Opinion

The most surprising thing about Karoline “KKKaroline” Leavitt’s announcement that she’s leaving her job as White House Press Secretary was that she had lasted so long in the first place.

Considering the track records of all of her predecessors, you’d think Trump would’ve installed a golden revolving door to the Press Room, along with all of the other unnecessary renovations he’s making to our White House while vandalizing D.C. to make America look as weak as possible on the global stage.

Go back 35 years, and you see it. It's right there as part of the story, impossible to avoid. The man who used to go on Howard Stern's radio show to run down a list of women and grade them from one through 10, full body, definitely face and features, President Donald J. Trump would sputter out a number, "She's an 8.5, would be a nine or more if she weren't so flat," or something similarly as offensive as juvenile.

Decades later, and he's still at it; perhaps he's matured out of vocalizing the grade, but the women at the White House better bring the mandated look. Trump wants them ready for cameras and his eyes, always. It is now exhausting them into little leaks about the look he demands.

Yesterday at the White House, Trump held a photo op with a 16-year-old lifeguard, Ryder Williams, who’d pulled a drowning 10-year-old out of a dangerous surf in Santa Cruz. For any other president, it would have been a sweet, feel-good moment. Trump, though, turned it into something dark — and most of our press either missed it or politely pretended to.

After giving the award, Trump looked at the blonde teen’s parents and said:

For some Americans, the reality of who Donald Trump really is is coming home to roost. And for the sailors trapped aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln, that moment has already arrived.

The Lincoln left San Diego last November. Nine months later, it is still at sea, its crew stretched past 250 straight days without meaningful relief. What was supposed to be a seven-month deployment has become closer to a floating humanitarian disaster.

I've been fortunate enough to visit the White House several times, and what strikes you first, after you’ve seen pictures of it growing up, is how small it actually is. Not small in importance, of course, but small in square footage and size.

And I’ve been to the Oval Office three times, each time an awe-inspiring experience. And, again, it's really modest. I’ve been in corporate executive offices throughout my career that dwarf it. The press briefing room is tiny and cramped. I stood behind the lectern once, and I felt like I was looking down on a small hospital waiting room.

“People are disappearing into this no man’s land. They have no connection to their new country, and they also apparently have no legal rights.” —Immigration rights attorney Alma David, quoted in The New York Times

“Terrible things are happening outside... poor helpless people are being dragged out of their homes. Families are torn apart; men, women and children are separated. Children come home from school to find that their parents have disappeared.” — Anne Frank diary entry January 13, 1943

To co-opt a famed riddle about drug addicts and alcoholics: How do you know a member of the Trump Administration is lying?

Answer: Their lips are moving.

Horrifically underqualified and monstrous Secretary of Defense Peter Hegseth should never have been confirmed by the Senate. Even Mitch McConnell, along with Lisa Murkowski and a "concerned" Susan Collins, voted no. Mitch almost always votes party first, but not this time. Now, every other Republican senator and Donald Trump are on the hook for allowing Hegseth's mismanagement to all but kill our brave and committed sailors.

On November 21 last year, the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln set sail from San Diego to the Middle East, prepared for war as it always is, but unaware of the oncoming issue with Iran, one that began February 28 of this year. Thus it is that the first shots fired from aircraft based on the Lincoln occurred three months into its deployment, or roughly halfway before it would normally be scheduled to return to San Diego for rest, relief, repair, and restocking.

Trump just took steps to make it very difficult to prosecute money laundering, a crime he and his real estate buddies may well have been committing much of their felonious lives.

This month, we learned that Capital One Bank closed more than 300 Trump Organization accounts back in 2021 because, they said, their internal fraud department had flagged illegal money-laundering activity. But on who’s behalf?

Back in the days when conservatives were so hungry for media platforms that they’d come on progressive shows, I used to regularly debate Wayne Allen Root (here and here, for example). Instead of trying to convince me, though, Root has recently taken to giving Trump ideas about things to do, like stealing the election this fall.

On his show on “Real” America’s Voice, Root told Trump:

While slouched at his desk in the Oval Office this month, Islamophobe — among many other phobes — Donald Trump told reporters that a friend had suggested he start calling his political opponents "jihadists."

He made clear he had one candidate in mind — Dr. Abdul El-Sayed, the Michigan physician who won the Democratic Senate primary and would be the state's first Muslim senator.