Thank God. Donald Trump has saved us. The old Cracker Barrel logo is returning.
Having spent too much time traveling across the country since before I knew how to drive, there are two road stops I’ve always loathed to make. Cracker Barrel was one. To me it was just a dining room extension of the Stuckey’s of my youth — which I also hated. I was never a fan of Cracker Barrel’s food, Stuckey’s candies or the kitsch you had to wade through if you had the misfortune of spending time at either establishment. But Cracker Barrel’s porch and rocking chairs are good enough for a road rest, and if you like the food, more power to you. I can barely handle the pecan roll at Stuckey’s.
Cracker Barrel recently changed its logo to something more representative of a business card for a salesman with the Dunder Mifflin Paper Company, Inc. from Scranton, Pa., and endeavored to reinvent itself as a sterile cuckoo devoid of any character or charm. The move is hardly a unique occurrence in the history of a chain store-minded country. After all, we elected Donald Trump twice, but it was old Puff Donny himself who claimed responsibility for returning Cracker Barrel to its former glory.
When the restaurant announced Tuesday that it was abandoning the makeover for its traditional cornpone, Donny took credit for the about-face and announced it as the crowning achievement of his day — after declaring in a Cabinet Meeting earlier that morning that he could do anything he wanted because, don’t forget, he’s president.
When the restaurant announced Tuesday that it was abandoning the makeover for its traditional cornpone, Donny took credit for the about-face and announced it as the crowning achievement of his day — after declaring in a Cabinet Meeting earlier that morning that he could do anything he wanted because, don’t forget, he’s president. A president can’t make or interpret laws, isn’t above the law, can’t declare war or decide how federal money can be spent. He can’t even choose Cabinet members or Supreme Court justices without Senate approval. But in Donny’s delusion, he thinks he can.
He said some may call him a dictator, but he’s not — though he’s pretty sure some want him to be.
The latest meeting of Donny’s bargain basement Cabinet ran for three hours and 17 minutes. Even the New York Times recognized that Trump once again ran it like a reality show. Most media critics say it should have been broken into two episodes. The first hour and 45 minutes should have just featured the effusive fawning praise from Cabinet members and self-congratulations parading as insight from Donny. The second episode could have been dedicated to stand-up routines from the Cabinet secretaries, followed by some self-congratulatory, deep questions from the press — like what does the president think of two celebrities getting married? What a great question that has nothing to do with Trump invading American cities, trampling citizens’ rights, lying, cheating, stealing and destroying the free markets of capitalism he swore to uphold.
Just kidding. Donald Trump never swore to uphold anything he couldn’t sell off. Speaking of which, has someone checked the National Archives recently to see if the Constitution is still there?
Trump probably thought his latest meeting went really well. After all that’s what everyone close to him told him to his face, and on the face of it, Donny seemed great. His trained seals all barked at him affectionately, and one — billionaire and Middle East special envoy Steve Witkoff — so longingly planted his withered lips to Donny’s posterior that, when I saw it happen, I wondered how long he had practiced for his supreme moment of total subjugation. “There’s only one thing I wish for,” Witkoff declared, as if Donny was his first crush. “That the Nobel committee finally gets its act together and realizes that you are the single finest candidate since the Nobel Peace, this Nobel award, was ever talked about.” Blush. Bat your eyelashes. Smile and sigh. Now sit down.
Donny is certainly demented, but he’s not nearly delusional enough that he didn’t recognize the single most ham-handed posterior puckering since “this Nobel award” was ever talked about.
The truth is, outside of the Cabinet Room — into which he sought shelter from the storm of reality by cuddling with his darkest fantasies as his frail mental faculties evaporate more quickly as his hair spray — Donny, for the first time, is involved in a struggle he can’t make go away by waving his hands. The reason for that is because the people demanding answers are those who usually chase his waving hands.
When it comes to the Jeffrey Epstein files, many members of MAGA remain upset. Trump fans still want Puff Donny to supply answers regarding the government investigation into the convicted felon. The continued and incessant demand for anything to do with Epstein is music to the ears of everyone else in the country, though it sounds like a broken record to Donny and his motley crew of hand-assembled villains, whose main jobs appear to be that of a day player role on a horrible soap opera. Hey, they’re all stars in their pickled minds. The secretary of defense even has his own makeup room.
For the second time in a month, Donald Trump has, in an attempt to avoid talking about Jeff Epstein, stepped into something else he is having trouble shaking from the dark loafers that fail to cover his swollen ankles.
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On Monday, he signed an executive order calling for the prosecution of people who burn the American flag. While the Supreme Court has ruled — definitively — that doing so is protected by the First Amendment, Donny felt it necessary to protect a symbol of our country rather than the actual rights the flag represents.
“I would never burn the flag, but I support your right to do it,” a number of MAGA supporters told me this week — including a few who work for Trump. “That’s free speech.”
Yes, those who spew hatred understand protected free speech, thus giving some semblance of hope in an otherwise dystopian nation led by Trump.
The MAGA minions are also becoming alarmed at the president’s flagrant violation of the Posse Comitatus law, which is supposed to keep the government from using the military as police officers. The law was a direct result of the Civil War, and it was originally proposed by, wait for it … Republicans. Many members of the military, as well as the National Guard, are also not too happy with Trump for ignoring this law. They have received training as soldiers, not as peacekeepers; they are not officers who are sworn to protect and serve. It is inherently dangerous to arm the military and have them patrol cities throughout the U.S. This isn’t 1968. We aren’t in the Vietnam War. We don’t face the spectacle of thousands of soldiers coming home in body bags. Two of our most important political and moral leaders haven’t been assassinated. Our cities aren’t burning, and there are no riots in the streets — although it appears Trump would like there to be. He is both deflecting attention from his Epstein association and doubling down on his strong-arm tactics to break all resistance to his regime.
The difference between Trump’s second and first administrations is seen best in this one issue. In his first term, Trump didn’t know what the Posse Comitatus Act even was. That’s a fact. CQ Roll Call’s John T. Bennett and I were the two reporters who asked about Trump violating it. The president had no idea it existed, and his staff referred to it as “that Hakuna Matata thing.” Now Trump and his people know what it is — and they don’t care.
In a press conference sponsored by the Vet Voice Foundation, retired Maj. Gen. Paul Eaton said that Trump’s use of the military is “not just a distraction” but will do “long-term generational harm to the military and civil liberties.”
Former Democratic Rep. Max Rose, who represented New York’s 11th congressional district and once served in the National Guard, outlined it this way: “The mission is the problem here, not only because of the undue power domestically that it’s giving the president of the United States … it is to scare the hell out of millions of people, principally those who disagree with him, as well as his political opponents. That’s what’s going on here. That’s why it’s being done in such a public, brazen manner.”
Could Trump use the military to declare martial law and avoid an election in 2028 so he could stay in office — something he candidly joked about last week in the Oval Office? Well, in case you haven’t noticed, he is selling “Trump 2028” hats.
In the meantime, he’s also trying to nationalize industries. He has set tariffs based on which countries anger him the least, and he’s showing deference to industries and companies inside the U.S. that bend before him.
“I don’t know where this all ends, but you can’t base an economy on the wishes of one man,” a Trump cabinet member from his first term told me on background. “We have to wait this out.”
That’s not free market capitalism. And again, it is MAGA members calling Trump out on this, particularly when he announced that the federal government had invested in Intel. “I don’t know where this all ends, but you can’t base an economy on the wishes of one man,” a Trump cabinet member from his first term told me on background. “We have to wait this out.”
Behind his back, all of Trump’s trained seals are waiting for his exit. His minions have grown angry. His greatest fans — except those who believe mRNA vaccines are evidence of an alien invasion, and/or those who believe that COVID-19 is an AI construction — are growing weary of him.
This brings us to the comment Trump made regarding a dictatorship, which came after he called Chicago a “killing field.” That alone should give us all pause, but then Trump took it further. He said some people told him, “Maybe we’d like a dictator.” Trump humbly said he’s not one. “I’m not a dictator. I’m a man with great common sense and a smart person.”
He certainly is conniving. And no one has been able to put the brakes on him since he returned to the White House in January. His congressional stooges are still what I called them during Trump’s first term; they are eunuchs at the hate orgy, unable and unwilling to do anything about the vile atrocities of which they are a part.
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Trump remains a venal man who purposely confuses criticism with hatred and critical thinking with socialism, communism and anti-American sentiment. He points at the foibles of others and refuses to hold himself to a higher standard. He and his lackeys want a country without dissent. Trump’s rants against his political opponents take on an even darker tone when you consider all he is perpetuating. In a world of acrimony, filled with the gasoline of fear and hatred, his words are sparks.
Across the globe, Trump fans the flames of intolerance that other despots use to usurp power and subjugate the governed. He gets along with Putin because Trump sees the Russian president as a mentor. The chaos surrounding Trump is there to keep you from looking at every other foul thing he undertakes — the exploitation of women, the abuse of the Treasury for his own ends, the stripping of regulations that enables the robber barons to run free and the destruction of science and a sharable base of facts from which we all operate.
Trump seeks to eliminate the collaborative efforts of all Americans by favoring the deeds of only those who show him fealty.
That’s our president in a nutshell. But thank God he brought back the Cracker Barrel logo. We can now all rest soundly in our rocking chairs on the front porch as he destroys every ideal upon which this country was built.
