Trump Declares Himself 'King'--and Zelensky a 'Dictator'

Plus new music from Rhiannon Giddens and a dozen hot cartoons.

Greg Mitchell is the author of more than a dozen books and now writer/director of three award-winning films aired via PBS, including “Atomic Cover-up” and “Memorial Day Massacre.” Now Watch trailer for acclaimed 2025 film “The Atomic Bowl.” Before all that, he was a longtime editor of the legendary Crawdaddy. At Blue Sky and Twitter: as @gregmitch. You can still subscribe to this newsletter for FREE—so see new links to read about/order his books at bottom of this newsletter.

Starting with some music (and controversy). Rhiannon Giddens, one of our faves, is about to tour with old Chocolate Drop pal Justin Robinson and they have an album coming in April. Here is the first cut from it below. But at the same time, she is among the most prominent artists with upcoming Kennedy Center gigs, on May 11, as Trump’s new board cancels what they see as “woke” shows. So some expect or hope that she will cancel, as Issa Rae has done. On Wednesday she posted on Facebook with cryptic message, ending with reference to the “other gigs”:

So I’ve been quiet on here…I’ve been just unable to say much. I will say at this point in time that I’m working on a couple of things behind the scenes that I’ll announce when they are ready. In the midst of all this mess, the other gigs must continue to be announced and celebrated!

Next let’s turn to the latest Trump outrages on Wednesday, first claiming that Ukraine started the war with Russia and “dictator” Zelensky cheated us out of military aid—and then this beauty below, as you may have noticed….

And in case you thought it was just one big laugh, the official White House account tweeted out this:

Well, social media mockery and lampoons quickly arrived but, of course, this is deadly serious and another example of saying-the-quiet-part-out-loud. Cartoonists have their say, below, but no one may be laughing in a few weeks, or even days.

And see new links at bottom for my various books if you wish to sustain this (still somehow free) newsletter.

King Loony the First

Ann Telnaes:

Angus Greig, New York Times, clever Trump/Putin mashup

Some of Greg Mitchell’s books, you might order one or more to help sustain this FREE newsletter (links to Amazon but most also available elsewhere), in no particular order.

>The best-selling “The Tunnels: Escapes Under the Berlin Wall—and the Historic Films JFK Tried to Kill” (Crown, 2016).

>Award winning “The Beginning or the End: How Hollywood—and America—Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb” (The New Press, 2020).

>Another award winner (and considered a “classic” by many election nerds and others), “The Campaign of the Century: Upton Sinclair’s Race for Governor of California and the Birth of Media Politics” (Random House, 1992, and later editions).

>”So Wrong for So Long: How the Press, the Pundits—and the President—Failed on Iraq” (Union Square Press, 2008), with a preface by Bruce Springsteen, Forword by Joe Galloway).

>”Tricky Dick and The Pink Lady: Richard Nixon vs. Helen Gahagan Douglas, Sexual Politics and the Red Scare” (Random House, 1998), a New York Times Notable Book.

“Vonnegut & Me,” an inexpensive (some would say cheap) little ebook recalling my interviews with the author and humorist in the 1970s, including a much-anthologized profile of the author by one Kilgore Trout.

>Best-seller “Hiroshima in America: Fifty Years of Denial,” with Robert Jay Lifton (Putnam’s, 1995).

>”Atomic Cover-up: Two U.S. Soldiers, Hiroshima & Nagasaki, and the Greatest Movie Never Made” (Sinclair Books, several updated editions), inspired my award-winning film of the same name.

>”Memorial Day Massacre: Workers Die, Film Buried” (Sinclair Books, 2024), companion to my PBS film on the 1937 police murder of striking steel workers and activists in Chicago.

>”Who Owns Death? Capital Punishment and the American Conscience,” with Robert Jay Lifton (Morrow, 1999).