Opinion

That photo from Sunday at the World Cup.

I don’t even need to go any further because you automatically know what I’m talking about.

Over the last six weeks or so, Hunter Biden has emerged as the strongest and most vocal critic of Donald Trump since Gov. Gavin “Studly” Newsom. But instead of using AI to trigger the MAGA cult, Hunter uses “FU,” like a true son of Fightin’ Irish Joe Biden, because he knows his very existence is enough to set them off.

And he couldn’t care less about what they say, because he’s already heard it all, from the not-actually-a-laptop to those thirst trap photos that looked like Herb Ritts took them. Remember when Marjorie Taylor Greene used to bring them to work with her because, like most Republican women, her partner just wasn’t lighting her up the way she needed? I always imagine the staff at the local Kinko’s screaming “Not It!” any time Marge would send her assistant in with yet another thumb drive full of “evidence.”

Dying doesn’t automatically erase a person’s track record, no matter the circumstances. But you can tell how little the late Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) truly meant to Donald Trump simply (stressing that “simp” part) based on the “eulogy” the president posted on Truth Social.

Truth Social

Yes, we are all aware of the fact that irony died a tragic death by suicide sometime late in 2016, and yet its ghost still haunts the Trump administration, dragging chains heavy enough to compel a theoretical physicist to declare the "spirit" is alive — and not at all well.

On Thursday, news broke that the technician Donald Trump has used to load his teleprompter before major speeches had made $100,000 on Kalshi — the internet betting site where, yes, you can gamble on who wins the World Cup (Argentina at 42%) or even how many times President Donald Trump will say "Iran" during his evening speech.

When Tim Cook steps down as CEO of Apple on September 1, he will be leaving behind a company enjoying record-breaking profits. In just the second quarter alone, Apple reportedly earned over $100 billion. Financially, the company couldn’t be any stronger. Ethically, it couldn’t be in any more peril.

Since Donald Trump returned to office, his masked goon squad—aka ICE—has killed 10 people. Fifty, if you include the roughly 40 who reportedly died while in custody. And that's not counting the tens of thousands who have allegedly been injured, brutalized, or wrongfully detained at the hands of these poorly trained, poorly screened, and increasingly lawless agents.

We have all become so hypnotized, desensitized, bored, angered, and abused by President Donald Trump that at this point, it's far more productive to point to what Trump won't do, won't say, than all he will.

On Thursday evening, Trump meant to bring the country to a standstill with a presidential address, something normally reserved for Space Shuttle explosions, 9-11, or the hunt for Osama Bin Laden. In a country at war with Iran, at war with inflation, warring against wages and underemployment, and mostly at war with itself, Trump talked about the only issue that moves him: how the world perceives him day to day.

I watched the horror show that was Donald Trump’s address to his base Thursday night, the one not covered by ABC and NBC on their traditional over-the-air networks (the ones fewer and fewer people watch, anyway).

It was a predictably appalling display because it showed the depths to which the president will sink to rig the midterms and save his base of absolute power. Six years after the 2020 General Election, he still pretends he got screwed out of his rightful victory despite every court in the land finding his claim lacked even the thinnest degree of merit.

It was one of those stories that causes barely a ripple of interest anymore, one that we’ve become so inured to that it passes almost unnoticed but that would trigger a massive investigation/impeachment hearing were this any other administration.

Here was the New York Times headline on Tuesday: “Trump Paid $2 Million by South Korean Company Facing Trade Investigation.”

During my Capitol Hill days eons ago, I made friends with a handful of Secret Service agents. It was during my crazy Dewey Beach summers on the Delaware shore.

Once in a while, depending on how many beers I had, and they had, I'd ask them questions about the job, what it was like, and who they liked and disliked. They rarely budged on disclosing any details.

We are, right now, dealing with a war overseas with Iran that has done so much damage to our country’s reputation, military, and economy that the ramifications, serious as they are now, will likely only get worse in the years ahead.

At home, gas prices are climbing. Food prices and mortgage rates are rising. Wildfires are burning across the West. Tornadoes have torn through states like Illinois and Indiana, already shattering annual records. Flooding has once again devastated communities in Texas, Kentucky, and other parts of the Midwest.

Tonight at nine o’clock Eastern, Donald Trump will look into a television camera and tell America he’s rescuing democracy. He teased the address to reporters this week, promising “really big news” about “free and fair elections” and adding that “it doesn’t get bigger.”

For once, he and I agree. It doesn’t get bigger.

Some of the less imaginative in the media refer to the "Blue Tea Party" to label the zeitgeist that is taking hold of the nation as young Democratic Socialists are making noise, winning elections, and being "nice" about it.

Please. This wonderful development, long in the making, is hardly a retread of the Koch-financed, centrally planned, tri-corner hat, muzzleloader-carrying red coats of the 2010s. The Tea Party was little more than a corporate response primarily to the Black president, moderate as he was, who wanted to moderately raise taxes on the rich.