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.