Where do I even begin in describing what the events of the week have told us about the coming Trump era? Four developments this week, in entirely different realms, have done much to illuminate what life under Donald Trump is going to be like.

Let’s begin with a piece of news that you may have missed. This was good news: The Biden administration’s Federal Trade Commission won a big one in a Portland, Oregon, court when, after a three-week trial, a judge ruled against the proposed Kroger-Albertsons grocery store merger. The stores argued that the merger would give them more leverage over suppliers, thus enabling them to lower prices. The government argued that it would reduce competition, allowing them to both raise prices and reduce the power of their unionized work forces. The judge ruled for the government.

What does this tell us about the Trump era? A couple important things. One, it’s extremely unlikely a Trump FTC, under nominee Andrew Ferguson (who will not require Senate confirmation), would try to block such a merger. You see, the Biden administration announced merger guidelines a year ago that made effects on the labor market a more central factor in considering mergers. In other words: It took a stand for the working class. Two, Judge Nelson was appointed by Joe Biden.

The Trump FTC will surely revisit—that is, toss—those Biden-era guidelines. It would also look more favorably on mergers like the Kroger-Albertsons one. Ferguson, and Trump’s other antitrust appointments, do want to do a certain amount of cracking down, but to the extent they’re prepared to swing a big stick at corporate consolidation, it will be in pursuit of a narrow interest: Big Tech’s alleged (and mostly phantasmal) suppression of right-wing speech. And if a future merger like the Kroger-Albertsons one comes before a Trump-appointed judge, count on it getting approved. But remember, the Republicans are the party of the working class!

Item two: Trump rang the opening bell on Wall Street Thursday, to thunderous applause and chants of "USA, USA!" He announced there that he’ll lower the corporate tax rate to 15 percent for companies that make their products in the United States. It would stay at 21 percent for companies that do not. That sounds very MAGA. But what about corporations that don’t make anything at all? Here are the 10 largest companies in the U.S. by revenue: Walmart, Amazon, Apple, UnitedHealth Group, Berkshire Hathaway, CVS, Exxon Mobil, Alphabet, McKesson, and Cencora (the last two are pharmaceutical distributors). Only a couple of them make things. Let’s guess what these companies’ new rate will be.

The great avatar of the working class will stop considering workers’ interests in antitrust enforcement and will lower corporate taxes again. But hey, he went on Joe Rogan. He’s a tough-guy tribune of the working stiff.

A third development of the week that opens a window onto what Trump 2.0 will be like was the open declaration by Elon Musk that he’ll finance primaries against Republican senators who vote against Trump’s Cabinet nominees. "How else? There is no other way," Musk wrote on X. Marjorie Taylor Greene, chasing approval and relevance, chimed in: "Elon and Vivek talked about having a naughty list and a nice list for members of Congress and senators and how we vote and how we’re spending the American people’s money."

In other words, Republican senators: You better vote to approve Pete Hegseth and Tulsi Gabbard and Kash Patel and RFK Jr., or you’re going to have a primary challenger on your hands financed by Elon Musk—who, thanks to the right-wing Supreme Court, can throw as much dark money at a primary as he wants. Twenty GOP incumbent senators are up for reelection in 2026, including Mitch McConnell (if he runs) and that sometime troublemaker Joni Ernst. This is hardly different from Putin’s Russia, or an Americanized version thereof. The billionaire president had better get his billionaire Cabinet just as he wants it, or the world’s biggest billionaire will destroy your career.

Those confirmations will include, as I mentioned above, Patel, who as of this week looks like he’s on a glide path to confirmation. So reassuring, in a week that started with Trump telling Kristen Welker that the members of the House January 6 committee belong in prison. It’s another marker of how grotesquely Trump has debased American political culture that a president-elect can dangle the threat of jail time in the faces of incumbent elected representatives and it’s barely even news.

It was news, however, that FBI Director Chris Wray will be throwing in the towel, and rightfully so. Wray chose not to go submit himself to the abasement that he knew he and the bureau faced, the endless smearing of his reputation in the right-wing media, if he tried to defy Trump’s wishes and stay on. The precedent this sets will reverberate plenty over the next four years and beyond. So Patel, the man who promised to explode the FBI and whose enemies list is three times longer than Richard Nixon’s, will probably take over the agency.

Fourth and finally, let us not forget Robert F. Kennedy Jr. There’s so much craziness and corruption and incompetence that it’s impossible to keep it all front of mind, which is of course part of the plan. So when we manage to direct our attention to the future of the nation’s public health, we must think not only about Kennedy. We are introduced to figures like Kennedy’s attorney Aaron Siri, who in 2022, The New York Times tells us in a scorching piece, petitioned the government to revoke the polio vaccine. The polio vaccine! Literally one of the great triumphs of the human race. Hey, Siri, is polio on the rise again? Why yes, it is. Lower rates of vaccination are part of the reason.

Trump expressed skepticism about polio vaccine revocation, so at least he’s apparently that sane. But the signal is clear: If Kennedy is confirmed, it’ll be open season on vaccines in general—maybe even modern medicine writ large. Siri is advising Kennedy on people to fill the top positions at his agency should he win confirmation. Feel better?

I know. Voters were angry about the price of eggs. And we can’t blame them. But soon enough, they’ll start to see what they voted for. And as Trump finally admitted this week, after lying for a year on the campaign trail, there isn’t really much he can do to bring down prices, either. So now we’ll have $5 eggs and a corrupt oligarchy and political opponents under arrest and new outbreaks of once-defeated diseases. But remember, Trump was the working-class candidate.

Last week’s quiz: "A state of war has existed …" A quiz on the attack on Pearl Harbor, 73 years ago last Saturday. 

1. Tensions were brewing between the United States and Japan for months over the course of 1941. In a Gallup poll just before the attack, what percent of Americans said they expected war with Japan?

A. 37

B. 45

C. 52

D. 61

Answer: C, 52 percent. With 27 percent saying "no" and 21 having no opinion. That 52 is pretty high, but it’s lower than the percentage who expected the U.S. would join the war in Europe.

2. How many Japanese aircraft participated in the attack?

A. 188

B. 222

C. 353

D. 408

Answer: C, 353. You can also take credit if you said 408 because I saw some sources that used that number, but 353 is the more frequently cited figure.

3. The attack was of course a great success for Japan, but it wasn’t the success it might have been because …

A. U.S. anti-aircraft guns took out almost half of Japanese aircraft.

B. the three U.S. aircraft carriers based in Pearl Harbor were out on maneuvers that day.

C. the Japanese ran out of fuel before an anticipated third wave.

D. Yamamoto misread a telegram from the emperor and ordered a premature retreat.

Answer: B, the three carriers were out. The Enterprise was a couple hundred miles away; the Lexington even farther; the Saratoga in San Diego. In 1941, the U.S. had eight aircraft carriers; by 1945, nearly 100. Today? Just 11!

4. The most famous phrase from Roosevelt’s declaration of war speech to Congress is typically remembered as "a day that will live in infamy." But he actually said:

A. "A date that will live in infamy"

B. "A date which will live in infamy"

C. "A day which will live in infamy"

D. "A day that will live in infamy" (i.e., the common rendering)

Answer: B, "date" and "which." Here’s the text. 

5. Interestingly, the United Kingdom …

A. declared war on Japan nine hours before the United States did.

B. coordinated matters with Washington such that Churchill spoke to the House of Commons at exactly the same time Roosevelt spoke to Congress.

C. waited to see what Hitler would do and didn’t declare war on Japan until December 12.

D. never officially declared war on Japan.

Answer: A, before. Why? Because (a) Japan also attacked Hong Kong, Malaya, and Singapore, and (b) because Churchill didn’t have to wait around for the House of Commons—the Cabinet had the power to declare war.

6. Which of the following is generally considered to be the best and most accurate Pearl Harbor movie?

A. From Here to Eternity (1953)

B. They Were Expendable (1945)

C. Pearl Harbor (2001)

D. Tora! Tora! Tora! (1970)

Answer: D, Tora! Unique because it explored the day from both vantage points. It was a joint Japanese-American effort that had very few stars and more regular people, especially among the Japanese. One American star was Martin Balsam, four years shy of trying to rob that No. 6 train.

This week’s quiz: It’s a Wonderful Life … On Christmas-themed movies and TV shows

1. The number one Christmas song of all time, Irving Berlin’s "White Christmas," made its debut in what 1942 Christmas movie?

A. White Christmas

B. Holiday Inn

C. Christmas in Connecticut

D. I’ll Be Seeing You

2. The finest portrayal of Ebenezer Scrooge on film occurred in 1951’s Scrooge, a British film released in the United States as A Christmas Carol. Who played Scrooge in this screen version?

A. C. Aubrey Smith

B. Bernard Lee

C. Reginald Owen

D. Alastair Sim

3. The 1960s brought the release of so many children’s Christmas TV classics. Three of the most beloved are How the Grinch Stole Christmas, A Charlie Brown Christmas, and Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer. They made their debuts in three consecutive years. What were the years, and what was the order in which they were released?

4. Rudolph of course was a Rankin-Bass stop-motion animation cartoon. The duo’s second-most-popular stop-motion Christmas special was 1970’s Santa Claus Is Coming to Town. It featured the voices of which two famous old Hollywood stars?

A. Gene Kelly and Bert Lahr

B. Bing Crosby and Bob Hope

C. Fred Astaire and Mickey Rooney

D. Laurence Olivier and Richard Burton

5. Moving beyond the old classics like It’s a Wonderful Life, there have been some great Christmas movies of more recent vintage. According to an imdb.com list of the Top 100 Christmas Movies of All-Time, the movies below rank at #2, #4, #6, #9, #18, and #22. Can you place them in the correct order?

A. The Nightmare Before Christmas

B. Die Hard

C. National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation

D. Love Actually

E. Elf

F. Home Alone

6. How many Christmas movies did the Hallmark Channel produce for this year?

A. 21

B. 32

C. 39

D. 53

Answers: We are breaking from tradition this week and giving you the answers. Fighting Words is taking the next three weeks off, reappearing not until January 10, so I figured I’d just give you these answers today because by January 10 you won’t care. So heeeeere they are.

1. B, Holiday Inn, starring Fred Astaire, Der Bingle, and the little-known-today Marjorie Reynolds. And no, your memory isn’t playing tricks on you—there was a movie called White Christmas, but it didn’t come out until 1954. It starred Crosby (again!) and the immortal Danny Kaye (no, not joking). Christmas in Connecticut is a 1945 rom-com starring Barbara Stanwyck and Dennis Morgan. And I’ll Be Seeing You is a vastly underappreciated 1944 William Dieterle-lensed film featuring rare dramatic, non-singing-or-dancing performances from both Ginger Rogers and Shirley Temple. The plot, rather daring for those days, has Rogers heading home from prison on a Christmas furlough and falling in love with soldier Joseph Cotten, fighting post-traumatic stress–related demons of his own ("shell shock," as it was called then). It’s quite moving and worth a holiday-break peek if you’re never seen it.

2. D, Alastair Sim. Yes, this is my opinion, but it’s not just me. One critic called his performance "the gold standard by which all others must be judged." C. Aubrey Smith was a great British actor of that generation. For a zestful taste of Smith, see Zoltan Korda’s astonishing 1939 The Four Feathers. Bernard Lee played M in the first several Bond movies, first opposite Sean Connery and then deep into the Roger Moore era. And Reginald Owen played Scrooge in a 1936 adaptation—credibly, to be sure, but with nowhere near Sim’s insight or panache.

3. My wheelhouse. I feel so lucky to have been a child at this time. It was Rudolph in 1964, Charlie Brown in 1965, and Grinch in 1966. Classics all.

4. The answer is C, Fred Astaire (as the narrator) and Mickey Rooney (as Kris Kringle). The A option was quite plausible, B a little less so, while if Rankin and Bass had landed Larry and Dick, well, that would have been something, but that kind of pop cultural irony didn’t exist yet. The Bing Crosby–David Bowie Christmas duet was seven years away.

5. The answers are: #2 is Die Hard, #4 is Home Alone, #6 is National Lampoon, #9 is Elf, #18 is Nightmare, and #22 is Love Actually. Here’s the full list, which is topped, appropriately, by It’s a Wonderful Life.

6. B, 32. I would’ve thought far more. I watch 10 or 15 minutes of these movies from time to time, speculating in my mind about the weirdness of this little industry and how there are probably hundreds of people in Hollywood, from directors to actors to key grips and gaffers, who make tidy livings strictly off Hallmark Christmas movies. This year’s highlight, which debuted over Thanksgiving weekend, was Chiefs Love Story, a fictionalized account of the Taylor Swift–Travis Kelce romance!

And with that, I’m off for a while. I thank you all very sincerely for reading these scribblings and wish you a happy holiday season. Again, Fighting Words returns January 10. Who knows what 2025 will bring. Let’s hope that this time next year we’re all still in a place where we can laugh about Christmas entertainments.

—Michael Tomasky, editor 

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