” the Times writes, “frustrating the judges trying the cases. In at least one filing, the government has shown an effort to wall off Mr. Musk in particular from scrutiny by asserting that he is not, in fact, the head of the Department of Government Efficiency, nor an employee of the office.” The Times writes, “in case after case, judges have strained to establish even basic facts about the staff members who have descended on federal agencies, attempts to press for specifics such as how many associates of Mr. Musk have been detailed to specific agencies, whether they have arrived as employees of those agencies or as representatives from the White House and what grounds they have for demanding entry into agency systems have been largely unsuccessful.” 

Below the jump page for that story, there's an item from the upshot about how the $16 billion of savings that Musk's team has claimed on its website includes $8 billion from a canceled contract whose value was actually $8 million. 

And in other news about doing fake things with numbers, on page A14, there's a congressional memo. “Voters give high marks to Congress. Can it last?” Voters are giving high marks to Congress? The U.S. Congress? The U.S. Congress that isn't passing any bills? And is sitting back while Donald Trump slashes all the funding that it approved? “Republicans in Congress,” the piece begins, “have spent the opening weeks of President Trump's second term falling in line behind his most scandal-tainted cabinet nominees, cheering him on as he tramples their power as a co-equal branch of government, and generally catering to his whims and Americans seem to be loving it.” Okay, the story continues. “About 29 % of voters approve of Congress, according to a Gallup survey released on Wednesday.” 29%. That's percent as in 100. As in, if there's 29 % on one side of something, then there's 71 % not on that side. Anyway, 29 % of voters approve of Congress. The Times writes, “a jump of 12 percentage points since last month and the highest approval rating that a long despised institution has scored in four years.” The story continues, “but what is really behind this sudden positivity for the typically reviled legislative branch?” Again, 29 % positivity. What is behind this? “A 42 point surge,” the Times writes “in approval among Republican voters.” That is to say, this poll is measuring the same thing that all the other polls measure, especially the polls last year about voter sentiment on the economy. The only thing opinion polling really measures at this point is polarization and party discipline. Republican-identified poll responders will move as a block from the positive column to the negative column, or negative to positive, based entirely on their own party's political position.

Saying voters give high marks to congress or “Americans seem to be loving it” is pointless and idiotic, or in this case since the writer is well aware of what moved the numbers. outright dishonest. 

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, please continue sending those in, and if nothing unexpected gets in the way, we will talk again tomorrow.