Hos for Pratt, Slop for Americans
Life During Trumptime - 5/11/26 - 5/17/26
When I imagine the near term future of American politics I see Spencer Pratt.
Pratt is a reality TV star running for the mayor of Los Angeles and I’ve been watching his campaign with morbid fascination. I have never lived in California and can not vote in this election, but the grotesque spectacle of its current politics calls to me. My guilt in following an election on the opposite coast was ameliorated somewhat when a Pratt fan bought a billboard for the candidate in Georgia. That’s a lot of Pratt rather close to my home.
Pratt first came to my attention because of an AI-generated campaign video that depicted him as Batman and Joe Rogan as Commissioner Gordon. In the video current LA mayor Karen Bass is imagined as a cruel Joker ruling over a Los Angeles on fire while Governor Gavin Newsom eats cake. In the video Pratt and normal everyday folk gather together to hurl tomatoes at Democratic establishment figures.
Pratt and his campaign did not buy this ad. It’s the work of a man named Charles Curran who saw Pratt during a televised debate and became a fan “It’s not inherently difficult. Which is why I think you’ll see a lot more of this,” Curran told The New York Times.
Curran is correct. We’re at the start of a new political reality where AI-generated videos become normal campaign fodder. This may seem frightening, but American politics has always been inundated with cartoonish satire using the tools of the day. I may loathe AI-generated art, but the tools are ubiquitous and I think it will be used by all sides in the coming elections.
The AI-generated political slop supporting Pratt is, at least, competently made. When Andrew Cuomo ran for Mayor of New York City last year he deployed a number of AI-generated advertisements that were quite haunting. In one, a satire of the famous Schoolhouse Rock video about how bills are passed, a cartoon Cuomo sang alongside a seemingly pregnant AI-generated cartoon bill.
Elsewhere online, a sex worker connoisseur filmed a video for Instagram where various working girls in Los Angeles shouted out their love for Pratt.
Win or lose, Pratt feels like an evolution of Trumpian style politics in America.
5/11/26
During an earnings call with investors, Saudi Aramco CEO Amin Nasser said the oil market would remain bad for some time. “If the Strait of Hormuz opens today, it will still take months for the market to rebalance, and if its opening is delayed by a few more weeks, then normalization will last into 2027,” Nasser said. As of this writing, the Strait remains closed.
Trump posted on Truth Social 55 times between 10PM and midnight. He shared videos about Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, conspiracy theory rants about his 2020 election loss, security footage of a man knocking plates out of a waiter’s hands at a restaurant, and a video of a Door Dasher allegedly stealing food.
5/12/26
Guerilla artists Secret Handshake installed arcade cabinets for the video game Operation Epic Furious: Strait to Hell at the DC War Memorial on the National Mall.
“The Trump administration knows that the best way to sell combat is by making it a video game. That’s why they’ve been pumping out the sockets Iran War video game hype reels. But why stop at clips when you could go full throttle?” Said a plaque near the arcade machines.
Journalists spotted members of the National Guard on patrol in DC playing the game. You can play it yourself online.
The FBI in Sacramento announced the arrest of the founder of the Punjabi Devils, a Hell’s Angel’s-style motorcycle gang. The Feds alleged that the founder attempted to sell weapons to an undercover officer.
5/13/26
Japanese snack maker Calbee announced some of its colorful bags will now be sold in black and white. The reason is a shortage of naphtha, a critical ingredient in colored ink that is in short supply because of the global oil squeeze caused by the closure of the Strait of Hormuz.
Trump landed in China with a delegation that included Nvidia’s Jensen Huang, Apple’s Tim Cook, and Elon Musk.
5/14/26
A lot happened today, let’s start in China.
Thursday was the busiest day for Trump in China. The delegations from both countries sat for lengthy press conferences, posed for pictures, and discussed the fate of Taiwan and the Strait of Hormuz.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio was in attendance despite being under Chinese sanction for speaking out against Beijing’s actions in Hong Kong and its mistreatment of Uyghurs. Early reports indicated that China got around its own sanctions by changing Rubio’s name so it didn’t match the official sanction documents. According to The New York Times, however, this isn’t true.
“The theory linking the multiple versions of his name to sanctions relief is wrong. Many non-Chinese people have varied Chinese transliterations for their names, even in official pronouncements or reports. It turns out that Xinhua, the state news agency, had already been referring to Rubio as both 卢比奥 and 鲁比奥 for about a decade. There might even have been other variations that have appeared in state news reports.”
Admiral Brad Cooper, the commander of CENTCOM, testified before a U.S. Senate Armed Services Committee and Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand grilled him on the end of the war and the bombing of civilian targets.
“How did we then bomb 22 schools?” Gillibrand said.
“There is no indication that we have that has been corroborated. Zero—” Cooper said.
“How many schools have we bombed?” Gillibrand said.
“There is one active civilian casualty investigation from the 13,629 munitions.”
Gillibrand asked if Cooper was investigating the various claims made by multiple news agencies and humanitarian groups about the US bombing of civilian targets in Iran. “Have you investigated those claims?” She said.
“We have not,” Cooper said.
The CIA published photographs of Director John Ratcliffe meeting with various officials in Havana, Cuba. CNN reported the meeting and said the DOJ was preparing an indictment against former President Raúl Castro. To me, this is another bid to wrap up all the Boomer plotlines before Trump dies.
The US House voted on a resolution to curtail Trump’s war powers. Such resolutions need a majority to pass and the vote was a tie, 212 to 212, so it failed. Democrats led the effort, but several Republicans voted in favor. An April 16 vote was split 213 to 214. A similar measure has failed in the Senate seven times.
America’s Ambassador to Greece is Kimberly Guilfoyle, California Governor’s ex-wife, the former fiancée of Donald Trump Jr., and former Fox News talking head. Today she cut the ribbon at a McDonald’s at the Mall in Athens, calling it “the most technologically advanced McDonald’s in all of Europe!”
5/15/26
Trump spent his last day in China meeting. A foreign leader visiting Zhongnanhai is rare and Trump did not enter the gardens during his 2017 visit. After taking in the rare delight of the imperial gardens, Trump and the US delegation left China. Before boarding the plane home, they threw away everything the Chinese had gifted them. “American staff took everything Chinese officials handed out—credentials, burner phones from WH staff, pins for delegation—collected them before we got on AF1 and threw them in a bin at [the] bottom [of the] stairs. Nothing from China allowed on the plane,” New York Post WH correspondent Emily Goodin said in a post on X.com.
5/16/26
US forces in Africa announced they’d killed Islamic State leader Abu-Bilal al-Minuki in Nigeria. Al-Minuki was a former Boko Haram faithful who joined the Islamic State’s West Africa division in 2016. He rose to prominence there and became an important figure in the Islamic State’s global campaign. The specifics of the mission are unknown but the Government of Nigeria partnered with US forces to make it happen and AFRICOM said there were no American casualties.
5/17/26
A drone struck a nuclear power plant in the United Arab Emirates. The attack started a fire but the UAE said no one was injured and international monitoring agencies did not detect a radiological leak. The Barakh power plant is the only nuclear power facility in the UAE. No one claimed responsibility for the attack in the aftermath, but the UAE Defense Ministry would later claim the strike came from Iran-backed Shiite militias in Iraq.
Axios published based on “classified intelligence” that claimed Cuba had acquired more than 300 drones and planned to use them to attack US military assets in the region.
“The intelligence—which could become a pretext for U.S. military action—shows the degree to which the Trump administration sees Cuba as a threat because of developments in drone warfare and the presence of Iranian military advisers in Havana, a senior U.S. official said.”