If The Shoe Fits...

🎵If you wanna know how he screws up so, it’s in the shoes.🎵  

Everything about Trump, his hires, and the chaotic misrule that followed, his failures, his cabinet’s incompetence, is manifested in Little Marco clomping around in oversize shoes. 

Wise readers who spend less time than I obsessively following the news and olds of Trump, might be unaware of this seemingly trivial but encapsulating fact: Trump, whose tastes run to grandiose gold and titular temples, is fond of cheap, shiny, wingtip shoes. So, either drawing on the billions he’s made during his “presidency” from unconstitutional grifts or, perhaps, from donations by gullible MAGAs, he bought some for his cabinet-makers. It’s reported he first asked their sizes, in which case the ill-fitting was a test of how much scaturient groveling he could elicit.

So there’s the Secretary of State of exceptional America wearing shoes three sizes too big, afraid to have said anything, submissively gluteosculating. Did he feel humiliated or, as it piled up, has he become inured? Either way, it explains how Trump got his war-not-war. No one pushed back, even those who undoubtedly apprehended the consequences. Trump chose lackeys, not people of competence and spine. Like Clark Clifford. 

So he got his war, about which he and perhaps his most unqualified appointee, Pete Hegseth, haven’t stopped bragging in the most vainglorious, tough-guy terms; war as video game, deaths as trophies. Who could observe the infantile, stupid preening of that tumescent pair and conclude they were ever capable of thinking past their emission of rockets and bombs? How stupid? Minesweeper stupid.

Trump expressed surprise at Iran’s response. No one told me, he claimed. Which, as usual, is a lie; in terms of repercussions, maybe his biggest. The Commander-in-Chief -- except for stupidity, Earth’s “most powerful” person -- didn’t expect attacks on other countries. Didn’t expect the Strait of Hormuz to be closed. Now that it happened, Trump is begging other nations for help. The same nations to whom he’s been giving the middle finger for years. As of this writing, other nations have gestured in kind. The grovelee became the groveler.

If this were a movie script, it’d have been hidden like the Epstein files. (Remember them?) While Iran blocks ours, Trump is letting their oil tankers through. Ukraine, abandoned by Trump, fighting for its life against Russia, is nevertheless helping the US and other countries with drone technology. Worried about the electoral impact of oil prices, Trump removed sanctions on Putin’s oil, gifting him billions of petrodollars to finance his war against Ukraine. While Ukraine helps us. And while Putin helps Iran target US resources. It’s inexplicable.

Or is it?

Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) recently gave a speech in the well of the Senate. It’s long, so only the pathologically obsessed, like me, will watch it. So here’s the TL;DR: He detailed connections between Jeffrey Epstein, Vladimir Putin, and Trump. Epstein, he said, installed hidden cameras in every room of his home, where he provided powerful men with underage girls and young women. The infusions of money he obtained from Russian sources, the senator implied, were in exchange for supplying videos of those encounters to Putin.

As the E-files make clear, Trump was a frequent visitor. Unsaid, but a defensible conclusion regarding why Trump, a bully to everyone else while obsequiing himself to Putin: It ain’t “pee tapes.” We may never know, because Epstein hung himself. He did, right?

As much as Trump would like to declare victory, Iran keeps getting in the way, by continuing to strike neighboring countries and turning ships in or near the Strait into fireballs. People who understand these things, which doesn’t include Trump and Hegseth but probably does the admirals and generals they fired and some of those who remain but are silent or ignored, say the only way to prevent those attacks is by controlling Iran’s shoreline on the Gulf. Which can’t be done from the air. So “no boots on the ground” Trump is sending a Marine Expeditionary Force to the region, complete with landing craft and 2,500 Marines. So far.

Trump’s bones will tell him when to quit. That’s what he said: he’ll end the war when he feels it in his bones. If that doesn’t give you confidence in his Chiefly Commanderness, this will: Bragging about destroying Iran’s main oil facility, he said he might do more “for the fun of it.” While people suffer everywhere, and while Iran might hand the world to China, Trump is having fun.

To our infinite shame, America elected a shallow, thoughtless man whose deplorable choices for cabinet secretaries were approved by cowardly Republican senators, some of whom surely knew better. Whatever in Trump’s impoverished mind justified leading us into his illegal war-not-war, his conduct proves his dangerous incompetence. And Congressional Republicans continue to three-monkey our path to doom.

And now, this: Due to non-political circumstances, my focus will be elsewhere for the foreseeable future.

Clowns In Charge

 

Five-star General Omar Bradley, hero of WWII, first Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, wrote, “Wars can be prevented just as surely as they can be provoked, and we who fail to prevent them, must share the guilt for the dead.”

When it was learned that 168 Iranian schoolgirls and 14 teachers were killed in the initial bombing attacks in Iran, Trump and Hegseth lied. They kept lying until video revealed a Tomahawk missile, used there only by the US, hitting adjacent buildings, pieces of it found in the schoolyard. “I didn’t know enough about it,” explained the Commander-in-Chief. John Kennedy, MAGA senator from Louisiana whose questioning of Kristi Noem may have led to her firing, didn’t lie, saying “We made a mistake.” Good for him. He’s self-importantly smug, but “blind squirrels” and all that.

Trump and Hegseth don’t guilt. They gloat. Said Hegseth: “We are punching them while they’re down, which is exactly how it should be.” And: “The only ones that need to be worried right now are Iranians that think they’re going to live.” When Trump finished announcing his war, unpresidential in a white “USA” baseball cap, he went golfing. Since then he’s made manly remarks like, “It’s fun to sink ships.” And, about casualties, “Before it ends, that’s the way it is.”

The human costs of war mean nothing to them; it’s all about flaunting power. As proof, Trump ended a Pentagon program studying ways to prevent civilian casualties. His wars don’t accept accountability. Nothing in his administration does.

He wore that disrespectful hat again at Dover AFB when receiving coffins of his war dead. That was too much even for Fox “news,” which showed footage not of that event but of one where he wasn’t standing under the hat. It’s me, it’s me, he’d said. Not this time, they said, later apologizing for their deception.

I spent a year in a combat zone, dodging rockets (all but one), caring for troops injured physically and mentally. War is horrible, righteous or not. It reveals humankind’s most damnable imperfections, its worst failures. Innocents die, survivors are ruined, combatants, too. In a democracy, we should demand that leaders who take our country to war reflect that seriousness and care about the consequences. For Trump and Hegseth to do so, they’d have to lie. If Congressional Republicans feel it, they conceal it convincingly.

Instead, having handed control to a lifelong liar, a psychically-wounded malignant narcissist who makes everything only about himself, who craves praise and manufactures it when he doesn’t get it, who made leader of our Department of Don’t-Say-War a third-string propagandist talk show host, we must watch their unseemly braggadocio, embarrassed and worried. Plus their despicable posting on social media of video promoting their war with scenes from macho movies and martial video games. Titled “Justice The American Way.” This is their thinking, sending America to war.

When Bush the Second invaded Iraq, a brother-in-law, a Marine and fellow Vietnam veteran who’d been in it much deeper than me, called to share feelings about war. Anyone who’s been there in person would think about Trump’s, even if supporting it, sad for everyone involved, remembering. Five-time-deferred, bone-spur-fabricating Trump can’t even fake it. He’s besotted with power. “People are loving what’s happening,” he said. “Cuba’s going to fall, too.” And “Khamenei’s son is a lightweight. I have to be involved in the appointment, like with Delcy in Venezuela.” King of the world. In response, Iran chose Khamenei’s son.

Ever-changing reasons for the war Trump and his henchfolk have offered might also include the riches his sons will collect from their investments in a drone-making company, to which their daddy just awarded a multi-million dollar contract. (But, but, Hunter Biden!!) At the very least, Americans who support the war for any reason ought to want more from their leaders than their frat-boy, chest-bumping, high-fivin’ white-guy (historic reference) behavior. The financial and security effects are worse, but those displays are loathsome.

It’s increasingly obvious how poorly the Trump administration thought through the aftermath of their initial strike. They expected immediate capitulation by the Iranians, and made no plans – hadn’t even considered the need – for evacuating Americans from the region. (Jody Allen sent the Seahawks plane.) Had they imagined – which would have required thinking beyond Trump’s signature shallowness – that Iran might respond by closing the Strait of Hormuz, they would have taken steps to prevent it and its subsequent worldwide havoc. That’s the price of electing a walking psych textbook who chooses advisers based not on qualification but on unquestioning genuflection.

Finally, a housekeeping note. Many readers find my tinyurls annoying. Their use derives from my blogging, where I can hot-link words to sources, non-disruptively. So, fighting temptation, I’ve provided none here. If asked for verification, I’ll happily comply. I don’t make stuff up. Except for the occasional word. 

Also finally: I’ll miss Jon Bauer, the Herald’s moving-on editorial page editor. The community will, too. He’s been great to work with. Happy trails to him. And to the Herald.

Wag, Doggie, Wag

 

                      Chat GPT, per me

“News that the Epstein files contain testimony about Trump raping a 13-year-old girl came at a bad time for the people of Iran.”

The quote is from a friend of a friend. Since Trump’s reasons for the war have changed every day, its implication is as compelling as any. After all, he predicted it. Was it to free the Iranian people, or because in this, the tenth year of Iran being two weeks away from building a nuclear bomb and missiles that can deliver them to U.S. soil, there was imminent danger? Even Trump’s Pentagon has denied that one. So Trump called reporters, trying out various justifications. It could also be God’s plan to hasten the Second Coming. Hegseth thinks so. Dismissing God, as usual, Trump blames Presidents Obama and Biden. Also, he "had a feeling." God help us.

The outcome of Trump’s illegal war won’t be known for months. Years, maybe. What we do know is that, because the Constitution gives the power to declare war only to Congress, what he did was unquestionably unconstitutional, and in violation of the War Powers Act. Interviewed by ABC’s Jonathan Karl, Trump puffed, “Nobody could have done this but me.” He’s right. No other president has been or would be so willing to violate the Constitution for personal aggrandizement.

Even if it turns out well and peace blooms like the Rose Garden he destroyed, is this how America should do war? Started unilaterally by a pathological liar and malignant narcissist who sees everything through the lens of self? It’s suboptimal. From the reaction of Congressional Republicans, though, you’d never know it. To their list of avertebral acquiescence to Trump’s usurpations, add starting wars.

“Peace president” Trump expended little effort to make his case for war. Given his history of monumental lies, there’s no reason to believe anything he says about it now. The war has cost lives of Americans, Iranian schoolgirls, and who-knows-how-many other Iranians and residents of neighboring countries. Three warplanes, so far, countless drones and missiles, and we still don’t know why. “Freedom isn’t free,” was the callous response of Trump’s UN Ambassador to the loss of American lives. Whose freedom, he didn’t specify. Pentagon Pete clarified, saying, “We didn’t start this war.” Not only is the statement from a non-parallel universe, but by using the word, as has Trump, he exploded the argument by MAGA and Foxian state media that it isn’t war. Expecting to convince the credulous that Trump isn’t violating the Constitution. Another Big Lie. Like stolen elections.

It’s reported that urging from Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu and Saudi Arabia’s Mohammed bin Salman is what convinced Trump to go ahead, and to imply, contrary to US intelligence findings, that America was under grave threat. World leaders have come to recognize and exploit Trump’s vulnerability to flattery, so we can imagine what was whispered in his ear by those two, for their own purposes: “Sir, you’ll be remembered as a hero for all eternity. Golden likenesses will be built, their height commensurate with your towering stature. Cities and byways will bear your name. Do it, your excellency. Just do it.” China’s Xi’s whispering is likely to himself. “Deplete your weaponry while we increase ours, massively. Do it, Dupable Donald.” Putin thinks: “Keep it up, my pretty. Let Ukraine die. Do it for me.”

Would I suggest that Trump is hoping for pro-Iranian terrorist attacks here, so he can declare a national emergency and cancel the November elections? Nope. Not my style. For one thing, there’s never been a less four-dimensional thinker than one-dimensional (me, only me) Trump. But I reserve the right to be wrong. It could be the plans they’re hatching to claim China stole the 2024 election.

Trump’s success in kidnapping Venezuela’s Maduro fed his hunger to appear powerful. He’s smelled blood and likes it. We’re at war for reasons hidden within the mind of an observably disturbed man. That’s why the Founders gave declaring war to Congress; i.e., the people.

But for now, let’s watch events unfold before speculating further. There’s else to address. Like Undersight Committee Chairman Comer subpoenaing the Clintons to testify about Jeffry Epstein, hoping to shift attention from Trump’s role and embarrass them. He failed hillaryously. Wisely, Secretary Clinton pre-released her scathing opening statement to the public, in which she thoroughly dinged Comer’s hum.

Kash Patel is firing FBI agents involved in executing the judicial warrant to search Mar-a-Lago for the classified documents Trump stole, hid, and lied about. Those agents also worked on assessing threats from Iran, among others. Smart move. Great timing.

Finally, before I run out of room, there’s DHS lying about agents who left a blind man to freeze to death in Buffalo.

The worst of our worst are in charge, intentionally cruel and dangerously inept, at home and overseas. What it means is that Trump’s planned election sabotage MUST be overcome. Massive turnout might be the only way.

Stating The State

                    another chatGPT creation

A minute in, when Trump flat-out lied about the economy he inherited and Republicans gave him a standing O, I turned off the SOTU. Everything to follow was predictable and sad. I returned to making a list of recent events. So many topics, too many to ignore or do justice. So here’s a compendium, in shorthand:

• As if we need more evidence of Trump’s unending desire for fawning adulation, or that, with Pam Bondi’s slavish obeisance, he’s turned the Department of inJustice into a vengeance vehicle, there’s that Soviet-style, North Korea-emulating visage hanging from DOJ headquarters. Pre-Trump, Americans found such submissive, cultish idolatry abhorrent.

• The Supreme Court’s rejection of most of Trump’s unconstitutional wielding of tariffs like a child wields a toy light-saber ought to have been 9-0. Three so-called originalists dissented, ignoring clear, parchmentalized language. Justice Kavanaugh, by acclamation the least intelligent of the nonet, based his dissent on adverse consequences of returning the ill-gotten money. Which is like arguing criminals shouldn’t be punished if it would make their families sad.

• Classic Trump: after the verdict, he’s relentlessly attacked “the f..king courts” (his words), calling the justices, including two of his appointees, traitors. What he should have said, is “the f..king Constitution.” Because that’s how he sees it.  

• Lee Zeldin, head of the Environmental Destruction (sorry: “Protection”) Agency, proudly announced, “We are driving a dagger straight into the heart of the climate change religion to drive down cost of living for American families, unleash American energy, bring auto jobs back to the U.S. and more.” Unpacking the Trumped-up mendacity and dangerous stupidity would eat up the rest of this column. 

• As Trump hypes his Epstein-distracting warlette on Iran, recall his words after his prior dog-wagging mission: Iran’s nuclear capability had been “completely and totally obliterated,” debunked within days. The lie is reconfirmed by his current demand that they end their nuclear program.  

• Expecting airports to be named after him, Trump has applied for trademarks for gift-shop junk bearing his name, “including clothing, handbags, luggage, jewelry, watches, and tie clips.” GOTUS. It’s pathological.  

• Ignoring the First Amendment, Pentagon Pete Hegseth holds prayer meetings there. His latest was led by a Christian nationalist who favors submissive, non-voting women and finds slavery not so bad. They’ll produce fine soldiers.  

• Sending an unrequested and unnecessary hospital ship to Greenland? The ridiculousness is self-evident. But he may have hallucinated it. The man is unwell. 

• Because they make voting more universally accessible, MAGA hates mail-in ballots, which we’ve had here, scandal-free, for years. Because it’s what he does, Trump lied again about them, including claiming the US is the only country that allows voting that way.  

• Like his tariff usurpation, Trump’s desire to nationalize elections is unconstitutional. Does SCOTUS have a two-fer in them? He lies daily about non-existent Democrats’ election rigging while planning to do just that, including sending ICE agents to polling places. Not to arrest people voting illegally, which doesn’t happen, but because many non-white, legal voters, fearing the harassment and detention for days and weeks we’ve seen, might stay away.  

• A former ICE instructor testified that ICE drastically cut required training and lied to Congress about it. Given the intentional brutality and lawlessness we see from them, it would be surprising if it were otherwise.  

• Kash Patel, the FBI’s most unqualified director ever, who loves using his position for personal pleasure, shared the US men’s hockey victory by guzzling beer with them on live TV, like a frat boy. J. Edgar Hoover, he’s not. A Hegseth/Bondi/Pirro-level embarrassment, he is, confirming, once more, that Trump chooses people for compliance, not competence. 

• If it turns out Trump’s personal law firm, dba Bondi’s DOJ, withheld parts of the Epstein files that explicitly accuse him of sexual abuse and rape, would it surprise you?  

• Decades ago, senators on both sides were honorable, intelligent, and committed to legislating for the common good. Though there’s plenty of competition, no one better represents the level of stupidity and uselessness to which the Republican Party’s choices have descended than Utah’s Mike Lee.  

• After a lifetime of scams, grifts, and ripoffs, Trump’s brazenly corrupt “Board of Peace” tops them all. In part consisting of dictators and murderers, each of whom reportedly contributed a billion dollars for a piece of the action, it’s announced-by-Jared mission is to turn Gaza into an investment opportunity for oligarchs, who’ll be protected by a huge military base. Trump will be the board’s president for life, in control of the money, including ten billion U.S. taxpayer dollars he’s committed, unilaterally, to it. For what purpose, other than enriching himself on other people’s dime? More tie clips? He gets away with such outrageous self-dealing by “virtue” of Republican silence and the manufactured devotion of gratefully suckered MAGAs. The importance of the November election he’s trying so hard to scuttle can’t be overstated. 

• End of partial list. Thank you for your attention to these matters.

Bribocracy

 

                           ChatGPT

“Shall I compare thee to a President’s Day? Washington’s selfless leadership, Lincoln’s timeless eloquence? Thou art less lofty and more intemperate.” (Author unknown.)

America’s political divide is wider than at any time since the Civil War, but there’s one issue on which everyone should agree: Trump’s is the most corrupt and dishonest administration in our history. Rather than hiding it, they wave it like that huge American flag on I-5 north of Mount Vernon. Trump has openly regretted not enriching himself more in his first term. Unable to deny, MAGA's only options are to ignore or embrace. We see both. “At least he’s honest about his dishonesty,” they say, admiringly. Or, “ Everybody cheats.”

It’s not merely embarrassing that our great-until-Trump country twice elected an unscrupulous, bribofacient, self-promoting fraudster; the damage at home and abroad is incalculable. Perhaps MAGA-threatened future historians will elaborate. For now, all we can do is enumerate.

Following FIFA’s pandering “peace prize," Trump’s next briblical acceptance was the Washington Coal Club’s “Undisputed Champion of Beautiful Clean Coal” prize. It’d be hilarious, had he not, a day later ended our government’s ability to regulate climate change emissions, to which coal is the greatest lump-for-lump contributor.

As literate Americans know, “clean coal” isn’t a thing, whereas climate change most definitely is. From his kingly throne, Trump is doing everything possible to boost fossil fuels and impede sustainable, actually clean energy. The money he gets from oil tycoons confirms his bribocratic corruption. With the fingers of others filling his pockets, he raises a middle one to us.

Bribery isn’t Trumpism’s only corruption. There’s cry-wolfery, gaslighting, and “accusation is admission.” Working to rig elections, for example, while lying that every election Trump or MAGAs lost was rigged. It’s as much a part of today’s Republican agenda as climate change denial, pardoning criminals, rewriting history, and lying to our faces. “Democrats rig elections,” they cry, against all evidence, while doing it. MAGAs wolf it down.

Here’s Homeland Insecurity’s Kristi Noem, promoting the restrictive voter ID requirements in the SAVE act, bragging, “ ... when it gets to Election Day ... we've been proactive to make sure that we have the right people voting, electing the right leaders to lead this country.” Confirming the anti-democracy and anti-Democrats purposes of voter ID, Republican Study Committee Chair August Pfluger (R-Texas) added, “The American people did not give Republicans a mandate to make excuses. They gave us one to deliver wins, and the SAVE America Act is exactly that.” (Italics mine.) Okay, well, they’re not lying about that. Ms. Noem did lie about another ICE shooting, though.

 

If states requiring it made voter ID equally accessible across all demographics, it’d be okay. In red states, it’s the opposite. They just said so. And who trusts Trump’s DOJ to protect the Georgia ballots they commandeered with no legal justification? His desire to “nationalize” elections is, of course, unconstitutional. Would it matter to his agreeable Supreme Court?

Noem. Bondi. Who can say who’s worse? In a tight race, impudent, arrogant, toadying Pam pulled ahead last week, when she broadcast her and her boss’s contempt for the Constitution; yelling, deflecting, insulting, refusing to answer legitimate, Constitutionally required oversight of her handling of the Epstein files. Why are you asking about that when the DOW is over fifty thousand, she sneered, non-sequiturally. While she scanned her staff-prepared, scripted whataboutisms to gotchify Democrats, Republicans on the Committee, living and dead, like every MAGA, couldn’t hide their glee. In a Congress containing Republicans of old, as in the Nixon era, the hearing would have adjourned immediately, to begin impeachment proceedings. But that party is as dead as climate regulation.

There are rumblings. In deep red South Texas last week, in a district Trump won by seventeen points, a Democrat soundly beat a Republican for state senate despite being outspent by millions of dollars. The same happened in very red Louisiana. Texas Republicans’ unprecedented and cynical mid-cycle gerrymandering, along with growing revulsion at Trump’s ICE brutality and, maybe, his transparent lying, have created unanticipated blue districts, while spurring blue states like California, after Trump’s Constitution-rewriting SCOTUS greenlit Texas, to do the same.

Clear-eyed voters know to assume every word uttered by Trump and his collection of collaborators is a lie; that every action is to their benefit, not ours. As scales drop from pinkish eyes, there might still be hope. But November is far enough away for plenty of Republican meddling.

Now, a mea kinda culpa. Last week, I praised the “unmitigated joy” of Bad Bunny’s Super Bowl performance. Since then, enthusiastic critics have sent translations which, if accurately rendered, were vulgar. I was disappointed and promised to address it. Since then, though, I’ve seen sources indicating the crudités had been edited in compliance with broadcast standards.

Few words, if any, have single comparables between languages; by definition, translations are subjective. Unless those taking offense are fluent Spanish speakers and heard it directly, I’ll stick with joyful.

Good Bunny

 

Without outrage, MAGAs have nothing. Without being offended, they’d be nothing. If it wasn’t unmistakable before, the Super Bowl (went Seahawks!) removed any doubt. Trump’s and MAGA’s anger over Bad Bunny’s halftime performance began long before it happened. Nothing, it seems, makes that crowd so infuriated as seeing people – especially those of darker hues – having fun. Exuberant fun. Occasionally sexy? For sure. But, even with some soft-boiled political Easter eggs, always celebratory. At the end, naming all countries in the Americas, as if we’re part of a whole, together. The actual not-fake wedding was sweet and hopeful. As was the omnipresent visual message, “The only thing more powerful than hate is love.” Only in Trump’s America could that be considered a subversive provocation.

So offended were MAGAs that they hied to a YouTube-only counterprogram featuring a badly lip-syncing, white-man-jumping, over-hilled Kid Rock, who’d once sung his way to fame lauding statutory rape. Maybe that explains his connection with Trump. There was also some guy who sang an anti-woke song. Good times. Wish I’d been there.

Sure, it’d have been nice to have had subtitles for Mr. Bunny, but it was about vibe, not vocabulary. Besides, what language is required to recognize pure joy? Not the one MAGA speaks, evidently. It was a celebration of America’s unique melting pot that accounts for so much of its greatness. Which explains the freakout of Make America Ghastly Again. Having once designated liberals as “snowflakes,” under Trump they’ve taken ownership of the term. They NEED to be angry at not-like-thems. If it weren’t so pitiful and, for that matter, anti-America, it’d be hilarious.

But, mostly, it’s just sad. Unlike Bad Bunny, MAGAs are unhappy people, preferring an even unhappier leader. Because it’s all they know how to do, if poorly, House Republicans are calling for an investigation.

Their reaction to the halftime show was a MAGA microcosm. The response to Trump posting an image of Barack and Michelle Obama as apes is as macro as it gets. Within seconds of the revulsion expressed by decent people, Pressed Secretary Leavitt referred to it as fake outrage. “Report on something today that actually matters to the American public,” she demanded, dootifully. Because having America represented by the most overtly racist “president” in our history shouldn’t bother anyone. Rather, for MAGA, it’s celebrated.

The rush to defend Trump’s awfulness, as always, was a stampede. Came the predictable blaming of an unnamed staffer. Trump hadn’t seen it, or didn’t watch to the end. Then, acknowledging it was he who posted it, Trump refused to apologize. Of course not. It’d be like 7-Up apologizing for selling soft drinks.

When it’s not outrage, it’s cruelty, as from organizations whose inhumanity MAGA will defend to the death. Literally. ICE, for one. I hadn’t known this while I served there, but in Vietnam, some GIs left ace of spades playing cards on the bodies of Vietnamese they’d killed. Sometimes in their mouths. Now we learn that ICE is doing the same, placing similar cards, professionally produced, in the vehicles they’ve broken into and dragged out the occupants. It clarifies the kinds of people ICE is hiring, and those who stay silent. Make America Ghoulish Again.

Like cutting USAID, ostensibly to save money, leading to tens of thousands of deaths and disease in Africa and elsewhere, particularly among children; and then spending taxpayer money to fund “MAGA-aligned” organizations in Europe. Why aren’t Trump supporters appalled? Jesus would be.

Some might say I’m being hypocritical when deploring MAGA outrage, for what are my columns if not that? Maybe so, but there’s a fundamental difference. My words, and those of No Kings protestors, anti-ICE demonstrations, and the tens of Antifa activists, are aimed at protecting and preserving the values of our republic: fairness, equality of rights and voting, healthcare, and help for those in need. It’s outrage at our government for eliminating those most basic tenets of a functioning democracy. Following Trump’s directions, MAGA is against all of that. If indignation can be righteous, this is it.

Like outrage, for another example, at the Pentagon for making the largest ever purchase of munitions from Israel, for internationally banned anti-personnel cluster bombs. Tough guy, that Hegseth, who also threatened Scouting for allowing girls and not being God-promoting enough, because he’s nothing if not the embodiment of godliness.

Or at Trump’s DOJ for shutting down Minnesota prosecutors’ investigations of the murders of Renee Good and Alex Pretti. Or having a “president” who’s such a petty, needy, and insecure bully that he withholds funds for New York unless it renames Dulles Airport and Penn Station after him. And, in one of his more insane rants, threatens to prevent opening the Gordie Howe Bridge between the US and Canada.

This is what MAGA and the not-so GOP defend. While condemning Bad Bunny. Can they go lower? In preparation for November, they already are.

McBillions

 

               Image created using ChatGPT

The lowball estimate of how much personal money Trump has grifted during the first year of his second “presidency” is around $1.2 billion. This is not counting the billions made by his spawn during this time, or the $10 billion he stands to make from suing himself, which is to say his IRS, run by his appointees, because his tax returns were leaked. After, truth-teller that he is, he’d been promising to release them himself for ten years.

This must be challenging for his MAGA idolators who, with tears in their eyes, continue to praise his selflessness in refusing his presidential salary (is he still?) because he loves and has sacrificed everything for us. In total, his Ovaltine haul is at least $4 billion. 

One might wonder how he came up with ten billion to compensate whatever trauma he suffered from the release of those returns, especially since it didn’t impair his reelection. The reelection that’s providing him with the aforementioned loot. Doesn’t matter. Because all of his appointees, from heads of the definitely not weaponized DOJ and FBI, to the Departments of Interior, Education, Commerce, and more, cater slavishly to his regal demands, it seems assured the IRS, after due consideration of the ethics and legalities, doubtless after in-depth consultation with ethical and legal icon Pam Bondi, will cough up the money. Maybe with interest. Bondi’s compliant DOJ would be charged with defending the IRS, too. Convenient. Whatever the amount, it’ll be our tax money, going directly to him.

He said he’d donate to charities, though. Presumably not like the one the courts shut down because he was stealing from it. What’s the over/under on how much he gets and how much he’ll keep?

Has there ever been a “presidency” from which more lawsuits have emerged or toward which they’ve been aimed? Lawsuits are as much a part of Trump as bone spurs aren’t. He sues. Always has. Especially people, like contractors he hires, lacking time or money to fight, who’ll pay him off. It’s how he ran his businesses, and how he’s “running” the country.

Cruel fate (ours) has inpocketed him our entire system of justice, through which, filled with people chosen for their pliability and disregard for our Constitution, he charges anyone he chooses with made-up crimes. Or sues. If only he could clone Judge Aileen Cannon, whose delay tactics and confounding rulings on indictments for his many crimes allowed him to go (for now) scot free (it doesn’t mean what you think). If every courtroom had her cloneliness in charge, lawsuits against him would be thrown out in a minute, and the people he’s had indicted would be convicted before they sat down.

Speaking of not sitting down, I don’t intend to see the Melania movie. Reviews are predictably split along party lines; if you bought Trump sneakers, you’ll love it. The significance, though, is Bezos’s bribery and Melania’s grift, as she stands to make millions off it. But MAGAs love the movie like they love life and hate immigrants, Melania excepted. Money for nothin’ and chicks for fee.

My intention this week was to back off, if slightly, from the democracy-damaging aspects of Trump and his klatch. Focus on stuff that’s only irritating and, based on decades of revelations of Trump’s ethos, predictable and almost amusing. But then came this from President-in-Fact and truly horrible person Stephen Miller: “Plenty of countries in history have experimented with importing a foreign labor class. The West is the first and only civilization to import a foreign labor class that is granted full political rights, including welfare & the right to vote... In America, for generations now, the policy has been that anyone who would economically benefit from moving to the US can do so, exercise the franchise in the US and their children, the moment they are born, will be full American citizens with all the rights and benefits therein.” He wasn’t suggesting it’s a positive.

In other words, per Herr Miller, the US should have a “labor class” that does our dirty work but receives no benefits, like citizenship. Or healthcare. There’s a word for that. To Übermensch Miller’s obvious disappointment, that side lost the Civil War. This link draws the appropriate historical comparison. He’s the one calling the shots (literally) for ICE and CBP. With Trump’s decline, his is the disordered mind behind it all. It’s what American values are up against, and it suffuses all of Trumpism.

As relentlessly depressing as is everything Trump, last week wasn’t all bad. A judge ordered the release of five-year-old Liam Ramos from ICE custody, and, in doing so, said the obvious: “Observing human behavior confirms that for some among us, the perfidious lust for unbridled power and the imposition of cruelty in its quest know no bounds and are bereft of human decency...” 

Also, in Texas, the yellow rose showed a blue tinge. First a district, then the state?

A guy can dream.

Multiple Minneapolis Murders

 

Outrage makes coherent writing a challenge. I’ll try.

Hell-bent on defending ICE when Renee Good was murdered, Trump and MAGA could claim her killer feared for his life because, for an instant, he was stupidly in front of her car. They could pretend that when he shot her to death, standing to the side, he was still endangered, because... I don’t know. Something.

But the latest Minneapolis murder, by Border Patrol agents (why are they there?) led by Nazi cosplayer Greg Bovino, affords no such rationale. The first shot into Alex Pretti, an ICU nurse who cared for critically ill veterans, came from behind, after another attacker had removed his licensed and holstered gun, which, unlike the lies told by Trump, Miller, Vance, Noem, Bovino, and more, he had pointed at no one, nor even touched. As he was executed, Alex Pretti was held down by several so-called officers, subdued, blinded by pepper spray.

We know the videos. Alex Pretti was holding a camera, not a weapon. When a non-violent woman was pushed to the ground by Trump’s thugs, he went to help her, and was taken down by several what-to-call-thems. He threatened no one. The gunmen who pumped eleven bullets into him, the kind Trump hires, might be professional killers, but they’re the opposite of professional law enforcement. Many are actual criminals. Others are just horrible humans. 

It’s so egregious, one might wonder if the assassination was intentional, because Trump and his Svengali, Stephen Miller, wanted to incite violence, enough to rationalize Trump’s dream of mowing down people who dare oppose him. I’m no conspiracist, but this was so out of bounds that who knows? Admirably, Minnesotans have refused the bait.

Everything Trump and his mouthpieces have said, even as multiple videos showed the truth, have been outrageous lies, told by people who know they’re lying but do it anyway. The lies and smears came so fast it was as if a script was pre-prepared. He was there “to do maximum damage and massacre law enforcement.” He was “a domestic terrorist and an assassin.” No one should believe a single word coming from any of them. Ever again.

Republicans defend the right of all Americans to be armed with all weapons at all times in all places under all circumstances. Wasn’t there a time when self-described patriots were buying up military-style weapons and so much ammo that there were nationwide shortages? Wasn’t it to protect themselves from a repressive government bent on rounding up and killing Americans? In fairness, that was when our president was a black man. But, unless memory fails, unlike Trump, President Barack Obama never called for the death of his political opponents or hired death squads. Now that America is living their fever dream, where are those brave men?

If Alex Pretti having a gun meant, ipso facto, as stated by Trump’s hench, that he intended mayhem, would I be a hero, encountering one of those compensatory microphallics in Walmart, slung with an AR-15 and bandoleers containing enough rounds to erase everyone in the store, if I killed him?

Like fiscal responsibility, law and order, and free speech, the right to bear arms turns out to be just another cynical Republican talking point. Bovino tried to legitimize the murder because Alex Pretti “possessed” a weapon. Possessed! He even showed a picture of it. Will independent investigators be allowed to check the registration?

The implication: anyone legally carrying is a deserving target. It’s a bit of a departure from Republican doctrine, but there’s nothing about Trumpism that conforms to long-gone conservatism. Trumpism has devolved into fascism. 

So committed was Trump to moral leadership that he spent the next days touting his monstrosity of a ballroom and hosting billionaire suck-ups for a private screening of a fawning movie about his third wife.

After the execution of Alex Pretti, not even the most Trumpofoxified can deny that Trump and his chosen atrocities lied about what we all saw. They consider their supporters submissive idiots and figure they can dilute votes from those who aren’t. In Trump’s America, citizens are murdered without cause or consequence. Constitutionally protected protest is domestic terrorism. Like the First, the Second Amendment is situational, applying only to his followers. Like Kyle Rittenhouse.

Until Trump is gone, voting for any Republican signifies approval of the brutality behind the murders in Minneapolis and of the mendacious people he hired to oversee it. No matter one’s political leanings, this cruel lawlessness must be stopped. No exaggeration: The times demand choosing between standing with or against America. Assuming it’ll still be allowed, only massive voting can end Trumpic tyranny. Despite a few words of “concern,” Congressional Republicans won’t.

The murders in Minneapolis should fill the hearts of every American with outrage, dialed to 11/3/2026. If so, Republicans would lose both Houses in a tsunami of repudiation.

Meanwhile, don’t leave home without a camera phone.

Yeah, I guess the outrage got to me.

Blinded By The Right

 

Calling elected Republicans cowards gives them undeserved credit. It implies that, seeing what Trump and his brutality-loving private army known as ICE are doing, plus his lawlessness and egotistical imperialism, they know it’s wrong but are afraid to say so.

No.

By now, their silence and that of the misinformed people who elected them shows they love what they’re seeing. They’re not cowards. They’re collaborators. They’re participating in the undoing of America, furthering a totalitarian, white supremacist theocracy, a blitzkrieg against democracy begun well before Trump descended upon us. And, as Europe no longer trusts the US, the ceding of world economic and political power to China.

The votes are there. We shouldn’t have to wait till the November election. By voting to defund it, Congress could stop the excesses of ICE in a minute. It could reclaim its war powers and redirect its investigative ones. It could recall its Constitutional role in levying tariffs. All it would take is a handful of Republicans to rediscover their humanity and duty to the law, assuming they once existed. Except for chameleons like J.D. Vance and Lindsey Graham, people don’t change so completely, so fast. Amorality and disregard for the Constitution must have defined them from the beginning.

Surely they’ve seen what President de facto Stephen Miller told ICE agents after the murder in Minneapolis: “You have immunity to perform your duties, and no one – no city official, no state official, no illegal alien, no leftist agitator or domestic insurrectionist – can prevent you from fulfilling your legal obligations and duties... [I]f officials cross that line into obstruction, into criminal conspiracy against the United States or against ICE officers, then they will face justice.” Translation: “Ignore local laws and officials. You won’t be prosecuted. The prosecuted will be anyone who tries to make you follow American law. I am the law. Trump (to a lesser extent) is the law. Not the courts, not a moldering piece of parchment.”

Unable to imagine the breadth and depth of the corruption and cravenness of Trumpism, the Founders failed us. A system that allows a single, psychically broken, self-deluding man-child to have his way, punishing those who don’t submit, including long-standing allies; a toddler having a tantrum over refused candy – that system is inadequate to the times.

So confident are they in unfailing support that Trump and his mobsters aren’t hiding their White Nationalist agenda. Trump’s Department of inJustice just rehired James Rodden, previously removed when his online posts were earthed, saying such thing as “America is a White nation,” “Migrants are all criminals,” and “All blacks are foreign to my people.” Welcome back, Jim.

The Department of Homeland inSecurity posted an ad seeking ICE applicants, featuring a cowboy under a stealth bomber in the sky. Its text reads, “We’ll have our home again,” from a WWII Nazi anthem loved by American white supremacists. 

Ubermenschette Kristi Noem gave a speech from a podium bearing the motto, “One of ours, all of yours.” Meaning: Kill one of us, we’ll kill all of you. In various forms, it’s been used by the world’s worst authoritarians. Nor is it accidental that Greg Bovino, Trump’s preening border security chief, dresses like an Obergruppenführer. At one time, they didn’t like being called neo-Nazis or white supremacists. Now, they’re broadcasting it, while MAGA and their Congressional representatives celebrate.

The story of America’s collapse, written by non-American journalists and historians, as ours will have been eliminated, will be one of willing acquiescence; of how, while there was still a chance to have prevented it, so-called conservatives, universities, bar associations, and not-yet sold-out media cowered, while elected Republicans and their MAGA horde welcomed it like the Second Coming. Preferring democracy, Congressional Democrats resisted, but weren’t in charge. The opportunity to protect it slipped away.

Meanwhile, Trump continues to ignore courts, refusing to release most of the Epstein files. But we don’t need to see them to know how damning they are to Trump. No criminal tries that hard to hide information that exonerates him. It’s a truism not even MAGA can deny.

Also, only a power-crazed, malignant narcissist would want to invade another country because he didn’t get a Nobel Prize. And ADMIT it! Trying to sound less insane at the World Economic Council, Trump, who lies, minimized the invasion part.

Finally, this: To many readers, the sarcasm of my previous column, which I assumed would be recognized three sentences in and in every succeeding paragraph, wasn’t. I heard from several, livid that I’d gone to the dark side. Even after reading, with reference to my blog, “keep these words in mind as your eyes deceive you,” or “’I’m not mad at you’ is classic professional agitation,” or “shame on anyone who reprints [Michele Goldberg’s comment]” after I’d reprinted it.

I meant to demonstrate, by parody, the gaslit, shameless lies issued daily by Trump and his coven. Evidently it was too cute. Apologies. It won’t happen again.

But, seriously, who doesn’t love Trump?

The Truth Is Out

 

Readers know I've never criticized Trump. I praise him. Always. Never have I mentioned him without placing the word "President" before his name, including now, because, as an American, I'm proud to call him that. This can be confirmed by scrolling through my blog, where I also publish my columns. If you do, keep these words in mind as your eyes deceive you. Trump is my hero. Nothing could be clearer.

What happened in Minneapolis is also clear, which is why Trump and his patriotic selectees have committed to recounting the facts, daily. The words of our Vice President, whose core values are solid as Gibraltar, are as true as mine: "This was an attack on law and order. This was an attack on the American people. The way that the media, by and large, has reported this story has been an absolute disgrace, and it puts our law enforcement officers at risk every single day." God bless him for saying it.

Kristi Noem got it right, too. In an act of shocking domestic terrorism, Renee Good accelerated her foreign-made SUV into a group of ICE agents. By definition, any movement from stationary is acceleration. It's factual. Disingenuously, Ms. Good turned her wheels away from the officers, confirming intent to deceive them. She possibly grazed the one who, as any of us would, then fired three shots into her head. It's training.

Although none of the available videos have shown it, we can be confident, because both Ms. Noem and Trump have repeatedly attested, that Renee Good drove right over one officer, sending him to the hospital where, for all we know, he's still recovering. Video of him walking away, rejoining the others, smiling, is fake. Who can doubt Trump's assurance that Renee was a professional agitator? "I'm not mad at you" is classic professional agitation. Plus, Trump never lies. There's plentiful online video of supporters attesting to that when asked.

The true facts surrounding the unprovoked, vicious attack on ICE agents, an attack on you and me, are important enough that Trump and Noem and Vance and Jesse Waters and definitely-not-closeted Lindsey Graham are obligated to continue repeating them until the significance of what they're saying is understood by everyone. The idea that we'd learn more from an investigation conducted by Minnesota authorities, who, Trump promises, are dishonest and untrustworthy, than from one done by the FBI under honest, trustworthy Kash Patel, is ludicrous. By handing responsibility to his fully independent Justice Department, Trump isn't suppressing evidence. He's seeking it in the best possible way.

Radical left lunatics lie that presidents are bound by laws, some of which, if you can believe it, are 250 years old. Laws that Trump acolyte Matt Walsh rightly called "fake," totally justifying Trump's response, asked in a New York Times interview if there are limits to his power: "Yeah, there is one thing. My own morality. My own mind. It's the only thing that can stop me." What real American doesn't admire that? It's not "malignant narcissism." It's Constitutional.

Trump's consistent morality and remarkable mind are seen in every decade of his life, as a student, a soldier, a businessman, and in his prizeworthy peace-seeking. For their selfless sacrifices, he and his family deserve even more than the billions they're making in the White House from investments. There's none more able to judge a man than the man himself. Like that impossibly arduous cognitive one, Trump passes the test. He's as honest a man as domestic terrorist Renee Good was a domestic terrorist woman.

Here's another outdated shibboleth: free speech is essential to democracy. Stephen Miller dragged that lefty falsehood into the light, crafting presidential orders refocusing federal law enforcement away from foreign terrorist threats and onto Americans who hold "anti-fascist ideas," like "extremism on migration, race, and gender" and "hostility towards those who hold traditional American views on family, religion, and morality." He added a well-deserved warning: "You will live in exile, because the power of law enforcement under President Trump's leadership will be used to find you, will be used to take away your money, take away your power, and, if you have broken the law, to take away your freedom." I'm glad those consequences don't all hinge on breaking the law. Trump, almost certainly having read the orders, signed them. Then, who better to enforce them than our highly-trained, respectful, disciplined ICE agents?

On notice now are insolent columnists like Michele Goldberg, who wrote in the failing New York Times after justice was brought to ICE-described "fking b*tch" Ms. Good, who, as Fox stars pointed out, was lesbian and used pronouns:

"All of us, citizens and immigrants alike, are being ruled by people who think life is a privilege bestowed by authority, and death is a fair penalty for disobedience."

Shame on her for publishing that. And shame on anyone who reprints it.

The Police State Comes To Minneapolis

              

            Made in the USSA - by Mr. Fish

The murder of Renee Good, that young mother in Minneapolis – and it WAS murder – ought to be the final awakening for even the most MAGAfied, the most propaganda-blinded Trump worshippers. Especially those who consider themselves patriots. Or Christian. Not just because of the horror of it, per se, or what is says about the thugs Trump – and it IS on Trump – is hiring to carry out his plan of intimidation and forced submission. As sad as it is to think of her young child now motherless, what’s even more portentous for the county Trump has made no longer great, are the government-sponsored lies that followed.

When Kristi Noem lied so brazenly about it, calling the woman a “domestic terrorist” who ran over the officer, which she clearly didn’t, even saying the murderous agent was hospitalized for injuries (Trump did, too), it doesn’t matter if she knew there was video of the assassination. If she did, she wouldn’t have cared. Like Trump, and Vance, and Bondi, and Patel, and Miller, and Bannon, and Fox “news,” and Newsmax, and Karoline Leavitt, and professional liars like Ted Cruz and most Congressional Republicans, she knows that decades of relentless indoctrination have, as intended, created millions of endumbed worshippers who permit getting away with whatever anti-democracy actions and lies they choose.

When reporters showed Trump the video that made a liar out of him, he retracted nothing. (tinyurl.com/sawtruth)

What American with even an ounce of decency could see what happened and not feel sick? Who could fail to acknowledge, finally, that what Trump and his rudderless political party are creating is a police state, modeled after every despotic government the world has seen. That’s NOT unwarranted hyperbole. It’s as clear as climate change and the Trump-enabled measles epidemic working its way through our county.

Trump just told the New York Times that the only thing restraining him is his “own morality,” not any law or body. This, from the most amoral man ever to occupy the White House.  

That submission to tyranny has characterized so much of human history is something to ponder and to fear. Why do so many of our species so readily submit to domination, happy to be released from responsibility? Whatever the explanation, it’s about to eliminate 250 years of democratic governance here.

There was a time when we could look at the rise of Hitler in Germany, for one example, and think we’re immune to it. That the greatness of America makes her better. That, unlike us, those Germans were uniquely prone to following dictatorial orders, willing to brutalize fellow humans, or, at least, to say nothing. If the Minnesota murder and our government’s response don’t put the lie to that myth and convince a majority of remaining Trump supporters of what’s happening, history’s repeat will become permanent.

The murder in Minnesota and brutalization by ICE and Trump’s weaponized National Guard in his hated Democrat-run cities everywhere, rounding up citizens and non-citizens alike, holding them in inhumane “detention” facilities or deporting them, in some cases to brutal gulags – these are only the most obvious examples of Trumpic totalitarianism. As is the acceptance of them by so-called conservatives.

Consider the takeover of news media by Trump’s billionaire pals, installing stooges to manage and control what we hear and read. Banning the teaching of history, censoring the words of history’s great thinkers. Even Plato. This is what governmental suppression looks like, the hallmarks of despotic autocracy, population control by thought police. Already enthralled, half the country doesn’t seem to care.

Like history’s worst dictators, Trump is creating and MAGA is rejoicing in a cult of personality. His visage hanging from the windows of government buildings, his name plastered above John F. Kennedy’s in the center for the arts about which Trump couldn’t care less. That awful, grandiose ballroomic paean to narcissism, the announced triumphal arch, which, if it gets built, will surely have his name on it, too.

Such self-created idolatry is typical of North Korea and Russia. In Italy, the architectural vestiges of Mussolini’s rule are everywhere, even including engraved years beginning at Day One of his takeover. I don’t wish il Duce’s fate on Trump, though. I want to see him live long enough to watch his self-adoring monuments torn down. If reason returns.

After Minneapolis, everyone can see we’re being lied to every day by Trump and the people he hired for their willingness to do it. Excuse my righteous indignation, but the death of that mother and the disgusting lies that have followed, the silence among so many Congressional Republicans, the acquiescence of MAGA, and the defense of it from what amounts to state media are too much to bear. If 2026 isn’t the year in which Trump’s and his collaborators’ attacks on American values are rejected by Republicans and MAGA, it’ll be beyond recovery.

El Jefe

 

On “Taxi,” the TV comedy starring Danny Devito, among others, and Christopher Lloyd, who played the brain-burned character Jim, there was an episode showing Jim as a brilliant student at Harvard, cajoled into trying a “special” brownie. One bite, and he morphed into the skew-faced idiot he was on the show.

For some reason, I thought of that after Trump announced his invasion of Venezuela. A taste of power, and he went mad. Because Trump was never a brilliant student anywhere, the analogy fails. Still, in his second term as “president,” he’s been nibbling power bit by bit, and finally swallowed it whole. Also, one who’s already mad can’t “go” mad. The analogy fails there, too. So never mind. Clearly, though, Trump is deliriously stoned on power.

The military operation was well-planned and brilliantly executed. How well thought out were the consequences and follow-up is suggested by the shallowness of Pete Hegseth resurrecting his Fox “news” and only qualification roots, crowing, “They effed around and found out.” The preening, testosteronical emanations that dominated the news conference all but made light of the seriousness of what happened. It confirmed, however, that it was never about drugs, obvious from the persisting lies that boats blown up and people killed by Trump were heading to the US bearing fentanyl.

Still more revelatory about the lack of long-term planning are contradictory statements, mostly from Trump and Secretary of State/National Security Advisor/Viceroy of Venezuela Marco Rubio. “We’re running the country,” quoth the Ravin’. “We’re working with their government,” says Marco. Which raises the question: what does it mean to “run” a country, a phrase Trump loves to spout referring to what he does to the US, and believes he’ll be doing to Venezuela. Here’s an experienced general, describing how failure derives from such chaos.

Running a country requires having people downstream to carry out plans. And more people, further downstream, willing and able to do the actual work. By firing competent people and hiring sycophantic yes-ones, Trump made inroads (but not roads) here at home. Stephen Miller and Russell Vought tell him what to do, he orders morally bereft lackeys, like Bondi, Patel, Hegseth, Noem, et nauseati, to carry it out. Trump’s monarchy has eliminated and/or ignored Constitutional checks, so it’s been working very well. Not for you and me, of course. But, for him and his spawn’s and cronies’ bank accounts, it’s been magical.

Neither Trump, who, between golfing and posting social-media jeremiads, hasn’t the time, nor Rubio, who hasn’t the downstream cooperants, can “run” Venezuela. Trump could have turned to opposition leader Maria Corina Machado, but, too bad for her, she won “his” Nobel Peace Prize. Vice-President Delcy Rodriquez, a Maduro acolyte, initially responded to the kidnapping by demanding Maduro’s return and promising that no one would be allowed to steal their resources. To which Trump replied, aping Al Capone, “If she doesn't do what's right, she is going to pay a very big price, probably bigger than Maduro.” As this was never about drugs, neither was it about creating democracy. Was Tucker Carlson wrong, too? 

The “peace president” has become the bully of the Western Hemisphere, threatening whomever and taking whatever he wants. Some see this as dangerous dereliction; others – MAGA and Foxoid media, predictably – see it as USA! chant-worthy. I’m among the former, given the license this has provided our adversaries to do the same, one of which already has. Which might explain Trump’s antecedent defense of Putin’s invasion of Ukraine: tilling his own soilage.

If the outcomes of Trump’s adventurism are unknowable (recall Bush’s Iraq invasion, about which V.P Cheney promised we’d be greeted as liberators and SecDef Rumsfeld said it’d be over in days), some are predictable. First, Trump’s dismissal of alternative energy in deference to fossil fuelers will continue, accelerating climate change, probably irreversibly; and, second, if American oil companies do return to Venezuela, rebuild its oil infrastructure, and resume pumping and selling the oil, Trump will cash in with a pre-arranged personal cut of the profits. It’s the only consistent aspect of his foreign policy. He admitted to working with oil companies, but not Congress, in advance of the invasion. 

How on board they are with the risk and expense is unclear, but Trump offered up US taxpayers to foot the costs.

Trump considers the oil underneath Venezuela “ours.” By any law, it never was; but it’s true that American oil companies once harvested it as if it were, taking from Venezuela billions in profits, making it unsurprising that the country would eventually take back control. Or, as Trump says, steal it. To evaluate that characterization, it’s worth knowing the history. Here’s one source. And another.

Maduro is a bad guy. Considering what Trump has done, and if he follows through on his threats to other sovereign countries, how does Trump compare? Opinions will vary.