As you’ve probably noticed by now, Donald Trump has a thing for dictators. While America’s long-standing allies have received nothing but scorn from him for the last two years, the real-estate developer turned president can’t get enough of strongmen whose brutal tactics he’d love nothing more than to adopt in the U.S. Recep Tayyip Erdoğan; Rodrigo Duterte; Vladimir Putin; Mohammed bin Salman—he loves ’em all. But while he’s utterly devoted to Putin for reasons that may soon be revealed, and dotes on M.B.S. to the point that the Saudis were given a free pass on murder by bone saw, there’s one authoritarian who seems to have truly stolen Trump’s heart: Kim Jong Un. After a slightly rocky start, the president of the United States appears to be uniquely obsessed with his North Korean friend, whose correspondence he carries around, and with whom he told supporters he “fell in love.” In fact, Trump is so smitten that whereas other people see a barbaric murderer, he evidently sees a stand-up young man from whom Don Jr. could learn a thi ng or two.

According to new report from CNN, the last time the two leaders met, Trump told Kim that he’d known “plenty of people who’d grown up wealthy and whose families were powerful,” life circumstances that led to them being total f--kups. But Kim, in Trump’s mind, wasn’t one of them. (As a reminder, we’re talking about a guy who runs a country that’s been described as “the world’s biggest open prison camp,” who’s starved his own people to pay for nuclear weapons, and who ordered the execution of his half brother and uncle.)

Trump, of course, has a vested interest in flattering Kim. The two are currently rubbing shoulders in Vietnam, at a summit that no one expects will yield much of anything for the U.S., save for, at best, a “gesture that would help signal that Kim may actually be serious about dismantling [his nuclear] program eventually.” As a leader for whom ass-kissing goes a very long way, Trump presumably expects the strategy to work on his little authoritarian friend. None of which is to say he doesn’t truly believe that Kim is an accomplished dictator people should look up to. Last year, he told reporters how impressed he was with Kim’s ability to “take over a situation like he did at 26 years of age and run it, and run it tough,” and earlier this month he informed his followers that an economic miracle is about to take place in North Korea—one that only he saw coming.

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Nothing to see here, just a Republican representative and Trump ally taunting a witness the day before he’s scheduled to testify before Congress

Cohen, Trump’s former fixer, is expected to “offer up a document to lawmakers” during his congressional testimony tomorrow “that he claims will show the president engaged in criminal conduct related to a hush-money payment to porn star Stormy Daniels.“ According to a recent report from The New York Times, Gaetz decided in 2017 that it was his duty to attack the special counsel’s investigation into Trump, a burden he apparently continues to carry in 2019. When asked about his threat against Cohen on Tuesday, the congressman told a reporter from Vox to stay tuned for “fireworks” tomorrow. In an interview with the Daily Beast, Gaetz insisted he was merely “challenging the veracity and character of a witness,” and that “this is what it looks like to compete in the marketplace of ideas,” which is an interesting euphemism for We’re gonna tell everyone about your who-ores.

Elon Musk can’t stop, won’t stop feuding with the S.E.C.

If only the regulator would let him tweet false claims about Tesla in peace, it wouldn’t have to come to this:

Elon Musk kept up his attack on the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on Twitter, even after landing in more regulatory trouble with potential penalties that at worst could see him being barred from running Tesla Inc. “Something is broken with S.E.C. oversight,” Musk wrote, in response to a user’s tweet sympathizing with this position. The U.S. regulator on Monday asked a judge to hold him in contempt for violating a settlement that required him to get Tesla approval for social-media posts and other writings that could be material to investors.

Musk was taking issue with the S.E.C. alleging he breached that deal with a February 19 tweet that said Tesla would make about half a million cars in 2019. The chief executive officer posted a few hours later that deliveries would only reach about 400,000. The exchanges come less than five months after Musk settled claims that he misled the public with tweets about taking the electric-car maker private.

Jerome Powell: No, printing money to cover our ballooning debts is not a great idea

And don’t think the Fed is going to enable y’all, either!

Powell . . . ripped proponents of modern monetary theory and threw cold water on the idea that the Federal Reserve would ever help out combating the impact of spiraling deficits by keeping interest rates low [during his congressional visit Tuesday] . . . MMT—as the concept is dubbed—argues that because America borrows in its own currency, it can always print more dollars to cover its obligations. As a result, the thinking goes, the U.S. can always run sustained budget deficits and rack up an ever-increasing debt burden. Helping grease the wheels for some MMTers is the expectation that the Fed would keep rates low to contain the cost of servicing America’s obligations.

“The idea that deficits don’t matter for countries that can borrow in their own currency I think is just wrong,” the Fed chair said in response to a question. The “U.S. debt is fairly high to the level of G.D.P.—and much more importantly—it’s growing faster than G.D.P., really significantly faster. We are going to have to spend less or raise more revenue.”

One way to spend less and raise more revenue would, of course, be to not pass deficit-busting tax legislation that does not, in fact, “pay for itself,” though that would require a time machine.

So we’ll put you down for “100 percent yes?”

Elsewhere!

Elon Musk says his Mars base will have a “fun, outdoorsy atmosphere” (CNBC)

Wayfair’s Surge Hits Short Sellers with $1 Billion in Losses (Bloomberg)

When the C.E.O. Wants You to Work Out with Him (Bloomberg)

Tariff Fears Led U.S. Manufacturers to Trim Spending (W.S.J.)

Andrew Cuomo and Bill de Blasio say weed tax and congestion pricing will fund N.Y.C. subways (CNBC)

Court Upholds AT&T-Time Warner Deal, Rejecting D.O.J. (W.S.J.)

Women take more C.E.O. roles at asset managers (Financial Times)

“I'm That Fat Rat Who Got Stuck in a Manhole Cover. This Is My Story.” (Jezebel)