By Todd Lassa

Let us all now praise the vinyl record album-style revival of print magazines. President Trump’s recent surprise, pop-up interview with The Atlantic the other week, having been swamped newswise first by his Arab Gulf trip and then by his stiff-arm lobbying for his Big, Beautiful Bill, has been preserved for history in the magazine's June 2025 print issue.

The print version of The Atlantic never went away, but now it could revive the Monthly part of its name, because it’s back up from 10 issues a year. And the June 2025 issue reminds us that in the pop-up interview, Trump said this: “I run the country and the world.”  

All that work running the globe and our own patch of it between the Atlantic and the Pacific hasn’t diminished Trump’s ability to sweat the details. On Tuesday Trump took to the House of Representatives in the Capitol to lobby Republicans to get his Big, Beautiful budget reconciliation Bill passed through Congress. Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) wants it passed and out of his chamber by Memorial Day weekend. 

Bollocksing up the House GOP’s three-vote margin is Rep. Chip Roy (R-TX, pictured), who leads a group of budget hawks who do not want to encourage Trump’s propensity for multiplying the deficit. 

Speaker Johnson has a three-Republican margin for passing the Trump budget reconciliation bill along party lines. Roy leads a group of four Freedom Caucus members who do not want to add the $3.8 trillion to $5.3 trillion the Council of Economic Advisors say Bx3 will add to the federal deficit in the next decade.

After his visit to the Hill, Trump is now threatening to primary Roy for his intransigence on his budget, per The Hill. Trump will have to wait a while. Roy was re-elected just last year, which means he’s next up in 2030.