Opinion

Donald Trump learned how to manipulate the media while instilling distrust in it directly from his Daddy Vladdy Putin.

Beginning in 2015, when Trump ousted a Univision reporter from a press conference, what started as a simmer became a roiling boil that led to his petty, arbitrary, and unconstitutional press ban last month — which a Trump-appointed federal judge blocked.

They’re at it again. The billionaires who own and run the GOP — including the billionaire in the White House and the billionaires in his Cabinet — are throwing out another desperate “let’s buy some votes” scheme by sending a million Americans their own money.

According to the White House, over the next few days about a million Americans will get a check for $500 in the mail, prominently signed by Donald Trump, along with a letter telling them a naked lie about it being money Joe Biden kept from them.

Former Trump-pet Marjorie Taylor Greene has somehow reinvented herself as some sort of truth-teller and is even garnering praise from liberals for how forthcoming she’s being about Republicans and her former boss.

Yet this is still her pinned tweet.

In 1998, Rep. Dan Burton of Indiana, a truly loathsome character at the time but now almost angelic in comparison to today's characters, told the Indianapolis Star that Bill Clinton was "a scumbag" and that's why he was "after him."

It was a really big deal. It sent shock waves through Washington. I recall being gobsmacked at the language. It triggered intense political backlash, with Democrats attempting to remove him from his committee chairmanship. He was never formally investigated, as the Dems demanded. The House Republican leadership ultimately blocked all disciplinary resolutions, allowing him to retain his position despite his potty mouth.

You can hear it in their voices, the words they use, the issues brought up, the frustration evolving into tinged anger, and the conviction — no more, you're pushing it, really pushing it.

Republican senators have been talking about Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth a lot more lately, and that's bad news at a particularly bad time for him, as he already faces eight articles of impeachment once the House returns (assuming it ever returns).

Two very different demos have recently risen to social media prominence: GenX women and our polar opposites, the MAGA Trad Wives. The starkly opposed messaging is making a real case for the “nurture” part of the “nature vs. nurture” argument during a time when women’s rights are constantly in flux.

GenX Women — aka the “Forgotten Generation”— have emerged as a hugely influential group thanks to being the (better) half of the last fully analog generation on the planet. Too many GenX men are MAGA, which is why liberal GenX women have found our collectively loud social media voice amid our current AI garbage fire of MAGA fakery. We are rightfully raging as we refuse to remain silent during our menopause, from the peri- to the post-menopausal years. Black women in particular are leading the female GenX trends, and rightly so.

Is it just me, or has anyone else also noticed that our president has been melting down even more than usual lately?

That whole “no guardrails” thing, combined with being surrounded by sycophants who are only too eager to do all of his bidding without questioning it and Congressional Republicans who almost without exception remain scared to death of him – plus immunity – has produced a monster who believes no court order applies to him and no law can stop him from doing whatever the hell he wants.

I was reading a story about how Donald Trump had so thoroughly destroyed the Kennedy Center, a once-great arts institution reduced to a pathetic shell by one man’s seemingly deep-seated enmity at John F. Kennedy’s ongoing, and entirely justified, veneration. It was clear that Trump’s goal all along has been to raze the venue and rebuild it as the Trump Center, so egomaniacal is he.

The thing is, this sort of pitiful move is entirely on brand for this president. He is at war with America’s history, the goal being to erase it and install himself as at once the demolisher and self-appointed savior of everything that has been and will be. He is all about marking his territory with toxic urine. If it doesn’t bear his name and/or likeness, he believes it carries no value and must be wiped from the face of the earth.

Donald Trump made history this week when he achieved something none of his predecessors ever could: the lowest approval ratings since approval ratings began. He’s languishing at -26, according to YouGov polling. Nowhere near the winning MAGA was promised.

It’s almost as if he’s deliberately trying to look as bad as possible so he can keep embarrassing our country on the global stage. Witness his welcome for Chinese President Dictator Xi Jinping, which was an exercise in full cringe. Oddly bundled into a winter coat with black leather gloves covering his badly bruised hands, Trump tried to show off for Xi during a military flyover, but ended up wincing in fear while saluting absolutely no one.