"Hound Dog" Trump Cryin' All the Time

But unlike Elvis he has not "left the building." Plus our usual cartoons and Springsteen chimes an end to his tour.

May 31, 2026

Yes, it’s still free to subscribe to this nearly daily newsletter! Greg Mitchell is the author of fourteen books and director of five films for PBS since 2022. In a previous life, he was a longtime editor at the legendary Crawdaddy.

Ann Telnaes saw it all back in 2020:

Trump yesterday mocked the talent of the flood of entertainers who have now exited his personal American 250 concert, then announced he would take their place since he was even more popular than Elvis. Longtime author and magazine writer Tom Carson responded:

Donald Trump is hands down our most showbiz POTUS ever. He’s the GOAT of glitz, a Picasso of tacky come-back-Liberace-all-is-forgiven décor. He’s the enthralled slave to a magnificent obsession with ratings, fruitless chases after the glittering prizes – one or a bushel of Nobels or Time’s Man of The Year, it don’t matter – and perceived conspirators against his throne (Kimmel, Colbert)…
That’s why It Is No Accident, as the Leninists say, that showbiz professionals shun our one and only President. Who wants to be blown out of the water by an amateur? At least Ronald Reagan was a colleague, damn it, even if Ronnie was apparently as dull castigating Washington at Bel Air dinner parties as he was recalling Hollywood for eminent White House visitors once his hobby had sprouted wings. One can forgive runamok tedium emanating from a past-his-prime peer….

Axios in its newsletter this morning:

The AI boom is pushing companies across the economy — from tech giants to automakers — deep into the energy business, Axios national energy correspondent Amy Harder writes.
Why it matters: The scramble for electricity has become the gold rush beneath the AI boom, creating enormous value and enormous risk if demand falls short.
Electricity — long treated as a cheap, abundant commodity — is suddenly emerging as one of the most valuable strategic assets in business. “Everyone to some extent is either dependent on energy as a core input or they see energy as a huge opportunity,” said Brian Janous, who was Microsoft’s first energy hire 15 years ago and is now co-founder of data center developer Cloverleaf Infrastructure.
Reality check: Beneath the surging stock prices, trouble is mounting. Opposition to data centers is intensifying, and some of the biggest projects may never come to fruition. “A lot of people are going to lose a lot of money in this space,” Janous said — not because of a lack of demand, but because so many mega projects are chasing that demand.