Trump wants us to lose all hope

Lately, words haven’t come easy, my friends.

Because what more is there to say to describe all this hell?

I feel angry and helpless as this terrible torrent of ill will, lawlessness, and lies are rolling over us from the top of Capitol Hill, where a collection of pathetic weaklings have surrendered to an inadequate, America-attacking madman, and his racist cult, who are energized by nothing but hate, and a tasteless zeal to feed the rich, and punish the poor.

Lately, I have wondered what more can possibly be said to highlight a national emergency which only intensifies by the hour, as this collection of anti-Americans exact their revenge on this country’s unmitigated gall to occasionally make progress.

I suppose this is the price of caring, but it is also a lousy excuse from a writer who is paid to help make some sense out of all this madness for brave, engaged readers who deserve at least that much right now.

I mean, the Cabinet of the United States of America is a collection of the worst, most incompetent morons in history, and we are supposed to suffer through it as if it was just another cloudy day.

This throng of environmental terrorists, racists, anti-vaxxers, white supremacists, Russian puppets, and a never-ending list of toxic right-wing propagandists staff these vital positions not because of their qualifications, but for their singular ability to stroke their repulsive cult leader’s ego, to make himself feel better about his sickly condition that most likely started around the time his parents kicked him out of the house because even they couldn’t stand to be around him any longer.

My God, our morbid, puppy-killing Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem doesn’t even know what habeas corpus means. Settle on that one for a minute …

And I’ll bet you everything in my dwindling retirement account, which has been plundered by these idiotic tariffs, that fully half the people in that revolting cabinet don’t know the significance of habeas corpus either, including the convicted felon they work for, who could care less about it.

Think too hard about this, and it can shatter you.

Just yesterday alone, the rust-orange wannabe king hosted South African President Cyril Ramaphosa at the White House with the sole intent of verbally assaulting the man with racist lies and venom, as a public nod to his sickly funder, Elon Musk, and his white nationalist base. This was out of the same odious Birther playbook that Trump pulled with Barack Obama starting in 2011, to garner the attention and undivided love of the millions of nauseating Christo-Fascists, who currently lead the Republican Party.

It was a grotesque scene, and an obvious racist dog whistle to the right — though I couldn’t find it covered that directly in any of my likely sources in our broken, corporate media, who have effortlessly normalized bigotry.

Speaking of which … are we EVER going to stop hearing from this sanctimonious sap, Jake Tapper, who is being handed one microphone after another to tout his under-sourced, overhyped book, which is treating Joe Biden’s decision to run for president in 2024, as somehow remotely comparable to Trump’s refusal to accept the results of the 2020 election and his subsequent violent attack on our country and attempt to overthrow the government?

While damn near everything we hold dear is under attack AGAIN, Tapper and the mainstream media have completely lost the thread and are now trying to strangle us with it.

He (they) need to just shut the f––k up.

And this: Anybody who buys this book needs to have their head examined, and have officially become part of the problem.

Then there’s the Republican-controlled House led by the mealy-mouthed “Moses” Mike Johnson that just passed a budget that would make Jesus Christ faint. This lurid package of cruelty will steal from the poor so they can reward their rich overlords with handsome tax breaks.

It is gruesome, mean, and if passed by the Senate will also saddle the country with trillions of dollars of debt, because all that crap about “fiscal responsibility” they claim to care so damn much about is just that: CRAP.

So … with all that creeping around my wrecked mind this morning, I was cracking away at the daily newspaper and mainlining my third cup of coffee — I can probably count the number of decent nights' sleep I’ve had since Nov. 8, 2016, on one hand — I actually came across a story that so delighted me, I simply had to share it with you.

With the tsunami of terrible news coming out of D.C., I think all of us patriots should selfishly dine on this story today out of Wisconsin.

You might remember that with control of our Supreme Court on the line here last month, Musk was throwing his money and all his bullshit around like a racist car salesman on a ketamine bender.

He was buying votes, and nonstop touting Republicans’ crooked party line. He was riding high after helping to topple Democrats in our national election, and was doing his damndest to ensure his party’s disease infested Wisconsin for good.

Except he was stopped dead in his tracks when voters in this battleground state, where statewide elections are almost always decided by razor-thin margins, stomped his candidate out by a remarkable, 55%-45% margin.

It wasn’t close, though I’d like to personally thank him for doing his best to stimulate our fading economy by leaving $20 million of his ill-gained money in my state.

Now Musk says he’s going away and surrendering, and will spend less time on elections and more time on his failing businesses.

You can’t believe a word he says, of course, but you also can’t overstate the epic ass-kicking we put on his GOP up here in an election Musk himself said, "could determine the fate of Western civilization.”

Well, as fate would have it, we aren’t dead yet, and people like me would be well-served to remember that, as hard as it can be sometimes …

Now, on to the next fight!

(D. Earl Stephens is the author of “Toxic Tales: A Caustic Collection of Donald J. Trump’s Very Important Letters” and finished up a 30-year career in journalism as the Managing Editor of Stars and Stripes. You can find all his work here, and follow him on Bluesky here.)