Digestif #25: January 26th
Oscars speculation, Musk salutes, and Severance (and Trump) are back.
Welcome to Trump’s America (again): There are a possible billion takes to make about Trump's return, and all of them have already been said, but here are my 10 quick thoughts:
Trump is nuttier, more reckless, and more able to achieve his plans than during his first term. He doesn't need to win re-election, he has a more effective team around him, and fewer guardrails can stop him.
The best hope for moderation is that he will continue to care a lot about the market's movements and will pull back on policies that alarm Wall Street and send the S&P tumbling. This was true of the last Trump administration, and he's even closer to American business today. He will also happily stab his own voters in the back to achieve this; expect every H-1B visa argument to similarly end in the way that favors billionaires over working-class Trump voters.
To that end, I don't expect him to put in place the kind of tariffs he's been talking about, and instead, he will claim to have secured some great deal with China and Mexico and back down. If he went through with the China one, the global economy would tank; if he went through with the Canadian tariffs, American oil prices would explode; and if he went through with the Mexican one, many popular cars and grocery items would leap in price. Hopefully, he knows this and will back down from enacting these.
Similarly, if he were to follow through on his deportation plans, not only would they be morally awful, but they would cost billions for the American taxpayer, and the market would respond very negatively. Instead, I assume he'll pull a "crowd-size" claim about the deportations: throwing out those "illegals" currently under arrest or in jail, and cracking down on new crossings, but stopping there. I don't think he genuinely wants to see ICE going door-to-door, dragging away grandmothers, and this limited approach is easier, cheaper, and still achieves his political objections. Plus, he's vain, and those images wouldn't help him.
He will genuinely pursue buying Greenland; this isn't a bluff and obviously never was. At the right price, it's not a bad idea, and more independence, money, and defense probably sounds better than Danish control to many Greenlanders. (If you want to know about their history, I strongly recommend this piece in the Financial Times). It's weird to be a priority, particularly as Denmark's NATO membership makes it less strategically important, but alas.
I don't think he'll genuinely pursue taking the Panama Canal or Canada. But, if the economy went into recession, that could change. He's a real-estate guy; his whole political motto is around restoring America to its former glory, which typically included territorial expansion; and he's a showman/media-whore, and this would get a lot of attention.
He's not sounding as bad on Ukraine as I expected. I thought he would share J.D. Vance's line that Ukraine needed to accept defeat, that Zelensky is getting his innocent people killed, and dragging the world into a war etc. — but, instead, Trump's mostly saying that Putin is weak (which is true). Is that down to his chats with Boris Johnson, or his classified briefs? Who knows. He won't spin this into full-throated support for Ukraine, arming them to the teeth as I would like, but it also probably won't end up with him forcing them to accept a bad deal. I shall try to remain optimistic.
Modern Presidents have decided to do everything through executive action, ensuring their policies have a half-life of four to eight years (lasting until a President of the other party comes into office and revokes them all). This is lazy, stupid, short-sighted governance, and frankly undemocratic, and it's about time that a candidate of either party ran promising to sign almost no executive orders and achieve their agenda through coordination and cooperation with the legislature. You can't make a legacy through instantly revokable policies, and more politicians should realize that.
One of the bitter ironies of modern politics is that one of the only bills to pass both houses, with almost unanimous bipartisan support, then get signed by the President, and approved by the courts, is the TikTok divestment bill, which Trump has chosen not to enforce. So, to be clear: it is illegal for TikTok to be active in the US1, but Trump is choosing not to enforce that ban, or the multi-billion dollar fines they have every legal right to hold against companies that serve it, like Oracle. An utterly insane, stupid situation.
Speaking of disfunction: the pardon power needs to be dramatically limited through Constitutional amendment. I like the idea floated by David French and Sarah Isgur that all pardons, individually, have to be approved by the Senate, fulfilling their “advice and consent” function. It’s good for the President to have the pardon power; but Trump and Biden have both used it corruptly and recklessly, to free violent thugs and corrupt family members alike.
Anyone who professes to care about free speech and isn’t outraged at Trump’s demands for MSNBC to be taken off the air is a hypocrite and doesn’t actually care about free speech.
DOGE will do nothing meaningful about government expenditure and inefficiency.
Musk and Trump will have an enormous falling out within the next 12 to 18 months, and it will be hilarious.
Did Musk Sieg Heil? No. Musk holds far-right views and isn't shy about them. So, if he were a Nazi, his salutes wouldn't have any ambiguity, and he would plainly advocate for Nazism. He's an intensely physically awkward person (have you ever seen him dance?), and this seems entirely consistent with that; even though a grown man shouldn't need to be told, "By the way, be careful not to accidentally give a Nazi salute." His less ambiguous and far worse action was appearing over a video call at a rally for the far-right German party, AfD, saying that "I think there is too much focus on past guilt, and we need to move beyond that. Children should not feel guilty for the sins of their parents - their great grandparents even." Yikes.
A big week for big AI claims: The world of AI was sent into a tizzy this week over two different but related news events. The first was The Stargate Project: an investment project from Oracle, OpenAI, and SoftBank, promising to build American AI infrastructure over the next four years and spend half a fucking trillion dollars doing so. (Clip above is unrelated). One day before, the Chinese firm DeepSeek released an open-source AI model that gets close to the performance of OpenAI’s leading o1 model, costs 100 times less to run, and apparently was made for only $6M. I have a piece on this in the UK Spectator coming out early next week (it’s one of the best pieces I’ve written in ages), where I air my doubts about its cost claims and whether DeepSeek released this out of altruism or to increase Chinese influence.
Perfection. 10/10, no notes.
Back to the Office: Severance is back for a second season, and I've written about it! Or my innie did. It’s still the best show on TV, and season 2 takes it in an even stranger, deeper direction. Definitely recommend giving it a watch. Also in The Spectator: my cocktail column! This one is on Bloody Marys, which are deeply underrated and wonderful.
In The New York Sun, I wrote about the new Tesla Model Y, Subaru’s crappy new WRX STi, the death of Y/Project, a review of a cool camera, thoughts on Nvidia’s new GPUs and Project Digits computer, a dumb AI pendant, and Nintendo’s long-awaited Switch 2. My Gizmo of the Week is the CalDigit TS4 Thunderbolt 4 dock.
Oscar nominations are out! There were snubs (no cinematography for Nickel Boys?!), but this is a surprisingly diverse, competitive year with a lot of great films up for contention. So: here are my predictions for who will win, and who ought to.
Best Picture
Nominees: Anora, The Brutalist, A Complete Unknown, Conclave, Dune: Part 2, Emilia Pérez, I’m Still Here, Nickel Boys, The Substance, Wicked
Who should win: The Brutalist2 or The Substance
Who will win: A Complete Unknown
This had a split race between Emilia Pérez and The Brutalist, but both have their controversies and people who don’t like them, whereas A Complete Unknown is very widely liked, and I think it’ll squeak into victory. Conclave had been in this slot, as an old-fashioned Oscars contender, but A Complete Unknown was a late surprise, and Chalamet’s double-threat performance will carry the film.
Best Director
Nominees: Jacques Audiard (Emilia Pérez), Sean Baker, (Anora), Brady Corbet (The Brutalist), Coralie Fargeat (The Substance), James Mangold (A Complete Unknown)
Who should win: Brady Corbet
Who will win: Brady Corbet
Ordinarily, the Best Picture winner and Best Director go together, but I seriously doubt Mangold gets this, with Corbet as the obvious choice. Coralie Fargeat would be a wonderful surprise though.
Best Actor
Nominees: Adrien Brody (The Brutalist), Timothée Chalamet (A Complete Unknown), Colman Domingo (Sing Sing), Ralph Fiennes (Conclave), Sebastian Stan (The Apprentice)3
Who should win: Timothée Chalamet
Who will win: Timothée Chalamet
Chalamet is the clear front-runner here, and deservedly so. Brody is second, but I don’t think he gets it unless The Brutalist throws an Oppenheimer and runs the board, getting Picture, Director, Actor, Actress, Supporting Actor, Original Screenplay, and so forth.
Best Actress
Nominees: Cynthia Erivo (Wicked), Karla Sofía Gascón (Emilia Pérez), Mikey Madison (Anora), Demi Moore (The Substance), Fernanda Torres (I’m Still Here)
Who should win: Demi Moore
Who will win: Demi Moore
A bold, brilliant performance in the rare horror film to get an Oscar nomination. Her place in this race was late arriving, but her Golden Globes speech seems to have locked in a win, and rightfully so. And, if she doesn’t win, I’m doing a one-man Jan. 6 on The Academy headquarters. I want to shout out Mikey Madison, who is remarkable in Anora and deserves many great roles in the future.
Best Supporting Actor
Nominees: Yura Borisov (Anora), Kieran Culkin (A Real Pain), Edward Norton (A Complete Unknown), Guy Pearce (The Brutalist), Jeremy Strong (The Apprentice).
Who should win: Guy Pearce
Who will win: Guy Pearce
I’d be utterly shocked if he lost.
Best Supporting Actress
Nominees: Monica Barbaro (A Complete Unknown), Ariana Grande (Wicked), Felicity Jones (The Brutalist), Isabella Rossellini (Conclave), Zoe Saldaña (Emilia Pérez)
Who should win: Felicity Jones
Who will win: Zoe Saldaña
It's not a particularly compelling roster here (which makes Margaret Qualley’s snub all the more odd), but Saldaña will sweep to the win here despite obviously not having a ‘supporting’ role (she has almost an hour of screen time, which is enormous) and not being particularly good in it. But oh well.
Other Awards
These awards get less attention and are harder to predict so this is the reduced format.
Original Screenplay: The Substance should win; The Brutalist will.
Adapted Screenplay: Conclave should win; Emilia Pérez or A Complete Unknown probably will.
Animated Feature: The Wild Robot should and will win.
Production Design: Nosferatu or Conclave should win; The Brutalist probably will.
Costume Design: Nosferatu should win; Wicked might get a win here? Or Conclave?
Cinematography: Nosferatu should win; Emilia Pérez probably will.
Makeup and Hairstyling: Nosferatu or The Substance should win; Emilia Pérez probably will though.
Sound: Dune: Part 2 should win this; Emilia Pérez probably will though, or A Complete Unknown if not.
Visual Effects: Dune: Part 2 should win this (though Alien: Romulus deserves its props); I have no idea who will.
Original Score: The Brutalist should win this; Wicked will though.
Original Song: One of the Emilia Pérez songs will win, and I couldn’t care less.
International Feature: Flow or I’m Still Here should win; Emilia Pérez will win though.
I haven’t seen any of the documentaries or shorts; and I never know who should or will win the editing award.
And rightfully so, given how much data it hoovers up, how much influence it can have, and how tightly linked it is to the CCP.
For disclosure: I haven’t seen The Brutalist yet, but I put it here out of very high confidence that I will like it, and even if I don’t, it’s a low-budget epic with an interval, shot on film, and that’s deserving of a win.
If Harris had won the election, we would never have heard about this film again, and rightfully so.