Wicked

 

According to current TV ads, there’s a new, more effective hair growth pill. It’s good news, and timely: I’m running out of hair to pull out. By now, every non-comatose American should have realized everything Trump says, without exception, is a lie. That there remain believers, a diminishing number but apparently floored at thirty percent of voters, is alopeciafacient.

What evolutionary aberration produced such people, and why haven’t the responsible genes been bred out? Ironically, it’s probably because people they hate the most, “libtards,” they call them, have, through decades of good governance, put in place programs enabling their continued existence, despite what would otherwise be unsurvivable credulity. Trump is the thanks we got.

How often has he claimed victory in his unnecessary, unconstitutional, poorly planned, ill-managed, Iranian war of distraction? How many times, after what, the 20th or 30th, bombing run, has he claimed Iran is “begging” for an agreement? Following his latest such bleat, while Iran was busy negotiating with Qatar, not the US, over control of the Strait of Hormuz, Iran announced its conditions for opening it. In digestible form, here they are:

The United States must “correct its behavior,” including permanently ending the war, lifting the naval blockade and sanctions, releasing all frozen assets, fully compensating Iran for war damages, and promising never again to threaten it.

Does that sound like begging? Does it suggest Trump is winning his war of stupidity? Do his repeatedly disproven claims indicate a man of sound mind? A man who should remain as titular head of our country? Over the weekend, he bragged about “great poll numbers,” when they are, in fact, terrible (for him, not America). Even Fox “news” polls!

So, what explains it? Presumably, not even the hardest-died Trumpist would believe him if he said the skies were clear while standing in a downpour. So it must be insanity. Either he thinks whatever he says becomes truth, like God herself, or this. It’s not within a light-year of normal. He’s melting like the Wicked Witch of the West.

If Trump’s cultists were born that way, they can’t help themselves. But surely, some Republican senators have the capacity to see; Tommy Tuberville, Marcia Blackburn, Ron Johnson, and their comparables excepted. Rand Paul, dogged defamer of Anthony Fauci, M.D., was such an unqualified doctor that, after repeatedly failing national certification boards, he made up his own and declared himself legit.

Yet there he sat last week, abetted by compatibly corrupt Congressionals, kangarooing attention away from their inability to govern, pushing debunked conspiracies, misconstruing and misquoting Dr. Fauci’s private diary. Shameful is a word too mild. They pushed venal, disgusting lies. Knowingly, calculatingly, disgracefully. As contemptible as their capitulation on Todd Blanche.

Republicans in Congress aren’t your friends, MAGA, and Trump’s lies aren’t the harmless kind four-year-old kids spin. Allied nations no longer trust America, whether by virtue of breaking inkwet agreements or consistent dishonesty. Can’t you understand that his delusional inability to see reality, much less accept it, has led to worldwide catastrophe? And not just making us less safe by weakening us economically and militarily, and by dismissing our allies, but by strengthening our adversaries, maybe intentionally.

Having gutted USAID, Trump is responsible for tens of thousands of deaths around the world, ending the flow of medicine and food to the sick and the hungry. Unsatisfied, he’s doing the same at home, defunding food stamps, child care, maternal health programs, limiting access to healthcare, deregulating poisons. And, just now, ordering changes to childhood vaccinations that will, at the very least, cause unnecessarily many trips to doctors’ offices, extra expense for parents, and multiple jabs for children, rejecting years of settled science, based on assurances from the worm that ate its way through Arfkay’s brain. And, because it’s already happening, will increase childhood diseases. And deaths.

His justification: “I saw this early on and I’ve seen proof of it, where they have a vaccination that looks like the size of a, a bottle of soda poured into a little child’s, uh, body. And bad things happen in many, too many cases.” No, really: those are his exact words. Proof, he calls it, like evidence of Deflection Pool vandalism he just admitted doesn’t exist. Vaccinations the size of a soda bottle! Has America become so lost that there are MAGAs who hear that and think, “By golly, he’s right”?

Trump is hallucinating, conspicuously deteriorating, confirming it by posting nightly AI slop, portraying himself as a muscled superhero, or blasphemously kissing Jesus on a golden (of course!) Crucifix, or an AI-buffed, Medal-of-Honor-wearing Four-Star General. Not even Mussolini and Kim Jong Un, who also suborned glorification with posters and statues, went that far. And his flunkies stand by, grinning and nodding their heads.

But let’s conclude with well-deserved comic relief: A lawsuit filed by Trump against Citibank for “debanking” him prompted their disclosure that, rather than political, it was because they’d gathered evidence of money laundering in his accounts. Karma. Prosecute THAT, Todd Blanche!

Smoke And Mirrors

Even before the latest news, Trump’s Deflecting Pool fiasco was the perfect metaphor for his disastrous “presidency.” It has it all: incompetence, arrogance, cronyism, lying, corruption, blame-shifting. Then his weaponized and degraded DOJ dropped charges against an Olympian canoeist who dipped his hand into virescent waters to touch a cerulean shard. The charges were ridiculous from the outset, transparently intended to give credence to Trump’s desperate scapegoating for his self-created disaster.

There was never substantiation that David Hearn caused a penny’s worth of damage, let alone the thousand-dollar threshold for a felony charge. Yet Trump’s incompetent and embarrassing choice for US Attorney, Jeanine Pirro, recidivist disprover of the “ham sandwich” trope, and, like so many of Trump’s competence-not-required appointees, a former Fox “news” personality, incited an indictment, repeatedly claiming there were photos, witness testimony, expert analysis, and damning video showing the man VIOLENTLY ripping sealant from the bottom of the pool. USING BOTH HANDS!

Shortly after we learned that the government’s expert contradicted everything Trump-level prevaricator Pirro claimed, the charges went the way of day-one-ended Ukraine war, Mexico-paid border wall, and Iran’s obliterated nuclear program pronouncements. It happened immediately after Mr. Hearn’s lawyers petitioned to release grand jury transcripts, likely to have revealed the malfeasance of Trump’s DOJ lawyers in securing the indictment. Withdrawing all charges, Judge-not Jeanine’s report described the damage as due to “rushed and botched installation,” with no evidence of vandalism.

That’s not all, because, with Trump, it never is. When he secretes lies, like climate change hoaxes and stolen elections, and unlike his wives, he sticks with them forever. So, even after the revelation that his inexpert hire’s shoddy work and not vandalism caused the damage, he kept insisting the opposite. So accustomed is he to lies getting him out of trouble, he released a video which, he claimed, confirms very vandalistic vandals vandalizing vandally. It doesn’t. Have a look. What it confirms is Trump’s psychopathy.

Whether Trump knows he’s lying or believes the lies is moot. MAGA believes. Republican kangaroo courtiers create diversions to wipe them away. We’re camel-strawed with a “president” for whom lying is a way of life, a formerly useful political party that has embraced it as modus operandi, and a Republican-controlled Senate too cowed and corrupt to reject Trump’s uniformly alarming nominees for critical positions. Like Todd Blanche, up for permanent Attorney General.

Two outgoing senators, Carolina Tom and Texas John, with nothing meaningful to lose, made a sham show of refusing to advance Blanche out of committee unless he’d put in writing the undoing of Trump’s slush fund for insurrectionists, seditionists, and other criminals, as well as the unspeakably corrupt, permanent exculpation of all crimes, past, present, and future committed by Trump, his spawn, and his businesses. All of which was “negotiated” by Blanche in the baddest of faith.

Predictable as Trump lies yet to come, they executed a mammoth cave after Blanche smoked a few mirrors, purporting to have complied with their demands. He did nothing of the sort. Surely all three know it, but now they have the cover of darkness. The honorable duo turned out to be just as weak as their compadres of contemptibility.

The original Blanche-created outrages were formally agreed to and signed by both parties: Trump suing Trump. Included in that document was the stipulation that it could be revised only by agreement and signature of both parties. What Trickster Todd produced was a unilateral “memorandum.” The prior agreement remains in effect unless Trump signs on. Will he? Whereas it purports to have ended the crime-loving slush fund, it appears to keep in place the prosecution-avoiding provisions for all of Trump’s prior and current crimes, possibly allowing the pursuit of future crimes he’ll surely commit. Assuming Trump’s pet DOJ would choose to. Will it?

Even if the memorandum was bilaterally signed, wiping out all previous provisions, which it isn’t, there remain plenty of reasons why Blanche should be rejected like a moldy tomato. The timid two and all Republican senators know it. As acting A.G., he approved going after the so-called pool vandals, which they weren’t. He okayed the persecution of six Democratic members of Congress who reminded troops they can refuse illegal orders. He was instrumental in withholding and lying about the Epstein files, quidded a suspicious quo with Ghislaine Maxwell, and did Trump’s bidding in indicting James Comey.

Without fail, he’s demonstrated loyalty to Trump over the Constitution and ethical departmental independence. He was and remains Trump’s personal attorney, which he doesn’t hide because Republican submissiveness guarantees he doesn’t have to. He’s the archetypal Trump appointee and, as such, will likely be confirmed.

We can only wonder if any of the approval monkeys dba Republican senators look at the harm being done by the Trump goons they okayed and have regrets. If not, they’ll have eternity to ponder what they did, assuming Hell exists, which is doubtful, but in the era of Trump, I kinda hope it does. I’m willing to take my chances.

Dinner Time

 

With apologies to Thomas Hobbes, Trump’s speech at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner was nasty, brutish, and long. It’s unsurprising that a man with no sense of humor, who can neither tell nor take a joke, who has empathy for none but himself, whose bitterness, mendacity, and self-pity characterize his entire life, resorted to unfunny, mean-spirited, crude, and childish insults at which no one laughed but his gaggle of incompophants. By acclamation, it was the most appallingly unpresidential speech since Andrew Johnson’s on September 4, 1866. The analyses are in. 

Decent people were disgusted. MAGA loved it, the name-calling, body-shaming, transphobia, and lies. Trump hates everyone and everything they hate, and they love him for it. Their delight at the stench of his speech confirms it.

As to the dinner itself, given Trump’s Constitution-hating attacks on the free press, calling reporters enemies of the people, threatening arrests and delicensing, inviting him to speak was like having cancer over for dinner after it killed your best friend. One reporter refused to shake his hand. The rest, who didn’t, debased themselves. So did the planners who ended the tradition of having comedians roast the current president and the press. It was cowardice and capitulation akin to most Congressional Rs.

Kudos to Wolf Blitzer, though, for reading the bill of particulars right next to Trump, including the doxxing of a reporter, leading to death threats, forcing her and her family to move. Trump, the personification of repugnance, literally laughed it off.

But there are greater outrages than useless dinners. We’re living under a government so corrupt, so dismissive of the intelligence of its people, that George Orwell would have burned his most famous book, had he concluded no one would believe such a dystopian world, like ours under Trump, could ever become real.

There’s no better (worse) example of Orwellian double-speak than removing the names of four soldiers killed in Iranian attacks from the list of eighteen war dead. Because those four were killed by strikes during one of many Trump-declared, imaginary ceasefires, they don’t count as deaths in war. So said straight-faced awficials.

That malevolence came not from North Korea or Russia, but our own, minority-elected government. If he could, Trump would hide all the failures of his unnecessary war. Surely MAGA doesn’t buy it. Not even they are so thoroughly brainwashed, so delightedly uncritical that they accept such fetid bullscat as another justification for their limerence.

Mr. Orwell presaged Trump’s executive-ordered signs outside the Smithsonian Institution warning of “inaccurate information” therein (i.e., resisting the MAGAfication of our true history). In “1984,” George had the Ministry of Truth saying, “War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength.” In real life, he wrote, “In a time of deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act.” Like revealing that government officials doled out billions of dollars in grants for clean energy development to states “based solely” on whether they voted for Trump.

Facts, pulled from a quicksand of lies, that should have led to actual revolution. Facts, like security problems with Qatairforce One, leading to Trump’s puppified DOJ subpoenaing New York Times reporters who revealed them. And their families. Trump’s lawyers abandoned that festival of unconstitutionality after a judge summarily firstamendmented them out of court. That acting Attorney General Todd Blanch issued those subpoenas shows why his nomination as permanent A.G. ought to be rejected 99-0 (absent not-necessarily-dead Mitch). Instead, his promotion will likely be approved, thanks to a Jello salad of devertebralated Republican senators.

Trump’s fact-free spewage includes, from now till November, accusing Democrats of being communists. Confident in the grateful gullibility of his voters and the fact that neither he nor they know the meaning of the word, he took a manly stand in defense of Mount Rushmore. “The communists want to take it down. They have tried to take Mount Rushmore down. They want to blow it up. They want to take it down…. These people are crazy.” If he believes that, he’s the crazy one. If he believes MAGA will believe it and that Congressional Republicans will look away from his confabulations, he’s right. But still crazy.

Crazier still are the rules his administration is pushing to complete his extinguishing of science, handing any hope of progress to the rest of the world, making his regressive, un-greatened America a fourth-world country. It limits creating research partnerships with other nations, the sort of cooperation that has led to major scientific breakthroughs. It would place in the hands of his unqualified, compliant political appointees, not experts, decisions on what kinds of research deserve funding, and how much. We can surmise which would get the axe, or, as Elon Musk’s death-dealing DOGE put it, the chainsaw: climate change, pollution, evolution, cosmology, vaccines, poverty, addiction, pure science like the Hadron Collider. And, by their exact words, “woke” and “DEI” things. 

But, hey, as long as Trump calls Adam Schiff a watermelon-head, it’s all good. Right, MAGA? Right? Are we great yet?

Fraud Fraudulence

 

Trump’s fraudulent fraud speech about election fraud came after I’d sent in last week’s column. A dishonest beaut, is what it was, confirming everything written about his intent to discredit any election a Democrat wins. Better yet, to keep such an election from happening at all.

Because he’s unable to read for comprehension, and because it wasn’t presented to him in cartoon form, the evidence to which he referred, posted on his Truthless Sociopath website, proved the opposite of what he claimed. With satisfying irony (who really knows what “irony” means?) the material confirmed the election meddling he’s been denying since day one of his first “presidency.” You know, the “Russia hoax” that wasn’t. A hoax. Also, China’s. 

Which is more inexplicable: that he can fool all of MAGA all of the time, or that he isn’t struck by lightning when he eructates his gaseous lies? Maybe the MAGA cult is right, claiming he’s sent by God. To lie, though? Surprising. If so, we've been misinterpreting the Ten Commandments all this time. Could it be, instead of “He has a plan for us all,” it’s “He has a scam for us all”? With its countless rewritings and translations, original intent may have been lost to time.

In that bizarrely self-negating, proofless smog, Trump claimed illegal voting is rampant; perhaps his biggest lie of the night. Innumerable investigations show instances to be vanishingly small; many were unintentional errors or misunderstandings, never in numbers enough to affect any election, anywhere, ever. His pre-hyped “bombshells” were damp squibs.

Also inexplicable: does he know he’s lying, or does his malignant narcissism render him incapable of believing he lost in 2020? Whatever the answer, each of his appointees and nominees is terrified of saying Joe Biden won that election; only that he was sworn in. With serial cowardice, they and their Republican questioners prostitute and embarrass themselves at every Congressional hearing. It follows, though, that a “president” having no integrity can sniff its lack in others and anoint only them. Notwithstanding the uncountable mistakes he’s made in managing everything from pandemics to energy production to ill-advised, lie-based wars, he deserves credit for getting every one of his selections for office exactly right. If “right” means sycophancy first, competence and rectitude last.

Which brings us naturally to the World Cup, FIFA’s glorious spectacle, second only to awarding Trump its once-and-only Peace Prize. Having known nothing about soccer pre-parenthood, we came to love (and hate, as every fan understands) the sport as we saw, in our son, the effort and athleticism required to master it. He was good, a striker, faster than the effluvium of lies from Trump. His select team, having won a state championship, played in an invitational tourney in Canada. Work kept me from attending the first bout, against the Canadian U-17 national team. When I got there Saturday morning, a dad told me I’d missed the best game ever. Score: 0 – 0. Which confirmed our status as aficionados of the game. Even my parents, when they came, once, from Portland to watch their grandson play – their grandson!! – said it was boring. As to skill, well, it took our son years to get exceptionally good, whereas the first time he ran with a football, he scored a touchdown.

I’m with the rest of the world on this: Americans should call it football, too. Except for a few seconds of a game, what we call football isn’t. We should call it handball. Then what would we call Olympic-style handball? Soccer.

We watched almost every World Cup match, including the final, less exciting than the third-place game. Much as I relished knowing Trump would be presenting the trophy to Spain, toward which he’s been exceptionally nasty of late, I forwent the ceremony. It’d have been like finishing a Michelin-starred meal with a cyclospora salad. (Another Trumpic mess; following the screw worm screwup.)

Proving me prescient, America’s embarrassing “president” ignored FIFA’s president’s efforts to get him out of the way of team pictures. How great, though, that Spain later edited him out. Would that it were that easy elsehow.

If this column sags a bit, here’s why: On Monday, my wife and I had lunch downtown with Joanie T., best scrub nurse/surgical assistant ever, and the friends of a friend of her friend, who sends copies of my columns to them in Nebraska, America’s heartland in more ways than one, evidently. Through friend of friend and Joanie, they’d requested an audience, if I may so describe it, during a planned visit here. Wonderful people, great fun. (My longest-distance reader, far as I know, lives in China.)

I wasn’t feeling a column this week. I would have taken a minibreak, but I thought of how nice those folks were, how interesting and engaging, the mutual appreciation, and didn’t want to disappoint right after our meeting. So this one’s for them.

Making A List

 

Presenting a surfeit of offenses, this column can be consumed cafeteria-style.

Unlike Trump upon the death of Robert Muller, I’ll not say I’m glad Lindsey Graham is dead. As to Mitch McConnell’s “proof of life,” I have questions.

Man-with-a-plan Trump proposed collecting tolls for passage through the Strait. One-eightied a day later.

Here’s an abbreviated, sorta-sanitized joke: A ship sank. Its captain and a married couple made it to an uninhabited island. The captain orders taking turns in a tree to watch for help, and goes first. Every few minutes he says, “All clear. And stop copulating down there.” The couple is puzzled, since they weren’t. It repeats till the end of his shift. Then the husband takes his. “All clear,” he says after several minutes. Then, “By golly, it DOES look like copulation down there.”

I think of it when Trump issues his daily lies about election fraud going on down there. And the fact that the only examples are when he and Republican lawmakers are down there doing it. To us. Like saying Georgia Senators Ossoff and Warnock are “illegitimate” because of nonexistent fraud. That’s 25th Amendment stuff.

With his approval sinking like that ship, Trump’s plan is clear: hammer it incessantly, so that if Ds win November, he’ll claim fraud, and MAGA will gobble it like Trump on a cheeseburger. Meanwhile, he’s fast-tracking his own election dupery by firing the Election Assistance Commissioners, whose job is helping states identify and eliminate fraud. Why? (We pause for the three seconds required to figure it out.)

The murder by ICE of an undocumented Texas man who’d been in the US for 35 years, law-abiding since arrival, started a construction company, put his kids through college, is stomach-turning. He was on his way to a job, three employees with him, each of whom had been in the US for over twenty years. All deny ICE’s claim that he’d tried to run over an officer. Trump is rushing to deport them, which requires another three seconds to comprehend.

After the execution of Renee Good, justified by a similar claim even after video revealed it was a lie, who believes any statement from ICE? Or from Trump’s administration, including him? MAGA. That’s who. Incredibly, ICE thought they were chasing someone else. And they just killed a documented immigrant in Maine in front of his three-year-old daughter. It’s the police state of Trump’s dreams. Even after belatedly pausing (then not pausing) vehicle stops, the deaths are on him. He ordered indiscriminate, massive deportations, with quotas.

It’s a looping online reel: Trump bombs Iran, says Iran wants talks, Iran denies; Trump announces a ceasefire, Iran says there isn’t one; Hormuz is open, Hormuz is closed; one side resumes bombing, then the other; Congress capitulates; Trump says Iran wants talks, Iran denies; Trump says he destroyed Iran’s offence, Iran attacks; Congress capitulates: it’s a war, it’s not a war. Here we go loop-de-loo. As the Queen of Soul asked, “Who’s zoomin’ who”? (I’d have said “whom.)

Yet again, Trump smeared the Smithsonian Institution for recording history truthfully. He aims to rewrite America’s story the way MAGA prefers. Happy slaves, no racism, no Trail of Tears. No liberals, probably. Trump has homed North Korea. History isn’t political. It’s history.

 

If lying about Democrats’ election fraud doesn’t fly, and if commie-calling fails to gain traction, there’s resurrected claims of welfare fraud, a trope sticky like flypaper since Saint Ronnie spoke of welfare queens. Saddled by Trump with another loser after the Iran Memo of Understanding, V.P. J.D. is charged with rooting out fraud (not Trump’s). He hyped a case which, he said, proves Democrats are pro-fraud. The perpetrator was a woman prosecuted, convicted, and imprisoned under President Biden. Oops. In J.D.’s defense, in Era d’Trump the lyin’s share is committed by Republicans. He had few options.

Because there’s no bottom below which Trump won’t sink, he shared a photo of a kindergarten ceremony, shaming smiling little girls for wearing hijabs. Because there’s no bottom below which MAGAs won’t sink, there followed ugly comments on the school’s website, including membership-required death threats.

Trump rejected disaster relief for several blue states while granting it to red ones. It’s part of his efforts to manipulate voting, punishing states that neither kow nor tow. And he ordered the Postal Service not to deliver ballots in states that refuse his illegal demands. That’d be us. USPS says it will obey. Courts have a Constitutional duty. Will they?

Continuing its assault on the First Amendment, punishing journalists and others, Trump’s DOJ subpoenaed New York Times reporters for revealing safety problems with his “gifted” Qatari 747, already costing taxpayers $400 million in retrofitting.

Trump inflicted his name onto the airport nearest Married-a-Lardo. At least Ronald Reagan waited till he died. It’s more North-Korea-level cultism. Like the Trumphal Arch, just approved by his hand-picked something-or-other commission. And those fawning posters hanging like dingleberries on government buildings. And now, a one-dollar coin from the US Mint, with his face on it, right next to "In God We Trust." Un-fking-believable. Might 2029 see names removed and projects disassembled? We can hope. 

That’s only one week. Be sure your cafeteria has a sneeze guard.

They're Everywhere

 

In his “all about me” takeover of our national birthday, Trump proved me right yet again. In last week’s column, I predicted that from now till November, Republicans, of whom he is the leader of the pack of lies, will tell you Democrats are communists. “America will never be a communist country,” he vowed. True, uncharacteristically: there’s never been one, anywhere. The only examples of definitional communism have been collective farms in Russia and Israel, and a couple of failed ones in the US. Trump has no clue what communism means.

Same goes for MAGA. Nor, for that matter, do many – if any – of the fringe lefties who label themselves with the word. As national governance, it’s vapor. But when have lies stopped Trump and MAGA Republicans from pushing them?

The irony is that what Trump is actually making of America is what never-communist Russia is under Putin: a dictatorship facilitated by hyper-wealthy oligarchs. As to the Declaration of Independence, signed on the first of 250 American birthdays, who can point to any value enshrined within that Trump protects? Or believes? Or could name?

But enough about me. Graham Platner, the “common man” running against perpetually concerned Senator Susan Collins (R-Maine), has been credibly accused of sexual assault. As opposed to Republicans, who voted for Trump after he bragged about committing it (“grab them ...”), and who are all in on Texas Ken Paxton, who’s approximately as amoral and corrupt as Trump, Democrats aren’t excusing Platner. Virtually all are calling for an end to his campaign, even if it threatens Democrats’ chances of retaking the Senate.

It’s a consistent difference between what Republicans have become under Trump, and Democrats. MAGA can’t deny it, so they embrace it. Democrats opted for morality. Before Trump, both parties did. Mostly.

Which provides an excellent lead-in to the latest revelations of Trump’s astounding corruption. For he so loved us that he gave his begotten $400,000 salary. And cashed in on his “presidency” to the tune of $3 billion or so, to thunderous silence from Congressional Republicans, excepting a couple on their way out of office. The comparative corruption surrounding that “gifted” Qatari 747, which cost taxpayers $400 million in upgrades, wouldn’t feed a chicken.

Trump and his family made billions on their cryptocurrency scam, while credulous people who invested in it lost, in total, about the same amount. Stock in his company peaked at $79, when he pocketed the money. It’s now a buck seventy-five. Trump, his family, and his insider goons purchased stock in various corporations before Trump awarded federal contracts to them.

Just last week, Trump stood next to Michael Dell and told everyone to buy his “great” computers, which goosed Dell stock. Guess who’d purchased shares weeks before. And this: Trump is relaxing rules governing online purchase of guns. Need I tell you whose son has a big stake in an online seller? And how about the hundreds of stock trades he made before pausing tariffs? Nor shall we forget the gritfo di toti grifti, the corrupte qua non, his “Board of Peace”?

According to his financial disclosure statement for 2025, Trump absconded with over $2 billion. That included, in addition to his crypto crimes, grift from overpriced sneakers, Bibles, commemorative coins, and foreign-made Trump watches. What’s that saying? “You can fool all MAGAs all the time.”

Then there’s Trump turning the pardon process into a cash pig. “It is general knowledge in our practice that for $2 million, you can have a pardon,” a prominent defense attorney told anti-Trump, former Republican Charlie Sykes. He made $686 million from his eponymous cryptocurrency offering while suckered investors lost a total of $3.6 billion. Looking away, Congressional Republicans and America-loving MAGAs suffer torticollis.

There’s much more, but why bother? Even if Democrats retake the White House and Congress, thanks to the Supreme Court’s hall pass and Democrats’ faintheartedness, he’ll get away with it. That ought to matter to everyone, not just the ones he’s been playing for suckers for a decade as “president” and a lifetime before that. Their acquiescence is the avatar of Congressional Republicans’ hypocrisy. They chased non-existent corruption of President Joe Biden for years and perpetuated outrage over Hunter’s paintings, sold by a gallery, over a few years, for a total of $1.5 million; Trump probably keeps that much in his drawers.

Speaking of non-sequiturs, which nobody was, here’s another prediction: Supreme Court Justi and Constitutional literalists Alito and Thomas, who just ignored the literal wording of the Fourteenth Amendment, will retire before Trump’s term ends so he can replace them with yoots (Cousin Vinny reference) who’ll sit for decades. If Ds improbably take the Senate in November, they’ll do it before January, when the noobs are sworn in.

Finally: It’s a truism that everything Trump touches dies. Had he not meddled in the World Cup, giving Belgium super-incentive, might the US team have done better? We’ll never know. But about Alito and Thomas, we will.

Failure To Learn

 

“It’s déjà vu,” as my personal yogi once said, “all over again.” The ability of Democrats to unclench the jaws of victory and pry defeat out like a rotten molar can’t be overstated. It depends upon how much the recent primary results in New York City harbing national sentiment.

I like its mayor, Zohran Mamdani. Much as Republicans and their mendacious media tell you otherwise, he’s neither a communist nor an antisemite. Those prevaricators couldn’t define communism on their way out of a wet paper bag. He’s a Democratic Socialist (also right-side undefinable.) I have no problem with that any more than I do with Scandinavian countries, all of whom fit the definition and are distinctly capitalistic. What they get for higher taxes is economic security in retirement, free education and healthcare. Saabs. Volvos. Erickson electronics, Fiskars tools, Bang & Olufsen, Ambu bags. The products aren’t free, but they confirm thriving capitalism.

Mayor M speaks out against Israel’s conduct after the horrors of the horrifying, subhuman Hamas slaughter on October 7, 2023. A response was inarguably called for, but not, in the opinion of many, what has come since and continues. Many Jews agree with Mamdani. It’s not antisemitism; it’s antipolicyism. I admire Israel’s many accomplishments, especially in science, technology, and medicine. It’s given the world much and we should hope it always will. Just not this.

The mayor didn’t do Democrats any favors come November, though. His endorsements for NYC’s Democratic primaries all won. Knocked off was Dan Goldman, one of the most effective Representatives and interrogators, when they show up, of Trump’s goons. But he’s a mainstream Democrat. In NYC, that was fatal.

One winner– not the Goldman slayer – was Darializa Avila Chevalier, 32, whose credentials are impressive in many ways, and who’s clearly very smart. But her thoughts? Not so much. She’d eliminate police, prisons, and borders. And she openly prefers communism. For those being told she’s proof of MAGAfoxian claims, her similars among Democrats number in the zeros. But there will be ads. Billions of dark dollars’ worth. And they’ll hurt. From now till November, Republicans will claim communists have taken over the Democratic Party, which is as false as Trumpic authoritarianism taking over the Republican one is true.

As a Constitution-respecting American, I believe in fairness, opportunity, and equally accessible voting by all citizens; even Republicans who, in the era of Trump, are the ones committing voter fraud. I approve of helping those struggling in an increasingly heartless system, thanks mostly to Republicans. I support regulations on pollutants and other poisons, on drugs and automobiles; occupational safety. Child labor laws. Public education. Separation of church and state. And I recognize that immigration is an indispensable part of American progress.

I vote Democratic, and I’m horrified by the attempts of today’s Republican Party, having bent over to Trump, to eliminate every one of those law-, morality-, and empathy-based values. Christian values, one might have said, until Trump.

Until Trump, the central issue separating our political parties, debated honestly, legislated with compromise, was the role of government in our lives. Should it be hands-off other than providing roads, police, and soldiers? Or should it, as in the Preamble to the Constitution, “Promote the general welfare”? Across the philosophical spectrum, disagreeing Americans were once considered Americans.

No longer. For a democracy, what we have now is suicidal: a self-centered, narcissistic, vengeful, know-nothing-but-thinks-he-knows-everything “president” who vilifies the opposition in the most obscene, embarrassing, and childish terms, and, weaponizing his Department of “Justice,” seeks to punish them. Try them for treason. It’s dictatorship, and MAGA loves it.

Which makes it critical that Democrats regain control of Congress in November and the White House in 2028. And which explains my concern over the NYC results. I don’t love the leadership of the Democratic National Committee. They’ve been as uninspiring as they are unable to form a coherent, approachable message to voters. The need for a new generation of leadership is apparent, younger and enthusiastic. But “Throw them all out” is a pathway to loss. So is basing votes solely on one’s view of Israel. America is a big country and, unless Trump and Steven Miller have their way, free. What will happen will happen. But please, Democratic Socialists of America: don’t do a Green Party thing.

Now, a brief return to Trump’s Reflecting Pool fiasco: So committed is he to convincing everyone his failure is due to unseen vandals bearing unseen knives and “criminally made algae” (in commie labs at Harvard?) that he’s fenced it off, added cameras and, as is his wont, troops. So now we’ll see. If it was vandalism, the pool should clear up like outgrown teenage acne.

And finally, a new definition of schadenfreude: Observing the failures and scant turnout for Trump’s “all about me,” puny Great American State Fair; and the number of people bailing out when, substituting himself for self-canceled musicians, he gave a lazy speech recycling his sad lies about turning America into the “hottest” country on Earth. (Climate change reference?)

Happy Birthday, America. Don’t blow it.

Dirty Pool

 

If you’re looking for the perfect metaphor for Trump’s “presidency” – I’m not first to say it – it’s his Reflecting Pool debacle. From start to whatever the finish will be, it has it all: hubris, incompetence, insider graft, lying, blaming. Some things are emblematic enough that they bear repeating; trying, futile as it may be, to bring sight to the unseeing.

Yes, it seems trivial compared to his lie-based, ill-conceived, vanity-motivated Iran war; nor has it, like the war, cost America and the world countless billions, jobs, and security. Unlike the war, it hasn’t left the terrorist nation of Iran in a stronger position than it was before his senseless embarkation. What it has done is provide shorthand for the dark, fibrillating heart of Trumpism.

It began, predictable as sunrise does the day, with Trump bragging that he alone had the know-how to “fix” the Reflecting Pool, adding that Presidents Biden and Obama, of whom his jealousy is boundless, are responsible for everything wrong with the pool; as he has with everything wrong in the world he created. Then, as with climate change and vaccines, he ignored the science of adding a dark, heat-absorbing base beneath a primordial soup. Which rejects evolution and climate change, as well. Because of course.  

It’s US law that government contracts can only be no-bid when there’s an emergency. But he handed one out, to the tune of millions, when no emergency exists. To a donor. Which demands something that’s lately become rare here: a link. Voters should know who the guy is. Gaze upon him. Read of his Trump-approved background.

Trump promised it’d cost less than two million (for what is Trump if not one who keeps promises?) It’s heading toward fifteen. So far. People who know things, a disqualification for anyone in Trump’s employ, predicted the outcome: water coming raw from the Tidal Basin, heated perfectly to brew algae already contained in that water, would produce blooms in amounts, as Trump likes to say, “never seen.”

Then Iranesque damage-control escalation: in this case, teams of workers dumping hydrogen peroxide into the pool to kill the organisms (also, it appears, ducks). Which lifted the blue stuff off the surfaces of the pool. Fortunately for Trump, who denies responsibility for each of his lifetime of failures, a 62-year-old former Olympian, having biked 50-some miles before arrival, decided to see the blue floaters. Touch one, even. He was immediately arrested, giving cover for Trump’s election-level lie that bloom and blue proved vandalism, clear as the pool isn’t. Then, adding credence to lies, as is his wont, he sent in the National Guard.

I was once a devoted cyclist. On fifty-plus-mile rides, I carried energy bars and Gatorade. I never considered adding pollutants. Too much weight. We’ve seen how many people adding how many gallons of bleach had how little effect on Trump’s blooming botchery. How many vandals, unnoticed by 24/7 cameras, would it have taken to do what Trump is claiming? Putting how much of whatever into a pool that holds 6.75 million gallons would be required to have an effect? Possible? Maybe. Coming from Trump, though, who, insulated by his true believers, lies about everything, doubt is the proper stance. They cut it with knives, he tells us. Having, weeks earlier, bragged that the surface he’s installing was impenetrable by blades.

I worry for the biker, who’ll probably face trial. Hopefully, he’ll be exonerated for lack of proof. But he’s in for a rough time. As are the people arrested, like “round up the usual suspects” dictators do. Consistent with his election lies, Trump has offered no credible proof of their sabotage. There, hilarity ends. It’s exactly the scapegoat-fueled authoritarianism into which Trump and his enablers are dragging us, cheered on by MAGA and their media, facilitated by silence from millions of uninformed, disengaged voters. Compared to Trump’s manifold and worse botchery, it’s small, but it shows exactly who and what he is. Americans must no longer stand for it.

Or for the pathetic capitulosity touted by Trump as “ending” his Iran debacle. Like this Swiss cheese from J.D. Vance, ace negotiator: “This is probably what we’re most excited about as Americans, the Iranians have agreed to invite IAEA inspectors back into their country. That is a major milestone for the American people.” Lucyfying the peace football yet again, Iran denies it; once more making Trump and Vance look stupidly gullible. Maybe it’s true. If so, it’s just a return to the agreement forged under President Barack Obama and ended by Trump.

Including the other giveaways Trump approved, like ending sanctions, a broken promise to help the Iranian people, praising Iran's leaders, handing over billions of dollars, allowing ballistic missiles, and nuclear power, selling their oil (to America!!), and ceding control of the Strait of Hormuz, it’s worse. Much worse. It’s a rare Trump promise kept: total surrender.

To repeat the undeniable: Trumpism’s incompetence and mendacity end in November, or never.

Not So Cagey

 

In honor of himself, the emperor built an arena festooned with corporate logos and ordered gladiators into it, to bloody each other before his majesty and consort. Perfectly encapsulating the tone and tenor of the event -- indeed, of an entire “presidency” -- one of the hand-picked combatants, an announced favorite of Trump, took to the microphone after his win and shouted, to MAGnafied cheers and, reportedly, a “half-smile” from Trump, “Michele Obama is a man. Am I right, America?”

Thus did Trump celebrate his birthday, adding a taxpayer-funded military fly-over. No American president has spent taxpayers’ money in such a paean to self. The desecration also included the Lincoln Memorial, on whose hallowed ground half-naked men posed for their weigh-in, after which they accessed every room of the West Wing. There are no words.

Disgraceful. Insulting. Embarrassing. Humiliating. Desecration. Shameful. Disgusting. Exploitative. Shameless. It’s foolish even to try. Degrading. Egomaniacal. Indecent. Reprehensible. Vile. Contemptible. Self-enriching. Repugnant. Grotesque.

It renders me wordless.

Debasing. Obscene. Vulgar. Tasteless. Self-aggrandizing. Unbecoming. Travesty. Shamelessly corrupt.

MAGA.

Happily, we needn’t dwell further upon this debauchery (wish I’d thought of that one). Other than reverberations through history and lingering stupefaction around the world, it’s over. We may now turn our celebratory attention elsewhere.

Our national artist of the deal has capitulated his way back, for sixty days, anyway, to where things were before his lie-based vanity war. It’s a “Memorandum of Understanding,” not a deal. The Strait of Hormuz will re-open, as before Trump’s folly, except for the fees Iran may still charge. Iran’s nuclear future remains unresolved. The regime stays in place. It can resume selling oil. Bewailed by Republicans when President Obama did it, Iranian assets are unfrozen. In the eyes of the world, Trump’s war has made Iran stronger and America weaker.

At best, our dealer might even art his way back, nuke-wise, to the situation extant before he trumped the Comprehensive Agreement achieved under President Barack Obama, international inspectors and all. If not, algaeic reflections on what we witnessed on the South Lawn may have to suffice.

But Trump’s amaranthine debasement of the White House is trivial compared to his deadly war on democracy’s definitional fundament: free and fair elections, equally available to all citizens. Having hired amoral sycophants helping Trump destroy everything America once stood for, people like Kash Patel and Todd Blanche and Russell Vought, plus overt racists like Stephen Miller, it’s proceeding apace, unchecked by Congressional Republicans, some of whom know better. Two, maybe.

Coming from Trump, to repeat a truism, accusation is confession. Like having lied for a decade about rigged elections for which he’s presented neither proof nor explained how it was accomplished. Aided by repetition of the lie by Foxian media, every cabinet member, and nearly all Republicans in Congress, he’s tilled MAGA’s intracranial soil, implanting unquestioning belief. Every election MAGA loses in November will be called rigged; every MAGA will believe it.

He’s not settling for the big lie. Under his command, the US Postal Service says it won’t deliver ballots in blue states, like ours, that refused his illegal demand to hand over their voter rolls. And he’s declared mail-in ballots illegal. Were the Supreme Court’s ideological, regressive majority not rewriting our Constitution, those efforts would be down-slapped in a Minuteman minute.

In what’s certain to be the first of many, Trump’s Kash-poor FBI raided an Ohio institution dedicated to registering eligible voters. The raid included homes of its leaders and staff, and the intent is obvious: intimidation. Not just of people wanting to register, but people helping them. Just as obvious: Democrats work to protect voting by all citizens, while Trump’s MAGAfied Republican Party wants to scare them away. Otherwise, they can’t win.

The sabotage includes SCOTUS-blessed gerrymandering in Republican-controlled states, where Black-majority districts are being systematically legislated out of existence. Some blue states are trying to counter it, even as Congressional Democrats have, repeatedly, produced legislation to outlaw gerrymandering, predictably voted down by Republican majorities. “Otherwise, we can’t win” should be their official motto. 

To their list of electoral corruption, add accessibility-skewed voter ID laws and purging legal citizens from voter rolls, potentially disenfranchising millions around the country. Their lying about Democrats rigging elections serves to mute allegations of their own obvious malfeasance. Is it time to suggest elections won by Republicans were rigged? What Trump and his party are doing is as obvious as an FBI raid. They hope to bury recognition under a pile of lies.

Oh, but Trump loves America. Just not the one in which laws were followed and court orders obeyed; in which the Department of Justice enforced our laws impartially. He kisses the flag, though, posts pictures of himself doing it on his Truthless Sociopath platform. And he put on a cage fight to delight testiculated Americans, right there on the lawn of the People’s House. Sure, he’s getting richer from investing in the sponsoring corporations and planting his crypto grift’s logo around the octagon. But, hey: what’s love if not that?

Also: nipples.

What About

 

Ken Paxton. Herschel Walker. MTG. Pete Hegseth. Pam Bondi. Lauren Boebert. Matt Goetz. Kari Lake. Tommy Tuberville... DONALD TRUMP!

Graham Platner.

That’s all I have to say about that.

Well, okay. There’s hypocrisy enough to go around. But if democracy is to survive, and, given how many so-called patriots don’t care or would prefer it doesn’t, survival is hardly assured, it’s existentially critical that Democrats retake control of Congress. Also, Susan Collins is very annoying. 

If Dems were to retake the Senate – I mean, seriously, Paxton vs Talarico is a tough call?? – I’d hope they’d find a new majority leader. Which is all I have to say about that.

Speaking of Trump – our querimonious gudgeon-in-chief – it’s hard to say which is more obvious: his continual lies about his equally idiotic and catastrophic war, or that Iran is playing him like a pawn-shop ghaychak.

His only consistent approach is to lie that we won the war, that Iran has no military capability left, even as they continue to strike, and that prices are coming down. Who ya gonna believe? Trump or yer lyin’ gas pumps?

But that’s not his only consistency. Equally consequential and destructive is his penchant (I like people who pronounce it “ponSHAWN”) for hiring the most unqualified people available; people guaranteed to ignore the law and to do his bidding. Bill Pulte is the most recent and among the most glaring examples. Trump wants him to be our next Director of (oxymoron alert!) National Intelligence; a man with zero experience in the field. None. Less than Pentagon Pete had in managing the world’s largest military.

What pulled Pulte into contention is his history, as head of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, of drumming up fake charges against people Trump hates. For their truth-telling and for using their positions as our Constitution intended. Clever deceiver that he is, Trump posits Pulte as “temporary” director, thus avoiding the need for senate confirmation which, even from this Trump intanked collection of electorally invertebrate Republicans, appears uncertain.

He’ll be there long enough, though, to look for ways to charge Democrats with treason or something. That there’s little else of importance to be done as DNI is confirmed by Trump having him keep that housing job. I won’t mention the dildo thing. Not that kind of guy.

How about this: hiring Elias Irizarry a convicted, then pardoned, J6 rioter for a sensitive anti-terrorism job in the Pentagon? He was only nineteen at the time, and he has apologized for what he did, including, I guess, deleting a week’s worth of texts on his phone, before and after January 6. The job requires top-secret clearance. Some of the flying I did in Vietnam required that, too. They didn’t want to give it to me because my dad once had a law client who was the brother of a member of the Oregon Communist Party. I guess things are looser now, in the current administration.

At least Mr. Irizarry isn’t among the hundreds of pardoned J6 felons who’ve gone on to commit crimes running the gamut from property crimes, fraud, illegal firearm possession, planned assassination, and more. At least fourteen have been charged with sex crimes, including child abuse. Victims of President Biden’s government weaponization, Trump says, deserving of taxpayer money for reparations.

Follow the law? In testimony before Congress last week, Markwayne Mullin, another questionable hire as head of DHS, refused to commit to obeying court orders. For Trump, that’s the opposite of disqualifying.

Another consistency in today’s version of Republican conservatism is, since entering the Trump zone, axiomatic: any election in which a Republican candidate loses is, inarguably and definitionally, rigged. Evidence, consistently lacking in all instances, is unnecessary nor to be sought. All that’s required is saying so. The consistent debunking of every claim, from mules to hacked machines to millions of votes from non-citizens to forged mail-in ballots, only goes to prove it. Never has anyone produced a credible sequence of steps by which the rigging occurred.

California’s ridiculously slow vote-counting is perfect substrate for conspiracists, a group that includes House Speaker Holy Mike Johnson, a man by his own assertion in direct communication with God. “Look, some of these efforts are so diabolical and so far upstream it’s impossible to prove,” he said. “But I think everybody knows instinctively something is wrong here.” The fact that it’s impossible to prove is all the proof Ministerial Mike needs. It’s instinct. Like Trump’s gut, as opposed to expert advice, when it comes to policy decisions.

We end today's reality check with something definitely-not cognitively-impaired, gut-following Trump posted on his Truthless Sociopath platform:

“Communists always do well with the Voters or, as they would say, THE PEOPLE, in the Early Years! But, in the end, the Country, State, or City, GOES TO HELL! Great Violence proceeds at levels never seen before, and the entity dissolves into Poverty, Squalor, and Crime. Remember, breathtaking ‘Popularity’ first, and then, guaranteed DEATH AND DESTRUCTION!” 

So sayeth the “Leader of the Free World.”

Fools Give You Reasons...

 

After last week’s column detailing only a fraction of the grotesque corruption Trump and his familiars are getting away with, I heard from a sometime commenter. “The most corrupt administration in US?!!,” he wrote. “Laughable! Thank God for President Trump. No he’s not perfect but the Biden and Obama administrations absolutely corrupt and throw in the mainstream media, including the Herald and the propaganda they push against America and you got corruption, buddy. At least Trump is standing up FOR America which is why the MAJORITY voted for him.” (sic)

I requested examples of Biden or Obama’s “absolute” corruption and for evidence of Trump being “for” America as opposed to only himself. I also pointed out that whereas Trump did win the last election, the majority of votes went to others. On the assumption he can’t differentiate between news and opinion, of which the Herald provides a variety, I didn’t ask for examples of its “propaganda against America,” of which there are none.

I guess he’s still formulating an answer.

His comment helps us understand Texas Republican primary results for US Senate. Longtime senator John Cornyn, a vanilla Trumpist who tried to get a Texas highway named after him but failed to grovel enough, lost to AG Ken Paxton; a man so glaringly corrupt that his own party impeached him and the Republican senatorial campaign committee spent $100 million to defeat 

him.

After a last-minute endorsement from Trump, he crushed poor Mr. Cornyn. After which the Republican campaign committee endorsed him. A serial adulterer and liar, an unethical scammer still under indictment, and first-order election denier. Sound familiar?

Two possibilities: either Texas Republican voters limit their news to Foxoid sources and haven’t heard about Paxton’s and Trump’s transgressions, or they know and consider them reasons to vote for them. Not despite. BECAUSE. The choices are equally damning of people still supporting Trump.

In the case of my commenter, it must be a bit of both. Bombarded for years from Fox with “the Biden crime family,” he swallowed it without chewing, despite, after years of “investigations,” having been shown no evidence of it. Fobbing off Trump’s self-dealing, lying, and illegal billions in family-enrichment as “not perfect,” the only inference is he’s okay with it. Admires it, probably.

To comprehend Trump supporters’ mentation, consider the latest verbal atrocity spewed by Deputy Chief of Staff and co-president, Stephen Miller: “The American people understand the hell that we inherited and the extraordinary paradise that President Trump is building.” That’s “climate change is a hoax” level lying. “Iran was weeks away from a nuclear bomb” b.s. “Nothing less than absolute surrender” narcissistic puffery. It’s the kind of barefaced, transparent lies away with which the Trump administration gets, daily. Not only gets. Has them amplified by rightwing media, hourly.

Here’s Miller’s “inherited hell”: Post-Covid, the lowest inflation and fastest-growing economy of any nation. More job growth than any previous president, most small businesses being created. Infrastructure being rebuilt. Reversed Trump’s Covid incompetence. There’s lots more. (I’ve been urged to dispense with fact-confirming links, but readers can easily find them.)

And Trump’s “paradise”? Soaring debt; an unending, unnecessary war based on a lie; accelerating inflation, especially food and gas; depletion of our military assets; handing world leadership to China; fulfilling Putin’s dream of weakening NATO; creating – deliberately – the most political division in our country since the Civil War, right out of the fascist playbook; and, to beat a moribund horse, wallowing in the most government corruption we’ve ever seen.

I’d have listed spewing hate for anyone who doesn’t support him, punishing dissent, and turning his DOJ into his personal Stasi, but MAGAs see those as positives. Same with his nightly barrage of repetitive grievances, childish name-calling, and pathological lying. It’s unsurprising that Stephen Miller, as loathsome a person as ever slithered the earth, produced the foregoing outrage, or that he assumes people will believe it. Nor, by now, is it surprising that they do. MAGA news sources are built around the concept that if a lie is repeated often enough, it’ll be accepted as truth.

It’s how my respondent can assert, with certainty, despite being unable to produce examples, that Presidents Obama and Biden were more corrupt than Trump. That kind of unquestioning credulity bodes ill for our republic, the survival of which depends on citizens’ ability to think.

But let’s end on a happier note. As Trump systematically destroys America’s efforts to study and mitigate climate change, other countries are filling the void. Australia has become a leader in solar power and, addressing sunshine’s inexplicable absence at night, its homes are increasingly equipped with high-capacity storage batteries. Elsewhere, Türkiye, where I just was, is creating massive solar farms, and, by law, manufacturing equivalent batteries to go with them. Several European countries are approaching 100% clean energy.

As Trump’s America, blind to science and averse to facts, falls behind – and not just in sustainable sources -- enlightened world leaders may yet save the day. Addressing climate change elsewhere, it seems, is easier than regaining sanity here.

It's Blatant

 

Today’s debate topic: “Resolved: Trump and his administration are the most corrupt in US history.”

Argument in favor: Duh.

Argument against: ...

Trump doesn’t hide it. Why should he? After receiving no pushback from his party in Congress, no outrage from his state media, and undying love from MAGAs, he flaunts it. His loathsome lawsuit against himself, asking ten billion taxpayer dollars to be delivered to himself, is corruption unbound. Sue yourself, settle with yourself to the tune of $1.776 billion (get it?), to be distributed to people shielded from disclosure, by appointees to a panel chosen by him, its rules kept secret. People claiming harm from “government weaponization” by President Biden; i.e., appropriately convicted of indisputable crimes by our American system of jurisprudence, following the letter of the law.

That, as opposed to Trump’s undisguised weaponization of his lackeyfied “government” against perceived enemies and truth-tellers. Give the money to Mark Kelly and James Comey, for two. Under Trump, it’s axiomatic: every accusation is an admission.

That’s not the worst of it. As executive head of the IRS and DOJ, sue-er and sooee, he agreed with himself not to investigate or prosecute himself for tax fraud, past and present, erasing potentially $100 million in penalties for cheating. That he sought and granted it to himself answers any question (which Congressional Republicans are too cowed to raise) about the legality of his tax filings and business dealings. Per Jeffrey Toobin in The New York Times, “The United States agrees that it is “FOREVER BARRED and PRECLUDED from prosecuting or pursuing” President Trump, his eldest sons or any of their businesses. The agreement covers matters “whether presently known or unknown” and cases that “have been or could have been asserted” by the government.” Other crimes are not excluded.

Knew nothing about it, he lied. Before bragging about it a day later. The art of the self-deal.

Why doesn’t the Constitution preclude a “president” from suing his own government and agreeing to whatever terms he might propose for himself? Probably because our founding fathers, more brilliant than not and skeptical of unbridled executive power, couldn’t imagine the Electoral College selecting a person already known to be as amoral and lawless as Trump or of a petrified Congress doing nothing about it.

There’s more, of course. Months after the State of the Union Address in which he urged Congress to ban insider stock trading by its members, we learned he’s been doing just that. A week before his government approved the sale of Nvidia chips to China, he bought $1 million in stock. He bought $5 million more right before Nvidia made a computing deal with Meta. In January, he bought stock in Palantir. Shortly thereafter, Palantir got a billion-dollar contract with DHS. Then he invested $5 million in Taser-maker Axon, two weeks before ICE announced $220 million in purchases.

Oh, the White House says, he had no hand in those trades. Right. Pure coincidence. Because when has he or his mouthpieces ever lied?

Every American should recoil in disgust from this wanton corruption, rejecting, till he’s gone, any politician remotely supportive of Trump. Proving how unlikely that is was the celebration of America’s alleged Christian roots, held a week ago on the National Mall, promoted by Trump, the fakest of fake Christians; a pander to the antidisestablishmentarians of his party as blatant as the aforementioned corruption; a show of Christian Nationalism as disturbing as it was un-American.

Trump’s faux Christianity was equally unhidden: to the adoring crowd, he beamed in, between rounds of golf in Florida, a recycled, prerecorded reading of a couple of Bible verses, originally aired in May. Imponderably, MAGAs continue to believe he and his corruption were sent by God. If they once had it, what happened to their ability to recognize a swindler? Trump, Fox, and red-state-style miseducation is what.

We’ve just returned from nearly a month in Türkiye. It’s a beautiful, geographically diverse country, a crossroad of cultures, one foot in Europe, the other in Asia, with picturesque mosques and churches, ancient Byzantine, Greek, Roman, and even older ruins. The parallels between its leader, Recep Erdogan, and Trump are obvious. Its constitution declares Türkiye a secular nation, but Erdogan is trying to make it overtly Muslim. Like Trump’s “Christianity,” it’s a naked political move, but, unlike Trump, it seems he’s actually a believer. Like Trump, he builds monuments to himself, jails political opponents (or calls for it), and throttles a formerly free press. Unlike Trump’s, his government actually helps average citizens: free healthcare (even for pets!) and education, good roads and efficient, clean, public transportation. Stuff MAGA Republicans reject as socialism.

While there, I scrolled through and deleted without reading most of my politics-related inbox. I couldn’t completely tune out our homely horrors, but my mind was mostly occupied by such wonders as the Blue Mosque, Hagia Sophia, the Bosphorus and Dardanelles, ancient cities like Ephesus, the Turquoise Coast, and the company of compatible fellow travelers of diverse backgrounds. Producing this column on return was less rewarding. Kebab for thought.

What The H?

Today’s episode is brought to you by the letter H.

Few things in life are as predictable as reactions to gun violence in America. (“In America,” of course, goes almost without saying.) When one of their own is threatened, Republicans will blame the rhetoric of Democrats. They’ll call for repression of speech. Like Gym Jordan, they’ll make connections that don’t exist and lie about them, as when he said, "I don't think it should be lost on anyone that we have a third assassination attempt on President Trump in the same week we learned that the Southern Poverty Law Center has been paying and generating hate."

For the record, like the FBI, with which the SPLC cooperates, it engages paid informants within hate groups, which is not “paying and generating hate.” Jordan knows that. He’s venal but not stupid.

If it’s one of their own who committed the act, they’ll make no mention of Republican rhetoric that preceded it. Like, oh, “Journalists are the enemy of the people.” “Democrats are the party of ‘hate, evil, and Satan.’” “Democrats want to destroy our country.” “I’m glad he’s dead.” “No Kings marchers hate America.” “[Senator Mark Kelly and others] ... should be put to death.” Stuff like that.

You didn’t hear criticism of Trump from the right when he shared the home address of President Barack Obama, following which a man was arrested outside, with a gun.

Until Trump, there was never a president who openly sought to foment that level of hate and violence against an opposing political party. And, before Trump, no president had a party that loved him for it.

What you will hear is that the person was mentally ill and doesn’t represent their party, and that a “president” spewing hate for liberals has nothing to do with it. What you won’t hear are suggestions for making guns less available to people with a history of violence or mental illness. Nor will you hear calls for funding treatment of mental illness.

You will hear conspiracy theories from both sides. Staged. False flag. Crisis actors. Ear cartilage. Groomed. In that, there is political equity. However, those theories generally emerge from higher up the right-wing chain than ones from the left, both media personalities and elected officials.

Still, people pushing those theories, from whatever direction, demean us all, just as political violence endangers us all. As do calls to punish those who speak the truth. Or tell jokes on TV. As Donald Rumsfeld famously told us, “Democracy is messy.”

Something original did come from the correspondents’ dinner episode: Trump demanded, his words received throughout right-wing media like tablets from Sinai and put on loop, that his ridiculous ballroom be built immediately, lest he be in “grave danger.” Lindsey Graham wants taxpayers to pay for it. Let's keep the secret hidey-hole underneath. Rebuild the East Wing.

More sponsorship from the letter H:

Trump just re-indicted James Comey. Remember when Rs investigated President Biden for “weaponizing” government and came up empty? Trump’s is as obvious as it is copious.

Republicans rejoiced when Texas initiated the mid-term gerrymandering that gave them five newly red districts. Trusting Democrats to cling to their tradition of clinging to their tradition, other red states followed suit. Then, OMG! Virginia Democrats did the same dang thing. Backlash from the right is set to eleven. The Washington Bezos, which previously editorialized that the Texas ploy was no big deal, called Virginia’s move a danger to democracy. N.B.: House Democrats teed up a bill outlawing gerrymandering months ago. Republicans refuse.

Trump just fired all members of the National Science Board, which sets scientific standards “for how rigorous, intellectual, scientific decisions should be made.” Like education, rigorous science, whether applied to healthcare, climate change, pollution, and more, is a greater threat to Trumpism than Democratic gerrymandering. Right up there with free speech.

Some have praised Trump for dropping his suit against Fed Chair Jerome Powell. No, it wasn’t because it was petty and unfounded. It was to get Senator Tom Tillis to drop his hold on the nomination of Kevin Warsh until the suit was dropped. It was and he did. As with every Trump nominee, Warsh is expected to do Trump’s bidding, for his sake, not ours.

We’ve just learned Trump’s State Department, headed by born-again yes-man Marco Rubio, will be putting Trump’s image on US passports, in honor of America’s 250th anniversary. It’s always and only about Trump. He’ll be on our money next.

Never has any American leader displayed such malignant narcissism. It’s reflected in everything he does. In foreign “policy,” the results have been disastrous. Can anyone imagine the reaction from the right, the apoplexy on Trump-state media, if Presidents Barack Obama or Joe Biden had demanded such a thing? Or added their name to the Kennedy Center, torn down the East Wing for a ballroom, proposed a garish memorial arch? Or launched a war, expecting surrender in two days, after ignoring warnings of the inevitable consequences?

In fact, everyone can imagine it. It’s filed under “H.”