Do not miss the point: The battle is for our children’s future, not our present.
Our present America is battered beyond recognition. The pillars of our democracy stand as the ruins of Rome, at times just a whisper of what we were. We were never perfect — not even close, but at one point, our messed-up system was better than all the other messed-up systems because most of us believed, ultimately, in the ideal that we are all born equal, with the rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. To the Christians among us, try Galatians 5:14 on for size.
Many of us have jettisoned the ideals of loving our neighbor as ourselves, so today’s politics sound more like pre-pubescents on the playground fighting over who is our favorite superhero, rather than adults discussing mutually beneficial political policy. The far-right mediascape is populated by thin-lipped, thin-skinned, thinly-veiled fascists who aspire to be Joseph Goebbels. Sorry: That’s the Stephen Miller seat and only one chief instigator at a time, please. The far-left is so far-left they sound like the far-right. The vast majority of us would rather go see a movie. “The Fantastic Four” was pretty good.
The free press does not exist. Trump controls the White House reporting pool. He has intimidated media companies, legislators and universities, and he leads a White House filled with the sort of flotsam one would usually find at the bottom of a long-clogged shower drain.
The free press does not exist. Trump controls the White House reporting pool. He has intimidated media companies, legislators and universities, and he leads a White House filled with the sort of flotsam one would usually find at the bottom of a long-clogged shower drain. But they’re all smart enough to lie to the president to his face to save their own butts. They are the latest tail end of the Trump human centipede, and the press gets to feed off the droppings.
Anyone not adhering to the Boss’s “Please, Please Me” mentality — what a horrible interpretation of the first Beatles’ hit — gets the “off with their head” routine. Thus, last week Trump fired a heretofore little known government worker who had the audacity to submit job numbers the president didn’t like.
Trump told us her numbers were “wrong” but he still hasn’t explained how he knows this. Did he do the math himself? Unlikely. Did he task someone else to do it? That’s also unlikely, as his reaction was nearly instantaneous. The more likely fact is that Trump lied when he said he knew the numbers were “wrong,” all because he didn’t like the numbers and wanted someone who would cook the books for him because he can’t face reality. The greater fact is that he may no longer be able to face reality.
That is Trump. In many cases, through his sheer will alone, and against all facts, he has created our shared reality. As a result, there are millions of Americans who still believe the Democrats stole the 2020 election, even though there are no facts showing that to be true. It is merely what Donald wants, so in Oklahoma the state government plans on institutionalizing his delusion by teaching that there were “discrepancies” in the election when there were none. This does not bode well for our future, teaching fiction over fact. It sets our children up for failure — and yet in Oklahoma they’ve decided politics determines reality, not facts.
For those who still don’t understand the situation, please rewatch Matt Hooper telling off Mayor Vaughn in “Jaws.” “I think that I am familiar with the fact that you are going to ignore this particular problem until it swims up and BITES YOU ON THE A*S!”
It’s a curious time to be alive. The problem boils down to this: The man who has the greatest influence on our shared reality is observably and arguably suffering a precipitous mental decline and is unable to do the job he was elected to do just six months ago. That leaves Chief of Staff Susie Wiles and Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller holding his leash.
Last week Trump admitted he did nothing after Jeffery Epstein “stole” a 16-year-old girl who worked in the spa at Mar-a-Lago. This is a damning piece of information the old Trump, at the top of his manipulative game, would never have willingly given us. But he had it pulled out of him by reporters last week fairly easily — in mere minutes. Compounding that unforced error, the old Trump would never have fired a statistician who supplied him with information he didn’t like; he would have just invented and reported his own figures. He finally tried that Thursday, but it didn’t go over well because he’d already fired the statistician.
During a White House event on Wednesday celebrating a deal with Apple Inc., a reporter asked Trump this: “You were the driving force behind Operation Warp Speed, these mRNA vaccines that are the gold standard. Now your health secretary is pulling back all the funding for research. What is going on?”
“Research into what?” Trump said.
“mRNA vaccines,” the reporter replied.
“We’re onto other things,” the president said.
Translation: He has no idea and doesn’t care. He’s already forgotten vaccines, Greenland and Canada, and he has told Netanyahu he can pave over Gaza. Why or how could Trump possibly care about vaccines when he didn’t have anything to do with Epstein?
Trump’s recent vertiginous stupor, exacerbated by his Epstein fear, coincides with our country’s moral and ethical malaise. We have stumbled dizzily from our ideals. We are overcome with anger and accusations; we rely on emotions rather than logic, fiction instead of fact and fantasy instead of science. When former Vice President Kamala Harris told Stephen Colbert last week that she had anticipated most of Trump’s actions since the election, but didn’t expect the ease with which Congress, colleges and the press capitulated, I wanted to shout, “Where the F**K have you been?”
Some of us have been warning everyone since the first Trump administration — and some even warned us before then. The late Robin Williams, in a 2012 standup routine, called Trump “The Wizard of Oz,” and pointed out his attraction to young girls — even his own daughter. “There are people in Arkansas going, ‘that’s just f**king wrong.’”
If you haven’t been paying attention, you’re not alone. Millions cannot believe how far America has fallen, and they still do not understand how our politics works today. To understand the current political climate and culture, just watch the WWE. Before he signed an executive order on Tuesday afternoon in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, Trump’s team actually piped the WWE’s “Undertaker Theme” through the sound system. The WWE is a shallow reality show perpetuated by rich hustlers to con those of average means so the rich can get richer and the poor don’t notice. Just like the White House.
The WWE is also our current equivalent of Bread and Circuses, “panem et circenses,” of ancient Rome. In Rome it was free food and entertainment and don’t look now but the Visigoths are coming. Today it’s no food and televised entertainment by a man in a wig that looks like a South Park cartoon character. Idea’s the same.
The Democrats decry Trump’s policies and politics, and recently so have his closest supporters. Nobody’s happy. And with the announcement of the completion of the new white-concrete Rose Garden and the looming construction of the Trump Ballroom at the White House, there are millions who believe the president will never leave the White House until he’s wheeled into his ballroom to lie in state. Of course it’ll only be a private showing — for those who are willing to donate to the Trump family business.
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To say we’ve lost our way is to understate the matter. To say that today’s politics is Orwellian is being unkind to Orwell. That drama is in our rearview mirror — as is the “constitutional crisis.” Turns out there was no constitutional crisis. The Republican Congress never put up a fight against fascism; the GOP in both chambers were willing accomplices. Crisis averted.
But the crisis Trump can’t avert is now on full display. This week his public appearances have been rare, staged and cautious. He didn’t make himself available at all until he began Tuesday morning with a rare phone-in to CNBC. He was probably sitting in his tighty-whities as he made a fool of himself, live on the air, over his latest polling numbers.
Then Trump was next seen Tuesday walking on the White House roof. For a second it looked like he was a mental patient escaping nurse Ratched. Why did he do this? Who knows. Trump shouted down at reporters who waved at him. He made a comment about installing missiles, and at one point a colleague wondered, “Does he think he can fly?” But Trump didn’t fly or jump, he walked back inside.
Finally, on Tuesday, he showed up in the EEOB to sign the executive order. The issue? The 2028 Los Angeles Olympics. “Most presidents begin their day with something this trivial,” a former White House official told me. “This is how Trump ends the day.”
Not entirely. He also held a brief presser with his chosen propagandists parading as journalists. After he got one real question from CNN’s Kaitlan Collins about the Ghislaine Maxwell controversy, he took only one more question before fleeing abruptly.
Trump wasn’t this distant from us during the height of COVID. Hell, he crammed us into the Brady Briefing Room and made the doctors accompanying him violate health protocols by appearing together in such tight quarters.
But the Epstein bombshell, combined with firing a government statistician because she gave him job numbers he didn’t like, has struck fear in Trump’s larcenist, shriveled heart.
The Democratic National Committee is attempting to make the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” the central strategy to regaining control of the House and perhaps the Senate — but the DNC doesn’t scare Trump. It’s the Republicans and his MAGA base that have him fearful.
The Democratic National Committee is attempting to make the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” the central strategy to regaining control of the House and perhaps the Senate — but the DNC doesn’t scare Trump. It’s the Republicans and his MAGA base that have him fearful. Again, he cannot harness the whirlwind that blew him into office. That is the crisis he cannot avoid.
A Republican strategist, who asked to speak on background, said the GOP is having a “difficult time” selling Trump to the base. “These days he’s not doing himself any favors. And he doesn’t seem to get it, or doesn’t care. He thinks he can bully his own supporters.”
On Tuesday, conservative radio host Michael Savage posted on X that Trump has rankled his own supporters with seven deadly political sins. “Trump voters who I spoke with say this; He has alienated them because of; 1) escalating instead of defusing the Ukraine/ Russia war; 2) pushing a bloated pork barrel spending bill and attacking Musk; 3) hiding the Epstein list; 4) firing the labor statistics chief who refused to back down; 5) unconditional support for Netanyahu’s war.6) accepting a plane from Qatar which will cost $1 bill to retrofit; 7) building a gilded ballroom in the WH (no, they will NOT vote for a Dem but may sit out the next election in protest).”
The MAGA base which swept him into office could lead the efforts to neuter Trump in the midterms and lay the groundwork for another impeachment, or at least the derailing of his so-called legislative agenda.
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But none of that addresses the damage that has already been done in the first six months of Trump’s new administration. The fact that MAGA is pushing back is of keen interest, but it appears, so far, that means little. Trump is currently trying to counter any resistance from Democrats by increasing the number of Republicans in Congress. In Texas he’s hoping to gerrymander districts to give him another five congressional seats. Statehouse Democrats have fled the state to deny Texas Republicans a quorum for a vote on congressional redistricting. On Thursday, Texas GOP Sen. John Cornyn, who had requested that the FBI assist state and local law enforcement efforts to hunt down the absent Democrats, said the agency had agreed to help.
Should Trump succeed in gerrymandering Texas, it may look to many that the game is lost. That’s not true for a variety of reasons including, but it’s not limited to the fact that Trump’s greatest challenge remains from his own angry followers.
It would be the greatest irony that while Trump and his Texas minions try to keep the Democrats from destroying the president, it is the MAGA crowd and their “Seven Deadly Donald Sins” that could do in Donny. Then again, many have predicted his demise several times before and have been wrong.
What happens next will, surely, be recounted in history books and remembered by our children and grandchildren for the rest of their lives — if we’re lucky.
