I'm Isaac Saul, and this is Tangle: an independent, nonpartisan, subscriber-supported politics newsletter that summarizes the best arguments from across the political spectrum on the news of the day — then “my take.”

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Today’s read: 15 minutes.

Ethan Strauss joins the show.

On the latest episode of Suspension of the Rules, the Tangle team was joined by sports writer Ethan Strauss, who came on the show to chat about the NBA gambling scandal and stuck around for a discussion on Graham Platner’s Nazi tattoos (and why we can’t stop talking about Nazis). It’s one of our favorite episodes yet. You can listen to it here. 

Quick hits.

1. As of 10 am ET, the category 5 storm Hurricane Melissa had sustained wind speeds of 185 mph, making it one of the strongest Atlantic hurricanes in history. The storm is expected to make landfall in Jamaica Tuesday afternoon. (The hurricane)
2. The U.S. military conducted three strikes on four vessels in the Eastern Pacific, killing 14. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth claimed the boats were trafficking drugs and said that military personnel have begun search-and-rescue operations for one individual who survived the strikes. (The strikes)
3. Amazon plans to lay off 30,000 employees — roughly 10% of its workforce — starting this week. The cuts are expected to impact divisions across the company. (The layoffs)
4. President Donald Trump met with Japan’s newly elected Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi in Tokyo on the second stop in his Asia tour. The leaders signed a rare-earth minerals deal and recommitted to the 15% reciprocal tariff plan between the U.S. and Japan negotiated earlier this year. Trump is expected to meet Chinese President Xi Jinping in South Korea on Thursday. (The tour)
5. The government shutdown enters its 28th day on Tuesday, and groups of federal workers, including air-traffic controllers, have begun to miss full paychecks for the first time since the shutdown started. On Saturday, benefit payments for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) will stop getting delivered  and the open enrollment period for health insurance plans through the Affordable Care Act will begin. (The update)  

Today’s topic.

The Argentine election and U.S. bailout. On Sunday, Argentinian President Javier Milei’s La Libertad Avanza (Freedom Advances) party won approximately 41% of the national vote in the country’s midterms, outperforming polling expectations and more than doubling its representation in the next congress. The result gives Milei additional legislative support to uphold presidential vetoes and block impeachment efforts. It also serves as a vote of confidence in his administration, which has prioritized spending cuts and other large-scale reforms. In the weeks before the election, the Trump administration also provided $40 billion in financial support to stabilize the country’s currency and markets. 

Back up: Milei won the presidency in 2023 as Argentina faced major economic challenges and hyperinflation. Originally an economist, he rose to prominence as a television pundit known for criticizing Argentina’s leadership, later winning a seat in the federal government’s lower house. Milei ran for president on a platform of radical change, promising to eliminate the country’s central bank, dissolve many government agencies, lower taxes, and roll back labor laws. In his first years in office, he succeeded in slowing inflation and shrinking the government, but Argentina continues to struggle with poverty and economic instability. 

Since coming to power, Milei has been an outspoken supporter and ally of President Trump. On October 9, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent announced that the United States had finalized a $20 billion currency swap framework with Argentina’s central bank to help address some of its liquidity concerns. Then on October 15, Bessent said that the Trump administration was coordinating an additional $20 billion through a group of banks and sovereign-wealth funds to backstop Argentina’s debt. 

Trump conditioned the aid on La Libertad Avanza’s performance in the midterms, saying, “We’re not going to let somebody get into office and squander the taxpayer money from this country. I’m not gonna let it happen.” After Sunday’s results, Trump congratulated Milei, writing on Truth Social, “BIG WIN in Argentina for Javier Milei, a wonderful Trump Endorsed Candidate! He’s making us all look good.” Milei thanked Trump for “trusting the Argentine people” and called the president “a great friend.”

However, the U.S. bailout has drawn scrutiny from Democrats and some Republicans. On October 9, a group of Democratic senators introduced legislation to block the currency exchange, noting the transaction came amid the ongoing U.S. government shutdown. Separately, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) wrote on X, “Americans are getting decimated with high cost of living and skyrocketing insurance costs… Tell me how it’s America First to bailout a foreign country with $20 or even $40 BILLION taxpayer dollars.” 

Secretary Bessent has maintained that the bailout will not result in U.S. taxpayer losses despite the peso continuing to weaken. Bessent also defended the move against critics, saying, “It is America first because we are supporting a U.S. ally.”

Today, we’ll explore views from the left, right, and Argentinian writers on the election and U.S. bailout. Then, my take.

What the left is saying.

• The left is critical of the bailout, viewing it as fiscally unwise.
• Many say Trump’s political motivations are clear. 

In MSNBC, Rep. Nydia Velázquez (D-NY) argued “Trump’s Argentina bailout once again puts Americans last.”

“With government operations paralyzed and Americans’ pocketbooks reeling, the White House has made the extraordinary decision to move forward with a $20 billion bailout for Argentina,” Velázquez wrote. “Like DOGE, Milei’s program was billed as a war on waste, but in practice, it became a showy slashing spree that gutted public services while doing little to fix Argentina’s deeper economic problems. Milei’s program has driven household spending on utilities up from 6% to 15%, according to a report from the University of Buenos Aires, and pushed the country to the brink of a currency crisis.

“This situation has left many Argentines fed up with the Milei political agenda, causing his party to suffer a stunning loss in a Buenos Aires provincial election in September. With more potential losses looming in a pivotal Argentine midterm election, Trump decided to step in to stop the bleeding,” Velázquez said. “[Argentina] has been burning through billions in reserves to prop up an overvalued exchange rate — a strategy that cannot last, no matter how much it borrows from the United States or other institutions. The Treasury Department owes the public an explanation of what safeguards or repayment terms exist to protect U.S. taxpayers from loss.”

In The Nation, Jeet Heer wrote “Trump’s Argentina bailout is bad for America but great for his hedge fund cronies.”

“Far-right Argentine President Javier Milei is a self-described anarcho-capitalist and admirer of the radical laissez-faire policies of the Austrian school of economics. But his attempt to carry out these destructive ideas has plunged Argentina into turmoil,” Heer said. “While untrammeled austerity might please international investors, it has provoked fury among ordinary Argentines, which might manifest in the polls in national midterm elections on Sunday. In order to diffuse this anger of Argentine voters, Trump and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent have taken extraordinary steps to stabilize the country’s currency, the peso.”

“[Trump’s] solicitude toward Milei reveals the true nature of America First, which has less to do with strengthening the United States than with bolstering the power of Trump’s investment-class allies by supporting plutocrat-friendly regimes,” Heer wrote. “Trump is not bailing out Argentina; he is bailing out Milei. Or, to be even more precise, he is bailing out the international investors who need their gamble on Argentina to pay off. In addition to the line of credit set up by the United States, Argentina is the world’s largest debtor to the International Monetary Fund.”

What the right is saying.

• The right is mixed on the bailout, with some calling it a prudent move in support of Trump’s broader vision for Latin America. 
• Others say the bailout is unwise but suggest Argentina could use the money to create more stability over the long run. 

In The Daily Signal, Daniel McCarthy wrote about Trump’s “fight for the destiny of the Americas.”

“Latin American nations like Bolivia can’t flourish — or become reliable friends of ours — if they revert to socialism every few election cycles. This is why Trump takes such a strong interest in the fate of Javier Milei’s government in Argentina,” McCarthy said. “Milei is a free-market reformer, indeed a drastic one even by our standards, let alone Latin America’s. His reforms have had some success but have also engendered an electoral backlash on the left, which in turn has spooked bond markets and weakened the peso, frightening even middle-class voters.”

“Trump has angered some libertarians here at home by arranging a $20 billion currency swap — strong dollars for weak pesos — to shore up the Argentine economy. Another $20 billion in aid is on the table, and Trump provoked the fury of America’s beef lobby on Sunday by saying he’d increase Argentine beef exports to our country, in part to keep prices down in our supermarkets,” McCarthy wrote. “First foreign aid, now trade that favors a foreign producer — is Trump betraying his America First agenda by putting Latin America First? Hardly — he’s looking at the big picture in the Western Hemisphere the same way our most farsighted statesmen looked at the Cold War in Europe.”

For The American Enterprise Institute, Steven B. Kamin and Benedict Clements argued Trump should have used the “$40 billion to dollarize Argentina.”

“This bailout is a terrible idea — it hands over $40 billion in US public and private funds to Argentine speculators with only a meagre chance of repayment for, at best, a short-lived stabilization of Argentina’s economy. But if the Trump Administration is hell-bent on handing over the cash to its political allies in Argentina, it should at least do it right — by using the funds to finance full dollarization,” Kamin and Clements said. “Milei actually campaigned on the promise of dollarizing Argentina’s economy. In the event, he didn’t follow through, in part because the government was broke and lacked the dollars needed to do it.”

Trump should “fully dollarize Argentina’s economy: replacing the peso with the dollar for all transactions and assets,” Kamin and Clements wrote. “To be sure, Argentina would lose the ability to adjust its exchange rate, print money to finance budget deficits, and conduct its own monetary policy, but those losses are, as they say, features rather than bugs. As demonstrated by Ecuador, El Salvador, and Panama, inflation would fall roughly to US levels, a necessary — but hardly sufficient — condition for a stable and prosperous economy.”

What Argentinian writers are saying.

• Some Argentinian writers see the Trump–Milei alliance as fleeting.
• Others say Milei’s victory was a resounding defeat for Argentina’s opposition party. 

In The Guardian, Jordana Timerman explored “just how long” Trump and Milei’s alliance will last.

“Trump’s bailout of Argentina is not an act of economic prudence (economists across the spectrum say it makes no sense), but of ideological finance. The goal is to shore up an ally in the US’s back yard and discredit opponents, especially the leftwing Perónist tendency in Argentinian politics that Trump equates with his own domestic opponents,” Timerman wrote. “Historically, Washington dressed up these types of ideological interventions as serving the greater good, defined in terms of US interests. But Trump has dispensed with even that pretence. For him, foreign policy is not strategic: it’s anchored by personal loyalties.”

“Milei’s challenge will now be to manage monetary policy. The government had been burning through reserves to maintain the peso’s value. US assistance was explicitly a stopgap. A temporary influx of dollars will not rescue a programme that is failing its own electorate,” Timerman said. “That Milei’s libertarian experiment already needs rescuing underscores its failure. Inflation has eased, but austerity has choked growth and gutted subsidies for transport, energy, health and education, making it harder for the country’s poor to make it to the end of the month.”

In The Buenos Aires Times, James Grainger said “Peronism’s renovation is well overdue.”

“President Javier Milei put his ‘chainsaw’ austerity approach and deregulatory reform drive to the test on Sunday. The results indicate that voters are at the least content with what they see, despite the hardships they have faced. At the very least, the results tell us that they don’t want to go back to get to the future,” Grainger wrote. “Of course, it’s not the first time Milei has overshot expectations. His entire political career has been this way. Doubted only to overperform. Sunday night had echoes of his famous run-off triumph in late 2023, when he blew his rival Sergio Massa out of the water and ejected the Peronists from power.”

“There’s no doubt, this result emboldens Milei. Improved representation in Congress will stop his opponents from blocking his reforms at every turn. He will have a stronger hand when it comes to negotiating with Argentina’s powerful provincial governors,” Grainger said. “Milei managed to achieve this victory off the back of two years of punishing austerity, in midterm elections when ruling parties nearly always perform poorly. It’s an astounding feat. The stage was set for the Peronists to perform, but the looks on the faces of Fuerza Patria’s candidates on Sunday night said everything.”

My take.

Reminder: “My take” is a section where I give myself space to share my own personal opinion. If you have feedback, criticism or compliments, don't unsubscribe. Write in by replying to this email, or leave a comment.

• The critiques of Milei fall flat when his policies have worked and his message keeps winning.
• Annoyingly, people in the U.S. can’t talk about Argentina without talking about ourselves.
• It might not exactly be “America first,” but spending resources to stabilize Argentina sounds like a good idea.

Executive Editor Isaac Saul: I want to start by revisiting what many people predicted about Milei’s presidency.

Before Milei was first elected president, left-wing economists from across the world were certain that his government would lead to “economic devastation.” Hundreds even signed an open letter saying the “election of the radical rightwing” Milei would lead to social chaos. After he won, Milei promptly cut public spending by about 30%, scrapped rent control, deregulated prices, and relaxed currency controls. 

Milei warned voters that things would get worse before they got better, which is exactly what happened: A lot of poor people got poorer, things got tough, and then they got better.

As Matt Yglesias put it, Milei ran on a sizzling populist platform but has mostly implemented run-of-the-mill fiscal austerity and free-market reforms to bring down inflation, accelerate growth, solicit investment, win economic relief packages, and get the economy back on track. And yes, it has worked — or, more precisely, is working. Argentina’s hyperinflation is under control and its exchange rates have narrowed, but given how catastrophic the situation was before Milei took office, it still has a long way to go to be economically stable (thus the $40 billion in currency exchange and private financing). Plenty of middle class Argentines are still hurting, but the election results make it clear the majority of them prefer what they have now to what they had two years ago.

Reading some of the takes from the left above, it seems as if none of Milei’s successes over these past nearly two years has broken through. Jeet Heer said Milei’s “attempt to carry out these destructive ideas has plunged Argentina into turmoil,” which is an odd talking point given Argentina was already in turmoil when Milei took office — indeed, that is why someone as bombastic as Milei got elected. And the economic success of his policies has been so obvious that left-of-center pundits and economists have been eating crow since. 

Still, reading something like Rep. Nydia Velázquez’s (D-NY) claim that the situation “has left many Argentines fed up with the Milei political agenda,” just as Argentinians give Milei the clearest thumbs up you can imagine, tells you all you need to know about how well American Democrats have been reading the situation.

The misread shows how Americans just can’t talk about other countries without making it about America. On the left, a fear about subtly endorsing fiscal austerity in the U.S. means denying how effective Milei’s turnaround in Argentina has been. But it’s not just the left’s problem. On the right, Milei’s early success is supposed to somehow indicate that President Donald Trump’s economic policies are all right on target. 

Of course, Argentina is a very different country with very different economic dynamics than the United States. To me, the most salient lesson to take from Argentina is that debt outpacing GDP with growing inflation can get very ugly very fast. But even that comes with the caveat that our debt is serviced differently and our economy’s central role in the global markets makes it much more durable. The kind of slash-and-burn economic tightening is exactly what Argentina needed; that doesn’t mean it’s what the U.S. needs or needed. 

Which all brings us to Trump’s decision to provide $40 billion to stabilize Argentina’s currency and markets. 

Most obviously, this move exposes some right-wing hypocrisy and undermines Trump’s “America First” campaign promise. The U.S. hasn’t sent this amount of money abroad to stabilize a foreign economy since we bailed out Mexico in 1995, and it comes at a time when our government is shut down, federal workers are being furloughed, farmers and ranchers are struggling, tens of millions of people are about to lose food assistance, and millions more are on the precipice of healthcare price spikes if Congress doesn’t act. 

Yet here is the Trump administration working out a complex economic bailout of a country many Americans can’t find on a map, all while Congress sits at home and the president takes off for his second global tour in three weeks. It just doesn’t feel very Trumpian, or America First, or really in line with much of what the administration claims its priorities are. Some people are noticing:

Just as interesting to me, though, is that the reaction to this bailout exposes some hypocrisy on the left, too. A harder, more complicated take than “this isn’t America First” might be to ask something like: How different is this, really, than the kinds of economic development projects that the Biden-Harris administration championed for South American countries? Over and over again, I’ve heard Democrats talk about solving migration issues and global instability with investment and development abroad; isn’t a financial bailout just an expedited, slightly riskier version of that kind of support? Just theoretically: If this bailout actually helps stabilize the Argentine economy, wouldn’t the same logic hold that an economically reliable Argentina is going to spur more growth and help stabilize the region, which is good for the U.S.? And why wouldn’t more Democrats be stepping up to support such an initiative?

One answer to that question is that Trump is doing all this just to align himself with a right-wing leader and against the left-wing socialists of South America. That is evidently the case here, and Trump isn’t exactly being shy about it. For a lot of people on the left, Milei’s right-wing social views are enough to make him persona non grata (he’s strictly pro-life, critical of feminism and skeptical of climate change science, among other things). 

But that hypocrisy is much less obvious than Trump’s, so it’s almost a political layup for Democrats to call him out for it and oppose this bailout. That criticism is fairly easy, and it plays well: This is not only a high-risk and expensive bet, but it could also allow Argentinian farmers to outcompete U.S. farmers in crops like soybeans. Most pointedly, it comes at a time when the American people desperately need Trump’s focus here, on this shutdown and the lights flashing on our own economic dashboard.

Even accepting all that, we should be careful to judge this bailout on its own terms — putting aside the whole of Milei’s worldview and even Trump’s motivations. I’m generally optimistic about long-term development projects in the Global South because I think the evidence is strong that smart investment can prevent not just undue suffering in these countries but also economic instability — and, of course, migration crises that affect us. Better yet, the bailout really is effectively a line of credit, meant to be repayable and involving the swapping of pesos for U.S. dollars. We didn’t just hand over $40 billion of cash, even if that’s how it’s being framed. 

A bailout of this kind won’t solve Argentina’s problems in the long term, but it could prove to stop a short-term crisis from emerging. Stability is genuinely the first step to prosperity, and if the goal is to bring Argentina back into the global economy as a reliable force, and if it can do so effectively, then this bailout seems as good a first step as any.

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Your questions, answered.

Q: I’ve been fascinated for years about the Armenian Genocide. It seems to me (and most sensible people) that it’s a tragic fact, yet lots of countries won’t officially acknowledge that it happened. What is the U.S.’s stance on the Armenian Genocide, and how do countries justify not treating this topic with the seriousness it deserves? 

— David from Jerusalem 

Tangle: In April of 2021, President Joe Biden officially recognized the Armenian genocide, departing from decades of delicate avoidance of the topic by the U.S. government. The term refers to a period of forced relocation and mass killing of at least 600,000 (and potentially over a million) Armenian subjects of the Ottoman Empire under the Young Turks government during World War I. Officially, Turkey acknowledges that mass atrocities occurred, but it maintains that the killings did not constitute a deliberate genocide. While Biden’s reference was controversial, most scholars agree that this campaign constituted a genocide.

The United States did not recognize the mass killings as a genocide for decades, influenced by political pressure to maintain an alliance with Turkey. After serving as a strategic ally to the Allied Powers during World War II, Turkey joined NATO in 1952. Successive administrations have kept good terms with Turkey, likely not wanting to offend its government by describing its past action as genocidal. Several countries and international bodies do not recognize the genocide today, including Azerbaijan, Pakistan, Ukraine, and European Union. 

Now, that list once again includes the United States. Shortly after his second inauguration, President Donald Trump rejected the term. For Trump, the political motivations are likely more personal. Turkey has been criticized for domestic human rights abuses and its incursion into Syria under right-wing President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, including by President Biden. So far in his term, Trump has reversed many of Biden’s proclamations and complimented right-wing leaders globally — including not just Erdogan and Milei in Argentina, but also Hungary’s Viktor Orban and El Salvador’s Nayib Bukele. In April, Trump called himself a “big fan” of Erdogan.

Want to have a question answered in the newsletter? You can reply to this email (it goes straight to our inbox) or fill out this form.

Under the radar.

Approximately one year after the 2024 election, the Democratic National Committee (DNC) continues to pay down debt from former Vice President Kamala Harris’s campaign. In September, the DNC paid $1.6 million toward the debt, bringing its total payments to more than $20 million. While these debt payments are typical after presidential elections, the outsized cost of Harris’s campaign — approximately $1.5 billion — has limited the organization’s finances as it looks to support candidates in key 2025 races. At the end of September, the DNC had roughly $12 million in cash on hand. Axios has the story. 

Numbers.

• 257. The number of seats in the Argentine Congress’s Lower House.
• 72. The number of seats in the Argentine Congress’s Senate.
• 64. The number of Lower House seats gained by President Javier Milei’s La Libertad Avanza (LLA) party in Sunday’s midterm elections.
• 14. The number of Senate seats gained by LLA. 
• 32.1% and 53.7%. The percentage of Argentinians who approve and disapprove, respectively, of the Milei administration, according to a September 2025 Analogías poll. 
• $1,420.5. The approximate exchange rate of Argentine pesos to U.S. dollars on October 9.
• $1,361.6. The approximate exchange rate of Argentine pesos to U.S. dollars on October 15.
• $1,432.3. The approximate exchange rate of Argentine pesos to U.S. dollars on October 27.
• 20% and 56%. The percentage of U.S. adults who approve and disapprove, respectively, of the U.S. government providing $20–40 billion in financial assistance to help stabilize Argentina’s economy, according to an October 2025 YouGov poll.

The extras.

• One year ago today we covered the Arab-American vote in Michigan.
• The most clicked link in yesterday’s newsletter was the Graham Platner controversy.
• Nothing to do with politics: Just some baby elephants smashing and playing with pumpkins.
• Yesterday’s survey: 4,863 readers responded to the demolition and planned renovation of the East Wing of the White House with 60% supporting renovations generally but opposing this project. “Can not say it better than Isaac did...I just don’t care,” one respondent said. “The project may be beneficial, but it’s hard to see the people’s house partially demolished,” said another.

Have a nice day.

In August of 2024, Betty Kellenberger had knee replacement surgery. In 2025, she turned 80 years old. Then, atop Maine’s Mount Katahdin this September, she became the oldest thru-hiker to ever complete the roughly 2,200 mile Appalachian Trail. After years of setbacks including the death of her hiking partner, health setbacks and weather delays from Hurricane Helene, Betty was finally able to accomplish her goal and set the new record. “Stay active. Start your training where you are physically. Get out, move, set a goal and work toward it. The bigger the goal, the greater the reward. Don’t let society or friends and family set your limitations,” Kellenberger said. The Trek has the pictures, more incredible quotes, and the whole story.