Trump debuts his Dolly Parton-inspired coat of many colors
President Donald Trump shows off his Dolly Parton-inspired coat of many colors.
Nick Anderson is a Pulitzer Prize-winning editorial cartoonist.
Opinion
Trump woos an ally that gave his monstrous role model an exile of obscene luxury
Last Thursday, a federal judge in Massachusetts put her foot down and stopped Trump’s Republican toadies on the Postal Board of Governors from seizing control of your mail-in ballot this fall. She noted that neither the Constitution nor Congress gives him or them that power and, besides that, there’s no time for states to comply with their demands.
They’re still trying, though, and if they’re unsuccessful, we can fully expect this scheme to reappear in the presidential election in 2 years with even greater intensity.
I’ve seen up-close-and-personal how this plays out when corrupt leaders driven by sex, money, and revenge take over a nation. It ain’t pretty.
Thanksgiving Day of 1980, I was the guest of host Sanford Ungar on NPR’s All Things Considered show, live from the famine zone of Kampala, Uganda, describing what I’d seen in the preceding days. Both times he asked me about soldiers (the country was militarily occupied by Tanzania at the time, them having evicted Idi Amin). The military cut the phone line and we had to re-dial.
I told him how Kampala, built on seven hills like Rome, was once one of the most beautiful cities in the world, but we’d been walking through burned-out buildings, broken glass, and confronted tens of thousands of hungry faces.
The city had no running water, and when the Commissioner of the Ministry of Rehabilitation met with Herr Müller and me, I apologized for arriving filthy in 4-day-old clothes; he told me not to worry about it as he hadn’t had a bath or shower in the two years the city had been “dry” since the war started. On one short morning walk, Herr Müller and I counted nine bodies.
We spent an afternoon at the Namalu “Detention Center” prison farm, one of Amin’s favorite torture sites, that was then a feeding station run by an Irish volunteer named Ann who gave each starving child a single bowl of ground corn and powdered milk every day. A few months after we met, Ann was shot dead by a sniper as she was feeding those kids.
Amin had fled the country in April of 1979 as the Tanzanians joined the opposition forces; he’d been gone almost two years when I got there, and the water still wasn’t running. The lesson for me was that bad men leading nations invariably corrupt or even destroy their institutions of government both to stay in charge and to enrich themselves and their families. And once the process starts, it begins to compound on itself until there’s little but wreckage left.
There’s a word for this, and a phrase that describes it.
Louise and I have been binge-watching a British crime series, The Chelsea Detective, and on the show we watched Sunday, one of the characters said to another that her cop grandfather had told her to “always watch for the holy trinity: sex, money, and revenge.”
Not only was she describing how to sort types of criminals, but she was also describing Donald Trump; there’s almost nothing in his public record for the past 50 years that doesn’t fall into one of those three categories.
In Idi Amin and Donald Trump’s cases, though, what separates them from run-of-the-mill criminals and abusers is that they weren’t concerned about the law restraining their worst impulses. If anything, once they seized power, the law protected those impulses and facilitated their acting them out.
The name for this type of government — where the leader is both a psychopath and has seized so much power he faces few or no legal or political restraints — is called “personalism.” It refers to the concentration of all decision-making and appointment-making power in a single man’s hands at the expense of everybody else except those in his inner circle (typically his family).
Democracy researchers Barbara Geddes, Joseph Wright, and Eric Frantz have put together what’s probably the world’s most comprehensive data set on this, detailing roughly 200 dictatorships since WWII. Titled How Dictatorships Work, it details how what I saw in Kampala (and roughly a dozen other countries in the years I did international relief work) comes about, and has deep lessons for us in today’s Trump and oligarch-run America.
Personalist rulers invariably — always, really — leave the countries they’ve ruled worse off than when they started and their damage typically long outlives them. Social scientist Max Weber called this patrimonialism: it’s when a ruler treats the nation, its commons, and its collective wealth as his own personal property to loot and share with his closest relatives and cronies.
Like converting the Department of Justice into your own personal instrument for revenge, blinding the IRS to your crimes, and tearing down the East Wing without asking anybody’s permission or advice. Or taking a country to war without congressional authorization. Or giving away federal lands to major donors and killing regulations to enhance their profits. Or his kids becoming defense contractors.
Once a country is essentially converted into the personalist property of one man, his family, and his billionaire cronies, his private lusts and grudges become public policy and the line defining the difference between his desires and the nation’s interests vanishes.
Putin, who appears to be tutoring Trump with their regular hour-long phone calls, ran this exact same sequence in Russia even though they still have elections and still claim that nation is a republic.
— His prosecutors went after the richest man in Russia when he started to defy Putin, then took apart his company and gave its pieces to Putin’s cronies.
— The Russian equivalent of the FCC broke the back of independent media; the press in Russia was brought to heel in fewer than two years with the help of a handful of loyal oligarchs who bought up the nation’s largest private media properties.
—Then came the “foreign agent” laws that, like Trump’s NSPM-7, categorized civil society organizations and dissenters as national security threats. And his illegal war to steal the wealth of Ukraine.
Instead of suspending the Russian constitution, Putin simply seized control of every one of the government’s agencies and their resources and redirected them all to supporting his iron-fisted rule while turning a blind eye to his looting the country.
Trump is doing the same thing here, from the IRS to the FBI to ICE to the Pentagon. For example, he replaced a real prosecutor in the Eastern District of Virginia with his personal attorney, Lindsey Halligan, who had no prosecutorial experience in her life, and within three weeks she’d come up with an indictment for Letitia James, the NY attorney general who’d won a half-billion-dollar fraud judgment against Trump.
When a federal judge blocked that for being illegal, Trump’s Justice Department tried to reindict James twice, in two different districts. So far only the refusal of grand juries to go along has prevented him from going full Putin, although the case is now in front of the Fourth Circuit appeals court dominated by Republican-appointed hard-right judges.
Now his DOJ has opened an investigation into E. Jean Carroll, the writer he sexually abused in New York, according to two juries who ordered him to pay her millions in damages. Again, right out of Putin’s and Amin’s playbook: sex and revenge, and all of his harassment of Carroll is paid for with our tax dollars.
Which brings us to the money. Trump’s net worth has tripled since he took office, mostly based on crypto scams that his own administration’s regulatory agencies legalized and authorized for him.
At the same time, billionaires Trump and Musk gutted the IRS by firing about a third of its enforcement staff. Yale’s budget lab says the 2025 DOGE personnel cuts alone will let billionaire tax cheats screw us out of at least $600 billion, all against the background of a current estimated $700 billion a year in routine tax cheating by the Epstein class.
The IRS under Trump is now auditing low-income families claiming the Earned Income Tax Credit at a rate 35 times higher that they audit the morbidly rich. Dwight Eisenhower and my Republican father are both rolling over in their graves.
Following Amin’s and Putin’s script, Poynter has documented more than a hundred federal actions against journalists and news outlets, with Trump personally responsible for roughly a fifth of them.
FBI agents raided a Washington Post reporter’s home in January, two independent journalists (including Don Lemon) were arrested for covering a protest in Minnesota, and now we discover the Pentagon is compiling a blacklist of reporters.
Trump’s NSPM-7 executive order categorized anybody who disagrees with his ideas of what patriotism, capitalism, or Christianity mean as a “potential terrorist,” leading now to Putin-like FBI and IRS investigations of nonprofits across the country. Instead of going after morbidly rich tax cheats, they’re now going after good-government organizations that personalist leader Trump considers a threat to his family’s and his cronies’ power and ability to loot our nation’s wealth.
Like in Uganda and Russia, too, the very rich are tossing in to support this personalist leader because it can mean billions of our tax dollars flowing into their money bins.
Republicans in Congress are cowering, as are their spokespeople on TV and in the press, while billionaires (both American and foreign) line up to shower Trump with gold bars and jet airplanes in violation of the Constitution’s emoluments clauses.
Elon Musk has revived his America PAC for the midterms and, according to independent writer Lalisa Stands, is harvesting voter data in Texas in a way that’s, shall we say, less than transparent. Her article is worth a careful read and I’m looking forward to more corroboration as details continue to come out.
Which brings us to this November. History shows us that once the prosecutors have been captured, the tax collectors neutered, the reporters cowed, and the protesters labeled as terrorists, the only way to get a personalist leader out of power short of physical violence is with an election.
So, like with Amin and Putin before him, Trump and his lickspittles are doing everything they can to corrupt or even seize control of this fall’s and the 2028 elections. That’s on the docket of Judge Indira Talwani (who is dealing with the mail-in ballots issue) this coming week, along with multiple other efforts by state attorneys general and folks like Marc Elias. But they’re going up against the formidable power of the entire executive branch that possesses a functionally unlimited budget and has the power to imprison and even kill their “enemies” with impunity.
This is how former spy-chief Vladimir Putin became one of the richest men on the planet, having played the game Trump started last year, and as I was feeding starving refugees in Uganda, Idi Amin was living it up in a massive mansion in Jeddah with maids, cars, drivers, cooks, and concubines, all paid for by the same Saudi government that gave Jared Kushner billions. This is simply how personalist governance works.
In Federalist 51, James Madison notes that if men were angels we’d have no need for the checks on presidential power that he and his colleagues had written into the Constitution. They thought they’d built a system that could survive a bad president and, for the first 250 years, they appeared to be right.
Now, with Amin as a role model and Putin as a mentor, Trump is testing that system and the entire world is watching, aghast. Republicans in Congress and the states, who have the tools Madison gave them to stop our slide from democracy into personalist authoritarian rule, are simply standing around terrified while making up excuses and rationalizations for doing nothing or collecting their own shares of the loot.
Trump’s obsession with sex, money, and revenge is tearing America apart at the seams while it guts both our soft and hard power around the world, just as Putin had hoped.
At least until this November. The GOP‘s cowardice means only you and I can stop this insanity and we’ll have to do it at the polling places this fall.
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Triggered MAGA loses its mind over who just shamed flailing Trump
While every week under the Trump regime feels like a test of our collective endurance, this past week also broke our hearts with the double-whammy losses of Dolly Parton and Tim Curry within 24 hours. GenX is having a particularly difficult time, because we literally grew up with both of them before the internet was even a thought.
Being able to grieve together on social media was incredibly cathartic, and the tributes to both legends leaned heavily into what good people Dolly and Tim were. Their talents were celebrated, but that felt somehow secondary to their kindness, generosity, positivity, warmth, and all-around basic human decency, which were at the forefront of every eulogy.
We’re still learning about cool things they did for other people when no one else was looking, but the throughline remains consistent: Is there anyone who’s as universally beloved as they were? “Preservation lists” began circulating as we looked to our elders to be an example of the kind of goodness that Dolly exuded everywhere she went. Mel Brooks, Dick Van Dyke, Carol Burnett, Patti LaBelle, Dionne Warwick…we still are incredibly lucky to have them and others with us.
Meanwhile, narcissistic loser Donald Trump tried to co-opt the love for Dolly that he’ll never get, and Bill Maher whined about people grieving her when “so much is going on.”
I’m old enough to remember when goodness and kindness were traits to admire in famous people. We’re certainly starved for those qualities from our elected officials after more than a decade of Donald Trump’s dumbing down of our democracy. Now it’s all about who can tweet the meanest zinger the fastest as Democrats are being forced to engage with their Republican rivals at the lowest intellectual levels.
Remember how good we had it under President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden? They were (and still are) wonderful husbands and fathers as well as selfless public servants who genuinely cared about the American people. They always made us feel safe, and thanks to both of them having fantastic senses of humor, they also brought joy everywhere they went.
People were always happy to see them, and there was truly nothing that made Americans smile more than the many “Obama and Kids” photos. MAGA hates this.
We’re a nation starved for goodness (and a ton of food we can’t eat now thanks to RFK Jr), but there’s a glorious example of what all leaders should be right now in New York City: Democratic Socialist Mayor Zohran Mamdani.
A young and energetic 34-year-old, Mamdani is the most popular NYC Mayor since the legendary Fiorello LaGuardia, aka the “Great Builder of New York City,” who served during the Great Depression and World War II. Mamdani’s approval rating is currently at a whopping 69%, up from 58% in June and 56% in March.
Trump’s current approval rating is at a historic all-time low of 28%.
Mayor Mamdani is doing an amazing job of taking care of his constituents with the kind of energy, joy, kindness, and productivity that the city hasn’t seen in years. Most significantly, he’s massively popular with younger New Yorkers, especially schoolkids. Check their reaction when he “eliminated bedtimes” so they could stay up and watch the Knicks clinch the NBA Championship.
And then there was the time he brought his buddy Barack with him to visit some kids at school, immediately gaining him “Mamdani and Kids” status.
I love watching kids watching them, their faces lit up with excitement as they’re watching these adult Men of Color treat them with respect and kindness. That kind of engagement can’t be faked. These men understand the assignment is to inspire kids, not traumatize them.
And the kids innately know this. They’re attracted to the beacon of light shining from within these good men, as evidenced by a brand-new video circulating of Mamdani being swarmed and hugged by a group of very excited kids at a camping event at Inwood Park.
If Trump did that, the kids would be traumatized instead of energized.
And of course, since Mamdani is Mayoring While Brown, MAGA is beyond triggered by his success while Trump is flailing like never before.
Mamdani has already made a major impact on Manhattan and the other four boroughs he oversees. Instead of vandalizing monuments and threatening to tear down JFK Memorials, he’s fixing roads and water fountains.
From free buses and babysitting, the mayor is just embracing and implementing the aspects of socialism which were already built into our government. And he still rides his bike to work every day, WITH A HELMET ON, thanks to the concerned constituents who constantly called him out for not better protecting himself.
A politician who LISTENS to his constituents? The hell you say!
But it’s not all levity and photo ops with Mayor Mamdani. Crime is at a record new low barely eight months into his first year on the job. He’s tackled and superseded accusations of anti-Semitism, which I just don’t see as an American Jew. I may not live in Manhattan, but my Jewish mother and Jewish niece do, and I’m glad he’s their Mayor instead of the very Trumpy Andrew Cuomo.
The Mayor of New York City has absolutely nothing to do with the Israeli government, and yet too many people expect him to fix all of the ills that exist between Jews and Palestinians. But he still demonstrated strong leadership skills and spoke out when Israeli President Benjamin Netanyahu was welcomed in D.C. by his fellow Putin-owned war criminal Donald Trump. Mamdani acknowledged their war crimes and lamented that he didn’t have the power to arrest Netanyahu, then stressed the federal government should take care of it.
Yeah, Putin’s Puppet didn’t do that.
Weird, huh?
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Supreme Court handed Trump a wrecking ball — and the Oval Office may be next
Construction on Donald Trump's aloof, monarchical, for-rich-whites-only 90,000-square-foot ballroom can proceed, thanks to an aloof, monarchical, and for-rich-whites-only Supreme Court.
What the Supreme Court handed down today isn't a ruling about a simple, easy-to-explain throwback to the Gilded Age. It's a ruling about whether anything and anyone can stop Donald Trump from doing whatever he wants to the country's most symbolic public property. And by extension, to the country itself.
I predicted this. Not because I’m some legal genius, but because these robed robbers and rulers on the High Court are now just too predictable. When given a chance to check or stop Trump, they will, 99% of the time – my own educated guess – find a reason not to.
Further, give Congress a chance to defend our Constitution, and it too will find a reason to look away. Now put these accomplices and capitulars together, and you get exactly what happened today, a 5-4 ruling clearing the way for construction to continue (It never really stopped.) on the White House ballroom, because the justices decided Trump has the authority to bulldoze part of the people's house, or frankly all of it, because Congress, which has authority over the property, doesn’t give a damn.
That's the pathetic and easy-way-out center of this ruling. The majority didn't say the ballroom is legal. It said the National Trust for Historic Preservation lacks standing to challenge it, because the "power of the purse" and authority over federal property belong to Congress, and Congress hasn't sued.
The only people with the power to stop this are Speaker Mike Johnson and his gutless House majority. Since they won't sue, Trump can do whatever the hell he wants. So fitting for this alarming era of congressional cowardice.
The Court knows damn well that Congress won't act, and it is choosing to hide behind that inaction rather than exercise the desperately needed judicial check the Constitution actually gives it.
Chief Justice Roberts had the foresight to see what this really was. Joining the Court's three liberals in dissent, he called the construction "likely unlawful" and warned that the majority was letting the executive branch "arrogate Congress's exclusive powers" simply because lawmakers haven't bothered to defend them.
He picked apart the White House's claim that $400 million in private donations gives them the right to bypass Congress, pointing out that federal law requires the "express authority of Congress" for major construction on federal land in Washington, regardless of who is paying.
And he said by letting Trump "outrun the courts," finishing the building long before any court reaches a final verdict on its legality, the majority has made the legal question academic.
In other words, you can't unbuild a ballroom.
So, will anything actually restrain Trump? If he can demolish part of the White House because Congress didn't formally object, what's left standing that Congress also hasn't formally objected to?
He's already ripped out the Rose Garden. He's already put in a helipad, ripping up the beautifully manicured South Lawn. Under SCOTUS logic, there's no legal reason he couldn't decide the Oval Office is too small (I've stood in it, and it is small) and knock out a wall, or demolish the whole West Wing like he did the East Wing.
Why wouldn’t he? Trump yearns for massive official offices like those of Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong Un. And Trump, who thinks he’s some supreme builder, realizes that the monster Ballroom on the East side dwarfs the puny disc on the West side. Well, he’ll want to even that out.
The Oval Office is not simply another room in a government building. The first Oval Office was built in 1909, when President William Howard Taft, with congressional approval, expanded the West Wing, and the office was moved to its current location in 1934 during Franklin D. Roosevelt’s expansion of the West Wing, again, with congressional approval.
Every president since then has used that room. It has been the setting for decisions and announcements that defined generations: war and peace, crises and triumphs, statehood and national tragedy. In 1945, Harry Truman announced Japan’s surrender and the end of World War II from the Oval Office. It has become so synonymous with the presidency that the room itself has come to symbolize the peaceful transfer and exercise of presidential power.
But Trump has already destroyed the Oval, plastering gold appliques everywhere there was once white space.
Further, there's no reason he couldn't take a dislike to the Lincoln Memorial and rip the statue of Abe out from his chair, and put a gold-plated Donald Trump in its place.
Two years ago, if someone told you Trump would take a wrecking ball to the East Wing, you would have laughed. So, don’t laugh when you consider that the increasingly unstable Trump would tear up more of the People’s House, or brazenly try to erase Lincoln.
This ruling now gives Trump almost dictator-like authority. The Court gave Trump broad immunity from prosecution. The Court is letting his administration meddle with the Postal Service and voter rolls ahead of an election without consequence.
Now add a Court that will let him gut and rebuild the people's house because the people's representatives couldn't be bothered to stand up for the people’s house. Individually, each ruling is a hammer. Together, they are a bulldozer, operating with impunity to knock over any democratic limits standing in the way.
The ballroom will get built. I mean, we all knew it was always going to get built. But what’s next? What will we watch be torn down?
The destruction of the White House and its grounds is a metaphor for our democracy. It’s been torn apart, it’s been ignored, it’s been run over. And now that it’s just a leveled construction pit, what will take its place?
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Punch-Drunk Pete devised this stupid plot to cover up war crimes
Our military has never seemed weaker on the global stage thanks to Cadet Bones Spurs' regime carrying out Project 2025’s planned changes to the U.S. military.
Aside from renaming the Defense Department to the Department of War during peacetime, the other shredding of our esteemed military being carried out right in front of us includes everything the Heritage Foundation wanted: ending diversity programs, reversing reproductive care travel policies, and reviewing high-ranking officer promotions for political alignment.
Then there’s renaming warships after terrible people, stranding the USS Abraham Lincoln, and manufacturing a war in Iran to distract from the Epstein Files, because the wars in Ukraine and the Middle East just weren’t enough.
Trump has a long history of openly disrespecting our armed forces, because that’s what weak, thin-skinned, jealous bullies do when they come face-to-face with their opposites. He takes no responsibility for the egregious body counts — both foreign and domestic — attributed to his two administrations. A weakened American military makes our country vulnerable to attacks from our enemies, which is exactly what Putin wants. It pairs nicely with the visuals of the vandalism in D.C. perpetrated by only one person; Putin’s puppet himself delivered the weakest version of our country as a 250th birthday present for Daddy Vladdy.
But there’s really no better example of how much Trump hates the military than his installation of former Fox News Talking Head and fellow thrice-married serial philanderer “Punch-Drunk” Pete Hegseth as the “Secretary of War.” Bringing his brash Broski braggadouchery to the MAGA base, “Kegseth” — a nickname he’s rightfully earned thanks to his multiple drunken public appearances — served in the National Guard from 2002 to 2021 and has now turned the Pentagon into a frat house with its own Green Room where he can get his makeup done before doing the world’s worst photo ops.
Together, Trump and Kegseth went scorched earth on the Pentagon and purged anyone who wasn’t going to choose loyalty to Trump over America. Under the guise of getting rid of anyone who was pro-DEI initiatives, they fired high-ranking military leaders from the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Senior Service Officers, and also blocked the promotion of at least 45 officers.
During his controversial tenure, Hegseth has been focused on strutting around and putting on pretend shows of strength. Colin Jost’s impression of Hegseth on SNL is so spot-on, it’s scary while also being funny/not funny.
Aside from making a mockery of our military on the global stage, Hegseth has been obeying orders by pulling a Bari Weiss and firing three employees of the venerable military publication Stars and Stripes after they reported — accurately — about the abhorrent conditions aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln.
Kind of like how the White House posted a “Leftist Influencers” List on its website to target three independent political content creators after they reported — accurately — on Trump’s health amid multiple “annual” visits to Walter Reed within the same calendar year.
Or how Trump constantly bullies the press instead of ever answering their questions.
It’s just weird how they keep trying to punish people who are just doing their jobs.
Anyway, Stars and Stripes (S&S) — which still has a print edition! — has reported on the United States Armed Forces and their communities since the Civil War era.
While it operates from within the Department of Defense War, it’s independent and editorially separate from it, and its First Amendment rights to report on military actions and other issues relevant to our military has been guaranteed by Congress.
Of course, none of that matters to Punch-Drunk Pete and the Epstein Bestie who keeps taking naps on camera while behind the Resolute Desk. While they’ve made it abundantly clear that they couldn’t care less about the conditions our servicepeople must live under, they care very much about the optics of a disaster like the one aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln.
Rather than apologizing and taking responsibility or, I don’t know, properly taking care of every member of our armed forces with dignity and respect so that they wouldn’t be considering suicide, Kegseth and Trump are just worried about their bad actions making them look bad.
So Hegseth, who can’t do a pull-up and has dumbed down every press conference from the Pentagon, ordered Editor-in-Chief Erik Slavin to fire journalist Lara Korte. When Slavin refused, Hegseth fired them, as well as publisher Max D. Lederer Jr., for “insubordination.” All three are now on “administrative leave” awaiting a court ruling after they filed a wrongful termination lawsuit against Hegseth, Chief Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell, DOD public affairs official Andrew Brey, and the DOD itself.
I guess Trump and Kegseth have to decide if it makes them look worse to admit the truth, or to fire the people who report the truth they don’t want to admit to. They are both threats to national and international security. The least qualified person to ever oversee our military is one boozy brunch away from accidentally launching a nuke over a perceived slight.
All of this makes my brain cry, because I’m so tired of the stupidest people carrying out the most obvious yet also stupidest plot to destroy our democracy from within. Stars and Stripes has been around since THE CIVIL WAR ERA and the drunk guy from Fox News and the handsy host of The Apprentice shouldn’t be anywhere near it.
I can’t stress that enough, because now we’re hearing that Hegseth is “seriously considering” a presidential run in 2028, which is just too stupid to think about. Although, I can’t say I wouldn’t enjoy watching Sen. Jon “Hotticus Finch” Ossoff shred Punch-Drunk Pete in a debate.
I’ve had a lifelong respect for our military, and I can only hope that once Democrats flip Congress, they’ll be investigating Hegseth and his staff for war crimes as part of their campaign of accountability for the Trump regime.
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One 80-year-old icon built an empire from nothing — and the other is Donald Trump
I had reservations about writing this column because Dolly Parton doesn’t deserve to be in the same piece as Donald Trump, let alone the same sentence.
She was famously non-political, and I think that’s one thing Americans of all stripes admired about her. And in her own way, she was vocal about the rights of the poor, marginalized, LGBTQ+ individuals, and had a sincere philosophy of unbridled acceptance.
Then I happened upon numerous social media posts that essentially said that the wrong 80-year-old died, and if you know, you know.
I got to thinking about the comment, and how it sort of forces us to choose which version of the American dream we actually believe in, Dolly’s or Trump’s. And so, in homage to Dolly, I thought the juxtaposition needed to take place because it’s so stark and illuminating.
Dolly Parton was born in a two-room log cabin on Locust Ridge in the Smoky Mountains, one of 12 children, raised without electricity or running water, in a coat her mother sewed together out of rags.
Donald Trump was born in a mansion in Queens, the son of a millionaire developer who, according to a New York Times investigation, funneled him at least $413 million in today’s dollars over the course of his life.
One of them built an empire out of nothing but talent, grit, and compassion. The other inherited a fortune and spent 50 years building a brand only for himself, with a talent for lying and cheating, and with empathy toward no one.
One was a huge success. The other, an abysmal failure.
Both have spent six decades turning themselves into American symbols — albeit vastly different — instantly recognizable by first name alone, and that’s where the similarities end sharply. Because Dolly Parton, whose death has left the entire country in mourning, spent that fame building things for other people.
Donald Trump has spent his time building things for himself, and this week, in the ugliest and most literal way yet, he’s threatening to demolish a monument to a slain president.
Dolly built you up, Donald tears you down.
She built Dollywood in her own dirt-poor home county, not as a monument to herself, but as a way to create jobs for the neighbors and family she grew up alongside. The Imagination Library (which some GOP states are working to gut), which she founded in 1995, still mails free books every month to millions of children around the world, most of whom will grow up and never know Dolly gave them the gift of reading.
When wildfires ripped through Sevier County in 2016 and left families with nothing, Dolly started the My People Fund and had $1,000 checks in survivors’ hands within days, no strings attached.
Her donation to Vanderbilt University helped fund the clinical trials that became the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine, a shot that has, by now, saved an uncountable number of strangers’ lives.
Now look at what Donald did, or didn’t do. Trump Steaks. Trump Vodka. Trump Airlines. Trump Mortgage. All defunct. Trump University, which cost him $25 million in a fraud settlement after ordinary people who trusted his name lost their savings.
Multiple Atlantic City casino bankruptcies, in which lenders, contractors, and small vendors absorbed the losses while Trump walked away intact. Every one of these ventures, which put his name up in lights, eventually went dark.
And now, he’s tearing down, or threatening to tear down, things that are not even his.
This week it was revealed that Justice Department lawyers told a federal judge that if Trump isn’t allowed to put his name on the Kennedy Center and shut the building down for two years of renovation, the center may simply have to be torn down and replaced with an open-air amphitheater.
The Kennedy Center is a living memorial that Congress established in 1964 to honor President John F. Kennedy. And Trump’s own Justice Department just told a federal court, in writing, that the building’s survival is contingent on Trump getting his name carved into it.
He is the same thug who tore down the East Wing of the White House to build his gilded ballroom that is only open to the wealthy, and the same madman who is pushing for a 250-foot arch near Arlington National Cemetery that he told a reporter, when asked who it was for, was “Me.”
One 80-year-old spent her life quietly building things that will keep helping people and make them happier long after she’s gone. The other will go down in history as a loser who did nothing to help anyone but himself.
Hopefully, in 50 years, kids will still be riding roller coasters at Dollywood and still finding Imagination Library books in their mailboxes. Somewhere, a stranger will still be alive because of a vaccine Dolly Parton’s money helped fund.
Trump’s arch, if it’s ever finished, will be a large door with his name on it. And the ballroom, a blight on the White House and a slap in the face to hard-working Americans.
Look, I don’t like comparing Dolly to Trump, because there is no comparison, and it’s not fair to her memory, or to the angel of a person that she was. But if we must look at what they both represent, it forces us to choose between a path of unifying grace and one of deep, cruel division.
America is at an inflection point now as the midterms approach, and I for one believe in fate and divine intervention. So, in that spirit, literally and figuratively, perhaps Dolly’s death at this critical time in our nation’s history is a reminder of what we could be versus what we have become
A country where one kind of American uses fame, fortune and influence to build something that outlives her, while another uses the power of the presidency to tear things down to feed his own ego.
Maybe that is the choice in front of us now. Not Dolly or Donald, because there is no comparison. But Dolly’s America or Trump’s America. One builds people up. The other tears them down. And if we have learned anything from Dolly Parton’s life, it is that what we leave behind matters far more than how big we managed to make our own name.
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Trump can't let go of an 11-year grudge — or his shoe lifts
Aug. 28 marks the 11th anniversary of Donald Trump blocking me on Twitter.
This means he's been violating my First Amendment rights for most of the last decade, minus the glorious four-year respite that was the Biden-Harris administration.
It also means he’s a giant coward who’s been afraid of some 5-foot-nothing lady on Twitter for 11 full years. How can anyone look at him and see anything but a giant failure of a convicted felon adjudicated rapist Epstein Bestie who spackles himself with orange clown makeup while wearing a wig, shoe lifts, and…something back there that looks like a portable port-a-potty.
Yes, we can dunk on the junk in that trunk, because it stinks in more ways than the obvious ones.
Do you even remember what our political landscape was like in 2015? Do you recall the day he descended that gold escalator to declare his candidacy? That was the day he began implementing the plan his Daddy Vladdy had patiently been grooming him to carry out.
Trump was the 12th Republican to enter the race, and his competitors all made fun of him. The press treated him like an entertaining joke…until he kicked one of them out of a press conference. Yes, in 2015. You forgot, didn’t you?
He ejected Univision anchor Jorge Ramos from a press conference in Dubuque, Iowa, on Aug. 25, 2015, for simply doing his job.
This is really when it all should’ve ended for him. The other members of the press should’ve walked out with Jorge Ramos and refused to cover Trump after that.
But they didn’t. They were so astonished at his “brash and brazen” approach to politics, something they’d never really seen before. So they kept enabling him.
It’s INFURIATING.
Did you also forget how his competitors spoke about him during the campaign, before the Russians hacked the RNC server and compromised them all to filth?
How quaint it all seems now to hear anyone talk about Jeb Bush as the one to beat. Even Karl Rove was saying Trump couldn’t win a general election.
Most damning of all, they all knew what Trump was, and then they let him compromise them anyway.
Thing is, I’ve also always known who Trump really was, because I grew up in New Jersey in the '70s and '80s. I first learned about him via my father, who called him a “slumlord” whenever he saw him in the newspaper. “Uch, he just makes my skin crawl,” my mother would sneer whenever she saw him on TV.
From the moment Trump descended that tacky gold escalator, I plagued him with replies that I knew would work on him. I was Gavin Newsom-ing him when Newsom was still Mayor of San Francisco. I used Trump’s own words and tactics against him, insulting him the way he insulted women while busting every lie he tweeted.
Looking back at my old tweets leading up to my block reminded me that I really started going hard after he went after Megyn Kelly, who was a moderator for a GOP debate where Trump didn’t like the questions. He lost that debate badly and blamed it on her, saying she was so angry that she was “bleeding from her eyes…bleeding from her wherever.” The 2015 version of Megyn Kelly got supported by women from all walks of life and shamed Trump for shaming our cycles.
Plus, I said stuff that other people said later. Like when Rob Reiner said this MONTHS after I tweeted it.
And then came the day when I finally broke him. Aug. 28, 2015.
It wasn’t illegal for candidate Trump to block me, so I just milked it. Plenty of us earned that badge of honor back then, but once he was installed in our White House in 2017, he ordered his own DOJ to unblock anyone he’d blocked anywhere on social media.
Which he did, definitely begrudgingly. But he didn’t unblock everyone, because he’s a giant petty babyman. I love to imagine him being presented with the list as he sat behind his empty Resolute Desk in an Oval Office that didn’t look like Hobby Lobby’s entire inventory of gold spray paint has exploded everywhere. He scans the list, phone in hand, and grumbles as he unblocks accounts. And then he gets to my name and says, “OH NO NOT THAT ONE!”
And I remain blocked to this day. But I also have the highest of Twitter Achievements: the Trump Quadfecta. I’m currently working on Melania now that I’ve heard she’s been blocking other liberal accounts, and Tiffany still hasn’t blocked me, not even after I’ve (repeatedly) tweeted that “Tiffany Trump is what happens when Ric Grenell is your only gay friend.”
Ric Grenell didn’t like it, though.
Without the full compliance of the Republican Party, we would be enjoying a nice Democratic administration right now. Instead, we’ve been watching Trump compromise the entire GOP to the point every day for over a decade. We’re now witnessing their willing participation in the Epstein Files cover-up while they’re openly trying to steal the midterms. None of them (minus the outgoing Thomas Massie) have said a word about the Epstein Files. None of them (including Massie) have said a thing about Trump finally paying E. Jean Carroll the $5.8 million he owed her. The press remains terrified to take him on. All of it infuriates me.
I’ll never get the chance to interview him to ask him all of the WHY ARE YOU LIKE THIS questions. Instead, I live with the knowledge that all it takes is some truth and a little tenacity to trigger the worst person this country has ever produced.
Coincidentally, the traditional 11th anniversary gift is steel. You know, if you wanted to get me a little something to commemorate the day.
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Trump's empire hinges on his name — but four others threaten to devour it whole
Earlier this year, an apparently highly ambitious Florida state Rep. named Meg Weinberger, a Republican from Palm Beach Gardens, introduced a Florida measure to rename Palm Beach International Airport to the President Donald J. Trump International Airport. Not to be outdone in the race to kiss Trump's "cheek," Rep. Brian Mast (R-FL) took the matter to the federal level by asking that the airport code name be "DJT." Gov. Ron DeSantis, wanting no part in someone else outdoing Trump's love, then signed off on March 30, 2026. On August 18th, yes - just a couple of weeks ago- PBI became DJT.
The fact that Americans do often name airports after prominent people, usually locals, is entirely offset by two disgusting facts: First, we usually wait until someone dies, thus completing a legacy (Ronald Reagan was very sick when National became Reagan National), and, most importantly, not currently IN power. Second - and somehow, this is even worse, because Donald J. Trump considers his name to be "Commercially Controlled Property" (His NAME!), Palm Beach Int... Ahem, Donald J. Trump International has to contract to use his name. There is no fee for his name's use... yet, but it's named only under contract.
The shift was finalized in the last two weeks when more people worried about Natalie Harp than Trump influencing naming his own airport such that he could - again - perhaps someday, profit off it. (Will grade schools around the South, wanting to be "Trump Elementary," also have to pay a $50,000 fee? Do. Not. Laugh. Why not?
Not one bit of this is fine. But, fine.
West Palm Beach did this to itself, and when someone really opens the Epstein files, it will be West Palm Beach and Floridians left to explain how they named their airport after "Florida Man," and may live to regret not waiting until well after he died, to be sure they still loved him.
But speaking of people who were loved at the time of their deaths, we are still mourning the loss of a true American original and icon, one whose heart was somehow bigger than her talents and her voice in Dolly Parton. Even Donald Trump had to admit that her death warranted lowering flags for a week.
It warrants a lot more than that. We are looking at you, Nashville International Airport, or "BNA," for reasons passing understanding. We want Dolly Parton International Airport, and we want it very soon. Let us grieve, let us think, and then let us celebrate- then you act. That "BNA" becomes "DPI" is no weirder than a DJT sandwich.
There is precedent for this. Ever fly to New Orleans? Do. The celebration of music starts in the concourse and never ends. After all, you are walking through Louis Armstrong Int., or "MSY" — also for reasons meaning nothing about nothing.
Go to Louisville? Well, whether you do or don't, your packages through UPS certainly do, and when doing so, land at Louisville Muhammad Ali International Airport — very befitting of its "best citizen." See a pattern here? Yes, they were wonderful people, sons of the city, but all dead when the name changed. In so doing, they remain forever some of the city's best ambassadors. DJT being the exception on both accounts, dead or wonderful.
Dolly Parton would be the best city ambassador just about anyplace. But, Nashville? Comically perfect, could be done in a week.
Now let's really up our game and demonstrate that for every major branding Trump manages, the rest of America renames two bigger things. First, and most important, Chicago O'Hare must become "Barack Obama Intercontinental" like Bush in Houston. Why Intercontinental? Because it sounds cooler, that's why! Why Obama? Because he is cooler. (There is actually a beautiful story that goes along with O'Hare, a hero pilot, certainly worth retaining a concourse name, but we're playing for big stakes, the hometown of the first Black President.)
And no. Do not wait for President Obama to die. Do not even wait for him to get sick. Do not even worry that if Trump runs for a third term, it's Hope and CHANGE all over again and Obama will win again. President "DJT" (Best not to use his real name, or he might charge us) has proven that nothing matters anymore, so certainly nothing about this matters. Change the name, Chicago: "Obama Intercontinental" sounds cool AF. Be like Nashville, hopefully.
We did say "twice as much" as Trump, and it's hard to shelve a figure like Dolly Parton as purely a liberal icon (though she'd certainly pick the Left among two choices), so one must look elsewhere for something "big" and needing an "obvious" anti-Trump stamp somewhere, somewhere bigger than West Palm Beach. Maybe we should go back to music. Where could we find a definite Left-wing icon, someone really anti-Trump and associated with a definite place...
Newark? EWR? Is there any sufficiently justifiable reason you have not become Bruce Springsteen International yet? (Too bad the code "BOS" is already taken by Boston, or that would be too perfect.) This one would be as obvious as Parton's, but let's have the Boss at the celebration of "BSI."
Last one — and none of these are bad ideas, indeed ALL should be done asap, but San Francisco has been almost criminally negligent in not naming SFO for the late Harvey Milk long ago. As most know, Milk ran for the SF County Board of Supervisors as the first openly gay man to run for office at a time when not only was that not done, but that could get someone fired in the private sector, break up families, keep them from housing, and too often, lead to violence. But Milk insisted he be allowed to live as he was. A year later, he was assassinated by a former supervisor, along with Mayor George Moscone.
Yes, yes, New York got the ball rolling with JFK literally weeks after the young president was slain; Reagan National was the product of living in a democracy (You have to give them some rights, too, at least back then), and Reagan was extremely sick when it happened. We also saw Louisville and New Orleans go all in — all, effectively, after their deaths. Now we've lost Dolly.
Nashville, you're up.
As to the Donald Trump sycophants — surely, with his blessing or encouragement, he IS licensing the county; after all, he got the ball rolling on people who remain alive, even still in office. Chicago and Newark have an opportunity, and they best walk right on through, diminish "DJT" as much as politically possible.
Too bad that JFK is taken as beautifully as possible, the nation's premier gateway; nothing NYC can really do to needle Trump's Lex Luthor, Barack Ob... You know? Every city has a street named after Martin Luther King. What if NYC named a street or an avenue "President Barack Obama Ave"? It would have to be a big one, for sure. What's big enough to warrant an honor like...
Fifth Avenue becomes President Barack Obama Ave. Absolutely, Fifth Avenue is "big enough" in stature. Trump picked it as the place he could, in theory, shoot someone. It's also the avenue on which he built Trump Tower. Thus, Trump Tower's new address would be: "Trump Tower, President Barack Obama Ave, New York, NY 10022.
Dolly would likely approve of all of this. She would be bashful about the attention but always loved a good time. She would make one demand: DPI's concourses each better have a children's reading area, stuffed with books and little couches.
Perfect.
Jason Miciak is a Rawstory Columnist, an author, political consultant, and attorney. Please follow on Bluesky, and he can be contacted at jasonmiciak@gmail.com. He is also available for public speaking arrangements.
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America mourns its legends like family — but Trump will get a very different send-off
I have rarely, if ever, seen the kind of outpouring of praise and adoration as that for Dolly Parton upon news of her death on Tuesday at 80. And it’s understandable. On every conceivable measure of humanity – talent, beauty, intelligence, warmth, wit, grace, generosity, decency, compassion, courage, humility, authenticity, integrity, wisdom, kindness, empathy, dignity and sheer goodness – Dolly was the real deal.
This is to say, she was the very antithesis of our president. Duh, right?
Well, not so fast.
Yes, Parton seemed to embody everything that’s good about human beings, while Donald Trump personifies everything horrid. Yet when you dig a little deeper, Dolly may have had more in common with Trump than any of us care to acknowledge.
I know this sounds completely blasphemous, but stay with me here. It’s at least worthy of an intriguing compare-and-contrast – beyond both of their first names beginning with “D-o.”
Like Trump, Parton was a quintessentially American creation: fabulously famous, outrageously wealthy, instantly recognizable, relentlessly branded and possessed of hair that utterly defied the laws of nature. Both turned themselves into trademarks. Trump has his towers, banners, golf courses, hats, fragrances and gold-plated everything. Dolly had Dollywood, records, movies, books, resorts and enough Dolly-themed products to stock a small republic.
Both understood decades before the age of influencers that in America, a personality could become a multinational corporation.
Let’s also not forget that Parton shared with Trump a fondness for extravagance. Neither is/was ever accused of minimalism. Trump loves his gold and marble and rooms that look as if Louis XIV had been given an unlimited credit line at a Las Vegas furniture store. Dolly favored rhinestones, puffy wigs, sequins and dresses visible from low Earth orbit.
But right there is where any similarity between these two ends, as their contrasts could not be more glaring.
Dolly spent six decades constructing an outrageously artificial exterior around what by all accounts was a remarkably authentic person. Trump, meanwhile, has logged roughly the same amount of time erecting a veneer of faux authenticity to mask an interior of pitiful emptiness.
Trump emerged from the womb with a solid gold spoon in his mouth in a family of staggering wealth in Queens, New York, despite his mythological claims of being self-made. Parton was as genuinely rags-to-riches as they come, born into wrenching poverty in rural Tennessee and always crediting her roots for driving her to success and compassion. She never forgot where she came from.
And while Trump has never stopped whining about how much the world owes him, Parton consistently made a point to exercise massive gratitude and a glorious sense of generosity. She led with discussion of her dirt-poor youth and how it kept her humble. Humility, as you may have noticed, is not part of the Trump arsenal.
Parton always asked, “How can I make these people happy?” Trump only wonders, “How can these people make me richer and more powerful?”
Dolly wore a towering blonde wig and 6 pounds of rhinestones and somehow projected decorum. Trump wears a dark suit and red tie and conveys theatricality.
But there are three primary areas where the distinction between Dolly and Donald is/was sharpest.
The first is in having a sense of humor about oneself. Dolly practically turned self-deprecation into an art form and a kind of armor, joking about how expensive it was to look so cheap. She knew exactly what people saw when they looked at her and generally got to the punchline before they did.
A perfect example was her once having entered a Dolly Parton lookalike contest at a West Hollywood, California, gay bar filled with drag queens. She made her hair bigger, her makeup heavier, her beauty mark darker. Nobody recognized her. She lost – and found the whole thing hilarious.
Then there is Trump. The man takes himself with utmost seriousness despite his persistent unconscious buffoonery, regarding self-mockery as a dangerous concession. His enormous insecurity won’t tolerate his being the butt of any joke. This has the ironic effect of making him an even greater figure of derision and caricature.
Here’s what Dolly long understood: if you take your work, but never yourself, seriously, it deprives others of ammunition. She took great glee in poking fun at her wigs, breasts, clothes, cosmetic surgery and over-the-top appearance. It made her immune to humiliation. She didn’t conflate ego and self-esteem, understanding that self-effacement could be a form of psychological power.
Trump’s inability to laugh at himself has served only to diminish him. The harder he works to prevent everyone from making him look small, the more power he gives them to make him look small. It’s also left him considerably easier to provoke.
The second substantial area where Parton and Trump severely diverged was in their approach to money. Dolly made a fortune and delighted in giving away large portions of it, most famously through her Imagination Library that distributed more than 200 million books to children. Her philanthropy was legendary.
Trump? It’s all about his accruing as much wealth as possible while parting with as little as he can. Charity? Surely you jest. To him, riches aren’t merely something to possess but evidence that proves success, status, dominance, victory. Those who have less than him are deemed scum unworthy of a dime.
Finally, the third area of greatest difference between Dolly and Donald surrounds loyalty. Dolly’s fans adored her at a level almost unprecedented in celebrity annals, yet she seemed to require almost nothing from them aside from the occasional purchase of a concert ticket. It was as pure a reciprocal love as exists between artist and fan.
Trump’s relationship with his grossly misguided followers demands unswerving devotion, the chief currency of Trumpism. Anything less than complete dedication risks transforming yesterday’s rabid cultist into today’s loser/incompetent fool.
As a result of all of this, when Parton died this week, she was mourned with an almost primal sense of national grief but concurrently celebrated for being the amazing human she so clearly was.
When Trump finally shuffles off this mortal coil, you get the sense it will trigger a celebration of a far different sort.
(Ray Richmond is a longtime journalist/author and an adjunct professor at Chapman University in Orange, CA.)
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Teeth-gnashing Trump went for the throat and found something with sharper fangs
"Oh, Canada!"
"Oh, God!"
He really is doing it; it looks like he is actually doing it. President Donald Trump has now managed to infuriate our neighbors in the Great White North to a degree once thought impossible, bringing a modern "Western War" with Canada into play. Not one with guns; wars against nations that could actually hit us are too expensive. No, he's about to start a "21st Century War against decent nations," one in which missiles packed with money lob back and forth.
Oh, and that kind of war is not exactly "cheap," either. This is the kind of war for which you pay directly out of your wallet, not nebulous taxation.
And if you thought Trump bit off more than he could chew in trying to strongarm Iran, "Stupid Trump War II - Operation 'Snow Blind'" will introduce you to an entirely new reality. Moreover, Americans are going to blame Trump entirely for this one, no regular Middle East thing about it. You think gas prices are already high? Well, lols to you. Americans will be shocked to learn that Canada sends three times more oil to us than any other nation, including Saudi Arabia and Gulf states.
This one we cannot even blame on Epstein!
Not that it really matters (Just a figure of speech; it matters A LOT), but aren't we supposed to LIKE Canadians? Congress needs to involve itself, fast, or this situation will spiral out of control. Fortunately, on that end of things, when it comes to trade (aka "money"), Congress has, in fact, stopped him before. But no one is stupid enough to count on that or them again.
Unfortunately, Congress would have to do what they're worst at: move fast and unified. Because, to a degree we don't yet appreciate, this is a "war" in which the United States might win every "battle"; our economy is just too huge to not inflict more damage on Canada than vice versa short term, and yet we could and likely would still lose the war.
Unlike Americans, Canadians are deeply offended: "Elbows Up" (An aggressive hockey term), and thus far more willing to endure more economic pain than Americans scratching their heads, saying, "Tell me again what this was supposed to accomplish, other than much higher gas prices, cars costing $4,000 more, fertilizer WAY up, making everything more expensive? And aren't we supposed to LIKE Canadians? (Get used to hearing that a lot)."
This is made worse by the fact that Canada's Prime Minister happens to be possibly the world's most respected former Central Banker. We've got, well, a guy scamming crypto, selling Trump watches and Bibles, building ballrooms, and renaming lakes, all because he wasn't as good looking or loved like Trudeau, and isn't half as smart as Carney.
It might be worthwhile looking at how we got in this mess.
Because Trump; that's why. No one can articulate any better reason. His gnashing of teeth about Canada robbing us in trade might sound slightly more legitimate if he wasn't the one who implemented most of our agreements!! But only "sound" more so. Canada has not been robbing us blind, nor riding our goodwill to giggles.
Second, how bad will it get? Real bad... In the long run, in a way we cannot fix, a multi-generational problem. In any war, each side looks to allies for help, and just like in Iran, Trump won't find a single sympathetic ear. But point your finger in literally any direction, and you'll hit a country that will help Canada.
Europe? Check. Doing it already. Mexico, Check. You better believe they are terrified they're next, so yes- along with most of South America. Check. South Korea, Japan, Australia? Check, check, and damn it, this makes no sense at all! And that is how a nation with fewer people than California can eventually crush the United States, representing all the world's anger at Trump- and there's a lot to go around, all of it now crashing down on Americans.
It is not like Canada kept it secret. PM Carney became the de facto leader of the free world in Davos, when, without mentioning Trump's name or expressly pointing to the United States, said that "the middle countries" (Meaning all but the U.S. and China) must band together if they want to keep their autonomy against bullies. He proposed treaties, not just across the Atlantic, but right around the Pacific Rim, rolling all the "good countries" right up and over the United States. Carney got a standing ovation befitting Neil Young. (Great export.)
Third, just because Americans will win the major battles doesn't mean Canada won't inflict a ton of damage on the people who used to be most inclined to support Trump. It is helpful to look up the definition of "potash" and what it does (At least for moronic writers), because Canada supplies so much to the U.S. Potash means "s--- that makes up fertilizer," which is just a reckless whammy against farmers already suffering under huge diesel hikes and high fertilizer due to the Middle Eastern War.
Our car industry is so intertwined with Canada it cannot be separated; parts and plans flow straight from Detroit, up Windsor, close to Toronto — new cars just got $4,000 more expensive.
The fact that these countries liked each other conferred sooo many benefits that are not worth giving up even if Canada was taking us to the shed on trade, which they were not.
As this column has repeated, almost weekly, like the beat of a Sarah McLachlan song (A priceless Canadian export), everything Donald Trump has ever gotten away with happened during a stable economy and, as you'll note, as the economy has taken a turn for the worse, so have Trump's numbers - close to Hooverville, if you recall. Now throw in prices Canadians are more than willing to pay as a middle finger to the yanks, "Elbows Up," all happening while Americans boil themselves over $5.50 a gallon or ground beef at $9.00 a pound. We will rightly demand answers.
The ultimate vanity project may also be the tipping point, the point at which the Western World decides, "We can't rely on these people at all anymore and need major insurance policies against their bullying tactics so long as that block of Right-Wing voters remain," and even in anticipation of such an international effort (which would require two to five years to really get going), stock markets across the world, more interested in the here and now than long term agreements, could go from "jittery" to "swimming straight out to sea, no life preserver needed/wanted."
Now let's talk Hoover. Trump's staff is already deeply concerned about numbers hitting the high 20s — and that was before he became serious about a true trade war with Canada... with Canada. Yes, he is still president. No, he is nowhere near as powerful when polling below his 29% shortly after Jan. 6. And nothing indicates he can hit the brakes anytime soon.
Don't discount the impact of having the "dumbest guy" in the war thing, ever.
How dumb? How about "Lake America" - typical Trump, that'll show 'em. Except "Ontario" is a Native American, First Nations name, Iroquoian-language, used on both sides of the border. Typical of Trump to utterly discount more brown Americans. Well, that and the "Gulf of America" still doesn't exist if you actually "talk" to anyone. He keeps firing blanks.
But Canadians will at least hear these blanks and won't appreciate the effort. While the US initiates "Operation Snow Blind," Canadians will respond with "Northern Blizzard."
Trump keeps saying that Canadians want to be the 51st state. Meanwhile, Canadians scream back that they're actually willing to fight, and pay higher prices, all to make us "go away." They are furious.
It is possible that as we enter this "war," Canadians might motivate themselves by rewatching the end of Braveheart: "You will never take away our freedom!" Meanwhile, many Americans, resigned to the end of an era, knowing it's too late to ever repair the damages to our empire, might perhaps watch "Leaving Las Vegas," turning to the bottle - maybe Crown Royal, in solidarity with the sane.
Trump? He will watch Star Wars, thinking he's Luke Skywalker, his MAGAs the dependable Ewoks. He lacks the bandwidth to process the whole "Empire" and "Vader" analogy, never mind Jabba. Unable to understand that it took only a small group of likeable rebels to blow up a Death Star.
One suspects Canadians will get up from Braveheart, feeling pretty good about themselves. Put on some Sarah MaGlachlan, maybe Neil Young, and somewhat mourn the loss of what was once a good friend, sing along, "I Will Remember You," and "Old Man," then smile and remind themselves, "In so many ways, we're just better," and certainly on this one, they're right.
"Oh, Canada! We are really, really sorry...
"Oh, God; Are they even listening? Those elbows are way up. Hey, come back!"
Jason Miciak is a Rawstory Columnist, former editor of Occupy Democrats, an author, attorney, political consultant, and single girldad - off to college, sniff. Please follow on Bluesky, and he can be reached at jasonmiciak@gmail.com. He is also available for public speaking engagements.
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A spine-chilling logic hides behind Trump's rushed underground Mar-a-Lago fortress
Just how many protective bunkers does one alleged president need?
If you’re Donald J. Trump, the answer is evidently at least two.
The question, of course, is why?
And here we’d all been led to believe that Trump’s hideous ballroom project was really all about the “military component” section of his White House monstrosity. It’s purportedly why the Supreme Court decided, in its infinite corrupt wisdom, to allow the mad-rush construction on it to continue “for now.”
(As an aside, you ever notice how the court’s shadow docket always grants Trump the go-ahead to proceed on whatever the hell he’s involved in “for now?” The thing is, “for now” has thus far always turned into “for good,” as the Supreme Court's majority never seems to return to address their emergency decisions. So very interesting. But I digress.)
It was just this past Sunday that The Washington Post published an exclusive detailing how federal officials had in fact built a highly formidable bunker buried more than 60 feet beneath the very same White House that Trump now calls home – the one he’s done his best to deface and destroy, both physically and spiritually.
This facility was apparently secretly completed during the Obama administration and is designed to withstand a nuclear blast. As noted in the Post article, it was conceived to ensure that “the president and his team have a secure command center to run the country in times of extreme duress.”
Huh. Imagine that. The thing Trump has been so obsessed about actually sounds more like a backup to what’s already been there for more than a decade. So, I mean, just how much security does one dude need?
It begs the follow-up question: exactly who is Trump so damn afraid of that he would need something so much bigger (more gold-encrusted?) than the bunker/military complex that was built for Obama?
Oh wait, that’s right. If it was for Obama, Trump needs to exceed it. We might see it as the presidential equivalent of penis envy. He’s always coming up short, particularly in comparison to a man who is so much greater in every respect that it’s essentially incalculable.
But back to that fear question. The usual collection of terrible totalitarian types are already Trump’s pals, at least publicly. You know, those renowned iron-fisted rulers like Vladimir Putin, Kim Jong Un, Viktor Orban and Xi Jinping. So, it doesn’t seem to be them he’s afraid of.
Who, then?
Oh wait. I think it must be us.
Yes, the American people seem to be who Trump believes he needs such massive protection from. The White House has argued that drone technology has created vulnerabilities that the first bunker (let’s call it “Archie Bunker” just for kicks) wasn’t designed to address.
Let’s assume Trump is fearful that the majority of the United States population that can’t stand the sight of him might get its hands on some of those drones and start firing them at him in some sort of organized uprising.
If you’re Trump, you might think you need the bigger space not to hide out in but to set up actual residence inside. Then, you would need not a mere underground fortress protected against attack but a palace. He would require it to house his staff, his family, his defenders, some soldiers, certainly Natalie Harp. Natalie would merit her own wing.
What could spark the need for Trump to hole up in such a facility for months on end, perhaps years? Well, for the sake of argument, suppose that he orders House Speaker Mike Johnson to completely hold off on seating newly elected Democratic representatives after the midterms. And the people take to the streets.
Think this is far-fetched? Think again. It is, in fact, entirely fetched.
Already, the Republican-controlled Congress has refused to function except as Trump’s rubber stamp. The will of the courts is consistently ignored and/or subverted – except for the Supreme Court, naturally, because they’re already in the tank for their master.
The only reason Trump would require a facility that could function as a below-ground Mar-a-Lago is that he needed a spot to hide out for a while without sacrificing any of the creature comforts he so demands. At the very least, it will need its own McDonald’s Bunkerland.
We are all living through the first presidential administration in American history that is bound by no accountability or rule of law. If you’re Trump, the one way to be sure that you remain invulnerable to eviction is to barricade yourself inside a place that can survive any amount of assault.
You think that a man who refuses to acknowledge his defeat in the 2020 Election will allow a little thing like term limits to dictate his power base? Not bloody likely. From what I can see, as has long been speculated, Trump has no intention of allowing any of his current level of authority to be usurped – and that includes refusing to leave in January 2029.
But before that, the accelerated/manic construction schedule of the current ballroom/bunker points to a desire to use it around the midterms and make sure it’s at least habitable on some level by possibly November, or year’s end at the latest.
I’m trying to reassure myself that there will have to be a way to stop Trump if the above is his goal of the moment, but I’m coming up empty. He’s already got immunity. And tens of thousands of ICE goons at his beck and call. And a militia of the pardoned Jan. 6 felons on some sort of slush fund payroll. And a paralyzed Republican Congressional base.
Can we really count on our conventional military to oppose this potential nightmare scenario? I wouldn’t bet my life on it. Would you?
What I don’t want to hear is that I’m ridiculously catastrophizing. I don’t believe that for a moment. What I do think is that our president isn’t rushing to finish a shiny new bunker because he’s concerned that future generations should have it as an option.
It is always, as ever, only about him.
(Ray Richmond is a longtime journalist/author and an adjunct professor at Chapman University in Orange, CA.)
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Kushner secretly cozied up to his worst nightmare — and the timing was no accident
Let’s get this out of the way first. There was nothing, nada, nil, zero, and zilch to gain for House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries by meeting with Jared Kushner. When I heard this news, I thought it was a joke.
It wasn’t, and I immediately thought, here we go again.
During the 2024 presidential election, my blood would boil when I’d see Kamala Harris spending her limited campaign time courting Republicans and appearing with Liz Cheney instead of pouring every ounce of energy into firing up the Democratic base that actually delivers votes.
Now, as the party splinters, and the number one imperative is to bring the party together and get Democratic voters jazzed up about voting on Nov. 3, with less than 70 days left to go, Jeffries meets with an enemy like the party has never experienced before. Every single Democrat I’ve heard from over the last 24 hours has basically said, “WTF.”
Exactly!
In case you haven’t heard, let me rehash the horror story. Jeffries met privately with Kushner in New York City in recent weeks, a session convened, according to multiple reports, in a space offered by a mutual friend, to discuss “areas of common ground” like housing, immigration, and the cost of living.
I want to stop here and rail, but I’ll continue.
Kushner reportedly suggested Jeffries also sit down with White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles. Speaker Mike Johnson, when asked about it, shrugged. “I don’t know what that’s about,” he said, before insisting Republicans would hold the House anyway.
Well, they just might, if Jeffries continues to waste precious time with the sworn enemy.
Jeffries, who could be Speaker of the House in five months, had a secret meeting with Donald Trump’s son-in-law about areas of common ground, i.e., housing, immigration, cost of living? And that’s why a “WTF” is the appropriate response.
Hakeem, why don’t you make sure that you will be Speaker first, instead of making a presumption and then inexplicably meeting with a person who is not an elected representative, doesn’t give a flying f--- about housing, immigration, and the cost of living, and who is as crooked as a coat hanger?
Come on, seriously, what does Jared Kushner know about the cost of living?
Kushner has no formal role in the Trump administration. He holds no Senate-confirmed post, answers to no oversight committee, and also inexplicably gets deployed by his daddy-in-law to negotiate nuclear weapons with a religious extremist government that he knows absolutely nothing about.
And just like his daddy-in-law, for Kushner it’s all about the money, all the time, always. His post-White House — and current —career has been built on very shady and perhaps illegal multibillion-dollar investment deals with the very Gulf monarchies he once “negotiated” with as a government official during Trump’s first term.
And just like his daddy-in-law, Kushner is all about Jared Kushner. So it begs the question: exactly what is he angling for by getting close to the guy who might be banging the gavel and handing out subpoenas come January?
Because that’s the other half of this story. If Democrats take the House in November, Jeffries becomes Speaker, and House Democrats get the authority to investigate this administration for the first time in four years.
Kushner, whose business dealings with foreign governments have drawn scrutiny for years, has every incentive imaginable to build goodwill with the man who could decide how aggressively that investigative power gets used.
Maybe that’s cynicism. Maybe it isn’t. But Jeffries can’t be that gullible, can he? He owes Democrats a thorough explanation of why he’s wasting his time meeting with the divisive and untrustworthy Kushner, and not devoting 100% of his time to making sure the Democrats come out on top in November.
Instead, Democrats got a vague statement about Republicans’ “my-way-or-the-highway approach” to governing. Jeffries didn’t even deny the meeting happened. I worked on the Hill for years. If this meeting was suggested, I would have yelled pretty loudly into Jeffries’ ear, “No,” almost as loud as Melania yelled into Donald’s ear during the Grand Prix race in D.C.
I keep thinking about what Nancy Pelosi would have done here. She understands power, she understands optics, and she understands the need for complete and total devotion to the party. I can’t even imagine her taking a meeting with Kushner two months before the election.
There isn’t even a hypothetical on this. She knows Kushner cannot be trusted, and she knows he is the last thing the party needs to worry about right now.
To me, that’s the deeper problem with this moment in the House Democratic leadership. It’s an absence of visible fight. Jeffries is smart, disciplined, and, by most accounts, a genuinely decent man. But this is a moment that calls for something sharper than decency.
In other words, Michelle Obama’s..love her to pieces, but … "they go low, we go high’” goes right out the window right now.
With that said, Democrats need a leader who makes Republicans nervous and galvanizes the base, not one who takes happy and conciliatory meetings with a Trump-family billionaire.
Kushner has no real government job; he uses his family connections to extract money from Gulf autocrats and fund deals of highly dubious integrity. The only interaction House Democrats should have with him - and in the future - is subpoenaing him, getting him in front of oversight committees, and grilling him mercilessly.
If Jeffries wants to lead a Democratic House next year, then make sure his fellow Democrats have all the ammunition they need for this moment right now. And that they WIN.
Why, oh why, oh why, Hakeem, do you think meeting with Kushner meets this moment?
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MAGA feels the squeeze
Nick Anderson is a Pulitzer Prize-winning editorial cartoonist.
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