D. Earl Stephens

Trump is clearly in the pocket of this fellow fascist thug — so why do we still look away?

Russian President Vladimir Putin is a mass-murderer and an enemy of the United States of America.

United States President Donald J. Trump has repeatedly appeased Putin, and is an enemy of the United States of America too.

That’s today’s column, and thank you for reading ...

Honestly, folks, I hoped to treat myself to a quiet holiday week, but simply must address the latest diabolical Putin-Trump phony attempt at a “peace deal” in Ukraine with some considerable urgency.

I also cannot look away from how this alleged “peace deal” is being reported by what’s left of our stinking garbage can of a legacy media, which is either complicit with Trump and Putin, or incredibly inept at journalism — but most likely both.

Once again, we are all being played for fools by these two dangerous skunks, whose lies echo freely in the vast, empty spaces of these major, bought-off media empires without challenge or context.

I have had more than enough of all of them.

So let’s get right down to it: Aided by a comatose American electorate in which only 59 percent of its voters bothered to show at the polls, Russia worked feverishly to install Trump as president in 2016.

Trump Campaign Chair Paul Manafort was actually passing internal campaign information to Russian intelligence officers during the election.

Go ahead: Read that again.

Trump himself asked for Russia’s help to hack Hillary Clinton’s email on the campaign trail, saying: “Russia, if you’re listening … I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing. I think you will probably be rewarded mightily by our press.”

Prescient, eh?

For what it’s worth Republican House Speaker Paul Ryan’s office condemned this public treason by saying in part, “Russia is a global menace led by a devious thug. Putin should stay out of this election.”

I add this because there actually was a time when some Republicans frowned on murdering fascists taking power, instead of courting them.

Look, Trump never even sniffs power without Putin’s help.

And hey, if you think I am typing just a little too fast and loose here to get back to my vacation, then I urge you to have a look at the infamous Mueller Report, which concluded among other damning things, that Russian interference in the 2016 election was “sweeping and systemic.” The report “identified numerous links between the Russian government and the Trump Campaign.”

Read that way, it’s a wonder Trump wasn’t removed from office and jailed on the spot, except Trump’s slimy personal lawyer, er, attorney general, Bill Barr, came to his own conclusions, which most of the media at the time were only too happy to lap up, spit out, and call good.

The Mueller Report was a complete mindblower, and after reading it, if anybody still willingly believes that Trump wasn’t aware of Moscow’s illegal interventions on his behalf, shouldn’t be trusted to dress themselves in the morning.

Then there’s the Republican-led Senate intelligence committee report in 2020 which concluded “the Trump campaign's interactions with Russian intelligence services during the 2016 presidential election posed a grave counterintelligence threat.”

Oh, and that committee’s chair? Well, that would be a guy named Marco Rubio, who lately has lowered himself to a level equal to the proximity of Trump’s ample ass.

You can’t make this up, because it’s all true, but has all but been conveniently forgotten by our ridiculous legacy media, whose reporting on Trump consistently includes little to no context for his myriad past offenses.

And let’s travel back in time to 2018, and Trump’s surrender in Helsinki where, in the words of the late Sen. John McCain, “(Trump) abased himself … abjectly before a tyrant.”

“Abased himself … abjectly before a tyrant.”

Finally, if you want all of this put in a tight package topped with a neat bow, I offer this showstopper penned by the Center for American Progress, dated Dec. 18, 2018: Following the Money: Trump and Russia-linked Transactions from the Campaign to the Presidential Inauguration.

It’s a mind-boggling piece of journalism that is painstakingly sourced and should be required reading for anybody (I’m looking at you, legacy media) who reports on Trump’s extensive interactions with Putin.

It concludes this way:

“If financial flows from Russia played a direct role in Trump’s campaign and transition, the potential implications for his presidency and America’s national security are far more immediate, urgent, and dangerous than those potentially resulting from his decadeslong business entanglements. Until we have a full accounting of what transpired — and how — we will not be sufficiently equipped to protect future elections against similar attacks from foreign powers.”

So why has our damn media seemingly quit working to get that accounting?

It is 2025, and we are still somehow trusting a guy who spurred a violent attack against the United States of America to have its best interests in mind while he snuggles up and deals dirty with Putin in private.

It’s absurd.

Look, there is no way — make that NO WAY — Trump will agree to anything with Russia and Putin that does not benefit Russia and Putin.

HE OWES THEM.

To believe otherwise defies common sense, and is an abuse of everybody who has had the gall to pay attention to this terrible tandem’s decades-long dealings.

Notice how Trump never begins any “peace” negotiations with Ukraine and Russia without talking to Putin first.

In 2013, Trump was like the fat kid who got trapped in the candy store, when Putin patted him on the head and allowed for his Miss Universe Pageant to descend on Moscow.

Trump tweeted this:

“I just got back from Russia-learned lots & lots. Moscow is a very interesting and amazing place! U.S. MUST BE VERY SMART AND VERY STRATEGIC.”

He later tweeted this that day:

“Do you think Putin will be going to The Miss Universe Pageant. If so, will he become my new best friend?”

Three years later, we all got our answer.

We can also assume that Russia was harvesting tons of kompromat on the big-mouthed Trump as he bragged about sidling up to one billionaire Russian oligarch after another in hopes of extending his real estate ventures there. “The Russian market is attractive to me,” he said at the time.

Lord knows what Putin has on Trump, but we do know this: Trump has never said a bad word about Putin — ever. He has, however, called him “smart” “savvy” “a strong leader” “a genius” and “charming.”

I guarantee you this miserable lowlife has never uttered these words about anybody besides himself in his miserable lifetime.

He has repeatedly bragged about how well the two thugs get along. The instances of this are too many to list here, but just sit with this beauty following Putin’s illegal attack on Ukraine:

“They say, ‘Trump said Putin’s smart.’ I mean, he’s taking over a country for two dollars’ worth of sanctions. I’d say that’s pretty smart. He’s taking over a country — really a vast, vast location, a great piece of land with a lot of people, and just walking right in.”

This, of course, is appalling, and I’ll ask again because I simply have to: How-in-the-hell could ANYBODY have voted for this fascist felon in 2024?

Like Putin, Trump does not have his country’s best interests in mind, he has HIS best interests on mind.

Trump and Putin are fascist thugs.

They worship power and money and will do anything to get it and keep it.

There will be no peace deals, only continuing crimes against humanity.

Words and actions back all this up.

It’s long past time it was reported this way.

(D. Earl Stephens is the author of “Toxic Tales: A Caustic Collection of Donald J. Trump’s Very Important Letters” and finished up a 30-year career in journalism as the Managing Editor of Stars and Stripes. You can find all his work here.)

Here's why Trump and the GOP are doomed

On Dec. 22, 1944, on a brutally cold and snowy battlefield in Bastogne, Belgium, Brigadier General Anthony McAuliffe's rough-and-ready 101st Airborne Division was surrounded and outnumbered by German armor units, which had literally come out of nowhere.

The fighting had been bloody and intense, and the Germans, sensing victory, made a final push to prevail in World War II. Before hitting the Americans with everything they had, the German command sent a message to McAuliffe, demanding he surrender his army.

McAuliffe snatched the missive, and then typed one of his own: “NUTS!”

When the Germans asked what “NUTS!” meant, an American officer clarified, “In plain English,” he snarled, “It means, ‘Go to hell!’”

Buoyed by the defiant McAuliffe the Americans went on to prevail in what would be known as the Battle of the Bulge and turned the momentum of the war in the European theater in the allies’ favor …

For the past 340-plus days, the sick and depraved Donald Trump’s fascist, bigoted, lawless regime has thrown everything they’ve got at a country and people they provably hate, by dint of their consistently repulsive actions that hit a boiling point on January 6, 2021, and have been on full simmer since.

They have moved to poison our air and water, and battered our government and our White House.
They have stained our armed forces by pitting them against American citizens, and demanded they follow illegal orders by carrying out murder on the high seas.
They have banned books and tried to bastardize our checkered history and those hard truths they hate most of all.
They have wrecked our healthcare system, attacked clean energy, and degraded science and vaccines that have saved millions and millions of lives.
They have coddled fascists, and taken a hammer to allies that have stood with us and people like General McAuliffe for eight decades.
They have propped up soulless, greedy billionaires, and covered for pedophiles.
They have pardoned thousands of crooks for cash, and gone after judges.
And those prices they promised to bring down? Well, they’ve only gone up thanks to Trump’s idiotic tariffs.

The past 340-plus days have been a bombardment of the senses, and an attack on human rights and just plain decency.

And it has all been by evil design.

Because Donald Trump, and Stephen Miller, and JD Vance, and Elon Musk, and the rest of the grotesque Republicans that spin out of control in their evil orbit want you to feel like America’s defeat is inevitable.

The repulsive and sickly Trump is doing everything he can to step on our necks with those fat little feet which are swallowed up by inner tubes for ankles. He’s a garbage-mouthed, lying lout, who can only find true pleasure in administering the pain that has lived inside him his entire stinking, miserable life.

Well, here’s what I say to that:

NUTS!

We’re still here, and by God we’ve more than proven we can give as good as we get.

Because buried in the rubble and amid all that the smoke, Democrats have been winning elections at an astonishing clip, and if 2026 looks anything like 2025, Republicans are heading for a bloodbath in the coming months.

And they damn well know it.

The failing Trump is in deep trouble, and as we swing hard toward the midterms, his subservient cowards in Congress will have a choice to make: Stay with the man who is trying to end us and them, or run to the Left toward freedom and programs and initiatives that lift all of us up.

Or … there’s a third option: They can just flat surrender.

Already, there have been a record amount of retirements in the House and Senate and as Republicans made the choice to cut and run away from their deeply, deeply unpopular president and toward the safety of their homes.

Here’s a fact: If the midterms were held this Tuesday, Republicans would lose the House by 40 to 60 seats, as well as the Senate. Big races, small races, and medium races would swing toward the left, because that is exactly what has been quietly happening among the carnage of Trump’s continued attack on America.

Major races that were supposed to be nail-biters in places like New Jersey and Wisconsin went to the Democrats by double-digits. Democrat Abigail Spanberger absolutely demolished her opponent in Virginia’s governor race.

In fact, the last time the Central Virginia town of Waynesboro voted for a Democratic presidential nominee, Lyndon Johnson led the ticket in 1964.

This makes it a Republican stronghold.

Well, last month, Democrats swept to victory in every race on that town’s ballot, including the governor’s race, when Spanberger became the first Democrat to ever win the majority in Waynesboro.

That’s change we can believe in, good people.

And there are hundreds of examples like Waynesboro all over the map.

Republicans can’t point to ONE election that they over-performed in this year — NOT ONE — while that is all Democrats have been doing.

Republicans are scared, folks, and it’s about damn time we shook off our doubts and started carrying ourselves as winners. Winning begets winning. It’s OK to walk with a swagger just as long as you are prepared to keep going hard on your way to the finish line.

Who here isn’t prepared to do that????

And let me get this out of the way because my ears are already burning: You are saying what happens if Trump somehow rigs the elections, and calls a national emergency or some damn thing to throttle our vote? Then what, Earl?

If these things were to come to pass, and I don’t believe they will, what does that change exactly?

Are you just going to take your toys and go home and cry? Are you just going let him do it, and whine about things not being fair?

Or are you going to show some damn resolve and keep doing whatever is necessary to protect your country and her people?

Here’s something I hope you consider most of all today:

Trump isn’t even close to as powerful as he wants you to think he is, and you are far, far more powerful than you think you are.

Please read that again, dammit.

I am no Pollyanna, and demand as much from our leaders as I do myself. In fact, I’ve caught a lot of guff for going after Democrats like Chuck Schumer from time to time for their half-assed efforts in the face of fascism.

After last year’s terrible election I thought too damn many Democrats were taking that beating lying down, and man, it made me furious. Turns out there were a lot of people like me …

I saw them by the thousands at all those rallies. I see them by the thousands in this space every day. We aren’t standing up for Democrats as much as we are standing up for America, and against the fascist Trump.

We want fighters.

Dammit you know me, and I know you, and NONE of us are quitting. That’s tens of thousands of us right here alone standing up for what’s good and right. And if everyone of us plants the seeds of democracy and does the necessary work in the field, thousands and thousands more will rise up and join us in this epic battle.

WE are leading the change and the charge.

And we will win.

I swear to God we will.

D. Earl Stephens is the author of “Toxic Tales: A Caustic Collection of Donald J. Trump’s Very Important Letters” and finished up a 30-year career in journalism as the Managing Editor of Stars and Stripes. You can find all his work here.

In these soul-sucking times, one trusted resource can give us the will to fight

While growing up in a working-class town in New Jersey, my family took the morning and evening newspapers, the latter of which I dutifully delivered to the houses in my tangled neighborhood and along the two main thoroughfares that tucked us all in.

When I’d get home from school, there’d be a mountain of bundled papers waiting for me on the curb. I’d sigh, roll ‘em up, wrap ‘em in a rubber band, pile ‘em in a Santa-like sack, hop on my bike, and sling ‘em in the vicinity of people’s porches. I had more than a few “uh-oh” moments when a paper would get away from me and head straight for a window, or a subscriber’s unsuspecting flower pot.

That’s what mass-communicating looked like back in the 1960s and 70s.

After some above-averagely rambunctious teenage years, and too many classrooms I could never settle into, I served in the U.S. Navy, and was honorably discharged to start living my dream: getting a byline in one of those newspapers I used to sling about. I went on to work at five dailies, one weekly, and two magazines during the greatest, luckiest, and most fulfilling career any man has ever had doing anything.

You know, my friends, I reckon the terrible decline in local newspapers has had a direct impact on the increasing ignorance, propaganda and misinformation in today’s America. You can draw a direct line from the end of our daily newspapers’ heyday, to the beginning of the fascism that is pouring over us like orange, contaminated syrup.

Gone are the days when eager journalists were everywhere that you couldn’t be reporting on what was happening in our communities, and calling power into account in our local courts, police stations, schools boards, sports venues, city halls, and state houses.

These days, most of our towns in this faltering country don’t have a daily newspaper, and there is no way they are any better for it. Too many public officials are now free to rob us blind in private.

Today we have the Internet, and I’ve consistently argued we haven’t come close to reckoning with the tidal wave of change it has wrought on society. Some of it has no doubt been good, but I’m confident as hell I could have lived very happily without it.

I am reminded of this every time I see an idiot crossing a busy street looking at God knows what on their stupid phone. Yet here I am typing to you in God knows where because of that Internet I am currently bellyaching about ...

I’ll be honest with you: When I started writing urgently following one of the most tragic days in American history, Nov. 8, 2016, I had no plans for where any of it would end up. It was simply therapy, and a release of the madness crawling around inside my head, as I tried to make sense of a country and a people I all of a sudden didn’t recognize anymore.

Who could vote for such an obviously grotesque man to lead the United States of America?

I guess I had no idea how many people thought so damn little of their country.

For the first time in my life I was not professionally tied to any single publication, and free to write what I wanted. Words are all I have ever known since I was first published in 1983, so I started pouring my heart out on an Internet that I didn’t trust.

After all that writing, I had a book, three basketfuls worth of columns and a need for a respectable place to hang my jacket and my words. So three-plus years ago, I decided to make Substack home, and I am happy as hell I did.

As many of you are aware, Trump and his lying, subservient Republican Orcs are in a war against the truth, and trying to crush anybody who dares report it. On Sunday, CBS News once again fell at the orange fascist’s fat little feet and spiked a story that was set to run on the once-venerable 60 Minutes news program, about the "the brutal and tortuous conditions" of his detention camps .

This was only the latest surrender by our diminishing legacy media to the convicted felon who attacked us on January 6, 2021.

The media I gave my professional life to is under attack and dying right in front of our eyes, so it is surprising and gratifying as hell for an old, broken down journalist to help breathe life into something new.

Places like Substack are the present in a world where the future comes at us too fast, and we should all do our best to support the tremendous work being done by independent journalists to inform and call power into account.

As a reader first, and a writer second, I know that the written word has staying power, and I like it just fine on paper, or one of these screens.

I am a fiercely independent SOB, and a one-man gang. I don’t collaborate with anybody, because I can’t live with letting anybody down but myself. I spent decades living on somebody else’s deadline. Now I set my own clock. It’s incredible how freeing that is.

I don’t do podcasts, and you won’t see my pretty face streaming live, taped, on the cloud, on a mountain, or anyplace there is some camera.

I learned a long time ago I’m just not made for that.

I co-hosted a TV show in the 1990s, and absolutely hated it. The show came first, and any substance second. That’ll read a little haughty, but it was the truth. So I stayed with the written word, which might explain why money never stayed around me for long.

I have my sources, integrity, but mostly … you.

I was taught working at all those newspapers that readers are pure gold, and owed everything you got. You are the reason I am here, folks, and I hope like hell that comes through in my writing.

These are some tough, soul-sucking, lonely and scary times we are living in, and community has never been more important. Thanks to this Internet I don’t trust I am able to connect with people like you I do trust all over the world, and that’s pretty cool.

Your readership and camaraderie helps keep me sane and hopeful. Your paid support means everything, and helps to deal with the never-ending bills that only increase with age, because America has decided older people aren’t worth as much as they are owed.

As I put a holiday bow on this piece, it has occurred to me that I started my life slinging words at people’s doorsteps, and I’m now on my way to ending it by slinging words into a computer and along an invisible information highway.

Such discovery …

Such a wonderful life …

Happy holidays, good people. I have a journalist’s hunch that 2026 is going to be a great damn year. In fact, you have my word.

(D. Earl Stephens is the author of “Toxic Tales: A Caustic Collection of Donald J. Trump’s Very Important Letters” and finished up a 30-year career in journalism as the Managing Editor of Stars and Stripes. You can find all his work here.)

This man can expose Trump — the GOP just silenced him

I will never get over the attack on my country January 6, 2021, by the anti-American lowlife, Donald J. Trump.

I will never move on until the man who spearheaded that attack is brought to justice.

Trump is the most dangerous man in the world, and if this has somehow escaped you until this point, he made the case yet again Wednesday night when he assaulted a podium, a microphone and our senses on primetime TV, telling approximately four lies every minute.

It was an unhinged performance worthy of one of history’s most notorious dictators.

Just six hours earlier, we had learned that former Justice Department special counsel Jack Smith privately testified in front of a closed House Judiciary Committee hearing that his legal team had “developed proof beyond a reasonable doubt” that the convicted felon, Trump, conspired to overturn the 2020 election.

Proof beyond a reasonable doubt.

Can we stop for a minute and consider what another day in America looked like Wednesday?

First, you have Smith telling a closed hearing that his team had “powerful evidence” on the morally dead Trump, who only hours later would claim he had the goods on America, and we better like the beating he is giving her or else.

A closed hearing …

Of course the damn thing was closed, because Republicans know good and damn well that if Smith were to take his testimony public, we all would have been forced to reckon with the worst attack on our Capitol since the War of 1812.

We would have been reminded that the traitor, Trump, did nothing but root for the attack’s success for hours while he sequestered himself in a room and punished ketchup bottles.

We would have been reminded that when the beatings and the threats, and the fires and the damage to our Capitol and worldwide reputation were finally over that gruesome day, the belligerent Trump stumbled in front of a camera and told his anti-American thugs who had attacked us that “he loved them.”

We would have been reminded how little Republicans did to safeguard this country from the worst possible outcome: The return to office of the man who is hellbent on destroying our Democracy and turning America into an authoritarian cesspool ruled by the very worst among us.

Finally, we would have been reminded in the wake of all THAT, how damn little Joe Biden’s Attorney General, the feckless Merrick Garland, did to bring America’s greatest enemy to justice.

Well, I am not moving on from this, dammit.

Ever.

We all watched in horror as America was being murdered in cold blood, hour after hour that day, and nothing was being done to stop it.

WE KNOW HE DID IT.
HIS FAMILY KNOWS HE DID IT.
HE KNOWS HE DID IT.

It was one of the most appalling days in American history, and everything should have been done to make sure it never, ever happened again.

Instead, nothing was done.

NOTHING.

I say again: I am NOT done with this, and I NEVER will be.

As a U.S. Navy veteran who served this country, and a man who cares deeply for her, I am demanding we get to the bottom of just what-in-the-hell happened January 6, 2021.

I will not be shutting up about it until I am dead and gone, because if there really are going to be no consequences for an assault on our country, the idea of America is as hollow as the tiny heart of the lowlife who attacked us.

Jack Smith testified in so many words Wednesday that the man who is currently taking a bulldozer to our White House and our human rights is a traitor.

Just what-in-the-hell is anybody who REALLY cares for his or her country supposed to do with this kind of information?

Let it go?

And what about Garland, this deplorable and gutless loser, who catastrophically failed in his greatest responsibility: PROTECTING AMERICA.

Where is this so-called man? Why wasn’t he on Capitol Hill with Smith on Wednesday?

I remind you: We are paying for his quiet retirement.

So I ask again: Just what in the hell is going on here?

For close to the past five years, I have lived in a constant state of trying to make sense of it all.

Why isn’t Trump rotting in jail right now?

Here is a part of one of the many pieces I wrote about all this following Trump’s attack. I spun this one in March 2023, in the weeks after the man who attacked us announced he was running for president so that he could finish us off.

Re-reading it again this morning, I began to shake with anger:

Just 10 weeks ago, the traitor, Donald J. Trump, announced he was once again running for the most powerful office in the world, the President of the United States of America.

This immediately made the disgusting man the Republicans’ frontrunner in the 2024 presidential election, and elevated the stakes in this contest to a sky-high level. If Trump wins, there’s every reason to believe it will be the last presidential election in American history.

The only person in America who seemed genuinely surprised by Trump’s terrifying and completely predictable announcement was our unflappable Attorney General Merrick Garland, who after nearly two years of doing nothing to punish Trump for his attack on our country, was finally forced out of his malaise and into making a move.

After careful consideration, the three-dimensional grandmaster judicial chess player studied the board, and outdid himself by actually putting himself in check when he pawned off his responsibility to somebody else to take care of this monumental threat to America.

Watching Garland glide to the podium, raise his voice to a thundering whisper, and haul out some unwritten rule to the game that actually tied both his hands behind his back was pretty galling, and plenty pathetic.
Essentially, he took out an empty gun, held himself up, and surrendered.

Grandmaster Crash told us that because Trump was now shockingly a candidate for president, he had been forced to appoint a special counsel to look into the former president’s violent attempt to overturn a free and fair election that he lost by more than seven millions votes.

Brilliant, eh?

Before moving onto Garland’s willing accomplices in our race toward fascism, let’s once and for all dispense with the stupid argument that even had he done his damn job and charged the treasonous Trump with some semblance of alacrity, it wouldn’t have prevented the rotten bastard from running for office while he was on trial.
Technically that’s true. Realistically, it’s laughable.

Had Garland charged Trump in a reasonable timeframe, say, ‘only’ one year after his coup attempt, there’s every reason to believe his gutless party, now provided the necessary political cover by the AG, would have long since abandoned Trump, and moved onto nominating far more qualified and cunning fascists like Florida Governor Ron DeSantis for president.

As bad as that would be, at least Trump would have been finished as a candidate, law and order would have prevailed, and the rotten, orange bastard would be staring at prison where he most certainly belongs.
Most important, there would actually be consequences for disgusting actions like the traitor, Trump’s, which would serve to prevent further attacks like this on our country.

There would be justice.

Except we never did get that justice, and because of that America has never been in this kind of danger.

Trump is every bit as guilty this morning as he was January 6, 2021, and far more dangerous. Predictably, he is failing catastrophically at his job, and lashing out at anybody who dares blame him for it.

He will own none of this, and warm his stubby, bandaged hands on the fires he has kindled.

That unhinged, unfit primetime performance on Wednesday night won’t be the last time he commandeers our TV networks (which one by one are falling at his fat feet and swollen ankles), and relentlessly lies to America, and threatens patriots who stand in his way.

We are in a battle for our survival.

If Jack Smith has “proof beyond a reasonable doubt” that ties Trump to the attack on America then everything must be done to make sure that everybody sees this evidence just as soon as possible.

Because if we are OK with the man who violently attacked our country now leading it, Democracy is dead.

(D. Earl Stephens is the author of “Toxic Tales: A Caustic Collection of Donald J. Trump’s Very Important Letters” and finished up a 30-year career in journalism as the Managing Editor of Stars and Stripes. You can find all his work here.)

America was mourning — and our insanely jealous leader's response was disgusting

More incomprehensible tragedy visited the United States of America when we learned that Hollywood legend Rob Reiner and his wife, Michele Singer Reiner, were found dead in their Los Angeles home Sunday.

The couple’s son, Nick Reiner, 32, was arrested in connection with the deaths. He has been charged with murder.

So now we hold on tight and try to process yet more senseless pain and hurt in a world that is spinning too damn quickly, even if it has always been well out of our control.

The weekend brought horrible shootings at Brown University and on a lazy beach in Australia. Two Iowa National Guard soldiers and a civilian contractor were killed by a gunman in Syria. There will be more violent deaths and senseless suffering by the time I am done writing this piece, because there is little we can do when the most dangerous form of life on earth, men, catastrophically malfunction.

It is being reported that Nick Reiner brutally stabbed his parents to death.

It would take me 50,000 words to properly thank Rob Reiner for the joy he brought me through his multi-faceted work. He was a genius, a giant of the arts, and a constant in my life starting with his role as “Meathead” in the incomparable sitcom All in the Family in the 1970s — for my money the most brilliant show that has ever been, or will be.

Reiner was also a nonstop humanitarian, and a scathing critic of one of the most evil men the world has ever known, Donald J. Trump.

Because how could any decent and normal functioning person not be?

I didn’t always agree completely with Reiner’s politics, any more than I completely agree with anybody, but respected him enormously for using his platform to speak out against the grotesque Trump, and wish more people of wealth and privilege would do the same.

It makes me furious that Hollywood isn’t using its enormous power to highlight on the millions of screens both large and small what we are being asked to deal with right now: violent attacks on our vote; the battering of our government; innocent human beings being rounded up by masked marauders; hundreds of millions of guns everywhere; life-saving vaccines being eliminated; troops in our streets; books being burned; our air and water being intentionally poisoned; women losing more and more of their rights …

Like you, Reiner saw and felt this danger every day, as this ghastly White House tried to transform America into their inhumane and revolting image. Like you, Reiner knew that if they they were to succeed, it would all be over.

They mean to end us, and one only needs read the history they are trying to incinerate to know this …

THESE are the stakes.

For all his enormous talent in the arts, it is Reiner’s activism that I will remember most of all.

He could have sat back and hidden behind his fame, counting his money, but instead chose to use his voice to sound the warnings. He was passionate, and unyielding at a time we’ve never needed passionate, unyielding people more.

Rob Reiner was a man who knew how to make us laugh, because he knew all too well, there was just too damn much hurt in the world to make us cry — hurt that ultimately led to his terrible, terrible demise.

So of course it took no time at all for every light to shine on just how right Reiner was about the gruesome state of things, when we heard from everything that is wrong.

This was the actual public comment offered by the grotesque Trump in the wake of the Reiners’ deaths, because there has never been one, single terrible thing on earth that this lunatic isn’t incapable of making even worse:

He wrote these terrible things because he is incapable of grace, and functions from inside the darkness, lashing out at everything he can’t see or understand. He’s a broken, inadequate little man who lives in a constant state of jealousy, as he lowers the bar of humanity into the dirt, so that even he can occasionally clear it.

By Monday afternoon, Trump had descended even further, calling Reiner, “deranged” and “bad for our country.” The joyless man who has spent his miserable life grabbing things for himself at the expense of our country, was calling the man who spent his incredible life spreading joy to the world, “bad for our country.”

And while Trump was busy dealing his poison, the first-class woman, and career public servant we could have (SHOULD HAVE) had as our president, reminded us all that America will only be a truly good and decent country, when we finally start listening to our women:

While I cannot fathom how awful all this must be for the Reiners’ family and friends as yet another one of America’s broken sons has brought their unspeakable hell to wreck the lives of others, it surprises me little that its worst son of all is doing what he can to make things even worse.

D. Earl Stephens is the author of “Toxic Tales: A Caustic Collection of Donald J. Trump’s Very Important Letters” and finished up a 30-year career in journalism as the Managing Editor of Stars and Stripes. You can find all his work here.

These betrayals are splitting MAGA from Trump — and making him more dangerous than ever

I want to pour you a shot of good news, with a stiff chaser.

It won’t wipe away all your troubles, but it might make you feel warm and fuzzy for about 30 minutes — maybe longer if you just allow yourself to go with the buzz …

(BARTENDER’S TIP: Allow yourself to go with the buzz. It’s been a hard damn decade.)

All’s not well in MAGA land, my friends.

It seems there are hardcore members of the most destructive cult in American history, who believe their fearful, orange leader is outdoing himself in the Department of Bulls–––, as he undoes our democracy.

It’s actually starting to look like Donald Trump can go too far for at least a few of his ardent supporters, who have been known to see homegrown terrorists stomping on police officers and destroying our Capitol as “tourists,” and view the poisoning of our air and water as “healthy.”

The list of terrible things these morally busted people have endorsed by helping elect this garbage can of a man, is longer than a summer day in Alaska, but might not be limitless.

It could be there are actually lines they prefer not to be crossed — even by their vulgar idol, who has done the heroic work of battering our government, our benefits, and his spineless party into submission.

In the past week, I have heard from two old friends in the business community here in Madison, Wisconsin, and in my hometown haunts of New Jersey.

These gents deal with a lot of MAGA bros in their day-to-day work, which takes them deep inside the American staples of sales and finance. They interact with these people because they have mountains of patience, and those dreaded bills to pay. Like myself, they are both old-to-middle-aged white men, and as such have been afforded a lifetime of privilege to do just about anything they want in America (including attack it) without any serious ramifications.

Here’s one of those messages I received:

“I’ve had a couple of MAGA folks confide in me the last couple of weeks that they are officially off the Trump train. It seems like based on the posturing that’s happening and his recent losses that they will be cannibalizing him soon.”

He cited Epstein, the “Kash/Bongino obvious lying” and the “pro-billionaire shit” as some of the reasons for their sudden discontent with the orange and appalling man, as well as their desire to be more public with their upset.

Another message I received said this, among a lot of other “stuff”:

“He’s losing MAGA. This is not what they voted for, and the Epstein stuff is killing him. I’m telling you, he’s in trouble.”

Reports like this are hardly scientific, but they are meaningful, and the numbers back them up. Trump’s approval ratings are at historic lows for a president (and I use that term loosely) in his first year in office, where honeymoon periods, and “benefit of the doubts” can extend well into a second or third season.

The speed in which Trump has lost support is breathtaking.

Recent election results that have gone heavily Democratic, and some skirmishes in the Republican ranks point to a presidency that is beginning to wear thin on the majority of America, including more than a few of his once loyal foot soldiers.

Look, I’m not even remotely insinuating we are out of danger here. In fact, if there is any validity to the growing anti-Trump movement in the Republican ranks, and I think there is, Trump will only become more unhinged and dangerous, as the golden walls close in around him, and he becomes more isolated.

He will lash out like a snot-nosed baby with a loaded machine gun, and before he is through, the January 6th insurrection will look like a minor skirmish.

The rest of one of the above messages from my buddy, reads like this:

“Hopefully this doesn't lead to some wild outburst when he (Trump) realizes this is happening (his cratering support), but it most certainly will ...”

Yes it will.

One morning this week, he rolled out of his steel-enforced rack, grabbed his nuclear-powered cell phone and went into full, unhinged, bro-mode by launching this beauty on his state-run social media channel:

This is the President of the United States of America at work on a Monday morning.

And let me answer your question, before finishing up:

“No, I don’t know how ANYBODY can support this grotesque, unhinged thug ...”

We’ll never survive three more years of this madness, and I have been of the opinion that Trump and his failing physical and mental health likely won’t either.

Rather than bet on the natural order of things, though, we are better off cautiously hoping that enough people in his revolting base will start to pull the plug on this failed regime, which will help release some of the hot air in a country that is ready to blow sky-high.

It’s worth keeping on eye on Republicans in Congress as we swing into the midterms and they hear from angry constituents who are fed up with Trump and his billionaires’ money-grab, while their costs increase and they discover they are literally paying for this authoritarian takeover.

We must continue to fight like never before, while expecting the absolute worst from a maniac, who has the singular talent of always going lower.

We still have a long road ahead of us, my friends, but for just today, why not pull off to the side of that road, and enjoy the buzz?

(D. Earl Stephens is the author of “Toxic Tales: A Caustic Collection of Donald J. Trump’s Very Important Letters” and finished up a 30-year career in journalism as the Managing Editor of Stars and Stripes. You can find all his work here.)

Trump will be battered by a midterm ferocity — if we can just get rid of these weaklings

Today, I will be typing to you with fire, and helping you deal with the excess hell that is being hand-delivered to us daily by the most lawless, bigoted, corrupt, heartless collection of sub-humans in American history.

I bring you those loaded words, and wonder if I still have somehow underestimated the revolting Republican Party.

I know that you are the true patriots in America who have the guts to pay attention, and then pay a terrible mental price for it. I know that you are the people who can be counted on to rush to the latest political fire, and if necessary use your bare hands to put it out.

I know that you are the people who deserve better than what you are getting both from the party you stand and fight for, and from the one that so obviously and consistently stands against Americans.

Every damn hour we are under steady assault by a repugnant collection of Republican, subservient thugs — a cult of knuckle-dragging hyenas — which are fronted by a gruesome man, who is so completely dead inside, the bile is starting to ooze out of him leaving bandaged hands, swollen ankles, and burnt-orange puddles wherever he was last seen sleeping in public.

The sickly Donald Trump does not have much time left, but then neither does the United States of America.

In fact, the only thing we have in common with this grotesque, abusive monster is that we are all locked in a battle for our survival.

Who’s going to die first? Our country or Trump?

There isn’t a single thing the bought-off Trump, aided by his subservient cult, won't do to end us, as he strangles a never-ending list of enemies, chokes the life out of America, and pockets millions and millions of dollars before he finally takes his last breath.

Our health care, food security, and clean air and water are all under steady assault. Our safety nets are gleefully being pulled from underneath us by lifeless billionaires who can never get enough. Our vote and humans rights are being incinerated. Prices are going up, and a lawless, bought-off conservative Supreme Court is doing everything in its seemingly unlimited power to drag us down.

Our military is being perverted into a partisan tool, and we are steaming toward the breaking point where it will be necessary to ask whether they are with us, or against us.

Trump will not stop until he is convinced he can snap his fat little fingers, and his military will do his heinous bidding. That’s what this is all about, because that is what this was always going to be about when he seized power last year.

This is a takeover, and an attack on a fragile democracy that has survived for centuries, but only because it could trust its president and courts not to unify with the odious intent of dismantling it.

Authoritarianism isn’t some fictional thing, people, it is A THING, and it is happening right in front of our tired eyes.

It is the laziest, most oppressive political system known to man, because it isn’t fueled by enlightenment or better ideas. No, instead it is all about the control by the few over the many, and rammed down our throats with brute force whether we like it or not.

It marches to the monotonous, banging drum of nonstop, state-run propaganda that props up evil, subservient agents in places like our Pentagon, Justice Department, the FBI, and that blasted court ...

You know what I am bringing to you this morning is true, because you have the audacity to pay attention. If you are reading this all-too-sober accounting of our current state, you can plainly see it, feel it, and most importantly: are wondering just what in the hell we are supposed to do about it.

Because if this is our reality, shouldn’t we all be sounding the alarms every chance we get, and supporting each other as we do the work to save the United States of America from itself?

I have great faith in you, dear reader. You give me strength simply by knowing you are out there. By God, there are millions of us, and we are our only chance to put this attack down, and save America.

So now an important question: Do you think the leadership in the Democratic Party is taking all this as seriously as you are?

If you are, we are done for the day. I wish you strength and peace of mind ...

Most of you will know that I am not a party man, because my work as a journalist prevented it, and because after observing political parties and their politicians closely, I trust most of them only as far as I can throw them with my old, tired left arm.

While we the people are fretting, and screaming, and voting, and marching, and hollering, and devouring all the warnings like this one, the leadership of the party we have assigned to save us, is at best badly misreading situation, or at worst, accepting too many horrible realities by the hour, that when piled atop each other will ultimately bury us — and most likely sooner than later.

Right now, like it or not — and man, I absolutely hate it — we are being asked to make the best of our tragic situation in America, while a trio of inaction figures spend the better part of each day rubbing the sleep from their eyes, and reacting instead of taking our righteous fight to the people 24/7.

How is it Chuck Schumer, Hakeem Jeffries and Ken Martin have been assigned to lead the Democratic Party in this historic hour of vital resistance?

Why are we STILL accepting this?

Isn’t it clear by now that time and again they have let us down since last year’s horrible elections? Isn’t it clear by now they have proven they are simply incapable of rising up to meet this dire situation?

Look, I don’t hate these men. I don’t even dislike them. I thank them for their service.

But now it’s time they return to the important ranks of the foot soldiers and backbenchers, because they are NOT leaders.

The irony is, we were always invariably going to be better off when we stopped with our absurd idolatry of politicians. It has been a weakness of the Democratic Party my entire professional lifetime, but that makes it no less a reality.

Here’s a fact: Most people simply don’t trust politicians, and that is actually a strength of a thriving Democracy. When one man or woman gains too much power we begin swerving toward what we fought to avoid more than 250 years ago.

Welcome to our current nightmare.

But since we are here, I will readily concede that occasionally, politicians can truly inspire. I have seen these rare folks and been sparked by them. Four come to mind in my lifetime: John F. Kennedy, Dr. Martin Luther King, and Michelle and Barack Obama.

In action and words, Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-GA) is my current favorite.

Lord knows, we have never needed inspiration more.

Schumer, Jeffries and Martin simply aren’t delivering it.

They have proven they lack the guts and talent to make our case to the American people. And making our case to the American people is what needs to be happening from sun up to sun down — from North Carolina to North Dakota — every single day.

We must grab the pulpit and shake it. We need to bring thunder to this war for our survival.

Tell me: When was the last time Schumer did that? As he ever done that?

Now tell me why Jeffries was siding with Trump earlier this week in the pardoning of Rep. Henry Cuellar (D-Texas), who was indicted by the Biden Justice Department on bribery and money-laundering charges. Just last month, Jeffries slammed Trump for being “completely and totally out of control” with these relentless, lawless pardons.

Does Jeffries mean what he says? Too many times I am not sure what the New York Congressman is thinking, and that has become a big, damn problem for such a public figure.

I won’t waste too much of my my breath on the Democratic National Committee (DNC), because its pretty clear they quit really giving a damn the minute they had all our phone numbers, and could just sit back and batter our cell phones with never-ending fundraising requests.

It’s still hard for me to reckon how Ben Wikler didn’t get that job, given what he did to help rescue the Wisconsin Democratic Party from the abyss the past decade or so.

Look, if you told me 13 month ago, coming off the most catastrophic election losses in America history, the Democratic Party wouldn’t change a thing with its Congressional and Senatorial leadership, I would have slapped some self-respect into you.

But here we are with black eyes, because any party that trots out the same losers to lead it after absorbing a thorough beating like the one we got last November can’t respect you if it can’t even be bothered to respect itself …

Nothing, and I mean NOTHING would energize the Left more than putting new, invigorating leadership in place. It would show the party listens, and believes in action, not just empty words. It would invite millions of people in, instead of stiff-arming them away with the same old bulls--- …

CHANGE.

Too many people don’t trust the party, because they don’t think it is listening to them. This simply has to be rectified, because we don’t have any time left.

If we don’t win big next year, we can kiss it all goodbye. There will be no more do-overs. We simply must do EVERYTHING we can to ensure we win.

So one more question before I go: Why do we expect so damn much from ourselves, and so damn little from our leadership?

(D. Earl Stephens is the author of “Toxic Tales: A Caustic Collection of Donald J. Trump’s Very Important Letters” and finished up a 30-year career in journalism as the Managing Editor of Stars and Stripes. You can find all his work here.)

Trump's hideous freakshow could easily be exposed — there's just one problem

On Tuesday, the President of the United States chaired a meeting of his busted cabinet that would have been impossible to believe just 10 years ago. I had no intention of watching this North Korea-like, state-run propaganda, but once I’d bumped into it, I found I couldn't take my eyes off it.

It was a train wreck wrapped in a dumpster fire, and in a normal time and place would have ended this appalling presidency.

Who could watch even five minutes of that tragedy without knowing that it simply had to be cancelled? Who could watch a man who is so obviously rotting from the inside out, and not flag the absurdity and danger of it all?

Those questions are chiefly for you, corporate media. But more on you in a moment …

Whatever was happening inside that room was not normal, and it certainly isn’t working.

The 142-year-old 79-year-old Donald Trump was adorned in a pink tie and stuffed in a white shirt and dark jacket that clashed badly with his burnt-orange face and the straw-colored wig puffed over his wrinkled head just so. When does he decide that this is the preposterous costume he wants to wear on a given day?

“Less combover, more fluff … A little less brown, and more white around the eyes … More orange in the cheeks, less around the chin … Hand me that pink tie …”

He looks absolutely ridiculous.

In the meeting, he did everything he could to stay awake, his head bobbing up and down and side to side. He pawed at his orange face as he drifted off to the fairways of Mar-a-Lago. It was hard to tell if he'd skipped one of the drug cocktails he pounds throughout the day, or just had one too many in anticipation of his big meeting with his crooked staff.

While he fought sleep, his grotesque collection of anti-vaxxers, stone-cold bigots, crooks, and multi-millionaires and billionaires showered him with praise for the stellar job he is doing heaping all his hate on the world, while stuffing his bottomless pockets with millions and millions in kickbacks and blood money.

One of them, the racist, puppy-shooting Homeland Security Secretary, Kristi Noem, preposterously thanked him for keeping the hurricanes away from the United States this year.

This kind of absurd praise would normally get an affirmative rise from Sleepy Rider.

Not this time.

No, this time Trump was barely alive, almost unresponsive to the sort of firehose of putrid adulation that used to inject him with life.

I’m really not sure whether to laugh or cry at this theater of the completely absurd — but I’m pretty sure indifference can’t be a viable option.

A drunk is at the wheel and for some horrible reason nobody is taking away his keys.

On Tuesday, after the praise finally stopped, the media was semi-free to ask this wreck of a man and his gathered assemblage of dangerous clowns questions about the abomination they just witnessed.

Except not one of these so-called journalists asked the most obvious question:

“Do you demand that these people ridiculously fawn over you like some tin-pot dictator, and shower you with this disgusting praise, or do they actually lower themselves into your trash can, and just stink up the entire place on their own?”

Instead, the assembled press ignored the fire that was burning out of control inside that room, and addressed a few of the myriad blazes that have been gleefully started by these arsonists outside the room.

Then, Trump finally rose to the bizarre occasion — triggered by a press he has spent a lifetime both needing and hating.

Scratching the sleep from his puffy eyes, he sat up in full harrumph. You could almost see the hate pouring from his chapped, pursed lips. Even his chubby, little hands were doing that weird accordion thing, as he holds everything and everybody in contempt.

He woke up in a bad mood.

He attacked Somalis, saying, “I don’t want them in our country.”

He doubled down: “We’re going to go the wrong way if we keep taking in garbage into our country.”

He tripled down, calling Rep Ilhan Omar (D-MN) “garbage.”

In full attack mode, the bile rising up out of him, he relieved his pain by inflicting it on anything or anybody that came across his short-circuiting mind:

“Countries were ripping us off for years, including allies. I won’t use the names. I won’t mention Japan. I will refuse to mention South Korea. I will not mention names.”

Of course, even when he is seeing red, and raging like a complete maniac, he never mentions names like Russia and Saudi Arabia in this context.

Such control …

Look, it’s sickening when he gets like this, but sicker yet that nobody points it out. He’s crashing, and intent on making sure everybody else goes up in smoke.

We can’t go on like this.

Finally, Trump addressed his obviously failing health, and never-ending “perfect” visits to the doctor, as only he can:

“I took my physical. I got all As. Everything. But they [the doctors] said to me, ‘Would you like to take a cognitive test?’ So I said, ‘Is it hard?’ And they said, ‘Yes.’ So I said, ‘Well, I’m a very smart person. Who was the last president to take one?’ So they said, ‘No president has ever agreed to take one’ ... I aced it.”

Nobody said a word.

The demented voices inside the man’s fat, orange head were doing all the talking …

(D. Earl Stephens is the author of “Toxic Tales: A Caustic Collection of Donald J. Trump’s Very Important Letters” and finished up a 30-year career in journalism as the Managing Editor of Stars and Stripes. You can find all his work here.)

Without this group of people, there would be no President Trump

I have cut back on the time I spend on social media since last year’s terrible elections. It might be the only good that’s come from one of the worst days in American history.

A once thriving Twitter account is now dead and buried. I simply can’t be anywhere the ghastly Elon Musk and his phony hate-mongers. The place is an overflowing trashcan full of so many lies, and awful things, it’s a wonder it hasn’t self-combusted.

These days, I kick around Bluesky, and Substack’s Notes when I feel like I need to get something off my chest in a hurry.

Last week, white people’s support for Donald Trump and his revolting Republican Party was eating away at me as it often does, so I let go the below blast:

The very direct point, of course, was that without white people, there’d be no President Trump.

“Most white people” got that point, but too many didn’t for my taste, and were indignant that I would type such a thing. Many white commenters made it clear that they didn't vote for Trump, and/or scolded me for scapegoating them.

Here’s a few examples:

“Wow. What a massive generalization. Lots of brown and black people voted for him too but it’s really irrelevant because it’s not a race thing. It’s a stupid thing. There are lots of dumb people in this country who have zero critical thinking skills. That’s the problem. Not all the bad white people.”

“Uh, I don’t know where you got your stats from … but I’m not so sure. Certainly not this white person …”

“It is not most white people. It’s a select few fucking idiots.”

Thankfully, more got it, than didn’t. This one wins a trophy:

“As white people who *personally* did not vote for him, let’s acknowledge that OUR DEMOGRAPHIC did vote for him. The collective “We” must OWN that, and work harder to engage those who voted for him, or who didn’t vote at all.”

Listen to me: You don’t get credit for simply doing the right thing by not voting for a bigot. It’s the very least that should be expected of you. Voting against a vulgar racist like Trump should be as easy and reflexive as putting on a warm jacket to ward off the bitter cold.

The terrible fact is that in all three elections that the appalling Trump was on the ballot, a majority (most) of white people in America voted for him.

Is everybody a racist who supports Trump? Maybe not, but everybody who did vote for him is a hardcore racist, or best case, ignored his long history of hate, to knowingly put a racist in our White House.

Many of these morally bankrupt people are probably some of your friends and family, or in my case, and as I made clear, ex-friends and family.

Here’s the breakdown of the last three presidential elections from the Pew Research Center. I am not sure why the 2016 numbers are incomplete, but you’ll want to concentrate on the white men and white women columns:

In all three elections that Trump was on the ballot, “most” white men and women voted for him. Hence, my post above.

Now that you’ve had a chance to look at these dreadful numbers, let’s also acknowledge that America mostly has a terrible white man problem, and that there is still a mountain of work to do scouring out the terrible misogyny that still pervades too many households, workplaces and the current White House.

Misogyny goes hand in hand with racism, and is a destructive disease eating away at millions of weak, impressionable minds.

This past week or so alone, Trump, who is rotting from the inside out right in front of our eyes, has called female reporters, “Piggy” and “stupid, horrible and ugly.” This follows a long pattern over his morbid lifetime of disparaging women, and mostly their appearance.

HE, an orange mess of a man, who tapes a dead ferret to his head each morning, is mocking other people’s looks.

But back to the eyesore of a graphic above …

Please take a hard look what Black voters did. I have typed before, and will type until my last breath, that they are America’s true patriots, and the only voting bloc that overwhelmingly and consistently gets it right.

I make it a point of walking in their shoes and at least trying to see things through their eyes whenever I can. How incredibly sad it must be to see white people fail so catastrophically at the polls each year, by electing lowlifes who see white supremacy in America as a virtue, instead of a plague.

I try to imagine how many people would have been shot dead on the spot Jan. 6, 2021, if Black people had dared attack our Capitol and beat and stomped law enforcement officials into the curb, as all those lawless, violent white people did on one of America’s darkest days.

Would Trump have told these thugs that he loved them after that horrific day?

It defies logic that anybody could have watched what happened at our Capitol, and what has happened to the criminals who attacked us since, and not see the rampant, odious white privilege in this country.

I try to imagine how Black people must feel as schools, universities, and corporations recklessly abandoned their Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) efforts in the terrible wake of Trump’s win last year.

These important initiatives, many, decades in the making, now lay in the rubble because of the weak, submissive white people, who either never believed in what they were doing, or worse, are too cowardice to stand up for what is most certainly good … and right … and FAIR.

Because DEI has never once been about favoritism, it is about fairness. If you think Black people have gotten a fair shake in this country, then in addition to your bout with bigotry, you have a terrible case of lying to yourself.

As a white man, who has had every advantage in life, I will not stop hammering these points home. I will not surrender to bigots like Trump, and the horrible people who support him, and like the commenter said above, will “work harder to engage those who voted for him, or who didn’t vote at all.”

This is my core issue — the one that courses through my veins and gives my life real meaning.

I cannot think of men like Martin Luther King Jr. or John Lewis without getting a lump in my throat. These were giants, who endured beatings and even death to take America to a better place. We honor them, by standing on their broad shoulders and rising ever higher.

I will continue to speak up about racial equity, and down against people who do everything possible to prevent it. I will never stop talking about it, because that is exactly what these racists want.

Everything must be done to eradicate racism in America, because until it is dead and gone, we can never dare to say or believe that all men and women are created equal.

Right now, that is simply another lie, and shame on us for not doing everything in our power as caring humans beings to finally correct it.

D. Earl Stephens is the author of “Toxic Tales: A Caustic Collection of Donald J. Trump’s Very Important Letters” and finished up a 30-year career in journalism as the Managing Editor of Stars and Stripes. You can find all his work here.

A monstrous vulgarity rampaged through Thanksgiving — but it will be crushed

I'm not writing to you today about all the things I am thankful for as our 2025 holiday season visits us, because I am too damn busy with what makes me furious to type otherwise.

We are a country at war against fascism, and its racist, evil residue. We are at war against a dark, lawless, centralized force that does not believe all men and women are created equal, and do the bidding of soulless billionaires who fund all this hell to pad their absurd fortunes.

You can say I don’t have my priorities straight, and in return I will do you the courtesy of suggesting you quit reading now, to save you your precious time. Hopefully, we can catch up again next week.

To the brave who have stayed, I will endeavor to put down words of molten steel that do you justice, and send my gratitude for your heart and soul. You are what is needed in abundance right now as we stare down the most dangerous time in America since the 1860s.

So thank you for your fight.

I have always loved the notion of Thanksgiving and hope to celebrate it with vigor again someday. It was a time for friends, food, football and family. It was a break from school, and later the chaos of working a 50-hour-a-week job, that never seemed to love me as much as I loved it. Journalism always called, and I always listened, but Thanksgiving was my day to try to tune it all out.

Now I refuse to tune anything out, because there is danger everywhere. It is in our streets and in our homes. In our churches and our government. In our workplaces and in our personal business.

This Thanksgiving, I did not invite anybody into my home who I know supports the grotesque, anti-American Donald Trump, nor did I accept any invitation to be anyplace where I might find people who do.

And you can save the high-minded, snooty lecturing that goes something like this: “Come on, Earl, can’t you just let it go one day, and drop the politics?”

No. No I can’t. And I don’t understand how anybody can. We aren’t dealing with a difference of politics in 2025 America, we are dealing with a difference in human decency and monstrous vulgarity.

Democracy vs. monarchy.

I have my lines, and I won’t be crossing them. Ever.

Besides, I don’t trust myself not to haul off and belt a Trump supporter at some gathering, because I unabashedly hate these people and the tiny, no-good things they stand for with a blistering rage. I hate them for enabling this hell, and the hurt they are unnecessarily bringing to millions of lives here and around the world.

They are heartless, thoughtless bullies, who only look after themselves, because they are too weak in mind and body to carry anything else besides what they stuff in their big mouths and bottomless pockets.

Look, I tried for the better part of eight years to reason with these people, but I’m done with that. Old friendships, are now dead and gone. If Trump appeals to you, then you’ll want no part of me, because it turns out we have nothing in common.

You go your way, and just keep on going …

Our democracy is hanging by a thread, and I will not surround myself with people who make excuses for racists, and make it harder, not easier, for people to feed themselves, clothe themselves, and get the medical care they deserve.

And I have lost every inch of patience I might have had in the reserve for the selfish and willingly ignorant who don’t have the decency to care either way. They are the ones who really fry my ass.

You know the type. They’ll tell you how tired of it all they are, and that they have enough problems in their lives without having to deal with the rest.

How nice for them that they can concentrate only on themselves at the expense of the millions who are less fortunate. Turns out, they are the reason we are here, and how Nazi Germany happened so many decades ago.

Indifference is nothing but appeasement wrapped in a suffocating cloak of willing ignorance. It’s weak, and lifeless.

Believe me, I wish more than anything it wasn’t this way. I wish I could wake up and sit down with my cup of coffee, devour my newspapers, and then write about beautiful things. I know they are out there, and I endeavor to be among them whenever possible. But these days I see these things as needing our protection from bloodthirsty Republican politicians, and the corporate raiders who fill their overflowing bank accounts, who are coming after them.

Our air, our water and our animals are all under steady attack by these corporate heathens who worship guns, and killing above all, and then have the gall to tell us how important life is.

Just this week, it was announced Trump’s Environmental Protection Agency will be abandoning air pollution rules that save thousands of lives a year. What kind of sick ghoul would support such a thing? Hundreds of thousands of children with asthma will now be at risk, because some fat cat loser believes in profits over breath.

As I climb toward the end of my life, I want it known that I stood for what is good and right — on Thanksgiving and every day. I want it known that I stood for an America that I served in the Navy back in the ‘70s when we knew oppressive places like fascist Russia were the enemy, instead of the strong arms of the cowardice Republican Party.

I want it known I stood for voting rights, equal rights, and women’s rights.

I want it known I stood for our environment and its air, water and wildlife that make life truly worth living.

I want it known I stood for democracy and against fascism.

I want it known that if you can’t stand for at least this much then you are my enemy, not my friend, and I will work tirelessly to defeat you and your morbid kind.

Because if these anti-American fascists will come after a patriot’s patriot like Sen. Mark Kelly (D-AZ), they’ll damn sure come after us.

They are desperate, have no ideas for improving America, and stand with a woman-abusing, draft-dodging, America-attacking goon, who is rotting from the inside out.

They must be stopped, because they are traitors. All of 'em.

This might not be the message you wanted to read as we steam through the holidays, but I am mad and indignant. I am giving more than I get.

I am not standing for this shit.

We beat this rotten son of a bitch fair and square once, and then didn't do all we could to make sure he stayed beaten. I am furious about this, and will never let it go.

I’ll give plenty of thanks when he and his terrible kind are gone.

Until then, I will rage.

I will fight.

I will resist.

And I will never give up the ship.

(D. Earl Stephens is the author of “Toxic Tales: A Caustic Collection of Donald J. Trump’s Very Important Letters” and finished up a 30-year career in journalism as the Managing Editor of Stars and Stripes. You can find all his work here.)

Trump's vicious response proves he's cornered — and dangerous

This was always going to be one of the most dangerous junctures of Donald Trump’s godawful second term, though I admit it arrived a bit earlier than expected.

How would the dangerous, ill-bred lout, who’s never seen a lie he didn’t like, handle it when the truth about him and his failed policies were dragged into the unfiltered light of hundreds of sunny days for all of us to see?

How would the man who stalked America’s countryside last year, the grotesque billionaire Elon Musk in tow, bombastically floating empty promises and plenty of hate during his profitable, one-after-another hate rallies, handle it when he was found out?

How would the man who promised to release the list of Jeffrey Epstein’s vulgar cohorts deal with the blowback from many in his racist cult, when it was clear all he was really prepared to give them was yet another song and dance, instead of a list of the repugnant headliners behind these horrible assaults on our children.

How would the man handle it when his vile name was used by Democrats all over the map to warn against more of the poison he was dealing, while sweeping to landslide victories in places like New Jersey and Virginia in the first significants elections since America chose so spectacularly wrong a year earlier ...

Well, we got our answer last Thursday, when the unfit Trump took to his caustic, state-run social media channel and threatened to hang politicians who he doesn’t like.

It should matter little what set off this nuclear-powered temper tantrum from our sick king, only that he is now on the record making it clear just how far he is willing to go to quiet the opposition, as well as the dark, vindictive voices that are eating away at what’s left of his decaying brain.

He should be removed from office just as soon as possible, of course, but won’t be because he still has the corrupt, cowardly Republican Party and its mealy-mouthed sinners like House Speaker Mike Johnson under his fat little thumb.

Trump will kill to keep power, and now Johnson and his worthless party can never pretend otherwise.

Trump’s second term has been a bonfire catalyzed by greed, fear and retribution. The terrible man is governing this country in his horrid image. Rather than building, he is breaking. Rather than unifying, he is splitting. Rather than rising up, he is tearing down. Rather than helping the most needy among us, he is going out of his way to hurt them …

He doing all these horrid, vindictive things because he just wants to be loved, you see, and if we are all too stupid to get that, then he will use the enormous power his office grants him to shake us all until it hurts.

We will bend the knee, or else ...

Can’t we understand that he is demolishing the White House for our own good? Can’t we see he is fixing our health-care system, government, and decades-long global alliances by taking a sledgehammer to them first? Can’t we see that prices are actually lower, even though we the buyers can plainly see they are going up?

Trump is failing everywhere and is doing so in spectacular fashion.

When six of my fellow veterans in Congress produced a 90-second video, Don’t Give Up The Ship, reminding our troops that they are obligated to refuse illegal orders, the unhinged Trump wasted no time illustrating why this video was so necessary.

“SEDITIOUS BEHAVIOR, punishable by DEATH!” Trump wrote in one post. And just to make sure his bloodlust was crystal clear to everybody he shared a different post, written by another person, that said: “HANG THEM GEORGE WASHINGTON WOULD!!”

This madman doesn’t belong in our White House. He belongs in a straitjacket.

I knew this day was coming last November, the minute the election was called for Trump in the wee hours of one of America’s darkest nights.

I wrote Warning Shot just two weeks later, because I understood that at some point things were going to get so bad for Trump that he was going to do what every murderous fascist of note has done before him, and hide behind the military for protection.

I’m not sure I have written anything that got more readership.

From that piece:

Once you understand that Trump will use his presidency and whatever is left of his miserable life to settle scores and return the favors of the crooked dictators, and slobbery weaklings in his political party, who helped put him back in office, you can better prepare for the hell that’s most assuredly coming.

By words and by deed it is clear as day that Trump has absolutely no respect for the United States of America he violently assaulted, nor our men and women who wear the uniform, because like any authoritarian leader he sees them as servants to him, and not our country.

I went on to explain:

Remember: Trump, and his Supreme Court see his power as absolute. There is NOTHING that applies, or restricts him from doing whatever the hell it is he thinks needs doing in the interest of national security, which as of January 20, 2025, will mean his security.

So now we are counting on our military not to obey unlawful orders and defend a Constitution their Commander in Chief could care less about. That’s a mighty big ask.

I quoted an official in the Pentagon at the time, who chillingly said this:

“Troops are compelled by law to disobey unlawful orders. But the question is what happens then — do we see resignations from senior military leaders? Or would they view that as abandoning their people?”

I hope everybody now understands why Sen. Elissa Slotkin of Michigan, a former C.I.A. analyst who served in Iraq, organized this important, timely video.

Slotkin was joined by Reps. Jason Crow (D-CO), Chris DeLuzio (D-PA), Maggie Goodlander (D-NH) and Chrissy Houlahan (D-PA), and Sen. Mark Kelly (D-AZ).

These patriots and public servants are staying true to their oaths, and their duty to warn. They have watched as Trump has bastardized our military this past year for his political gain. He has taken to our bases to sell his gross MAGA merchandise, and called out Democrats, including past presidents, by name. He has called on these troops to use our cities as their “training grounds.” He has belittled true heroes like John McCain, and disgraced Arlington National Cemetery more times than I can count.

He doesn’t know a single, damn thing about army values, navy values, or ANY values, because the only thing he truly values — the only thing he has EVER valued — is himself.

So now he has proven himself again to be dangerous as hell, as his regime fails on all fronts. He is now looking for others to pay for his mistakes, and there isn’t a single thing he won’t do, including kill opponents, to give himself the vindication he thinks he deserves.

He’s lost his mind, and it is never coming back.

I typed Warning Shot one year ago lat Wednesday. I ended it this way, and so I will again with this piece:

This is not a story of hope, my friends, but words of warning.

Like it or not, and as tired as we are, we must be vigilant and NEVER accept this as anything approaching normal in this country.

A repulsive coward who never had the guts to serve will do everything he can to get our armed forces to serve only him.

WE must be the resistance.

(D. Earl Stephens is the author of “Toxic Tales: A Caustic Collection of Donald J. Trump’s Very Important Letters” and finished up a 30-year career in journalism as the Managing Editor of Stars and Stripes. You can find all his work here.)

This foul betrayal is Trump's worst treachery yet

Almost lost among Donald Trump’s latest assault on America, has been his utter disdain for our democracy, and love for Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Amid Trump’s attack on our government, White House, health-care, food benefits, vote, the arts, environment, our economy, and peace and quiet, the Russia-Ukraine War has raged on.

Defying all odds, the Ukrainians and their gutsy, charismatic leader Volodymyr Zelenskyy, have held off the once-feared Russian army for nearly four years. This should be celebrated as one the most inspirational events of a 21st Century that has been sorely lacking inspiration or good.

Putin and his vaunted army were supposed to cut through Ukraine like a knife through butter when they launched their attack on Feb. 24, 2022. When Putin’s army amassed on the Ukrainian border it was estimated by many experts that Ukraine would fall in mere hours.

Except that never happened because the Ukrainians proved themselves more feisty and prepared, and Russia weaker and more clumsy, than all these experts expected.

By the third day of fighting Zelenskyy was proving himself more than ready for what feeble Russia was bringing him, and produced a video watched my millions that turned down the United State’s invitation to evacuate him, saying:

“The fight is here; I need ammunition, not a ride!”

Something wonderful was happening on the eastern front, as a small, upstart and proud nation was smacking the murderous Putin and his army right in the mouth.

It was scary, thrilling and good news to everybody it seems except for Putin and his puppet, Trump, who wasted no time alerting the world to what side he was on, calling Putin’s attack, “savvy” and “genius.”

Just three days later, when he saw what was happening, as the valiant Ukrainians stood up to the bully, and “savvy genius,” Putin, the carnival-barking Trump changed his tone at a CPAC gathering in Florida, on February 27, 2022, and slobbered this:

“The Russian attack on Ukraine is appalling. We are praying for the proud people of Ukraine. God bless them all.”

After surviving this anti-democratic whiplash, instead of apologizing for his grotesque words praising Putin, Trump did what he always did, and has always done: He attacked the United States, and let Putin off the hook, saying:

“The real problem is that our leaders are dumb, dumb. So dumb.”

But Trump’s phony reversal, and attack on America, was only the subhead of that event in Florida, because he used that never-ending speech to hint loudly at another run for office by taking a swipe at America and its President, Joe Biden:

“As everyone understands, this horrific disaster would never have happened if our election was not rigged and if I was the president …”

He went on:

“In November 2024, Democrats will find out like never before. We did it twice, and we’ll do it again. We’re going to be doing it again, a third time.”

Here’s where I will always point out with precision and rage that this anti-American, no-good monster should have been on his way to rotting in jail by now for his attack on our country that had occurred just one year earlier, on Jan. 6, 2021. Except Attorney General Merrick Garland still hadn’t even laid a glove on the traitor, Trump, and allowed him to reclaim his hold over a party that had proven itself morally busted, and incapable of standing up against Trump or Putin, and for America.

Now four very painful years later, the proud Ukrainians are still holding off Russia, and Trump is still doing everything he can to make sure Russia prevails.

As I type this, Trump has rolled out a U.S. peace plan this is so absurd even the cowards who helped enable him in the Republican Party are speaking out against it, saying it is nothing but a Russian wish list.

Here is Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC):

“Putin is a murderer a rapist and an assassin. We should not do anything that makes him feel like he has a win here.”

Here is Sen. Mitch McConnell, (R-KY):

“If administration officials are more concerned with appeasing Putin than securing real peace, then the president ought to find new advisors.”

I am aware that both of these men are not seeking reelection, which is why you can be assured they are both finally telling the truth.

On Sunday, Trump was right back where he was four years ago, despite all the heroics of the Ukrainians since, blaming the United States, Ukraine and our allies for the attack, by blasting this out on his state-run social media channel:

“With strong and proper U.S. and Ukrainian LEADERSHIP, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine would have NEVER HAPPENED.”

“UKRAINE ‘LEADERSHIP’ HAS EXPRESSED ZERO GRATITUDE FOR OUR EFFORTS, AND EUROPE CONTINUES TO BUY OIL FROM RUSSIA.”

Read that again, and try to tell me that Trump is not a traitor.

Not a single word of condemnation at the aggressor and murderer, Putin. Only disdain for America, Ukraine, and our NATO allies whose relationship over the decades has been forged in blood and honor.

Russia helped install Trump into office in 2016. We know this. In fact, nobody knows it better than his Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who chaired the Republican-led bipartisan committee who rendered these findings in August, 2020, which stated:

The Trump campaign’s interactions with Russian intelligence services during the 2016 presidential election posed a “grave” counterintelligence threat.

This is from a PBS story that went into the 1,000-page report. It was the fifth and final one from the Republican-led Senate intelligence committee on the Russia investigation:

“The findings, including unflinching characterizations of furtive interactions between Trump associates and Russian operatives, echo to a large degree those of special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation and appear to repudiate the Republican president’s claims that the FBI had no basis to investigate whether his campaign was conspiring with Russia. Trump has called the Russia investigations a “hoax.”

Cold irony then that it is the feckless Rubio who seems to be caught in the middle of unfriendly fire right now between Trump and the rest of the free world as his boss attacks the United States and makes excuses for Putin with his pathetic excuse for a “peace plan.”

From AP reporting:

Lawmakers critical of President Donald Trump’s approach to ending the Russia-Ukraine war said Saturday they spoke with Secretary of State Marco Rubio who told them that the peace plan Trump is pushing Kyiv to accept is a “wish list” of the Russians and not the actual proposal offering Washington’s positions.

A State Department spokesperson denied their account, calling it “blatantly false.”

Rubio himself then took the extraordinary step of suggesting online that the senators were mistaken, even though they said he was their source for the information. The secretary of state doubled down on the assertion that Washington was responsible for a proposal that had surprised many from the beginning for being so favorable to Moscow.

“For being so favorable to Moscow …”

Shocking, eh?

So here we are again. Donald Trump is doing everything in his seemingly unlimited power to make sure Putin gets what he wants after starting this illegal and immoral war against Ukraine.

He is clearly in the tank FOR Russia and AGAINST America.

Just what in the hell is going here????

(D. Earl Stephens is the author of “Toxic Tales: A Caustic Collection of Donald J. Trump’s Very Important Letters” and finished up a 30-year career in journalism as the Managing Editor of Stars and Stripes. You can find all his work here.)

Trump will finally crash if we hammer him on this — instead of Epstein

I am going to type something you are not going to like, folks, but it’s for our own good, so here goes:

We are never going to see the Epstein files.

I know, I know, there I go, harshing your mellow again, but I am done playing these silly, tiresome games where our corporate media spends 278 consecutive news cycles chasing the crumbs Donald Trump and his lawless Department of Justice tosses them about Jeffrey Epstein, until all of a sudden everybody wakes up one day and have completely lost the thread, which is this:

The man has had one of the single-worst years of any president in history. More than that? He knows it. Even more than that?

The voters know it.

Prices are rising, and jobs are evaporating. The rich are getting richer, and everybody else is getting poorer. Americans are sick and tired, at a time their health-care premiums are going through the roof.

There is a complete chaos in Washington, where the only thing Trump has accomplished of note is bulldozing our White House into one of his tasteless, cheap, and failing golden casinos, just five years removed from his destructive alterations to our Capitol Building after losing the 2020 election by more than 7 million votes.

He is a professional arsonist and ripoff artist who has assembled a submissive, appalling cabinet whose single job is to bow in unison to their king, while keeping the matches and gasoline coming.

Through all the blood and smoke, Left-leaning voters have taken to the streets, kept their tired eyes on the prize, and just two weeks ago, elected Democratic candidates to office at a stunning 2-to-1 clip. If this keeps up (and it will if we stay focused) Democrats might just flip the Senate next year, in addition to taking the House with a sizable margin.

Look, I am not saying everything and anything associated with Epstein isn’t important, but I am saying it can’t become the thing.

I am saying we believe the women, who were victimized by these monsters. I am saying we keep calling for the release of everything to do with Epstein, and we keep asking the woman-abusing Trump one question, and one question only, as it pertains to this abominable affair:

“Why won’t you, Mr. Trump, use all this power you relentlessly remind us you have to release the Epstein Files RIGHT NOW?”

Because if Trump really wanted the Epstein Files in the general vicinity of the public he could make that happen with a single snap of his fat little fingers.

But he’s not going to do that. Ever.

Anybody who thinks Trump is going to allow the Epstein Files — or even a semi-close approximation of them — to come out is completely delusional and has been in a blissful slumber the past 12 years. Trump didn’t surround himself with that corrupt cabinet, and build a lawless Supreme Court in his revolting image just so he can turn around and detonate a bomb that could blow him to smithereens.

Instead, he’s going to do that special thing he did Sunday night, when he assaulted his nuclear-powered cell phone with those fat, little fingers and took to his state-run social media account to type out this low-grade slop:

“House Republicans should vote to release the Epstein files, because we have nothing to hide, and it’s time to move on from this Democrat Hoax perpetrated by Radical Left Lunatics in order to deflect from the Great Success of the Republican Party.”

The Epstein files will be the blunt object Trump uses to beat on the Democrats and the press. This is all sport to him. Dangle whatever is left of the files out there as the shiny object that distracts us from the complete mess he has created since he stomped back into office 10 months ago, then play the victim of all of it.

“It’s another hoax — a witch hunt! Everybody is so, so mean to me …”

What it is, is a cover-up and that’s the only word that should be used going forward.

Sunday night, King Trump grudgingly gave his Republican congressional serfs the cover they need to tell their voters that they voted to release the files. Now they can wash their hands of the whole thing, before dirtying them again as they try to fend off Democratic challengers who are coming for their jobs next year.

Meantime, Trump can do what he does best, and spin our corporate media like a top. He can play that pathetic victim card, while he gaslights, deflects, and offends.

As I was researching this piece, I came across a clip in which Trump tells the press, “All of Epstein’s friends were Democrats.”

That is called a lie, but like so many of the tens of thousands of lies before it, went unchallenged, and was barely a part of the record. Trump’s too good at telling lies, and our media is too bad at exposing them and giving them the heft they deserve.

Worse, they have become far too accepting of the abuse this ill-bred yacht club bully and convicted felon directs at them on an hourly basis. As a career journalist it has become almost impossible to watch.

On Air Force One on Friday, Bloomberg reporter Catherine Lucey asked Trump about the Epstein case.

He shoved his chubby finger in her face, and snarled: “Quiet, quiet piggy!”

Lovely, eh?

By Tuesday he was brushing off the brutal murder of Washington Post journalist, Jamal Khashoggi in 2018. Seated cozily next to Saudi Arabia’s crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, whose dirty regime ordered the killing, the dead-eyed Trump said, “Things happen.”

There’s no newsroom guidance I’m aware of anywhere that says journalists have to just sit there and take it when a slob, and convicted felon calls them “piggy” and shrugs off the brutal killing of one of their colleagues by simply saying, “Things happen.”

It is very hard to respect a press corp which won’t respect itself. Trump works for their readers, viewers, and listeners, and I’m not sure when exactly they forgot that.

For now, I will continue to fervently hope that in addition to pressing for an answer to the one and only question about the Epstein Files that truly matters, Democrats take this far more important question to the nation as a whole as we head toward the midterms:

“Are you better off now than you were two years ago?”

The answer to that will go a long way toward determining the balance of power in America, and just how much more crap we will all have to take from this lying, orange, abusive loudmouth.

This hero offered to punch out Trump

Two days after her beloved Democratic Party showed it still has plenty of fight left by battering Donald Trump’s Republicans at the polls all over the country, Nancy Pelosi, 85, announced her retirement from Congress Thursday.

There ought to be monuments erected in Washington D.C., to honor this great woman. You can wipe the damn smirk off your face.

I’m dead serious about this.

After raising her five children to adulthood, because the children — ALL children — always came first with Pelosi, she served in Congress for 38 years where she would become the first woman ever to ascend to Speaker of the House.

She was without a doubt the most powerful person to ever hold this lofty position, and if you don’t believe me, let former Republican Speaker John Boehner tell it:

“Nancy Pelosi had a killer instinct and may be the most powerful Speaker ever. She understands power, knows how to use it, and rarely leaves fingerprints.”

Can somebody point to one person like Pelosi in our nation’s history who has book-ended and deftly turned the pages on two ugly chapters of Republican filth, incompetence and destruction?

Can somebody point to just one person who hung in for America’s sake and led the charge to help rescue her not once, not twice, but three times from the abyss?

In 2006, George Bush, the Far, Far Stupider One, was in the middle of his patented, daily drooling while hundreds and thousands of our nation’s finest were being killed and wounded every month in Iraq thanks to a war predicated by his singular ability to lie through his crooked teeth.

As caskets draped in flags were brought back to our country and hidden from plain sight by the Cheneys, Roves and Rumsfelds, we were quietly steaming toward what would be the most horrific financial crisis since the Great Depression. Making matters potentially worse, just moments away from hundreds of thousands losing their homes and jobs, Bush was snorting and cackling about Social Security reform, because, well, shouldn’t everybody have the ability to invest in the stock market? Yes, had that ghastly GOP reform gone through, the Great Recession could have actually been far, far worse.

Imagine that.

Well, not a moment too soon, the 2006 Midterms happened and the Democrats seized control of the House and Senate and set about restoring order to Bush’s odious, corrupt Republican animal House.

And, say, is this ringing any bells …?

Anyway, in the Democrats’ wisdom back in ’07 they nominated Pelosi, the firebrand from San Francisco, to become the face of the party and the first woman ever to grab the Speaker’s gavel.

And an aside: I still get chills down my spine and a lump in my throat typing about this. I was not prepared for that moment. To see a woman finally rise to these new heights in American politics meant my daughters and other daughters could do it, too. In short, I became a blubbering fool and my love and respect for Nancy Pelosi started.

Because I am telling you again: Nobody has ever done her job better.

From 2007 to 2011, Pelosi ran the House with style, integrity and a champion arm-wrestler’s strength. She was key in helping elect the first Black man to the U.S. presidency. And when you think about it, have we ever been better off than with Barack Obama and Pelosi at the helm of our government?

Sigh …

Pelosi’s 111th Congress was one of the most productive ever. Some say it was the most productive. Who am I to quibble? She tirelessly rammed through life-changing and -saving legislation. She didn’t suffer fools lightly, but really she was just smarter and savvier then what she was messing with — and she wasn’t messing around.

Pelosi’s Congress passed Wall Street reforms, got rid of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” committed our country on a course toward clean energy, and twisted enough arms to get something called the Affordable Care Act passed by a whisker. Hell, those are just a few headlines. I could type 30 more column inches on what this titan accomplished during her historic, four-year term.

In short: SHE-HANDLED-THIS.

So with order restored and our nation on its way back from the abyss, the Democrats did what they absolutely do best: took a big, damn nap.

The Radical Right Tea Party blew a hole through truth and decency in the 2010 Midterms, and after four years of restoring order to the House, Pelosi was done as Speaker.

Six years later, the Democrats still in a Van Winkle slumber sat out the 2016 elections and the repulsive Trump, replete with a Republican Senate and Congress, was elected president.

The Democrats awoke from their nap in a panic and started sifting through the rubble for answers while tripping all over themselves in the darkness.

Again, is this ringing any bells?

It was going to be a long, terrifying two years.

In fact, it was a long, terrifying two years. But something magic was happening … While the orange beast terrorized the countryside, he was being met with real resistance. I’m talking get-out-on-the-street-and-do-something resistance.

If the Democrats were completely outraged by Trump and his GOP, they were even more outraged at themselves for letting it happen in the first place. A resolve to clean up that mess gripped the Left.

Then, just like in 2006, the 2018 Midterms came along and hopefully in the nick of time.

The Democrats demolished the GOP at the polls that year, casting nearly nine millions more votes. Despite being gerrymandered to the point of suffocation, the Dems seized 40 seats in Congress. They were back in charge, but who would lead them?

What?! Are you kidding?! Who would lead them?!?!

Nancy Pelosi would lead them, that’s who, dammit.

You got a mess to clean up? You need order restored? You need a titan to stand up to a bully? You need strength and honor staring down the crooked face of evil and corruption?

You call on the strongest leader in the world.

Pelosi rebuilt committees brick by brick, tore in to the ghastly Trump and tore up his slobbery speeches. Nobody, I mean NOBODY publicly took it to Trump like she did. He had no idea what to do with a strong woman, who was half his size, and better than him in every, single way.

Pelosi and her Democratic Congress put the brakes on Trump and his odious presidency, and helped Joe Biden run the madman out of office in 2020 — but not before his appalling attack on America just months after that election. Pelosi, of course, was in our Capitol that day, while Trump’s anti-America MAGA filth were hunting her down.

She took charge, and was caught on camera saying of Trump:

“I want to punch him out, and I’m going to go to jail, and I’m going to be happy.”

Instead, and unfortunately, Trump slithered away from his violent attack because Biden’s Justice Department lacked even half of Pelosi’s strength and resolve.

With Biden in office, Pelosi did what she does best and got the votes to pass the historic Inflation Reduction Act, the CHIPS bill and the bipartisan infrastructure law.

In 2022, Republicans reclaimed the House and Pelosi stepped aside from formal leadership, tossing the baton to New York’s Hakeem Jeffries.

These days, the weak and grotesque Republican Speaker Mike Johnson has rammed through one bill of significance and it helps only the billionaires in this country, who helped install his rancid party in office.

Johnson replacing Pelosi as Speaker is the flea replacing the lion.

And if you are reading all this, and still have the inclination, to start with some, “Yeah, buts …,” concerning Pelosi you’ve missed the entire point of this column and her career.

You can attach “yeah buts” to Washington, Lincoln, Roosevelt, King, or Kennedy … but they are all recognized as iconic figures.

Like these men, Nancy Pelosi is a singular person in American history. Her tirelessly work in service to this country, has made it a better, safer, healthier, and smarter place to live.

So how do you honor this woman’s sacrifice and leadership?

You thank her.

You build monuments to her.

These signs spell doom for Trump's shocking true goal

Lately, I’m hearing way too damn much about the anti-American Donald Trump running for a third term in the office he disgraces on an hourly basis — and it needs to stop right now.

We are not even 10 months into this second reign of terror, and have more than enough to worry about without spending needless energy on a fever dream pouring from a madman’s sick and quickly diminishing mind.

Getting hung up on this third-term nonsense is not only stupid but self-defeating and dangerous. So let’s talk about reality for the next five minutes or so, instead of overheated conjecture.

I want to type with some precision about what the grotesque, 79-year-old Trump is, and what he is not.

Donald John Trump is provably an America-attacking, uncouth, convicted felon and bigoted slob who is both sick in mind and physical health. He drags his heavy left leg around with him like so many of his failed relationships. He visits the doctor more often than he goes to church, and lately has had more screenings than a 150-year-old house in a mosquito-infested swamp in Louisiana.

He is terminally ill, and second-term challenged.

He’s a morbidly obese mountain of hate, whose swollen ankles should hire one of the 1,200 lawyers he has in his employ, and sue for lack of support.

Just Monday, this lumbering lout casually bragged to a bunch of fawning reporters, “I got an MRI, it was perfect.”

This was significant news that as usual didn’t get the attention it deserved by an incompetent corporate media that has been brought to heel by their abuser with the short leash.

MRIs aren’t handed out at alleged routine medical checkups like lollipops.

“OK, Mr. Trump, let’s take your height, weight, and a MRI …”

Magnetic Resonance Imaging is used to detect and/or monitor potentially serious issues inside our bodies. The deteriorating Trump is a walking, talking medical crisis, and you don’t need a doctor to detect that.

I’ve typed for some time now that maybe instead of wondering if our country will survive these next three-plus years of Trump, this question should be asked instead: Will Trump survive these next three-plus years?

In Japan Tuesday, he spent part of the afternoon aimlessly wandering around Akasaka Palace like Frankenstein after an all-night bender at the biergarten. It has to be seen to be believed, as newly elected Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi does her best to keep Orange Frankenstein in her general vicinity.

This is where I feel obligated to tell you that if Joe Biden had been seen doing this, it would have been headline news for several months — the things bulletins are made of. With Trump it gets little to no mention at all, before attention is turned back to the 73 other circus events he has loosely choreographed, including insane talk of a third term.

Trump is in obvious failing health, so yapping about anything past next month, much less 2028, is a massive waste of everybody’s time. But that’s exactly what Trump did right after breathlessly breaking the news of his “perfect” MRI.

That’s when he said he “would love” a third term because of his “popularity with supporters,” who just can’t get enough of a guy who is about to end SNAP benefits for 42 million Americans, many of whom are THEM.

And oblige me while I stop here to remind you of this, before continuing:

Every bill to help feed people in my long lifetime has been passed by Democrats. Every bill to starve them has been passed by Republicans.

Look, in the next year or so, as the evidence mounts that Trump is deteriorating faster than a snowball in the Arizona desert, his health will finally grudgingly be flagged by the very so-called media experts, who are now fixated on this fictional third term.

So let me step to the head of the line and type this: He should resign immediately, and go off to spend whatever little time he has left on some golf course, dragging that leg around, stiffing caddies, and punishing golf carts and playing companions.

Meantime, there is something else that bothers me about these busted, cloudy forecasters who warn of another term despite the feeble, wandering old man who is right in front of their damn eyes: They are giving this 350-pound pile of sludge some form of inevitability and power he simply doesn’t have.

I understand Republicans have spent decades and billions of dollars turning our Constitution into some perverted document with optional wording, but the 22nd Amendment clearly spells out, “No person shall be elected to the office of the President more than twice.”

Stop normalizing something that should have never even been a thing.

Finally, by talking of this fictional third term, we are distracting from his myriad failings as both a president and a man. There’s a better-than-average chance this monster abused children with his dead buddy, Jeffrey Epstein. The list of Epstein’s worshippers that Trump’s bought-and-paid-for attorney general said was on her desk has allegedly gone missing, and with it evidence that would potentially tie him to absolutely unthinkable crimes.

Just a month ago, there was significant bipartisan steam behind getting these Epstein documents released. Every minute wasted talking about third terms sprinkled with fairy dust dissuades us from talking about how unfit for life this appalling man is.

But if you can’t get enough of worrying about things that will never happen, I’ll give you something pleasant to fixate on that most certainly will:

In the next 20 years or so, there will in fact be big talk of a Trump third term — maybe even a fourth or fifth one. History’s worst will convene, and Trump and his beady red eyes, will elbow his way further downward and make it clear in his special way that only he can handle the heat of yet another term in his new home.

That’s when I reckon, Lucifer will be only too happy to oblige …

(D. Earl Stephens is the author of “Toxic Tales: A Caustic Collection of Donald J. Trump’s Very Important Letters” and finished up a 30-year career in journalism as the Managing Editor of Stars and Stripes. You can find all his work here.)