Trump reaches for his phone after another humiliation
Nick Anderson is a Pulitzer Prize-winning editorial cartoonist.
Opinion
Moaning MAGA fans find new grievance as their own families dump them
The “partisan split” of Americans showed up in a big way at Fourth of July celebrations and backyard barbecues last week, but the media, while noting or even complaining about it, rarely mentions exactly why it’s happening.
A few weeks ago, Louise and I were having coffee with an old friend who’s known us since the early days of the radio show, and somewhere between the second cup and the muffins she said something that’s been rattling around in my head ever since. Her sister, a three-time Trump voter, had finally called — after months of silence — and demanded to know why our friend had stopped returning her calls.
“It’s just politics,” the sister said. “Why are you taking this so personally?” Our friend, who is queer and married, listened for about 30 seconds and then said, very quietly, “Because you voted for the people who want me to disappear, and you knew that when you did it.”
Then she hung up. She told us she felt awful about it for about an hour, and then she felt nothing at all, and the nothing was almost worse than the guilt would’ve been.
I’ve heard variations on that story dozens of times in the past year, and apparently so have a lot of other people, because a piece making the rounds on Daily Kos a few weeks ago by the writer Vyan put words to something that’s been building in millions of American households since January of 2016.
The piece is bracing and worth reading in full, but the core observation is one that the right-wing media ecosystem genuinely can’t process: their voters are suddenly discovering that their daughters and sons and nieces and old college roommates no longer want to come to July 4th, Thanksgiving, and other holidays.
They’re treating this as some inexplicable “progressive cruelty,” as if the rest of us simply woke up one morning and decided to be petty.
Greg Gutfeld did a whole monologue on it on Fox “News.” The framing, of course, is that you’re the unreasonable one for refusing to “look past” a single political choice your father or your uncle made:
“Can’t you just love them anyway? Why are you being so hateful?”
Here’s the thing they can’t quite bring themselves to say out loud, because saying it out loud would require admitting what they actually did: they didn’t vote for lower egg prices, although that’s the cover story most of them have settled on by now.
They voted for a man who descended an escalator in 2015 and called brown-skinned Mexicans rapists, who described non-white immigrants as “vermin” who were “poisoning the blood of our country,” language historians of fascism noted at the time was lifted almost verbatim from Mein Kampf.
They voted for him again in 2024 knowing exactly who he was, knowing what he’d promised to do, knowing that Stephen Miller had spent two years describing on podcast after podcast a deportation operation that would, in Miller’s own words, require building “very large staging facilities” and deploying the military against the civilian population.
They knew.
The Heritage Foundation published a 900-page blueprint to, in my words, “Make America White Again.” Miller did the interviews. JD Vance called Trump “America’s Hitler” before he became his running mate, and then ran with him anyway, and the voters knew that, too.
So what they got is exactly the hate and racism they voted for, and now, 17 months into the second Trump administration, more than 675,000 people have been deported, the ICE detention population has swelled to over 68,000 — a 70 percent increase over where it stood at the end of the Biden years — and people are dying inside those facilities at a rate this country has never seen before.
The Kaiser Family Foundation tracked 46 deaths in ICE custody between January 2025 and March 2026, with annual deaths roughly tripling from the 11 recorded in 2024 to 33 in 2025, and 2026 already on pace to exceed even that.
The ACLU now estimates someone is dying in immigration detention roughly every six days, and a CNN investigation a few weeks ago found that at least a dozen of those deaths were directly attributable to medical neglect, understaffing, and the cascading failures that happen when for-profit concentration camp operations double the detained population without doubling the doctors.
Three of the six deaths in a single recent month were suicides. The administration’s response has been to point out that the death rate, expressed as a percentage of the swollen detained population, comes to 0.009 percent, which is the sort of statistic you cite when you’ve already decided the people doing the dying aren’t quite people.
And Miller isn’t slowing down. He’s spoken openly about a vision of removing as many as 100 million people from the United States, a number that mathematically can’t just describe the undocumented, because there aren’t 100 million undocumented people in this country and there never have been.
That number describes naturalized citizens, mixed-status families, the U.S.-born children of immigrants, and anyone whose skin is dark enough that their presence Miller and his ideological allies consider an affront to what they keep calling “Heritage Americans,” aka “white people.”
Since the law changed in 1965 and we ended racial immigration quotas, the majority of immigrants to America have not been white, but white people (from South Africa, for G-d’s sake) are all the Trump administration now encourages to come into the US.
Too many Black and brown people have already arrived from “s---hole countries,” they say, and it’s time for them to leave. Stephen Miller’s white supremacist project to ethnically re-engineer the country runs faster every week.
If you’re a white person who voted for this administration and you’re now telling your gay nephew or your Korean-American daughter-in-law or your Mexican-American grandkids that you don’t see what the big deal is, you’re asking them to make peace with the fact that the people running the country have, on the record, in their own voices, described a future in which they don’t exist here.
The economic case the administration likes to make is that all of this cruelty is somehow “necessary” because immigrants are “draining the country.” But that, in particular, is simply an establishing lie.
The Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy found that undocumented immigrants paid $96.7 billion in federal, state, and local taxes in 2022 alone, and that in 40 states they pay a higher effective state and local tax rate than the top one percent of households living alongside them. Every million undocumented people deported represents about $8.9 billion in lost annual tax revenue, money that funds the schools and hospitals and roads in the very communities now cheering ICE on.
And the criminal rationale, the one that animates every Fox “News” chyron about “foreign rapists,” collapses just as fast: ICE’s own fiscal year 2025 enforcement data shows 127 sexual offense arrests in a country where the FBI logged roughly 127,000 reported rapes by US citizens, and the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network estimates closer to 443,000 actual incidents of sexual violence every year.
Meanwhile, Trump has issued an executive order labeling Americans dissenting from his racist, fascist, so-called “Christian” policies as domestic terrorists, and they’ve begun investigating, prosecuting, and imprisoning people for being anti-fascist, or “antifa” when the organization doesn’t even exist.
We’re dismantling due process, abandoning habeas corpus and the Fourth Amendment, and building concentration camps against a population that accounts for less than a tenth of one percent of the sexual violence in this country. The numbers don’t support the policy, though, because the economics were never the point, other than the number of Black and brown people arriving on our shores since 1965.
This is why people are walking away from their relatives and didn’t show up for July 4th picnics, and why the people walking away aren’t, in fact, “being petty.”
When someone you love votes for a candidate who has promised, in plain English, to do something cruel and unconstitutional and historically catastrophic, and then he does exactly that, and they still defend him, the relationship isn’t being broken by your refusal to overlook it.
The relationship was broken when they cast the vote. You’re just the one acknowledging the damage.
Gutfeld and his colleagues want to frame all of this as “Trump Derangement Syndrome,” as a kind of emotional incontinence on the left. But there’s a much older word for refusing to extend warmth and intimacy to people who’ve signed off on the persecution of your neighbors and those who stand for democracy against authoritarianism, and it’s not derangement.
It’s conscience.
The Germans who quietly stopped inviting their Nazi-sympathizing brothers-in-law to dinner in 1934 weren’t being dramatic. They were doing the only honest thing left to do, and most of them, looking back from the rubble in 1946, wished they’d done it sooner and louder.
We’re not in 1934 yet. The midterms are five months away. The country still has somewhat functioning courts (other than SCOTUS), a free press that’s bruised but breathing, and the kind of organized opposition that can flip a House and possibly even Senate majority if enough of us show up.
Look up the local organizations doing rapid-response work for detained families through groups like the Detention Watch Network.
And when the MAGA friend or relative in your life asks why you’ve gone quiet, you don’t owe them a fight and you don’t owe them an apology. You owe them, if you choose to give it at all, the truth: that you saw what they helped build, and you’ve decided you’d rather associate with someone else.
The rest of this year is going to demand more of us than ever before. Pretending otherwise is no longer an option.
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This MAGA lackey is drowning in cash — and Trump haters are to blame
My name is Ray, and I’m still an Amazon user.
Whenever I need anything, I automatically order it on Amazon Prime and it’s magically at my doorstep the next day. Or within a few hours. Sometimes, it arrives so quickly I swear they’re reading my mind and that I only thought about ordering it.
I’m so lazy that if I need a roll of aluminum foil or a couple of AA batteries, I just go on Amazon and order it because – click-click – it’s done in less than 60 seconds. No driving to the store or even walking to the corner. Amazon has turned me into an immobile sloth.
And I don’t feel all that good about it.
This naturally wasn’t the case when Amazon chief Jeff Bezos was still regularly facing down Donald Trump. During Trump’s first administration, he was one of the scant few open billionaire resistors we had fighting for the good guys.
The two frequently butted heads. Trump often called him “Bozo,” one of those school-yard nicknames he reserves for those of which he’s most jealous. He accused Amazon of avoiding taxes — usually a sign of intellect in Trump’s eyes — and exploiting the U.S. Postal Service. Trump also mercilessly attacked The Washington Post, which Bezos purchased in 2013, claiming it was unfairly hostile to his administration.
Of course he did.
Bezos also believed it was political pressure that contributed to his loss of a major Pentagon cloud-computing contract, though the government naturally denied any interference.
Of course it did.
During that first administration, Bezos and Trump rarely appeared together and publicly represented opposing poles of American political and business culture. There was even a moment in 2017 when the president reportedly asked Anthony Scaramucci, a.k.a. The Mooch, then an aide, “Can we break up Amazon?”
But as the 2024 presidential campaign wound down, Bezos suddenly and without warning hedged his bets. He blocked the Post from endorsing a presidential candidate so as not to anger Trump, wreaking havoc among the paper’s staff and driving hundreds of thousands of subscribers to cancel.
Then, following Trump’s 2024 victory, the change in approach really shifted into overdrive. Bezos radically swung from quiet defiance to enthusiastic — even joyous — compliance and support for everything the administration stood for. It began with his giving Trump very public congratulations on the victory, contributing $1 million to his 2025 Inauguration and sitting with all his fellow tech oligarchs in the front row.
From there, the Bezos outreach to regularly kiss Trump’s derriere has continued to ramp up. Bezos contributed substantially to the ballroom/bunker fund. The two men have reportedly had multiple private dinners together, and Bezos and his socialite wife Lauren Sanchez Bezos have broken bread with the Trumps on multiple occasions, even dining together privately in the former Rose Garden.
Fast forward to the present. The Wall Street Journal reports that when Trump spoke to the elite Alfalfa Club earlier this year in a rambling 45-minute outburst of meanness and rage, Bezos sat right up front, laughing uproariously. Trump has told advisors he is going to do everything in his power to make sure Bezos’ Blue Origin space company reaches the moon and is fast-tracking its contracts.
Indeed, those contracts are swiftly in motion, as reported in The Journal. Blue Origin has won major NASA and Defense Department deals worth billions. And the mission of The Post is no longer to hold Trump and his corrupt cronies to account but to take an approach of laying off and allowing the shadiness to move forth unimpeded.
You think when the owner of The Post is seen guffawing in the front row of a Trump speech and raking in billions in contracts, that newspaper is going to push to uncover the abundant dirt that makes this the most crooked administration in American history? Not bloody likely, boys and girls.
Oh yeah, and how could I almost forget about the Melania documentary that was funded by Amazon MGM Studios (owned by Bezos) to the tune of $75 million for the licensing rights, production and marketing-promotion for a 2025 doc on the First Lady’s gilded existence? Bezos claimed he wasn’t personally involved in the acquisition decision. Right. And no doubt the fact that she happens to be the president’s wife was completely coincidental.
Bezos has naturally denied that anything he is doing smacks of quid pro quo when it comes to his newest buddy. But it’s crystal clear the man is courting Trump’s adoration, even though he’s actually worth enough (at more than $250 billion) to buy Trump at least 50 times over. He’s seen where his bread is buttered, and he’s very busily buttering it, the grave hit to his morals and ethics notwithstanding.
In a word, Bezos is a sellout, and a contemptuous one at that. There is not a single question about it. Consequently, he should peddle The Post to someone who would return it to something resembling editorial relevance.
The fact that the preeminent paper in the nation’s capital remains constrained by its boss’ coddling of a tyrant is yet another nasty side effect of the country’s Trumpified fever dream. It’s resulted in significant changes to its opinion section and its greater emphasis on viewpoints centered on free markets and individual liberties — just as Trump demands.
Bezos has gone so far as to praise Trump as presently “more disciplined and mature” than during his first administration — an observation that is flat-out unfathomable.
This brings me back to my own battle with Amazonian guilt. No one is holding a gun to my head to buy my boxer briefs and iced tea from Amazon, and yet I do. It’s all about the convenience. That’s what keeps a company that’s no more than a glorified middleman at the top of consumer commerce.
How do I reconcile this? I struggle to convince myself that using a service isn’t an endorsement of its business practices or political opportunism, but I’m not sure even I believe it.
I also try to square it in my head that perfection is unattainable and that nearly every large corporation has executives, investors, lobbyists and business relationships that I’d find objectionable, though I easily find a way to avoid frequenting places like Chick-fil-A that I know fund the Republican cause.
Would shunning Amazon, as my wife does, make me feel like I’m living more consistently with my values? Or would it just make my life harder without accomplishing much?
These are the billion-dollar questions I am yet to definitively answer.
In the meantime, I feel a bit like a fraud.
(Ray Richmond is a longtime journalist/author and an adjunct professor at Chapman University in Orange, CA.)
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Sleazy Trump destroyed hope of national glory in a single phone call
First, full disclosure: I’m not a soccer fan. I'm a football fan, and a diehard Pittsburgh Steelers fan. So, having said that, let’s start with a hypothetical.
Say the Steelers are heading into a playoff game and their best defensive player just got suspended for a hit the league ruled illegal.
Team owner Art Rooney doesn't like the call. So he picks up the phone, calls NFL commissioner Roger Goodell directly, and leans on him to “take another look.” Two days later, the league reverses course. The suspension is lifted. The player suits up. The Steelers win.
If that happened, I'd be thrilled, and I would not be asking a single question about how it all went down. Because Art Rooney owns the Steelers. Roger Goodell runs Rooney's league. That's a phone call between people inside the same house, playing by rules (well, I would hope they are) that belong to them.
Nobody outside that room would have any right to be outraged, except, of course, if you were a Baltimore Ravens fan. But I digress.
Now here's a real story about how another phone call went down.
Last Thursday, U.S. striker Folarin Balogun picked up a red card during Team USA's win over Bosnia and Herzegovina. It was a foul serious enough to draw an automatic one-match ban, which would have kept him out of tonight’s knockout match against Belgium.
Balogun is the team's leading scorer at this World Cup. Losing him for a win-or-go-home game felt, to a lot of American fans, like a gut punch. Donald Trump decided to meddle. He called FIFA president Gianni Infantino and asked him to "review" the card. My bet? Trump didn’t say the word "review."
On Sunday, FIFA announced the suspension was being set aside, not overturned outright, mind you, but "suspended for a probationary period," a wobbly phrase that bounces off the head and goes out of bounds. It all screams corruption, which America, and the world now knows, is Donald Trump’s middle name.
In the Oval Office on Monday, Trump bragged about what he did. Balogun will start against Belgium tonight, and the world is seething with anger — or at least most of the world.
Now, here's the difference from my Steelers story: Donald Trump doesn't own Team USA. He isn't its coach, its federation president, or anyone with legitimate standing to intervene in a disciplinary process.
I highly doubt Trump is even a soccer fan because it’s not bloody and gory like a UFC match.
He's, gallingly, the President of the United States, and he’s calling the head of an independent global sports body four days before his own country's must-win game. It reeks of favoritism, stacking the deck, and dissing every other team in the tournament.
Let’s do another hypothetical.
What if Belgium's star goalkeeper, Thibaut Courtois, received a red card during the team’s win over Senegal, and Belgium’s Prime Minister, Bart De Wever, called Infantino and asked him to review Courtois’ red card? That request would stand a snowball's chance in hell.
The last time something like this happened, when a red card suspension was famously bypassed following presidential intervention, was during the 1962 World Cup, when Brazilian star winger Garrincha was cleared to play in the final after political pressure.
There is a reason the last time this happened was 64 years ago, and I don’t think I need to explain why.
Once the suspension was lifted, all hell broke loose.
This time, Belgium's football federation called the reversal "unprecedented, incomprehensible and unjustifiable." They appealed the decision, but guess what? They were denied. Go figure!
Former English soccer star and BBC analyst Wayne Rooney called it "an absolute disgrace." Another English former star and current NBC Sports analyst Gary Neville said it "absolutely stinks."
Once politics — or, in this case, the sleazy Trump — gets involved, who knows where or how it stops?
None of this should surprise anyone who's watched Infantino suck up to Trump. He slavishly and ridiculously handed Trump the tournament's first-ever "Peace Prize" last December and has spent months building political cover for him. Infantino runs a federation about to post record profits hosting the biggest live sports event on earth, and Trump is his money ticket because the games are happening here in the U.S.
If Infantino said no to Trump, would Trump sic FCC Chair Brendon Carr on him and threaten the cash cow of broadcasting rights? Maybe that’s a bit of an exaggeration, but who knows what the impulsive Trump would do?
It’s a wash, though, since Infantino would change Trump’s diaper if he were asked to.
What makes this so combustible is that it's split fans into three camps. So once again, Donald Trump sows unparalleled division.
American fans who just want their team to win are thrilled because Balogun is irreplaceable, and losing him felt like getting robbed.
Other American fans, the ones who think the undisciplined Trump has no business anywhere near a disciplinary ruling, are embarrassed, and plenty of them are openly rooting for Belgium tonight because Donald Trump inserted himself, again, into a situation where he does not belong.
And fans overseas, many already furious at what Trump's tariffs and uncalled-for Iran war have done to their economies, see this as one more example of the evil Trump being the loathsome Trump. They hate America and Americans because they voted for Trump.
Tonight, they're not just rooting against a soccer team. They're rooting against Trump and against a country they feel put him back in office.
We have now drifted so far away from whether the original red card was the right call. If the U.S. wins tonight, plenty of people around the world will say it wasn't earned, and that with Trump’s intervention, the U.S. cheated.
The U.S. will be the team the whole world roots against.
If the U.S. loses, just as many will call it karma. Either way, the team can't win without controversy. Trump made sure of that, then made it worse by bragging about it afterward, thanking FIFA for "reversing a great injustice."
Whatever the final score says tonight in Seattle, it won't tell the real story. The real story is that once again, everything Donald Trump touches ends up poisoned by Donald Trump, and a tournament that was supposed to belong to the world now has his dirty fingerprints all over it.
If anyone deserves a red card — a permanent one — it’s Donald Trump.
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Trump unleashed a new whopper of a lie that's crazed even by his standards
After progressives, including self-described Democratic Socialists, won numerous primary victories in New York and elsewhere, President Donald Trump launched a whopper of a lie, even by his crazed standards. He declared that the “communist” Democratic Socialists are “the biggest threat to our nation there is, maybe since our founding…. That includes World War I, World War II, September 11, it includes the Pearl Harbor attack.” This comes after his November 2025 White House meeting with New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, where Trump praised Mamdani strongly, saying they would work together to make a better New York City.
Trump is singing a different tune now. He is like Senator Joe McCarthy on steroids, who in the 1950s smeared political opponents, activists, and others, falsely accusing them of being communists. Snarling Joe then maliciously exploited the post-war fear of the Soviet Union. Today, Trump is just following in McCarthy’s footsteps by launching his latest BIG LIE yet to firm up his shrinking base of Trumpy MAGA voters.
Look for Trump, an authentic fascist, to dittohead himself on his “communist” tirade. He knows that the pro-Israel, corporate Democrats are distancing themselves from the rising new progressive candidates who, if they’re smart, will make populist domestic demands that are heavily favored in the polls.
These Democratic candidates should push for a much higher minimum wage than the present frozen federal minimum of $7.25 per hour; full Medicare for All; restore corporate and super-wealthy taxation to the levels of the prosperous 60s; crack down on corporate crimes against consumers, workers, and the environment; and adopt the long-time Western European social safety net of childcare, paid worker and family sick leave, and paid vacations. A real child tax credit would cut child poverty nearly in half and would benefit over 60 million children. They should raise the Social Security taxes on upper-income people to pay for raising Social Security benefits frozen for over 45 years.
Jeffries and Schumer are perfect foils for Trump to pit them against the rising progressive revolt inside their party. Why? Because they will dig in their heels, reflect their paymasters’ demands against most of these reforms, and create the very cleavage Trump wants.
Candidates should push to cut the bloated military budget, end hundreds of billions of dollars in corporate welfare, and direct the savings to public works and safety net services in the community, USA.
These changes have substantial left-right voter support because they are concrete improvements for all families who need and deserve such social benefit returns from the tax dollars they send to Washington.
There are other left-right supported reforms, such as public funding of campaigns; ending the gross, corrupt selling of our elections to the highest toxic profiteering bidders; ending military arms shipments to countries that violate human rights (already federal law but unenforced); and stopping Israel’s ongoing genocide of Palestinians, committed with US weapons and unconditional political backing, which violates five federal laws.
All these measures should be integrated into a heavily publicized “Contract for the American People” and turned into a daily vocal call for a commitment to this agenda by these candidates. The class message is that corporations, all created by government charters, should be our servants, not our masters, as the Kleptocratic Trump regime continues to balloon the Trump Dump.
Bolstered by support of such concrete commitments, Trump’s “communist bellowing” will look ridiculous and will be ripe for the sharpest of counterattacks, dragging the GOP’s wreckage out into the open by comparison. To paraphrase Shakespeare, the Republicans will be hoisted by their own petard.
The real hurdle to this “Contract for the American People” is the corporate Democrats—indentured to the same Wall Street crowd and military-industrial Empire of war and vast profits. The chief corporate Democrats are the party’s leaders—Hakeem Jeffries in the House and Chuck Schumer in the Senate. When asked by a reporter about impeaching Trump (the cruel, corrupt, violent, America-wrecking outlaw, using the White House as corporate-occupied territory to enrich himself), Jeffries replied, “I don’t want to get out ahead of that discussion.” What about getting ahead of Trump’s daily despicable efforts to destroy our democracy and wreck America?
How about just representing the vast majority of the Democratic voters and about 60% of all polled Americans who think Trump is “a dangerous dictator” and want him impeached and removed from office?
Jeffries and Schumer are perfect foils for Trump to pit them against the rising progressive revolt inside their party. Why? Because they will dig in their heels, reflect their paymasters’ demands against most of these reforms, and create the very cleavage Trump wants.
If Trump does not steal the election with his many voter suppressions, redistricting, and other attempted usurpations of state election controls, he’ll work to paralyze a Democratic-run Congress. Jeffries and Schumer, to preserve their leadership, are susceptible to not rocking the boat and not fiercely rolling back all the Republican Party’s devastating enactments since January 20, 2025.
Let’s see if the incumbent and newly elected progressives know how NOT to marginalize themselves by pushing distractingly marginal ideas instead of showing just how popular the above components of this proposed Contract for the American People are with the voters.
These challenges should also focus on the growing drive for Impeachment around the country, which both Trump, Jeffries, and Schumer oppose (The Hill reports neither Jeffries nor Schumer have endorsed any of the removal efforts)—the latter two enforcing a “Now is not the time” policy. What smug insensitivity to the fears of millions of Americans hurting from Trump’s cruel decrees every day and night NOW!
Jeffries and Schumer are creating their own Achilles heels for emboldening their progressive Democrats to move to replace them in January 2027.
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Trump's crushing failures laid the groundwork for this massive con
I've never been much of a gambler. I think it's a waste of time, and I just don't enjoy it. Money has never gotten my pulse up. And if I'm honest, the times I've proverbially thrown the dice, I've always lost.
Every time I've sat down at a table telling myself this is the round I get ahead, I've walked away further behind than when I started. So I quit playing, and I settled on the same line every time I walked out of a casino: "What a chump!"
Turns out that's the same way I feel about this country since it was disclosed that Donald Trump made over $2 billion since his return to the White House. He's making us all feel like chumps.
The irony here is rich, and not in the monetary way. Trump failed in running casinos before (by screwing workers and others, he still made money). Anyone who held Trump Taj Mahal bonds in 1991, or Trump Plaza bonds in 1992, or watched Trump Hotels & Casino Resorts file for bankruptcy protection twice more in the years that followed, lost tons of cash.
By his own later admission, he wasn't a great gambler when the odds were real, the regulators were watching, and the competition could out-market him. Atlantic City chewed him up. The industry made him feel like, well, most likely a chump. However, he was one to begin with.
Now Trump is running a different kind of casino, and he hasn't lost a dime running it out of the Oval Office.
That's the metaphor for what's happening with his family's finances. It's bigger than some in-and-out heist. It's a 24/7 house that never loses, and a casino rigged from the top down.
It's a casino where the one man who owns the building also sets the odds, deals the cards, stops the roulette wheel when he wants, and always comes up with a 21 hand.
He's also the pit boss supposed to catch anyone cheating. He's overseeing himself, ensuring he's never held accountable.
The whole tawdry affair — that word seems far too tame — brings to mind the film Ocean's Eleven, the original with the famed Rat Pack stars Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Sammy Davis, Jr., and Peter Lawford.
The gist of that movie is in its attention to detail. A crew studies the vault, maps the cameras, times the guards, and pulls off something audacious against a system built to stop them.
The house is assumed to be an ironclad fortress, and beating it takes genius. That's the fictional version of a casino heist: clever people outsmarting a rigged game, a bunch of chumps who find a way to win.
What we're watching with Trump isn't that. It's the inverted version of the film. There's no vault to crack, because the man walking off with the money built the vault, owns it, and appointed the guy whose job is to guard it, himself and his regulatory lackeys.
There's no elaborate plan required when the institutions meant to say "you're under arrest,” a Republican Congress, a Justice Department under his own thumb, and an IRS permanently barred from auditing him, have already stood down. Danny Ocean needed a genius crew and a getaway plan. Trump's operation needs a Truth Social account and a crypto-coin launch.
That's what should offend every one of us about the billions the Trump family has pulled in since January 2025. It's not just the size of the number, but the fact that it defies the basic shape a con job is supposed to take.
Every heist movie, every grifter story, every dime-novel thriller runs on the same promise: eventually, someone notices and starts investigating. An audit happens. Regulators show up. The crew has to get away with it, which means, narratively, there's the cookie-cutter car chase or the airport run.
With Trump's heist, there's no chasing anyone, because nobody's coming for him. No one is auditing him. No legislation is pending to hold his feet to the fire. And under a recent Supreme Court ruling, Trump now effectively controls the regulatory agencies meant to police him.
The people who'd normally blow the whistle are all, instead, supplicating for him.
Which brings it back to the casino floor. In an actual casino, the house wins on the math, the odds are stacked, but at least they're stacked the same way for everyone who sits down. Or they're supposed to be. I've always felt they were extra-stacked against me, but I digress.
That's still, technically, a game — you versus the house. What Trump has built is a room with no other players, where the chips are meme coins and crypto tokens carrying his name, and ordinary investors buy in and lose while the house, the White House in this caper, cashes out clean every time.
Trump went bankrupt when he had to compete against others. Now he's only competing against himself. And we're all standing around the table like chumps, because his winning streak is preconceived and unstoppable.
Every reporter, news outlet, watchdog organization, and congressional committee has the receipts. What none of them have is the guts to go after him, or a precedent, because there isn't one.
By contrast, in 1952, Vice President Richard Nixon felt compelled to go on national television just to defend a gifted cocker spaniel named Checkers. America was aghast at first, but sympathetic after the “Checkers speech.”
Eight years later, Nixon lost the presidency, but his family still had Checkers. The simplicity and normality of it all.
Today, the Trump family is playing a high-stakes game of checkers, cashing in on a scale that defies reality, and making every American feel like a chump.
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This visionary saw Trump's rampage coming — and knew how to end it
Hundreds of people died last month across Europe from the heat; they’re a symptom of a larger problem that governments around the world have failed to address — that goes far beyond simply global warming — and that the Trump regime is making far worse.
Its foundation is one of the most troubling aspects of human nature called predation: while most people just want to live their lives, raise their kids, and have a comfortable old age, some small percentage of those among us have simply become, for lack of a better word, predators.
In nature, there are natural predators and natural prey; foxes and rabbits are the classic example.
Rabbits, like most prey animals, have wired into them by evolution a response called “tonic immobility”; we used to think that when a rabbit or mouse was seized by a fox or eagle and went limp that they were playing dead (“thanatosis”) but, in fact, we now know their body is suddenly flooded with hormones, chemicals, and nervous reactions that essentially put them into a coma to either/both fool the predator or avoid experiencing the pain of being torn to pieces.
Predator animals — including humans — also have this instinct/mechanism; we see it when people “faint from fright” or are paralyzed by PTSD. But it’s far less frequently activated in predatory animals, particularly social animals like apes and humans, largely because we invent social systems to discourage predation.
Among modern humans, according to psychology, predation against other humans is a form of psychopathy, twisting the predator instinct our species once used to hunt food, instead, against others of our own kind, whether it be via physical/sexual violence or via theft and fraud.
As Thomas Jefferson wrote to his dear old friend and advisor Edward Carrington on January 16, 1787:
“If once they become inattentive to the public affairs, you and I, and Congress, and Assemblies, judges and governors shall all become wolves.
“It seems to be the law of our general nature, in spite of individual exceptions; and experience declares that man is the only animal which devours his own kind, for I can apply no milder term to the governments of Europe, and to the general prey of the rich on the poor.”
To prevent this psychopathic predation within our societies is why we created governments. I’m reminded of the years Louise and I spent living in Europe where the landscape is dotted with castles and walled cities built not to defend against wolves and bears but against other humans.
It’s been this way for millennia; the castles and walled cities of Europe, Asia, and the Middle East were designed to keep out invading human predators, be they the Huns, Vikings, Ottomans, or Crusaders.
Modern cities, as technology improved, developed the equivalent of walls to keep the predators out; airborne missile defense systems and the like.
But the problem we Americans now face — one that citizens of modern nations have faced in various parts of the world for centuries — is that our government, seized and then run by psychopathic predators, has become predatory itself rather than protective.
For example, JD Vance, who once wrote proudly about how when his father left the family and his mother was stealing drugs from the nursing home where she worked he and his sister existed on food stamps (SNAP benefits), is now “actively working to strip American children who were just like him of their SNAP benefits…”
And now our federal government is hand-delivering notices that “You may have violated federal law” to people who’ve criticized ICE murdering American citizens in Minneapolis.
That is what is happening today in America, with the Trump family, Republican politicians, massive monopolistic corporations, and the Epstein/Oligarch class extracting billions from us at the same time they threaten us when we protest. The top headline of a recent online edition of The New York Times, for example, was:
“Trump Cut a Billion-Dollar Mining Deal. His Sons Stand to Profit.”
Predation has also become the new American business model as well; everything, it seems, is a hustle designed to prey on us.
We pay a fee for our car to open remotely or have navigation; to use a word processing or other necessary program; or must surrender all of our private information simply to have a laptop operating system function properly, even though we paid thousands for the hardware.
But as much of a problem as corporate predation has become (largely through the GOP’s Reaganism, neoliberalism, and Clinton’s Third Way deregulation), the biggest danger is government predation, because — unlike Microsoft or Apple or a car company, which can each just hustle a few bucks from us every month — government has the power to take all of our money, end our freedom and lock us up, and even — as Alex Pretti’s and Renee Good’s families learned — kill us with impunity.
This is where America stands today. The Trump regime, and those states controlled by Republicans more generally (which are almost universally the poorest, with the highest rates of illiteracy, poverty, STDs, unwanted pregnancies, murder, rape, and other violent crimes), have turned predatory.
They are using the weapons of theft and violence (which our government holds legally) against us citizens when we protest their modern forms of predation: their corruption, ICE violence, encouragement of predatory corporate behavior, and general rigging of the system to the benefit of the Epstein/billionaire class and the politicians it owns.
Now we find that even people protesting against ICE and other Trump regime abuses are being arrested and sentenced to decades in prison, people posting about these outrages are being visited by DHS to intimidate them, and the Trump regime promises to rig the upcoming elections.
It’s a problem as ancient as our government itself. As Jefferson also wrote in that same letter to former Continental Congress member Edward Carrington:
“I am persuaded myself that the good sense of the people will always be found to be the best army. They may be led astray for a moment, but will soon correct themselves. The people are the only censors of their governors: and even their errors will tend to keep these to the true principles of their institution.
“To punish these errors too severely would be to suppress the only safeguard of the public liberty. The way to prevent these irregular interpositions of the people is to give them full information of their affairs thro’ the channel of the public papers, and to contrive that those papers should penetrate the whole mass of the people.
“The basis of our governments being the opinion of the people, the very first object should be to keep that right; and were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers, or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter.”
This is why the acquisition/control of our news and social media sites by morbidly rich Epstein/billionaire class predators — whose first loyalty is to their peers rather than democracy — is so dangerous to both our republic, the poor, and what’s left of our middle class.
It’s why Trump taking hundreds of millions from the fossil fuel and other industries and then either ignoring their lies and their poisoning our planet or their theft from us via banking and insurance predation is so destructive of both faith in government and life itself.
It’s why the 50-year-long project funded by American oligarchs to pack our courts (particularly the Supreme Court) with toadies and ideologues, to build rightwing media empires, and to seize control of our universities and public schools has done such violence to our society, be it in school massacres, women dying because doctors are afraid to provide lifesaving reproductive care, or working families watching their children inherit a nation with fewer rights, fewer opportunities, and a planet pushed ever closer to ecological collapse.
So, what do we do?
I agree — as have generations of Americans — with Jefferson’s comment that, “[The] good sense of the people will always be found to be the best army. They may be led astray for a moment, but will soon correct themselves.”
We must, in other words, do everything we can to stop, block, and even prosecute the predators among us who’ve seized outsized control of both our government and our economy.
— To take on the fossil fuel industry and the Republicans who continue to both defend and subsidize it and its executives, who should be investigated for their decades of lies about global warming that are, today, literally killing thousands around the planet every day.
— To rebuild the New Deal and Great Society programs that neoliberals in both parties have been tearing apart for 45 years.
— To replace the predators in the insurance and banking industries with a Medicare For All style national healthcare program and free or affordable higher education like my parents’ generation enjoyed.
Public opinion polling and recent elections show that Americans are waking up; our work — our obligation as both citizens and decent human beings — is to assist and speed along that process by speaking out.
We must demand better of our elected representatives: work to strip our electoral system of the dark and billionaire money five corrupt Republicans on the Supreme Court authorized in Citizens United; strengthen the right to unionize while raising the minimum wage; rebuild a green electrified America; end the cap on Social Security taxes; and assist the growing progressive movement within the Democratic Party.
Tag, we’re it!
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MAGA has been forced to admit this Trump truth — and it's spitting mad
MAGA is raging about Trump “losing” after the Supreme Court voted to strike down his racist and xenophobic birthright citizenship ban. They’re also big mad at Melania Trump for not hating transgender women nearly as much as they do. The Red Hat Death Squad is so in love with their hate, and they hate it whenever they’re forced to face the truths they’ve been avoiding about Trump for years, so they’re currently very busy scapegoating “leftists” for yet another Trump fail.
However, they’re oddly silent over another L that SCOTUS handed Trump on Monday, because they just can’t bring themselves to admit that he’s an adjudicated rapist whose name appears in the Epstein Files nearly as much as Jeffrey Epstein’s.
That’s high art combined with a major historical turning point, as far as I’m concerned. Frame it, hang it in the Smithsonian, and give it a plaque praising E. Jean Carroll for being the first (and hopefully not only) woman who’s ever held Trump accountable for sexual predation and abuse — which is why he has never stopped defaming her.
MAGA lost its collective IQ point when my eternal Shero first beat Trump in court in 2019, and they’ve never stopped crying about the jury verdict. They whined so much that Judge Lewis Kaplan (no relation to E. Jean’s powerhouse of a rock star lawyer, Robbie Kaplan) had to issue a statement explaining what words mean.
"Judge clarifies: Yes, Trump was found o have raped E. Jean Carroll," read a Washington Post headline stating that, though he was found liable for sexual abuse, the judge clarified that what he did met the modern definition of rape.
The most willfully obtuse don’t want to accept this truth about Trump, even after the SCOTUS ruling. But somewhere inside their broken brains, they know it’s true, which is why they’re so, so mad. The fake accounts are particularly triggered and are continuing to spew every Trump lie about E. Jean.
It’s only going to get worse for them because Team E. Jean wasted no time once the decision was announced. Her lawyers immediately filed papers in New York on Tuesday asking a judge to force Trump to pay her the now $5.8 million (oh, that pesky daily interest rate!) he owes her.
Of course, the compromised traitors who legally represent the adjudicated rapist are trying to delay the payment, which is extra weird considering Trump was out there on Wednesday bragging about making billions.
Trump is also still appealing the decision from a separate Manhattan trial, when the jury unanimously awarded E. Jean $83 million after he famously testified and misidentified a photo of E. Jean for his second ex-wife, Marla Maples.
As she writes in her fantastic book Not My Type (reclaiming that Trump insult is another brilliant chef’s kiss by my Shero), one of the jurors had revealed during voir dire that he got his news exclusively from MAGA podcaster Tim “Beanie Baby” Pool. I like throwing that in MAGA’s face whenever they whine about her making up the entire story.
The self-proclaimed Jesus followers in the MAGA Cult have always justified Trump’s creepiness, from his three marriages and trysts with adult film stars to his predation backstage at the Miss Teen USA pageant and his sexualization of both of his daughters.
Meanwhile, Democrats have always held our own accountable whenever they’ve committed crimes. When we found out Eric Swalwell was a sexual predator, we ran him out of Congress within two weeks. The Trumpocrites on the other side of the aisle are simply not capable of doing the same thing, mainly because they’ve all been compromised to filth after a decade of blackmail being held over their heads.
But the biggest takeaway from the SCOTUS decision is that Trump is still being enabled by the entire Republican Party, minus a detractor or two here and there. It’s one thing to weakly discredit a judge’s ruling in one Manhattan courtroom, but that argument doesn’t hold up at all when you factor in the Supreme Court’s dismissal of Trump’s case. Allowing the lower court’s ruling to stand is the same as broadcasting to the entire world that Trump is AN ADJUDICATED RAPIST.
And a convicted felon, which no one mentions nearly enough, because MAGA decided it was cool for Trump to have a mugshot because Johnny Cash also had one. Seriously, the FEC needs to update the eligibility rules and regulations so that convicted felons, adjudicated rapists, and other criminals can’t run for any public office, let alone the highest office in the country.
While we’re on the accountability tip, ALL Congressional Republicans (okay, minus Rep. Thomas Massie) should be asked on the record every day when they’re going to demand Trump’s resignation. And if they refuse, they should be pressured to resign their own seats for choosing to remain loyal to an adjudicated rapist. That’s a little thing called treason, and it does indeed have very serious consequences when there’s a real government in place.
The GOP needs to figure out where they stand ASAP, because Acting AG Todd “Yes Sir, May I Have Another” Blanche has now run out of time to release the remaining unredacted Epstein Files.
On top of everything else that’s insanely wrong about Trump still walking around free, it’s also utterly insane that this is all happening in the days leading up to America’s 250th birthday, which no one seems to want to celebrate. The “Great American State Fair” has become yet another Trump Fail. The Reflecting Pool has a fence around it so no one can “vandalize” it any more than Trump already has. And the White House looks like the set of The Walking Dead by way of Germany circa 1939.
None of this is the winning MAGA was promised, and yet they still can’t accept that Trump can’t stop losing.
WEIRD.
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America is a smoldering pile of rubble this July 4 — and this absurd law is to blame
Hooray, we're free! Screw you, England!
Now what?
When Benjamin Franklin emerged from the Constitutional Convention and said we'd been given "a republic, if you can keep it," is there any doubt he was talking about 2026 America?
Taking stock of where we are—on our nation's 250th birthday—we're not exactly knocking it out of the park.
The Supreme Court appears well on its way to anointing the first American king: a man who has seemingly escaped accountability for everything under the sun, including fomenting an insurrection, then pardoning many of those involved. Meanwhile, Congress appears to have thrown in the towel years ago.
Our FBI is run by a frat bro. Our Justice Department seems hell-bent on prosecuting anyone who creates an offensive array of sea shells, while overseeing what looks to be one of the most blatant cover-ups of a sexual predator in modern history.
Legions of poorly trained "Brute Squads" roam our streets, disappearing people on their way to work, asking for proof of citizenship, even killing American citizens in broad daylight, with zero consequences.
Business-wise, we've helped create the world's first trillionaire. Surprise—it happens to be the same guy who recently oversaw the dismantling of foreign aid programs that fed some of the world's poorest children.
Our tech oligarchs have gone into full capitulation mode, cozying up to power, settling frivolous lawsuits, and swallowing media companies whole, decimating decades of journalistic independence and public trust in the process.
Meanwhile, millions of Americans are on the verge of losing healthcare coverage and Social Security benefits. Thanks to our kowtowing Congress allowing a president to start a war for no discernible reason beyond placating his fragile ego, oil companies are once again enjoying record profits.
Not to mention, cage fighting on the lawn of the White House, crypto grabs, billion-dollar ballrooms, abandoning clean energy, throwing protected lands open to drilling, election tampering, gutting cancer research, and a Health Secretary calling for an end to vaccines.
Oh—and the small matter of judges handing out near-life sentences for exercising the right to protest your government.
It's as though we've opened the Ghostbusters containment tank and the demons are running wild through Times Square, while the people who should be stopping them have decided it's easier—and infinitely more profitable—to switch sides. Along with the Zuckerbergs and Bezoses of the world, they've concluded that courage is expensive. Character even more so. Both are in desperately short supply in 2026 America.
Especially in an America where our highest court can acknowledge that a president committed sexual abuse with one breath, then proceed to hand the guy even more power with the next.
The situation has become so beyond absurd, even the country we fought a revolution to escape is openly wondering why Americans suddenly seem so eager to crown a king. A king who just boasted about making more than $2 billion during his first year back in office. A king who demonstrates daily that the word "honor" may as well be a four-letter one.
Given all this, would it really have been so terrible to just pay the damn tea tax and move on?
I mean... could it honestly have turned out any worse?
We're the teenagers entrusted to watch the house while their parents are away, only for them to return home to a smoldering pile of rubble.
One of the many reasons we find ourselves in this predicament: The Electoral College.
This anti-democratic relic was created to give states with smaller populations an equal say, but instead, allows the few to govern the many.
Until this archaic, obsolete law is vanquished, digging ourselves out of this hole will remain nearly impossible. As long as we continue to give states that routinely rank near the bottom in every meaningful category, i.e., education, healthcare, economic opportunity, the ability to decide the future of our entire nation, we're going to keep reliving this Orwellian nightmare for generations to come.
Having said all that, before you climb the tallest building and start screaming, "THIS GUY HATES AMERICA!!"
Consider how tragic it is that we've reached a point where standing up for the rule of law, the Constitution, and basic accountability requires the ones doing it to have to repeatedly reassure those listening that they love their country.
For what it's worth, I do.
I loved America before the Mad King took the reins. I loved it when the Supreme Court effectively decided a presidential election over a hanging chad. I loved it when a president lied about an affair with an intern. I loved it when a president’s entire Cabinet lied about weapons of mass destruction. And I loved it when a president wore a tan suit.
Call me crazy, but I love the America that practices what it preaches. Or, at least, used to preach.
The one that welcomes people with open arms. The one that believes everyone deserves the opportunity to pursue happiness. The one that believes helping those less fortunate is more important, and much more rewarding, than adding another zero to your bank account. The one that values compassion. Ethics. Tolerance. Decency. And Character and Accountability over Hate and Lies and Bigotry and Misogyny.
However, as dim as the future looks, we’re not done yet. In a few short months, it'll once again be up to us to decide whether we want to continue living under the hand of an unhinged wannabe autocrat who can barely spell ‘c-a-t’ without assistance—or whether "We the People" still possess the courage, and the desire, to reclaim what has been taken from us.
Because the alternative isn't patriotism.
It's demanding everyone look like you, think like you, worship like you, and obey like you—or they don't belong.
And that's not America. That's a cult.
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Trump's just a sickening blip in America's history — and this holiday proves it
America turns 250 this year. If you were around for the bicentennial in 1976 you probably remember it like I do. I was an 11 year-old preteen obsessed with presidents but not yet old enough to understand the experiment called democracy I was celebrating.
I remember red, white and blue everywhere. In our neighborhood, every porch or window had a flag. People proudly, and without partisanship, displayed them. I collected ‘76 decals and bumper stickers, the round ones, and stuck them on the wall above my bed, and on my bike.
I can recall having red, white and blue spokecards clipped to my spokes that clicked as I pedaled. My family and our neighbors all gathered at North Park in the North Hills of Pittsburgh for a barbecue and watched a giant fireworks display.
To a young, patriotic boy like me, the bicentennial was a big deal. That’s why I can vividly recall it. There’s that, and the fact that I have an unmatched memory. The pride was everywhere, and it didn't belong to anyone in particular. It belonged to all of us.
A few weeks ago I was pulling out of my garage. The car in front of me had two enormous American flags hanging out of the back windows. And the first thought that popped into my head, before I could stop it, was, “A Trump supporter."
That's what I thought. Not "there's a patriot." Not "there's someone who loves this country." Just there’s a Trump supporter. And it was then I realized this is nothing at all like 1976.
How did that happen? How did I get to a place where seeing my own flag makes me flinch instead of swell with pride? Because somewhere along the way, Donald Trump hijacked it. He and his movement wrapped themselves in the flag so completely that now, in most cases, you can't see one without a Trump flag flying right next to it.
It really makes you sick. Trump banners have zero place next to an American flag. This is a fool who has spent a decade attacking the pillars of democracy, the courts, the press, the peaceful transfer of power, the very idea of a fair election, and on and on and on.
Somehow, he has made himself the face of the flag that's supposed to represent all of us.
But you know what? He hasn't won, and he never will.
Trump is not forever. MAGA is not forever. Movements like this fizzle out, and history is not on their side. He is a speed bump in the long race of American democracy, not the finish line. I believed that at 11 years old without fully understanding why, and I believe it now with 250 years of evidence behind me.
Look at what he's turned this birthday into. He's tried to shoehorn himself into America's 250th on the National Mall, and by every account, it's been a horrific mess. Thin to non-exist crowds, logistical failures, a “state fair” built around one man instead of a country's vivid history.
He'll give his “big speech” on July 4th. It will be the meandering slop of a deranged man. He said there will be the biggest fireworks ever. Well, if it’s anything like his state fair on the National Mall, they will be ho-hum.
But none of it matters. And do you know why? It’s because democracy was never supposed to live on the National Mall at some cockamanie state fair. It lives on our blocks. In our neighborhoods. In the way people wave from a porch ladened with flags, the way my neighbors did in 1976, simply because we were all Americans together.
So I’m going to ignore him for one day, even though my job as a journalist is to keep tabs on him. And all of us should ignore him too.
He’s like a deadly cancer, spreading everywhere. He is in every headline, every breaking news alert, every conversation, every single day of our lives. Let him have those days. Not this one.
And, not while he's reportedly pocketed roughly $2 billion during his second term, and now flies around on a luxury jet gifted by Qatar, all while pretending to preside over America's birthday.
He’s about as patriotic as Vladimir Putin, and that comparison would actually make him happy, so there’s your proof about how “American” he is.
Fly your flag this Fourth of July. Fly it proudly, and don't let him have it. Enjoy your friends, your family, your neighbors, because we are still, despite everything, a democracy. It is on us, not him, to make sure there's a 251st birthday, and a 252nd, and a 253rd.
Go back to the Constitution. Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. *Happiness.* Go find that word in the Magna Carta, or in the founding documents of almost any other nation on earth. You won't.
We promised something bigger, and that’s the right to chase joy. That is what makes this country different, and it is exactly what Donald Trump has spent years trying to steal from us - joy - piece by piece, grift by grift, insult by insult, lie by lie.
The best way to fight back is simple. Be happy anyway. Be proud anyway. Laugh about it all.
So this Fourth of July, F-Trump for every way he's tried to make us miserable. F-him for the liberty he's chipped away at. F-him for the corrosion he's dragged through our public life. F-him for all of it, because this day has nothing to do with him. He has contributed nothing to the survival of this democracy. We have. We're the ones who will outlast him, who will keep chasing that life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness long after he's a footnote.
God bless America. Happy 250th birthday.
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The spectacular implosion of Trump's big bash shows America is finished with this clown
If you’re feeling that the celebration of the 250th anniversary of the United States has been hijacked by a narcissistic, political hack, you’re not alone. Instead of a joyous event for all Americans, our holiday has been plagued by vicious attacks on those who haven’t drunk the Make America Great Again Kool-Aid. And the results are proof positive that we, the people, are not going for it.
Not one bit.
One of the primary “celebrations” was the Great American State Fair held on the National Mall this week. Supposedly showcasing the history of the 50 states, a whopping 20 states decided to skip the event entirely. Not because they’re not proud of their state or didn’t want to tell the wonderful tales about the vast diversity and beauty of this place we call home, but because President Donald Trump turned it into a political rally for himself instead of a birthday party for all Americans.
Most of the musicians and entertainers who were booked cancelled as it morphed into a staged event for Trump. Those few that didn’t cancel had very sparse crowds sprinkled over the lawn in one of the most embarrassing displays of just how historically unpopular our current president and his attempts to divide, not unite, Americans are with the populace.
Despite Trump claiming a crowd of 45,000 people, about 1,000 showed up. Of course this is totally in line with his self-aggrandizing exaggerations across the board since he lives in a fantasy world where he is worshipped and adored.
But the stunning failure of the Great American State Fair isn’t alone in demonstrating the fact that Americans have grown very tired of this particular reality TV show clown. Consider these events of the last week:
- The Supreme Court ruled against Trump’s executive order attempting to overturn the Constitution’s guarantee of birthright citizenship. It’s not where we came from, it’s where we are; and those born here are Americans.
- The president’s former attorney, Ty Cobb, reflecting on the financial declaration showing the president and his sons have garnered more than a billion dollars from sketchy crypto sources called it “the greatest onslaught of corruption in the history of mankind” adding “he creates policies that can only enrich himself and his family, is something that I think the average American should be staggered by.”
- A federal judge blocked Trump’s executive order that the U.S. Postal Service could not deliver mail ballots in states that had not surrendered their voter role information to the federal government, thus halting one of his most obvious and odious attempts to rig the coming elections in which his MAGA allies are predicted to lose badly.
- Even the Social Security Administration’s latest list of popular baby names puts “Donald” at its lowest point since the 1880s.
The takeaway is clear — Americans are not happy that our nation’s birthday has been hijacked and degraded. We are not happy with being intentionally divided instead of united in celebration of our history. We are not happy that those who fought and died to establish this nation — and all those who have struggled to keep democracy alive since then — have been shoved to the side by a gilded grifter.
Trump is not who we are as Americans and Montanans. We are the nation of “all men are created equal,” and on this 250th celebration of our founding, the great challenge is to live up to that promise, to be the united, not the divided, states — and to continue to forcefully reject these self-serving, despicable efforts to drive us apart.
Daily Montanan is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Daily Montanan maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Darrell Ehrlick for questions: info@dailymontanan.com.
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This eerily quiet summer means Trump is finished — or he's about to unleash hell
This column grimly spent a spring predicting a dark summer of possible chaos and violence, an administration on the move, power grabs at every turn, one preparing for an unpredictable but authoritarian fall season. We would endure a lot of hot weather, late nights, some dangerous dynamics, and Kalshi had odds at 40% that Portland would be ashes by June 15th.
This worry followed protests in Minnesota, the fear of troops coming to Chicago, and everything else you surely remember. Well, the heat came to the East Coast. But nothing else, not yet.
Indeed, so far, if one had to pick a theme or feel for what's happening, it would be a catchy viral meme about what's not happening. "The summer that wasn't."
We are passing through the nation's 250th birthday, the biggest annual summer holiday, made infinitely bigger by the incredible number, and yet it looks like it'll go by largely unnoticed, except for skipping work on Friday, maybe hearing some booms late at night Saturday. One would have expected baited anticipation, pride, and massive celebrations planned everywhere, or at least that would have been the expectation back 10 years ago, "normal America."
I went to a big gathering in my city's central park to watch the U.S. play in the World Cup on big screens with a big crowd — nice weather. Yes, people supported the American team, but not with the passion, anticipation, or hypertension otherwise expected. Everyone's support seemed a bit muted, as if we weren't sure "which" America this team represented. They wore white, not red or blue. If one said, "It's actually the whole country's team," most would reply, "Right. But, again, which country?"
Everyone knows the cause.
Instead of a celebration of the good that this country has done in its years (while acknowledging the horrific), as per usual, the President of the United States made the entire thing, everything official, at least, not about America but about him. Yes, of course, your city park will still have the earnest city band or orchestra playing in the evening and then fireworks. But the tone is set by the institutions functioning as the nation's cerebellum: the White House, Capitol Hill, the Supreme Court, the Mall. Trump took it all over and made it a MAGA rally. About him.
Well that will blow a tire for the 60% of the nation that is exhausted by this man, consumed with disdain and fury. Interestingly, though, there's some evidence that even Trump supporters don't like having the Fourth of July a personal celebration of Donald Trump, as if they, too, have actually found a line in the sand upon which even they won't cross. He cannot take over everything. Kinda like if he named every NFL team "Trump," like the Buffalo Trump, the Dallas Trump, Seattle Trump, all of them. That would be too far, guaranteed. Perhaps this is, too.
No, no one is fooled. He damn sure can try to take over elections, has taken over the Department of Justice, the military, and planted his face on banners in a Stalinesque way throughout Washington. He can take over most things, and most of those things are the really important ones, as opposed to the "Great National State Fair" that invisibly passed us by and the big celebration planned for the actual Fourth of July — a rally, about him, always, his greatness, a nation relegated to nothing but a stage.
Is it possible that even MAGAs never wanted at least this part?
There are other factors. Yes, there is the heat. Yes, you better believe gas prices play a role. Lots more. And yet the number of artists who checked out after hearing the agenda, the lagging ticket requests before the weather report, the bizarre claw of the UFC fight on the White House lawn, a "Fair" no one asked for, and the fact that Washington is empty, all point to something deeper. Kind of like the U.S. soccer team, it's possible everyone agreed we'd have official "Safe Spots," areas relied on to rest from politics — a "timeout." Is it possible that people from the furthest left, to the most extreme 15% of MAGA muckers, all just want to eat a cheeseburger in a backyard, enjoy a day off, maybe even read in the AC? Sick of it all? Not sure which America we're celebrating, only knowing it's not Donald Trump personally?
Well, something is happening because nothing is happening!
It appears that our kids are out of school, mine seems to be home a lot — which normally indicates something "summery." That weirdly fascinating soccer stuff is on television, and we get to see some kinda cool costumes and customs from around the world. Hollywood released a handful of massive budget movies. Most people have Friday off. There is some evidence that it's summer's big holiday and a lot saying it's not supposed to be like this.
All of this might be an important development; it is possible it is an important element, and it's certainly better than an extreme alternative. But there's also the chance that we're seeing a delay of the dangers to which this column previously pointed. Is this the silence before the storm? Do we all just demand a Fourth of July, especially a 250th (!) without it being centered on "Donald J. Trump," want to be on our best behavior while hosting the world, and only afterwards will we then threaten 250 years by trying to rip the politically beating hearts out of one another toward Labor Day?
And does Trump have plans for late summer? September? Kids back in school, no World Cup, vacations over, working again, drifting into Fall, and then lowers the hammer? The speculation might sound paranoid were it not so damned warranted, given recent history and the stakes at play. Democrats are about to win back control of a critical branch of government. Nothing in Trump's past indicates he'll stand by, sufficiently medicated to just let it happen, and then just move on.
Maybe it makes sense that summer is passing us by wholly unnoticed. Everyone is too tired and terrified of pointing to a flag, whether over the Mall or on a soccer uniform, and saying, "Let's go USA." That just confuses everyone. "Which one?" or "It's under repair, road work" (Now that is a sign of summer), both sound legitimate.
But so does "don't say anything! Don't light a fuse!"
Don't know. You don't know. No one knows, and that's the point. Even Trump, who certainly knows what he might plan for later, sure didn't know he'd be mostly ignored. All anybody knows is that it's 95 degrees and it's not supposed to snow Saturday - must be summer, the summer that wasn't.
And wow, for the love of God, one would've thought this would be huge, just ten years ago. The 250th? World Cup? What could possibly have happened in one decade?
What happened is the biggest threat to that nation since 1861 — and that 1861 Fourth of July passed rather muted, too — the nation had been at war for three months, and the first battle just down the road from Washington was three weeks away. At least the country had its greatest president during such a dangerous time. We're going through it with a less predictable, less educated, and less narcissistic Jefferson Davis as president of both sides.
Our cannons are quiet for now. Maybe that's why summer silently slips by unnoticed - we're terrified of the alternative.
Jason Miciak is a Rawstory Columnist, former Editor of Occupied Democrats, political consultant, author, attorney, and single parent girldad. Please follow on Bluesky, and he can be reached at jasonmiciak@gmail.com. He does read, appreciate, and learn from the comments.
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