John Casey

This is Trump's tell that all isn't well

Years ago, I was drinking with friends in a dive bar with a jukebox. I went over, quarters in hand, and noticed “It’s the Same Old Song” by the Four Tops, sitting there in the catalog, and chuckled.

I decided to play it ten times in a row.

Every few minutes, as we drank, the same Motown classic kicked on again. Eventually one of my friends cracked, “Why do they keep playing this same song?” A moment later, the realization dawned.

That moment has been rattling around in my head lately, because Donald Trump and officials in his administration have been doing something remarkably similar. Whenever they’re confronted with uncomfortable questions, whether about corruption, incompetence, policy failures, scandal or even war, they walk up to the metaphorical jukebox and punch in the number.

Except their tune isn’t Motown.

It’s the stock market.

In Trump’s second term, the administration has relied on a single talking point whenever things get awkward: a rising Dow Jones Industrial Average. Lately, since it went past 50,000, they’ve relied on it more. Alas, at this writing, it’s down around 47,000.

No matter the topic, no matter the controversy, someone in Trumpworld brings the conversation back to the same supposed proof of success.

If critics raise concerns about tariffs or inflation, the response is: Look at the Dow.

If lawmakers question government misconduct, the answer is: Look at the Dow.

If scandals erupt — the same old song again. Just look at the Dow.

Attorney General Pam Bondi delivered perhaps the most jaw-dropping example, during a tense House Judiciary Committee hearing last month. Pressed about why her Justice Department had failed to indict Jeffrey Epstein’s co-conspirators, Bondi didn’t provide an explanation. She didn’t offer new evidence or promise transparency.

Instead, she blurted out: “The Dow is over 50,000 right now!”

It was so stupid it sounded like a cruel joke. Epstein survivors were sitting right behind her. Yet Bondi doubled down, insisting Congress should be discussing the booming stock market rather than pressing her about Epstein’s network.

She even mocked Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD), sarcastically calling him a “great stock trader” while dismissing questions with hissy fits of whack-o false factoids.

Bondi’s performance, tone-deaf and nonsensical, perfectly encapsulated the messaging strategy that defines Trump’s second term. When in doubt, play the stock market song.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent sings it, arguing that the market “lives in the future” and that soaring share prices prove investors believe Trump’s policies will produce prosperity.

Vice President JD Vance has incorporated the talking point into his claim that the economy deserves an “A-plus-plus-plus,” assuring voters that gains on Wall Street will translate into real benefits for ordinary families.

National Economic Council director Kevin Hassett echoes the theme, pointing to market valuations as evidence economic “lift-off” is driven by investment.

Loathsome lickspittle House Speaker Mike Johnson joins the chorus, invoking the “Trump effect” when the market hits a milestone.

Historically, the U.S. stock market has recovered and risen. But the problem with building an entire political narrative around it is that markets are fickle. They surge, stall, and sometimes plunge. And lately, the market has started reacting to the instability the administration prefers not to discuss.

Trump’s impulsive decision to launch military action against Iran has sent tremors through global markets. Oil prices surged, as tanker traffic slowed through the Strait of Hormuz, one of the world’s most vital shipping lanes for energy supplies.

Investors tend to despise uncertainty, and Trump’s erratic explanations for the conflict and its future have only deepened concerns about how long the crisis could last and how far it might escalate.

Does it end in four-to-five weeks? Tomorrow? Will we put boots on the ground?

The market reaction to such questions has been swift and punishing. Monday’s numbers were all over the place, as investors tried to digest the geopolitical shock alongside growing warning signs at home.

One of those signs arrived last Friday, in the form of a very poor jobs report. Economists had already warned that the labor market was cooling after years of robust growth. The latest data confirmed those fears.

At the same time, inflation remains. Many projections suggest core inflation will linger between roughly 2.6 and 2.8 percent through the end of the year, with some economists warning it could climb higher if tariffs and fiscal deficits continue to push prices up.

Those tariffs, combined with restrictive immigration policies, and the implications of rising fuel prices because of this war, are a confluence of danger signs for Trump.

The result is an economy that looks far less rosy than administration talking points suggest. Consumers continue to grapple with high costs for groceries, housing, and other necessities.

This Trump administration has relied on the stock market as its universal answer to critics. Questions about corruption are waved away with reference to record highs. Concerns about inflation are brushed aside with the same statistics. Even uncomfortable questions about Epstein were dismissed by pointing to the Dow.

But if the market continues to sink, becomes combustible or even stagnates, that shield disappears.

And that raises an uncomfortable question for Trump and his allies: if the one metric they’ve celebrated suddenly stops cooperating, what do they have left to point to?

Sooner or later, people will figure out that the same old market song was nothing but a joke.

John Casey was most recently Senior Editor, The Advocate, and is a freelance opinion and feature story writer. Previously, he was a Capitol Hill press secretary, and spent 25 years in media and public relations in NYC. He is the co-author of LOVE: The Heroic Stories of Marriage Equality (Rizzoli, 2025), named by Oprah in her "Best 25 of 2025.”

This gross display showed Trump's contempt for honor, service and decency itself

Donald Trump has offended us in so many ways, we should have built up immunity to his acrid tongue and distortive actions. Most react by calling whatever he’s said or done now “a new low point,” or asking, “Does it ever end?” But no, it doesn’t, and it always seems to get worse. Shockingly worse. There is no bottom.

One of Trump’s most offensive and blasphemous moments came this weekend, when his hypocritical deportment spoke louder than any savagery in his words.

On Saturday, Trump traveled to Dover Air Force Base in Delaware to attend the dignified — emphasis on dignified — transfer of six U.S. Army Reserve soldiers killed by an Iranian drone strike in Kuwait.

The visit was intended to honor the first American service members killed in the escalating conflict with Iran, with a ritual Trump himself has described as one of the “toughest” duties of a commander-in-chief.

Instead, he faced sharp criticism for wearing a white “USA” campaign hat during the solemn ceremony — criticism so severe that Fox News, Trump’s personal propaganda service, appeared to try to pretend it all never happened, broadcasting old footage of a hatless Trump at such a ceremony and passing it off as new.

At least Fox said sorry. When Saturday’s ceremony was over, Trump hopped back on his plane and flew to Florida to play golf and mingle with the rich and entitled at Mar-a-Lago, proving he couldn’t give a rat’s ass about his war or its deadly consequences.

But that white golf hat went far beyond bad taste. It desecrated the memory of the fallen troops.

The hat was grossly inappropriate. It had Trump’s trademark gauche gold lettering, the numbers 45–47 emblazoned on the side. Those numbers, that gold, signaled that everything is ultimately all about him. He never took it off.

This is a man who wormed his way out of military service during the Vietnam War with “bone spurs.” Whether as Cadet Bone Spurs or Commander Cankles — could the conditions be linked? — he has never experienced the hell of war or, frankly, any real discomfort.

Well, that’s not entirely true. He has had to endure the burden of flying on the cheap and dingy behemoth that is Air Force One, but that hardship will soon be relieved when Qatar’s most luxurious plane in the world comes into U.S. service.

Trump will no longer suffer the indignities of having to fly on the world’s most recognizable aircraft. Phew.

What made Saturday at Dover so sickening is that Trump has spent the better part of a decade degrading and dismissing America’s military — spitting in its face.

What he did Saturday was not mourning. Trump doesn’t have an empathetic bone in his body. If you know Trump, you know he thinks anyone who loses their life in war is beneath him. So what exactly was going through his mind?

He stood before flag-draped coffins, holding the bodies of men and women killed in a war he started without a clear strategy, without congressional authorization, without serious accounting of the lives that would be lost. That alone was breathtakingly disrespectful.

He looked somber for the cameras. But if Trump felt even an ounce of genuine grief, he would do something he has never once done: apologize, over and over and over again.

Apologize for calling Sen. John McCain, a man who endured five years of torture as a prisoner of war in Vietnam, “not a war hero” because he was captured.
Apologize for attacking Gold Star families, most infamously the Khan family, who lost their son Humayun in Iraq and were rewarded with petty attacks from a man who received five draft deferments.
Apologize for reportedly calling American war dead at the Aisne-Marne cemetery in France “suckers” and “losers” — men who gave everything so Europe and the world could be free.
Apologize for skipping a D-Day commemoration at that cemetery because it was raining. The men in those graves marched into machine gun fire. Their commander-in-chief didn’t want to get wet.
Apologize for gutting Defense Department leadership and treating the armed forces like a personal militia.
Apologize for purging career military officials, and replacing experienced defense leaders with loyalists whose primary qualification is devotion to one man.
Apologize for nominating a defense secretary who treats women and LGBTQ+ soldiers as risks on the battlefield and who claims the media is trying to make Dear Leader Donald “look bad” by honoring those killed in Iran.

This past week, Trump told the New York Post that unlike everyone else, he doesn’t get “the yips” about sending ground troops into Iran.

What a flippant choice of words: a golfing term, grotesquely trivial when applied to the gravest decision a president can make.

The reason presidents and military commanders agonize over committing troops, the reason they lose sleep, consult, study history, and weigh every option, is because they understand what it means when you put boots on the ground: you are putting human beings in the crosshairs.

You are signing death warrants. The “yips”? It’s called having a conscience. It’s called making the decision with immense seriousness. It’s called understanding the weight of the office you hold and the choices you make.

Donald Trump, you give us all a disgusting case of the “yips.”.

Trump’s behavior at Dover on Saturday was not an honor to those six fallen service members. It was an insult. A man who has made a career of demeaning those who serve does not get to associate himself with their sacrifice.

He does not get to stand before their coffins and claim grief he has never earned or shown.

Every American who has served, who has lost someone who served, who believes this nation owes its military the most solemn respect, should be furious. Not just at the white hat. All of it.

At the years of contempt. At a war with no plan. At the cavalier talk of sending ground troops into battle and risking their lives.

John Casey was most recently Senior Editor, The Advocate, and is a freelance opinion and feature story writer. Previously, he was a Capitol Hill press secretary, and spent 25 years in media and public relations in NYC. He is the co-author of LOVE: The Heroic Stories of Marriage Equality (Rizzoli, 2025), named by Oprah in her "Best 25 of 2025.”

Trump's new DHS pick can't stop embarrassing himself — and he hasn't even started

There just might be a second reason — besides the constant fawning praise for Dear Leader — why Donald Trump chose Sen. Markwayne Mullin (R-OK) as his new Secretary of Homeland Security.

Trump has floated the idea of hosting a UFC fight on the White House grounds on July 4th, trampling the memories of John-John and Caroline Kennedy playing on those lawns, and presidential dogs Rex, Barney, and Beau scampering about.

So what could top an ultimate marquee match between Mullin and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth? Let’s call it the “Cabinet Clash:” two Trump testosterone toadies, going mano a mano.

Because if you actually look at Mullin’s qualifications for his new role, there isn’t much that recommends him, other than that he compiled a 5–0 record in professional Mixed Martial Arts.

There was a time when the Secretary of Homeland Security was perhaps the most serious and consequential cabinet post. The job was created after 9/11 to coordinate intelligence, secure our borders, and manage the immense responsibility of protecting 330 million Americans.

Prestigious names have led the department: Tom Ridge, Janet Napolitano, Jeh Johnson. During Trump’s first administration, Gen. John Kelly. Serious people for a serious job.

Then the gravitas of the position took a nosedive when Kristi Noem rode in on her horse. Only this week was she thrown off, for being far less than forthright.

And now there’s Sen. Mullin, a man whose most notable pre-politics credential is that 5–0 MMA record.

Politically speaking, Mullin’s MMA stands for Macho Mixed-Up Ass.

Let’s start with the “mixed-up” part.

This week, Mullin pulled an Abbott and Costello routine, simultaneously arguing regarding strikes on Iran that the U.S. is and is not at war.

First he declared, “This is war, and we’re taking out the threat.”

Then he tried to clarify: “What I was saying was that they’ve declared war on us, but war is ugly. It always has been ugly.”

He finished with this gem: “We haven’t declared war. So if we haven’t declared war, then I don’t see that. The president hasn’t asked us to declare war yet, but they have declared war on us.”

Who’s on first, what’s on second, “I don’t know” is on third, and somewhere on that field of battle Mullin is still milling around, trying to decipher his own explanation.

If you thought Hegseth had captured the trophy for inauthentic and immature machismo, Mullin may give him a run for his money.

In November 2023, Teamsters President Sean O’Brien appeared before the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee. Famously, Mullin challenged him to a fight.

“This is the time, this is the place,” Mullin said. “If you want to run your mouth, we can be two consenting adults. We can finish it here.”

Sure sounds like a sane, responsible adult to me.

This year, at the State of the Union, Mullin grabbed a protest sign from Rep. Al Green (D-TX). Frankly, Mullin would make a fine ICE agent. He’s had practice roughing up a person of color.

And if you’re a member of the media, take note.

In April last year, Mullin posted a video recounting an 1890 incident in which a reporter was shot by a congressman in the U.S. Capitol. Mullin suggested “fake news” might decrease if modern disputes could be handled that way. He said it was a joke. Haha.

Mullin does enjoy “joking” around on Fox News, where he has made something of a habit of embarrassing himself.

In one segment, he waxed poetic about how war has a particular smell and a particular taste. The only problem was that Mullin has never served a single day in uniform.

Even back home in Oklahoma, he has hardly been a profile in integrity.

Mullin ran for Congress on a term-limits pledge, then broke it twice. In 2013 his plumbing business was the subject of an ethics investigation. More recently, he racked up STOCK Act violations, meant to stop members of Congress profiting from insider information.

He called Rand Paul, a senator who will be overseeing his confirmation, a “freaking snake.”

Come to think of it, Paul v. Mullin would also make a great MMA fight.

So this Macho Mixed-up Ass is the man who would oversee the Secret Service, FEMA, Customs and Border Protection, ICE, and the TSA. A man who endorses war — and not war — violence against the press and political opponents, who is ethically challenged and has zero background in security, intelligence, or managing a massive federal bureaucracy.

And all that said, Mullin might yet need to be reminded who his boss actually is.

A few days ago, while discussing Iran on Fox News, Mullin repeatedly referred to Defense Secretary Hegseth as “President Hegseth.” He made the slip twice before awkwardly correcting himself.

The Department of Homeland Security was built in the wreckage of the worst intelligence failure in American history. The job requires toughness but also judgment, patience, legal sophistication, and the ability to manage roughly 260,000 employees across more than two dozen agencies.

So while I joke about a Hegseth-Mullin cage match, Mullin’s nomination is no laughing matter.

Whether he realizes it or not, the United States faces real threats from adversaries around the world, and those adversaries are watching this spectacle of discombobulation, inexperience, and bravado.

When the real test comes, America may discover the difference between a man who talks about the smell of war, and a leader who actually knows how to prevent one.

John Casey was most recently Senior Editor, The Advocate, and is a freelance opinion and feature story writer. Previously, he was a Capitol Hill press secretary, and spent 25 years in media and public relations in NYC. He is the co-author of LOVE: The Heroic Stories of Marriage Equality (Rizzoli, 2025), named by Oprah in her "Best 25 of 2025.”

Cricket the dog gets last laugh as cruel Trump aide finally gets the boot

Let’s not pretend this was a surprise. Kristi Noem finally got fired, and if there is a God, somewhere out there Cricket the dog is happily wagging her tail.

Because killing Cricket the dog is the act for which this pathetic excuse for a human being will primarily be known to history. Not a stateswoman. Not a security expert. Not an intelligence expert. Not even intelligent. Not even a competent bureaucrat, in an administration full of incompetents.

Noem is, and will always and forever be, the woman who shot her own dog then bragged about it in a book, genuinely seeming to think it would make people think her fit for office.

That tells you everything you need to know about Noem’s judgment, her empathy, and the yawning void where her soul should be. She is an empty shell of a human being, lacquered in phoniness.

Her tenure as Homeland Security Secretary was a daily soap opera about an aged beauty pageant contestant craving a return to the limelight, wailing across all manner of media, social and otherwise, “Look at me, look at me, look at me,” all while inflicting relentless, performative cruelties on citizens and immigrants alike.

Her time as a cabinet secretary was a constantly staged show with a single cast member, filmed for TV, Instagram, TikTok and all paid for by you and me, the great American taxpayers.

Cricket the dog just bit birds Noem didn’t want her to bite. This week, Noem’s own actions came back to bite her, when it was disclosed that an “advertising” company that got almost a quarter-million-dollar federal windfall for a campaign to promote Noem was shadier than her eyelids.

The campaign for the made-up cowgirl was shot at Mount Rushmore. At least Noem’s stone-cold face fit the venue.

She became a running joke. Even when Trump finally dumped her, he gave her an outlandish title: Special Envoy for The Shield of the Americas. WTF?

Good luck to … The Shield of the Americas. Whatever that is. Noem wouldn’t know a policy if it hit her in the face — because it would just bounce off anyway.

While migrant children sat in DHS internment camps that would embarrass a third-world dictatorship — filthy, overcrowded, unfit for humans — Noem’s heavily made-up visage was being plastered across a multi-million dollar ad campaign she personally championed.

That pancake-shellacked face, immortalized so devastatingly by South Park, interrupted America’s evening TV like an ICE agent kicking in the door. The irony that she expended more energy on marketing herself than protecting anyone was apparently lost on her. It was not lost on us.

Then came this week’s Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, perhaps the most satisfying slice of political TV since, well, Trump tripped up the stairs to Air Force One.

Sen. Thom Tillis (R-SC), a Republican, took Noem to pieces. All of us who loathed her were cheering him on.

Tillis was smart. He highlighted that which will haunt Noem forever: what she did to Cricket. Tillis scolded Noem, criticizing her for killing a 14-month-old hunting dog: "You decided to kill that dog because you had not invested the appropriate time in training and then you have the audacity to go into a book and say it's a leadership lesson about choices."

My dogs, Freddy and Cooper, are better leaders than Noem could ever hope to be.

Under Noem, ICE agents prowled neighborhoods like an occupying force, targeting people of color in a campaign directed by a white-nationalist alien, Stephen Miller. He was Noem’s real boss, feeding her talking points like a handler feeding a snake.

She oversaw the shooting deaths of two people in Minneapolis, American citizens she viciously and falsely branded as terrorists. She refused to apologize to the families.

She was tone deaf to a fault. Visiting a maximum security prison in El Salvador, she wore a $50,000 Rolex, creating what may be the single most heinous image of an out-of-touch administration, overflowing with golden excess.

And then there was the alleged affair with Corey Lewandowski. The old Trump attack dog — the only sort of dog Noem likes, or at least one she hasn’t dragged to the gravel pit yet — was kicked out on Thursday too.

During the Senate hearing, Noem’s husband sat behind her as senators asked point-blank whether she was sleeping with her aide and adviser.

She couldn’t say no. She wouldn’t say no. How could she say no? All while her husband sat behind her, sucking in the fumes from 10 pounds of hairspray hardened hair.

Noem entered office with nothing but blow-dried ambition. She had no intelligence background. No security experience. Nothing that qualified her to run a department tasked with keeping 330 million Americans safe.

She has already written one book about killing things. Chances are, now she’s been kicked out of Trumpland, she’ll write another, about her time in government. Allow me to suggest a title: The Banality of Evil. It’s that or Lassie Go Home.

The old cliché says that when you’ve done your job, and it’s time to move on, you walk off into the sunset. Not Noem. She’s taking the down escalator — the express — to a fire-drenched hell, where she won’t need her special blanket.

And Cricket, looking down from doggie heaven, is having the last laugh.

John Casey was most recently Senior Editor, The Advocate, and is a freelance opinion and feature story writer. Previously, he was a Capitol Hill press secretary, and spent 25 years in media and public relations in NYC. He is the co-author of LOVE: The Heroic Stories of Marriage Equality (Rizzoli, 2025), named by Oprah in her "Best 25 of 2025.”

Trump just walked into a staggering trap

As of this writing, six American troops are dead. Donald Trump says there will be more. More than 1,000 Iranians are dead, and there will certainly be many more. The map of the Middle East is a sea of fire under “Operation Epic Fury,” and only 27 percent of the U.S. public is onboard.

So the real question isn’t whether “we” can win this war. It’s how fast Trump will claim he already has.

Trump has been crowing that while Iran allegedly tried to kill him three times, he “got Khamenei on the first try.” Secretary of “War” Pete Hegseth called that “guts.” It isn’t guts. It’s the reckless bragging of a man treating a potential world war like the season finale of a reality series: blow everything up, grab the ratings, cancel the show before the numbers tank and the shark is jumped.

But in Iran, the shark is taking a big bite out of the truth about why the war began.

The trap Trump has walked into is staggering. He explicitly demanded regime change. Every historian and military strategist will tell you regime change has never happened without boots on the ground. Trump ruled that out. Sort of. It depends on the day.

Utterly distasteful and offensive, Trump said he doesn’t get “the yips” about troops on the ground. The reason his predecessors, like anyone with a soul, got the yips was because they were risking American lives. What a heartless jerk.

The most dishonest person in the world keeps making half-assed promises. As each falls apart, he makes another.

We are almost a week in, and the reasons America went to war remain embarrassingly murky. Secretary of State Marco Rubio claimed it was to neutralize an imminent threat to Israel. Trump said he was the one who pushed Benjamin Netanyahu, not the other way around. Hegseth, equally untruthful and idiotic, has his own theories.

Americans were disillusioned and confused from day one. Now they’re getting angrier by the hour. There is no justification for this war. There never was. There never will be. And that’s becoming horrifically obvious.

Meanwhile, the dominoes are falling. Gas prices are spiking. Economists warn that petroleum-linked inflation is just getting started. Refineries are destroyed. The Dow is spooked.

Trump built his entire political identity on economic and no-war braggadocio: “best economy ever,” “I alone can fix it,” “no World War III,” “no forever wars.” Now he owns an oil shock and a war he started that has the makings of World War III.

In May 2003, just six weeks into the Iraq War, George W. Bush famously strutted onto the USS Abraham Lincoln under a “Mission Accomplished” banner. He wanted to project strength, declare an end to major combat operations, and pivot to domestic politics before a long, bloody insurgency exposed the whole enterprise as a catastrophe built on lies.

The same false premises are in play now: imminent threat, weapons of mass destruction, regime change, a grateful population to welcome Americans as liberators. Those premises collapsed. Wars started on false pretenses never end well.

Trump is too ill-informed, and too reckless, to understand.

There can be little doubt he is preparing his own “Mission Accomplished” moment — except he is more selfish, less humble, and has even less patience than Bush. To be clear, Bush was never known for humility. But compared to Trump, he looks like a pussycat.

Trump will surely declare “victory” soon, not because the threat is eliminated but because the markets are screaming, the oil industry is hemorrhaging, and Trump sees giant losses on the horizon, along with the prospect of getting tied down trying to fix a country he broke.

The only difference is that Trump won’t bother with a flight suit. He’ll do it in front of those flimsy black curtains that doubled as a Situation Room at Mar-a-Lago.

Fresh off his attack on Venezuela, Trump wants the world to see him as the man who makes strongmen disappear, the most imperial of imperialists.

But just as the Iraq justifications shape-shifted from WMDs to spreading democracy when the WMDs turned out not to exist, so “Operation Epic Fury” has mutated in real time from stopping an “imminent nuclear threat” to personal score-settling by a president who treats foreign policy like a drive-by shooting.

Trump will simply “kill you,” as Hegseth might say. Make a mess, speed away, let someone else clean it up.

Trump didn’t go to war for America. He went to war for Trump. And now he has to get out fast — for Trump.

After September 11, Bush had the benefit of 90 percent public approval. He had goodwill. Trump is starting his war in the basement, with an approval rating at a record low, 36-39 percent, and 60 percent disapproval.

With his war, he barely has a quarter of Americans behind him.

Rising body counts will not move Trump the way they would move a normal president. What will move him are the Dow and oil futures. When the financial fallout becomes intolerable, he will declare victory and bolt, leaving a destabilized Middle East to deal with the wreckage he made.

Trump has zero patience. He cannot stand to be associated with losing. A grinding, inconclusive Middle East war is the definition of losing — slowly, expensively, in public.

When his lies grow old and the polls get even worse, Trump will sprint for his “Mission Accomplished” banner. He will announce that he has eliminated Iran’s nuclear program, degraded its drone and missile capabilities, avenged three assassination attempts, and secured a historic win.

Then he will leave Israel alone in the fight, the region in flames, the cleanup to whoever’s still standing.

Trump doesn’t care about our soldiers. He doesn’t care about peace, stability, or the families of the six Americans already killed and the others to follow. He cares about one thing: how Donald Trump looks when “the show” comes to an end.

John Casey was most recently Senior Editor, The Advocate, and is a freelance opinion and feature story writer. Previously, he was a Capitol Hill press secretary, and spent 25 years in media and public relations in NYC. He is the co-author of LOVE: The Heroic Stories of Marriage Equality (Rizzoli, 2025), named by Oprah in her "Best 25 of 2025.”

Trump just sent his MAGA promises to hell with a rash betrayal

Donald Trump is epically and furiously destroying … all of his 2024 campaign promises, causing MAGA to fume and the rest of the world to sweat.

The official name for his war with Iran, Operation Epic Fury, most aptly describes what is unquestionably Trump’s biggest, more ferocious, blood-boiling hypocrisy of all.

There is one through-line, from gas pumps to grocery aisles to the Epstein files to Epic Fury. The louder and more frequently Trump makes the promise, the more spectacular the inevitable betrayal.

This weekend, he jumped a shark.

Americans feel the disconnect in their proverbial pocketbooks. Trump promised lower prices and relief from inflation. Instead, inflation remains above the Federal Reserve’s target. Tariffs, Trump’s favored word until “war” came along, add pressure to consumer costs.

Grocery bills haven’t retreated. Essentials are still pricey. And now, with a widening war in the Middle East, energy markets are rattled. Iranian retaliation targeting infrastructure, including Saudi Arabia's biggest oil refinery, threatens to send gas prices climbing.

“Drill, baby, drill” doesn’t mean much when global supply lines are on fire and geopolitical instability is priced in at the pump.

The same with health care. Trump promised better and cheaper. Expired Affordable Care Act subsidies and rising Medicare and Medicaid costs belie it. There is no relief in sight. No legislation, no executive orders, nothing to address a quickening national crisis.

Then there are the Epstein files. Trump pledged full disclosure. Appropriately, that was a sick joke. What has occurred has been steeped in non-disclosure. Trump’s Attorney General and the abhorrent FBI director openly shield their boss.

And all of this — the high prices, the health care strain, the botched Epstein releases — are now outshone by his biggest hypocrisy, his biggest lie of all. Trumpism was never about “America First” or “start no wars.” It was about Trump as dictator and imperialist.

He pressed “go” on Operation Epic Fury and unleashed death, destruction and chaos throughout the Middle East. This war, its reasons still unclear, will not end in a week, or two, or five. That’s not what happens when there are no clearly defined objectives.

It’s not what happens when you have a liar and a hypocrite leading the charge. Trump has suggested the operation will last a couple of weeks. History will remember that whopper.

The Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, is dead. So are many other Iranian leaders. That’s a good thing but the Trump administration insists it isn’t “regime change.” Strange, because it sure looks like a governmental decapitation.

Adding to the symbolism of lies and double-crossing — and the alarm — is Pete Hegseth, the Secretary of Defense who after Trump represents the ultimate “F.U.” to MAGA.

Trump promised no wars. Instead, he and Hegseth started a “War Department,” with Hegseth as “Secretary of War” and soldiers recast as “warriors,” committed to a “warrior ethos.”

The candidate who campaigned as the antidote to endless Middle East conflict now presides, with the woefully inexperienced Hegseth, over a conflict that risks expanding beyond anyone’s wildest imaginations.

Two lying, untrustworthy warmongers, who think peace is for sissies.

We are told this won’t be Iraq. It will be. We are told it will be limited. It won’t be. Contained. Not anymore. Strategic. Never was.

Americans have heard this before. Under George W. Bush, in 2003, Iraq was supposed to be quick and surgical. Not a quagmire. Not prolonged. Not generational. Oh, and Trump says Iranians should take to the streets and take back their government. In Iraq, Dick Cheney said U.S. forces would be welcomed as liberators. No similarity there.

Hegseth’s “this isn’t Iraq” is an icing of lies on top of a cake of prevarication.

If the promise of “no wars” morphed into Operation Epic Fury, why should the promise of “not a long war” mean only a couple of weeks? When trust is repeatedly broken, it doesn’t magically regenerate into truth, especially when dishonestly flows from Trump and Hegseth.

Hegseth is the embodiment of this transformation. On Monday, standing at the podium of what used to be the decorous Defense Department, he declared: “If you kill or threaten Americans anywhere on Earth, we will hunt you down … and we will kill you.”

“Kill.” It was repugnant.

It was a word delivered not with staid solemnity but with insidious irreverence. Clearly, Hegseth thinks “kill” makes him sound like a UFC champion. It may play well with the bullies and bros.

But Hegseth’s hyper-hypocrisy continues. The same leadership that demands ironclad discipline from its “warriors” has skirted established security protocols, relying on insecure communications channels while lecturing the country about national security threats.

The pattern of pietism is entrenched and unmistakable. Lower prices became lingering inflation. Healthcare reform meant higher premiums. Transparency transformed into protection of the Epstein Class.

And “no wars” mutated into a renamed “War Department” and chaotic Middle East conflict.

Politicians break promises. All. The. Time. But Trump’s lies are worse, with profound implications for Americans and for the world.

You cannot campaign as the peace candidate — and yearn for a Nobel — then govern as a war president. You cannot decry “forever wars” while launching one.

MAGA voters must reconcile themselves to airstrikes, oil volatility, rising gas prices, and the possibility of a drawn-out conflict. They were told “America first.” Instead, they see America entangled abroad while costs rise at home.

Under Trump, America is never first. Trump is first, always. When peace made Trump look weak and like a loser — no Nobel — he became conqueror-in-chief. That’s a lie too.

John Casey was most recently Senior Editor, The Advocate, and is a freelance opinion and feature story writer. Previously, he was a Capitol Hill press secretary, and spent 25 years in media and public relations in NYC. He is the co-author of LOVE: The Heroic Stories of Marriage Equality (Rizzoli, 2025), named by Oprah in her "Best 25 of 2025.”

This sweeping Trump assault has us headed for a hellscape of unimaginable dimensions

The first days of a bombing campaign almost always look successful. Targets are hit. Explosions dominate headlines. Leaders declare strength. But wars are judged by what follows: retaliation, escalation, unintended consequences that unfold in days, weeks, months, and years.

For example, Israeli sources said on Saturday that Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was killed in the initial bombings. But if he is dead, who comes next? His death after 35 years in power would likely trigger a prolonged, ugly and tumultuous struggle.

Further back, remember George W. Bush and his rush to declare “Mission Accomplished," shortly after the attack on Iraq in 2003?

That pattern of not thinking and planning ahead for what comes next mirrors Donald Trump’s life of losing. His deals and grand ideas often look triumphant at the start. Later, collapse, chaos, and damage become clear.

Trump’s decision to join Israel in bombing Iran is shocking the world. It feels reckless and ego-driven — both for Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu — undertaken without fully reckoning with the grave consequences such action could unleash.

Yes, Iran is dangerous. Yes, it should never have nuclear weapons. Yes, the regime’s mass killing of protesters is abominable. But behind the curtain of cruelty is an entrenched military and ruthless theocratic leadership capable of spreading unimaginable horror throughout the Middle East.

It’s already begun.

But let’s start in the U.S., with a president who campaigned in 2024 on ending wars through dealmaking.

Trump has ended nothing. He has built nothing. He has stabilized nothing. That assessment isn’t limited to what’s happening now. It reflects how he has carried himself throughout his life. He is not a winner. He is a loser. He does not create peace. He creates chaos.

Now he has detonated that chaos in the most volatile region on Earth. Why now? For what purpose? For how long?

Trump repeatedly claimed that last year’s U.S. strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities “obliterated” them. Obliterated. He has insisted on that word, dismissing experts who said otherwise.

So why are American bombs once again falling on Iranian soil? You don’t obliterate something and then have to obliterate it again.

There has been no publicly presented evidence that bombing Iran is in America’s best interest. None. No imminent attack disclosed. No ticking-clock intelligence, laid before Congress.

And what of Congress? Article I of the Constitution is clear: Congress has the power to declare war. Trump didn’t seek it. He didn’t secure it. He didn’t build bipartisan consensus. He simply acted. Congress represents the voice of the American people. We, and our elected officials, should decide whether to put American troops in harm’s way.

Trump failed to rally NATO. After years of threatening to weaken the alliance, flirting with abandoning European partners, even floating the absurd notion of invading Greenland, he has left the United States diplomatically diminished.

Rather than assembling a coalition, he has tethered America’s fate to another leader who thrives on confrontation: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Netanyahu has long viewed Iran as Israel’s existential enemy. Iran harbors deep hostility toward Israel and Netanyahu. Netanyahu is polarizing in the Middle East, controversial at home. Trump is viewed globally as erratic, incapable of restraint.

Two unpredictable leaders do not create stability. They do not project peace. And if these two have rid Iran of the equally unpredictable Khamenei, God knows what lies ahead.

This is a sweeping assault with no clearly articulated endgame against an adversary as hardened as it is brutal. If Khamenei is dead, his revolutionary forces will surely retaliate to an extreme.

There has been no serious explanation of what victory looks like, only assurances that bombing will continue. Escalation feels inevitable. Regional war is plausible.

Experts have warned for weeks that a full-scale attack on Iran could ignite the Middle East.

Iran is not isolated. It has a network of proxies: Hezbollah in Lebanon, militias in Iraq, the Houthis in Yemen. They are all capable of striking American assets and allies. Retaliation could be relentless, U.S. troops potential targets.

Shipping lanes could be disrupted. The Strait of Hormuz, through which flows a significant share of the world’s oil, could become a choke point. Energy markets would convulse. Inflation would spike. A fragile global economy, rattled by Trump’s erratic tariff obsession, could tip toward crisis.

And then there’s Russia, which was blunt in response to the bombing, saying it was an “unprovoked act of armed aggression.”

Moscow has deepened ties with Tehran. Iran has supplied Russia with drones. Russia has offered diplomatic cover. By attacking Iran in a sustained way, Trump risks entangling the U.S. in a broader dynamic that could spiral beyond control.

When military powers circle the same battlefield, miscalculation is a real probability.

Even within U.S. military leadership, alarm bells have been ringing. Joint Chiefs Chairman Dan Caine has warned that a full-scale confrontation with Iran would come with “acute risks,” along with being extraordinarily costly and unpredictable.

This is not Venezuela. Iran is no pushover. It is one of the most volatile regimes in the world, rivaling North Korea.

And now we have added another unpredictable actor — the habitual liar that is the President of the United States.

This is the man who has failed at virtually every major endeavor he has led, too many to list. He is not a steady leader. He is a coddled billionaire who has never faced meaningful consequences for his mistakes.

Trump, who thrives on confusion, lies, and chaos, has not clearly articulated objectives, sought congressional authorization, or built a multinational framework. And we are supposed to trust him?

We are headed for a hellscape of unimaginable dimensions.

What unfolds next could reshape the global order: regional war, confrontation with major powers, economic shockwaves hitting American families, gas stations and grocery stores, terror retaliation, cyberattacks … the “acute risks” falling like dominos.

Trump falsely bills himself as the man who would keep America out of endless wars. He foams at the mouth for a Nobel. He launched a farcical “Board of Peace.” Yet he has now lit the fuse in one of the world’s most combustible regions.

Unlike his past failures, his latest bomb is far worse than a bankruptcy. Far, far worse.

John Casey was most recently Senior Editor, The Advocate, and is a freelance opinion and feature story writer. Previously, he was a Capitol Hill press secretary, and spent 25 years in media and public relations in NYC. He is the co-author of LOVE: The Heroic Stories of Marriage Equality (Rizzoli, 2025), named by Oprah in her "Best 25 of 2025.”

This GOP farce just proved the net is closing on Trump

For the better part of 40 years, the Republican Party has chased Bill and Hillary Clinton with fervor bordering on obsession. From Whitewater to Benghazi, from emails to impeachment, the pursuit has been relentless, and always ridiculous.

After Hillary Clinton lost the Electoral College in 2016 (while winning the popular vote), it seemed possible the GOP might finally loosen its grip.

Nope. This week, the GOP tried to light the Clintons on fire again. And as usual, the Clintons proved flame retardant.

In the Epstein affair, James Comer, Chair of the House Oversight Committee, tried to use closed-door depositions to make the former first couple look guilty — or at least more guilty than Donald Trump.

But if Comer and his allies believed they would finally corner the Clintons, they miscalculated badly. The depositions produced no bombshells, no dramatic unravelings — nothing, unless you count the bizarre spectacle of a bunch of clowns asking Hillary about UFOs, and Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-CO) managing to torpedo the whole thing by leaking photos to the press.

If this two-day Chappaqua farce did anything, it made it more obvious that the current president and first lady should testify.

Anyone with documented ties to Jeffrey Epstein, and that includes Bill Clinton, should answer questions under oath. He did. Survivors deserve nothing less than full transparency. All this innuendo and all these flimsy excuses — “bad judgment,” “mistake,” “just business” — need to end. Now.

But if Republicans insist on dragging Hillary Clinton into the room, despite zero evidence she ever met or interacted with Epstein, then fairness demands the standard apply to Melania Trump.

Melania moved in overlapping social circles with Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell. She was photographed at events where Epstein was present. Maxwell reportedly referred to her affectionately — as “sweet pea.”

If Hillary Clinton can be questioned to eliminate doubt, Melania should be too. But don’t bet on it. She’ll hide under her shady hats, and refuse to step forward in her five-inch stilettos.

It shouldn’t stop there. It’s time to pick up the pace. Honestly, if Republicans want to stop Epstein haunting the entire midterms campaign, they need to get down to business.

Why has there been so little urgency to pursue testimony from figures far more substantively tied to Epstein than the Clintons? It’s starting to bother voters, and it’s only going to get worse.

Les Wexner, the billionaire who financed Epstein, did testify — and not a single GOP member of Comer’s committee dared participate in full.

Wexner said he was “deceived,” that Epstein “misappropriated vast sums of money from me and my family.”

Speaking of money, what the hell did Bill Gates need Epstein for?

The Microsoft founder has called meetings with Epstein after his 2008 conviction for child prostitution a “huge mistake” and a “serious error in judgment.”

But a “mistake” is not enough. Epstein was a registered sex offender. His crimes were public knowledge. Why continue meeting with him?

What was so valuable that it justified the reputational and moral risk? Gates has more money than God. It doesn’t make sense. That’s why Gates should testify under oath, and answer questions from the FBI.

So should Alex Acosta, the U.S. Attorney who approved Epstein’s 2008 Florida plea deal, then later became Trump’s secretary of labor.

Acosta later claimed he was told Epstein “belonged to intelligence.”

The full context of how Epstein secured such an extraordinary deal remains disturbingly unresolved.

The lawyer Alan Dershowitz needs to be grilled. He strenuously denies wrongdoing, stating, “I never had sex with any of Epstein’s accusers,” calling allegations “fabricated.”

So why did he hang out with Epstein? Seriously.

Then there’s Woody Allen. In light of all the allegations that have dogged the comic and director, his association with Epstein remains extremely dubious. As recently as September, Allen defended his attendance at Epstein’s dinners, saying Epstein "couldn't have been nicer" and was "charming and personable". And that he “told us he’d been in jail.”

Woody. You of all people should have run for the hills.

Steve Bannon, who spent hours interviewing Epstein after his conviction, says Epstein was “trying to rehabilitate his image.”

Can’t someone subpoena Bannon’s tapes? We’re talking about serious crimes.

And what of figures in proximity to Epstein who overlap directly with Trumpworld — including Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick?

Above all, if Bill Clinton can be compelled to testify a quarter-century after leaving office, then Donald Trump must be called to testify under oath and to be interviewed by the FBI. He was in way deeper.

It is not enough for Trump to toss half-answers at press gaggles or dismiss legitimate questions as “old news” or a “hoax.” Trump once called Epstein a “terrific guy” who liked women “on the younger side.”

That remark has no expiration date. There are photos, footage, flight logs, and overlapping Palm Beach connections. If Congress and the Justice Department truly believe no one is above scrutiny, that principle must begin with the man at the center of their universe.

Here is a starting point: anyone who chose to associate with Epstein after his 2008 conviction should testify. Period. No exceptions. Everyone. If you were really innocent, you should be jumping forward.

Ask yourself a simple question. If you were running a business and a man who had served time for sex crimes against minors offered to help, would you welcome him in? Would you schedule meetings? Would you board his plane? Would you strategize about philanthropy or public image?

Most Americans would recoil.

Yet an astonishing number of powerful people did not. They proceeded as if the conviction were a small inconvenience. And some are lying now.

Why?

The path forward is not complicated. Call everyone who associated with Epstein after his conviction. Put them under oath. Follow the money. Release the files, clean. Apply the same standard to Democrats and Republicans, billionaires and celebrities, former presidents and private citizens alike.

The survivors have waited long enough. And they deserve far better than they’re getting.

John Casey was most recently Senior Editor, The Advocate, and is a freelance opinion and feature story writer. Previously, he was a Capitol Hill press secretary, and spent 25 years in media and public relations in NYC. He is the co-author of LOVE: The Heroic Stories of Marriage Equality (Rizzoli, 2025), named by Oprah in her "Best 25 of 2025.”

New revelations show the end is near for Trump's Epstein defense

For close on 20 years, the American public has been promised the truth about Jeffrey Epstein’s crimes. For close on 20 years, that promise has been broken. Again and again and again.

We know Epstein ran a sex trafficking operation that preyed on underage girls. We know he cultivated relationships with the rich and politically connected. What we still don’t know — after two decades — is the full scope of his network, who enabled him, and who continues to shield such people from view.

That absence of critical information is not accidental. It is deliberate. Of that much we can now be sure.

What defies logic is not just the horror of Epstein’s conduct, but how long it took for scrutiny to reach the upper tiers of power. For years, it was treated as an unseemly scandal. His 2019 arrest briefly reignited attention. Then he died. And it seemed that was the end.

Then came Donald Trump.

He didn’t just promise transparency. He stoked his base with vows to expose a shadowy “cabal” and unravel Epstein’s web. His supporters believed him. Trump would expose it all.

Ha!

Instead, Trump became all about delay, deflect, deny. Trump, his Department of Justice, and the FBI have played a shell game with the documents, deploying partial releases and procedural excuses. It echoes Watergate, but here the stakes involve sexual exploitation and powerful men who may have known.

Increasingly, the cover-up seems set to expose the truth. That’s the way these things play out. It happened with Watergate.

Late last year, when the bipartisan Epstein Files Transparency Act (EFTA) passed overwhelmingly, it was hailed as a breakthrough. The public would finally see everything. But this is Trump. The shell games continued.

Fragments. Stretched deadlines. Redactions shielding entire narratives while, incredibly, unredactions exposed victims’ names and personal information. It was a horror show — especially for survivors promised protection.

Then came the revelation this week that 53 pages of FBI interview documents and notes were removed from public release.

Fifty-three pages do not vanish by accident. This screams “cover-up” louder than Trump barking furiously at a MAGA rally.

Those notes reportedly contained allegations from a woman — scratch that, a child — who claimed Trump sexually assaulted her when she was around 13 years old. The DOJ called it a “temporary removal” for redactions. The explanation strains belief.

It raises an obvious question: Is this why Trump is fighting so fiercely and so obsessively to keep the full Epstein files sealed?

Trump’s history with Epstein is no longer speculative. It’s all well known. In 2002, he called him a “terrific guy” who liked women “on the younger side.” As the scandal grew, Trump repeatedly revised the narrative. They were distant acquaintances, no contact for years. They had a falling out. On and on and on.

Yet the record shows shared social circles, flights on Epstein’s jet, and a 50th birthday card featuring a crude drawing attributed to Trump — which he pathetically denies.

Reporting indicates Attorney General Pam Bondi warned Trump his name appeared extensively in the Epstein files. When file releases showed Trump’s name thousands of times, he dismissed them as “boring.”

You do not suppress documents that exonerate you. You suppress documents that implicate you. Vintage Trump.

Bondi oversaw the partial and incomplete releases, claiming “full compliance” with the law even as millions of pages remain unreleased. Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche has defended delays as procedural and cited “victim privacy” to justify sweeping redactions.

All these two have done is to make sure that Trump is protected. End of story.

Atrocious FBI Director Kash Patel once demanded full transparency. Now the files remain incomplete, and the Bureau was involved in handling the missing 53 pages. Congressional oversight has been narrowed, through restrictive “reading room” rules.

All this hiding. This ongoing shell game. All these denials. But all of this obfuscation will fail.

The numbers don’t add up. The DOJ cites roughly 3 million pages as the full record. Internal figures reportedly approach 6 million. A 2.5-million-page gap is glaring.

Second, the suppression is totally out in the open. Missing pages. Shifting explanations. In the digital age, deletion leaves footprints especially when tracking codes tied to alleged victims make records traceable.

Third, public patience is exhausted — but defiant. The EFTA passed the House 427-1 because Americans across party lines are tired of elites escaping accountability. The public is not giving up on this.

Trump’s strategy appears to be to wait out the outrage by releasing fragments, stretching deadlines, and letting attention drift. But the opposite is happening. With each misstep, scrutiny intensifies.

Every withheld page sharpens suspicion. What might once have faded is becoming a test of whether powerful men are subject to the same standards as everyone else.

Bondi, Blanche, Patel, and their allies may delay disclosure but they cannot contain it. Too many journalists are digging. Too many records exist, across agencies and courts. Too many hands were in this pot of filth. Too many survivors want the truth.

The truth about Jeffrey Epstein was never just about a single predator. It was about a network — and the system that protected it.

Donald Trump is woven into that network more deeply than he admits and more deeply than we’ve seen. No volume of redaction can erase that. Whistleblowers surface. Courts compel disclosure. Information leaks. People talk. Victims come forward.

Suddenly, it seems as if a confluence of events are coming together and creating cracks in Trump’s dam of deniability.

And when it breaks, it will be because the effort to bury the truth became more revealing than the truth itself.

John Casey was most recently Senior Editor, The Advocate, and is a freelance opinion and feature story writer. Previously, he was a Capitol Hill press secretary, and spent 25 years in media and public relations in NYC. He is the co-author of LOVE: The Heroic Stories of Marriage Equality (Rizzoli, 2025), named by Oprah in her "Best 25 of 2025.”

'State of the Swamp' rebuttal to greet Trump at big speech

As President Donald Trump delivers his State of the Union address on Tuesday night, before an audience on the House floor dominated by Republican members of Congress, another gathering will take place nearby: a counter-program dubbed “State of the Swamp.”

Organized by Defiance.org, State of the Swamp is billed as a live rebuttal to Trump’s sure-to-be baloney filled speech, from the National Press Club in downtown Washington, D.C.

While Trump’s official address will most likely be a diatribe of lies, smears, innuendo, and petty grievances, among other useless exaggerations by the blowhard-in-chief, State of the Swamp will bring together members of Congress, other elected officials, journalists, activists, and cultural figures.

Guests are set to include the actors Robert De Niro and Mark Ruffalo alongside politicians like Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey, Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson, and former Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams, as well as journalists Don Lemon and Georgia Fort, both recently arrested amid anti-ICE protests in Minneapolis.

Real-time rebuttal to Trump will come from Stephanie Grisham, Trump’s first term press secretary and communications director, offering viewers a different account of the nation’s deteriorating condition. The event will be livestreamed.

At the heart of that effort is Miles Taylor, another former Trump official turned outspoken critic who created Defiance.org as a vehicle for pushback against the president’s actions.

Last April, Trump signed an executive order and a presidential memorandum targeting Taylor, who was Chief of Staff at the Department of Homeland Security during Trump’s first term but who swiftly turned critic, first anonymously with the bestselling book A Warning, then under his own name.

Trump also revoked Taylor’s security clearances and ordered an investigation, citing potential treason and the unauthorized disclosure of information

On Tuesday, Taylor told me that since he was targeted he has been under constant threat.

“Any day we expect it’s possible the FBI will show up at our doorstep,” he said.

“They’ll try to arrest me at an event. They’re going to bring up false charges. But if we cowered … that would say that it’s okay and that they can do that to people, so we’re not going to.”

Taylor said personal and professional costs have been steep. Before launching Defiance.org, he said, he and his wife had retreated into private life, launching a small business and focusing on family — only to see that life upended when Trump signed his order.

“It destroyed our business,” Taylor said. “It totally upended everything … there were death threats to our 18-month-old daughter.”

But he described a pivotal psychological shift when he and his wife chose to stop reacting defensively and instead adopt a posture of resistance.

“That decision to flip from a defensive crouch to a defiant one … that was a psychological game changer for us. We were like, ‘Oh, wait, we have agency here.’”

That sense of agency, Taylor said, is central to Defiance.org’s mission — answering the question he heard repeatedly from others after Trump returned to power: “What can I do?”

He traces the genesis of the organization to a late-night conversation with De Niro, who urged him to build something bigger that could offer weekly, actionable steps for people frustrated with the national moment.

Within weeks, Taylor said, he and his wife had bought their domain name and begun shaping what would become a hub for highlighting and supporting civic action, not just rallies and signatures.

“We’re a tiny little team,” he said. “Because we want to make sure that all of our member fees go toward actually countering Trump’s abuses of power, and not building some sort of big nonprofit industrial complex entity.”

Each Wednesday, Taylor said, Defiance.org announces a new initiative, from legal defense funds for reporters to constitutional challenges, to “know your rights” trainings for demonstrators.

“Every week we want to announce a tangible thing that we are doing that people can get involved in and has an actual impact,” Taylor said.

He wants to contrast that with what he views as more traditional forms of protest that lack follow-through.

Taylor said Defiance.org has purchased and distributed tens of thousands of ICE alarm whistles for frontline anti-Trump communities, with some seen being used in Minnesota.

Tuesday night’s event is part of Taylor’s broader strategy to sustain engagement beyond a single speech. Taylor estimated that roughly 600 people would attend State of the Swamp, close to capacity and potentially more than the number of lawmakers present in the House chamber during Trump’s address.

“We’re ready to fight back. We’re going to keep fighting back,” Taylor said.

“We’re happy warriors committed to persistent, organized resistance and action.”

John Casey was most recently Senior Editor, The Advocate, and is a freelance opinion and feature story writer. Previously, he was a Capitol Hill press secretary, and spent 25 years in media and public relations in NYC. He is the co-author of LOVE: The Heroic Stories of Marriage Equality (Rizzoli, 2025), named by Oprah in her "Best 25 of 2025.”

Here's the grim truth about Trump's State of the Union

As I considered what to write about Donald Trump’s State of the Union address at the U.S. Capitol tonight, one question nagged: why call it a State of the Union at all? The phrase implies an assessment of the country as it is. What we’ll hear will be a bombastic broadcast about an authoritarian utopia.

This won’t be a State of the Union. As with the rest of his gobbledygook, his self-centered hyperbole, his ludicrous stemwinders, this will be a guide to Donald Trump’s State of Mind.

Nowhere is that more evident than on Truth Social.

If you want a preview of the big speech, don’t consult history books or past presidential addresses or listen to the dingy Karoline Leavitt, Trump’s Secretary of Propaganda.

Scroll through Trump’s Truth Social feed, any day at 3:00 a.m. That’s where the real SOTU draft lives, in all-caps tirades, malicious monologues, and conspiracy-laced hallucinations.

Those whacked-out posts will form the outline of tonight’s “address.” The teleprompter will be little more than a continuous scroll through @realDonaldTrump.

Let’s start with foreign policy. With Trump’s online pronouncements as your template, expect a wild-ride about tariffs, Trump’s lust and true love.

Go back to when his second-term Truth Social Tariff Tilt-a-Whirl Tantrums began. Last January, Trump posted about an “emergency 25 percent tariffs on all Colombian goods,” because Colombia balked at accepting repatriation flights of migrants deported from the U.S.

The tariffs were posted like a punishment. Colombia relented.

Since then, tariffs have been declared, raised, paused, scrapped and re-declared in a dizzying loop, sometimes seemingly in response to court rulings or cable news segments or just plain whim. And always via Truth Social.

On Saturday, in retaliation to the Supreme Court ruling his tariffs illegal, Trump declared a "15 percent Worldwide Tariff, effective IMMEDIATELY.”

On Tuesday night at the Capitol, he will obsess about tariffs, and about how he is WINNING, all because he lost so publicly to SCOTUS. He will be in overdrive. And he’ll publicly scold the justices — or as he called them on Truth Social the "ridiculous (and) dumb" lowercase "supreme court” — some more.

He’ll say something like what he posted recently: that tariffs are “Making America Great Again — GREATER THAN EVER BEFORE!!!”

Then there’s Trump’s Greenland annexation fixation. He’s losing here too, so he’ll try to make it sound the opposite. He'll bounce off his surreal post that the USNS Comfort, a hospital ship, be permanently stationed at Greenland, to “take care of the many people who are sick, and not being taken care of there.”

Greenland and Denmark said an emphatic no to that, so Trump will be out for revenge.

It will be his way to show that he’s “winning” via his supposed compassion for the people of Greenland, and why they should jump on his ship of imperialism.

At SOTU, moments matter. In 2020, disgustingly, Trump used the address to award the Presidential Medal of Freedom to the bigoted and demonic Rush Limbaugh, transforming a prestigious honor into an abject horror show. Speaker Nancy Pelosi rightly ripped that speech to pieces, behind Trump’s back.

It’s hard to imagine that stunt being topped, but I know a way Trump might try.

For years he’s been raging online about the Nobel Peace Prize, including this demented whopper from June last year: “I won’t get a Nobel Peace Prize for this, I won’t get a Nobel Peace Prize for stopping the War between India and Pakistan, I won’t get a Nobel Peace Prize for stopping the War between Serbia and Kosovo.”

Um, okay, yeah. Given that you didn’t do any of that. Remember, though, that he finally stole a Nobel from an actual winner.

So here’s how he will use SOTU to award himself something, and in the process one-up his honor for Limbaugh. Don’t be shocked if Trump uses his speech to rename the Presidential Medal of Freedom the Trump Medal of Freedom, then asks J.D. Vance to drape one around his rolling rotunda of a neck.

And because everything bends toward him, expect a lengthy detour into Trump’s health. On Truth Social, he has repeatedly described his medical exams as “long, thorough, and very boring,” concluding with “PERFECT Marks.” He posts boasts about how he “aced” cognitive tests and challenges rivals to take the same exam.

He also used Truth Social to call reporting on his health “seditious” and “treasonous,”

Tonight, regardless, the obese, wandering 79-year-old will dramatically declare he’s the healthiest president in history.

From there, the descent into pandemonium will continue. Trump’s feed has become a stream of insults to allies and opponents, including a New Year’s Eve wish that a fellow Republican should “ROT IN HELL,” and the use of his favorite two words, “RIGGED AND STOLEN,” to criticize Bureau of Labor Statistics data and of course elections he didn’t win.

He has laid the groundwork for contesting the midterms, trashing American elections as a global “laughing stock,” warning that without sweeping changes in his favor, “we won’t have a country any longer.”

Expect Republicans to go wild with applause. The hypocritical House Speaker, Mike Johnson, will jump up and down behind him.

The bottom line is that the speech will show no distinction between Truth Social and the State of the Union. Trump’s performance will be a regurgitation of posts, a sullying of a pulpit that once stood for democracy and decency.

By the way, there is a reason the president speaks from the middle rostrum, the Vice President and Speaker placed above him. It’s to show that the people have the power.

Trump wants to destroy that barrier.

His speech won’t be illuminating. It will simply mirror and amplify his feed. And when it’s over, and he gets in his car to return to the White House, he will pull out his phone and post: “Everyone told me, SIR YOU GAVE THE GREATEST SPEECH in the HISTORY of our country tonight.”

John Casey was most recently Senior Editor, The Advocate, and is a freelance opinion and feature story writer. Previously, he was a Capitol Hill press secretary, and spent 25 years in media and public relations in NYC. He is the co-author of LOVE: The Heroic Stories of Marriage Equality (Rizzoli, 2025), named by Oprah in her "Best 25 of 2025.”

This weekend of lunacy was just another shining example of Trump's unfitness for office

On Sunday, news broke that an intruder had been shot and killed at Mar-a-Lago. Donald Trump wasn’t there. He was at his gilded northern chalet.

While wintry weather blanketed 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, the atmosphere inside was less “let it snow,” more Overlook Hotel. Less festive cheer, more psychotic crisis.

The White House, already cavernous, creaky, and drafty, felt even more so given the gaping hole where the East Wing used to be. And Trump’s habitually gaseous state helped keep that cold breeze flowing.

The “people’s house,” as it was called before a dictator turned it into a gold-plated casino, can feel isolating on weekends. Especially because Melania wouldn’t be caught dead there at any time of year.

Add a looming State of the Union address, sagging poll numbers, mounting legal setbacks, and Trump’s deteriorating health, delusion, and dementia, and you have the makings of a Stephen King novel, filmed by Stanley Kubrick.

Any normal president would be huddled with speechwriters and strategists, pacing through SOTU drafts, testing applause lines, ensuring messaging. That’s how presidencies work.

But Trump isn’t a normal president, or a normal human being. He doesn’t do rehearsals. He prefers improvisation, impulse, the dopamine rush of a crowd laughing while he mocks a disabled person or singles out a Black attendee.

Roaming the White House hallways, left to his own devices, Trump spent the weekend giving us his best impression of Jack Torrance, Jack Nicholson’s character in The Shining.

The symmetry was uncanny.

The most surreal moment was the re-emergence of a voice from the past. A caller identifying himself as “John Barron” called into C-SPAN’s Washington Journal, to rail against the Supreme Court.

To most, it sounded like a prank call. To anyone who has followed Trump since the 1980s, it sounded familiar. C-SPAN said it wasn’t Trump but in this era, when it comes to Trump, nothing is to be believed.

It was surely Trump. It had to be, at least to those of us who know the lengths Trump will go to to create a distracting media narrative by resorting to old tricks.

Trump has a long and oddly committed history of role-playing as his own publicist. In his tabloid heyday in New York, he would ring up reporters posing as “John Miller” or “John Barron,” fictional spokesmen whose sole purpose was to explain how staggeringly wealthy and romantically irresistible Donald J. Trump was.

All these years later, like Jack Torrance chatting with Lloyd the ghost bartender in an empty ballroom at the Overlook, Trump appeared to be talking to himself through the media, pacing the imaginary gilded expanse of his own soon-to-be ballroom, conjuring an advocate who reassured him in his wildest imaginations.

Now do you believe it wasn’t Trump?

The psychological hedge maze at the center of Trump’s mania is, of course, the Supreme Court. After SCOTUS bludgeoned his tariff authority on Friday, the bloodied Trump didn’t just bristle. He swung Jack Torrance’s ax.

Tariffs are Trump’s wildest obsession, his panacea for everything. His blood boiled.

In a fit of “all work and no play,” Trump swung-out on Truth Social, slicing out posts with the rhythm of someone typing the same sentence over and over, taking whacks at the justices, battering them as “fools and lap dogs.”

Instead of recalibrating, he doubled down. Gobsmackingly, most likely illegally, he raised global tariffs to 10 percent on Friday, in the wake of the ruling, then on Saturday absurdly increased them to 15 percent.

It was less about moderation and negotiation, more in the vein of, “I’m not gonna hurt ya, I’m just gonna bash your brains in.”

But this impulse to rip apart isn’t confined to trade statutes, international agreements or wayward justices. It has found a home within White House walls razed and bulldozed, like the East Wing, or spattered in gauche gold.

In the newly renovated aureate bathroom within the Lincoln Bedroom suite, one pictures Trump’s heirs, Don Jr. and Eric, playing their own version of the Grady twins, scrawling “REDRUM” on newly polished mirrors.

You can almost hear drafty corridors and vestibules echoing with whispered conspiracies while the Trump boys hover at the end of the hallway, chanting, “Come play with us. Come play with us.”

But Trump was busy with another game. Moving on from Barron and tariffs, the president wandered to the first floor and the White House Green Room.

In a move both berserk and bonkers, he announced he was sending a “great hospital boat” to Greenland. Greenland and Denmark responded that they did not need or request any such nautical mercy mission.

Classic Jack Torrance logic: if they won’t accept your offer, insist they’re too sick to know what’s good for them. Even Trump, whacked as he is, must have thought, “I must be losing my mind.”

That may be validated on Tuesday, when Trump finally escapes the White House and wobbles on wide ankles to the lectern in the Capitol, to give his SOTU speech.

He will declare the state of the union strong, the economy unparalleled, the tariffs transformative. It will go on and on and on, a loop of alternative facts, line after line, page after page, until the words lose meaning and only the churlish cadence remains:

“All work and no play makes Donny a dull boy. All work and no play makes Donny a dull boy. All work and no play makes Donny a dull boy…”

Finally, he may lean into the microphone and, with a more predatory grin than Jack Torrance could hope for, chillingly leer: “Heeeeere’s Donny.”

John Casey was most recently Senior Editor, The Advocate, and is a freelance opinion and feature story writer. Previously, he was a Capitol Hill press secretary, and spent 25 years in media and public relations in NYC. He is the co-author of LOVE: The Heroic Stories of Marriage Equality (Rizzoli, 2025), named by Oprah in her "Best 25 of 2025.”

A key Epstein associate quit her job but evades real scrutiny. Why?

Working in corporate America for nearly three decades, I learned that the most feared person in any organization isn’t necessarily the CEO. It’s the chief counsel. They’re the ones who know where the bodies are buried.

That’s why one name in the Epstein files has consistently given me pause. Perhaps more than anyone besides Ghislaine Maxwell, Epstein's convicted sometime partner, this person may know where the proverbial bodies are buried. Certainly her association with the late financier and sex offender has proved close enough that she was prompted to quit as chief counsel to one of the most powerful financial firms on the planet — though shockingly, she will still serve until June.

For years, the Epstein narrative has centered on men: a parade of shielded billionaires, aging politicians, and pampered royals pretending they didn’t know the man was a child predator. Their excuses would be laughable if the subject weren’t so serious.

No one enabled Epstein like Maxwell, chief architect of his evil. But the latest — and shockingly, perhaps final — tranche of released Department of Justice files revealed a more sophisticated adjunct to Epstein’s depravity: Kathryn Ruemmler.

Ruemmler wasn’t a fringe associate angling for a free ride on a private jet. She was Barack Obama’s White House Counsel, the lawyer for the office of the presidency, charged with safeguarding the constitutional integrity of the executive branch. After that, she became Chief Legal Officer at Goldman Sachs, arguably the most influential investment bank in the world.

By any measure, Ruemmler reached the pinnacle of the American legal establishment.

Yet emails from a period between those posts, when she was in private practice, show her gushing over “Uncle Jeffrey” and his gifts: luxury handbags, Fendi furs, Bergdorf Goodman cards.

Though she has insisted the connection was strictly professional, the emails paint a different picture.

She said Epstein was “like another older brother.” They exchanged dozens of messages, ranging from dating advice to crude jokes.

This was not cold legal counsel to a problematic client. It was a high-powered attorney cozying up to a convicted sex offender. For what? Social access? Designer goods? Proximity to power? She had all of that. It is beyond belief that a lawyer of her stature would associate with someone she knew to have pled guilty to a state charge of soliciting prostitution from someone under 18.

It gets worse.

A Wall Street Journal report details a 2016 episode involving French modeling agent Jean-Luc Brunel. Brunel was reportedly prepared to cooperate with federal authorities and testify against Epstein. Epstein alerted Ruemmler that a friend of Brunel was seeking $3 million to keep him quiet.

Ruemmler, the Journal reported, asked Epstein to explain, then when he did, said she was about to talk to an Epstein lawyer in Washington, D.C.

Brunel soon went “dark.” He would die in jail in France. Epstein remained free for three years, before dying while jailed himself.

David Boies, a lawyer for Epstein’s victims, told the Journal the Brunel episode “set us back a couple of years.”

“We know from our lawsuits that there were more than 50 girls that were trafficked after this,” Boies said.

A spokesperson for Ruemmler told the Journal: “This was another instance of Epstein attempting to engage Ms. Ruemmler on a matter about which she had no knowledge, and she appropriately directed him to his legal counsel.”

Ruemmler, the Journal added, “has said she never represented Epstein and regretted her association with him.”

Epstein’s D.C. lawyer told the paper he never talked to Ruemmler or Epstein about Brunel, though he did say he scheduled a call with Ruemmler on the day in question to talk about “quash[ing] a subpoena directed at Epstein.”

So many questions remain. Why would a former White House Counsel even respond to a convicted sex offender seeking the silence of a key witness? Why has Ruemmler not faced questioning herself?

The concerns don’t end there. While serving in the White House, Ruemmler shared non-public information with Epstein about the 2012 Secret Service prostitution scandal and even allowed him to review draft responses to journalists.

A convicted sex offender as a sounding board on ethics breaches. Let that sink in.

The DOJ has long known about Ruemmler’s association with Epstein. Yet she is untouched, bar announcing her resignation from Goldman Sachs. If anyone needs an example of how the rich and powerful evade scrutiny in this saga, look no further.

This represents a staggering betrayal of public trust. For elites, the law often appears less a boundary, more like a lever, something a ridiculously meticulous and unscrupulous person can manipulate.

Now comes what might be called the “Goldman Sachs Golden Pass:” a carefully timed resignation, effective months from now. She says media attention has become a “distraction” — that familiar phrase that signals an implication of guilt.

The Epstein case has always raised disturbing questions about accountability. Ruemmler’s role adds another layer. When you’ve served as White House Counsel, you aren’t being asked to fix parking tickets. You’re consulted because you understand systems of power, how to navigate them at the caller's behest.

Ruemmler may have been among the most consequential figures in Epstein’s orbit. She operates at the intersection of law, politics, and finance. She knows where secrets reside and how to keep them buried.

The emails we have, the “Uncle Jeffrey” familiarity and the gifts, suggest closeness that demands scrutiny. Her involvement in the Brunel episode should be investigated too.

If she were compelled to testify, she might well invoke the Fifth Amendment, as Maxwell recently did. In such a situation, she would prove cut from the same cloth as Maxwell and Pam Bondi, women who defy every fiber of human decency by ignoring the hollowed-out lives and desperate pleas of Epstein’s victims.

The DOJ needs to stop treating Ruemmler like a prestigious colleague and start treating her like what the Epstein files suggest: an associate of a monster, maybe also an advisor.

John Casey was most recently Senior Editor, The Advocate, and is a freelance opinion and feature story writer. Previously, he was a Capitol Hill press secretary, and spent 25 years in media and public relations in NYC. He is the co-author of LOVE: The Heroic Stories of Marriage Equality (Rizzoli, 2025), named by Oprah in her "Best 25 of 2025.”

This maniac's obsession is poison to MAGA

As a writer, people assume you’re never at a loss for words. But here we are. All I can think of is Caroline Kennedy’s warning about her cousin, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., and how “he put baby chickens and mice in the blender to feed his hawks.”

From this whack-a-doodle comes a gobsmacking, utterly inexplicable, surreal display of stupidity that upends both the seriousness of American public health policy and confirms RFK Jr., somehow become U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services, as the country’s number one health destroyer.

Kennedy teamed up with Kid Rock for a 90-second “BawitMAHA” workout video that showcases two absolute buffoons attempting to do God only knows what.

I say attempting because even as a fitness fanatic for 30 years, I genuinely have no idea what to call what they are doing. The bizarre clip features the duo shirtless in a sauna — Kennedy in his customary jeans — biking, stretching, flexing, and plunging into a cold pool.

Then comes the truly stomach-churning moment: the two of them, drinking raw milk in a hot tub.

I’m sorry, but the thought of consuming unfiltered milky mammal secretions while sweating in a hot tub is nothing short of vomit-inducing.

Cutting to the chase, the ludicrous video serves as a fittingly chaotic emblem of Kennedy’s so-called “Make America Healthy Again” (MAHA) initiative, which ostensibly doesn’t include eating raw chicks and mice out of a blender, but you never know.

This “campaign” — seriously, what do you call this? — appears more focused on dad-rock aesthetics, hyper-masculinity, and rank foolishness than on using evidence-based strategies to fight disease and help people live healthier lives.

Kennedy bypasses scientific rigor for viral content with an off-his-rocker partisan rocker less muscle-ripped than booze-addled. Kennedy has turned the Department of Health and Human Services into a nut-job quackery — or, in his case, chickery — that dispenses not life-saving vaccines but unadulterated idiocy. If there were a childhood vaccine for stupidity, Kennedy surely missed it.

Could MAHA be any less serious? Yes! The absurdity doesn’t end in the milky hot tub. The Hill reports that Republicans are treating RFK Jr.’s wellness crusade as an electoral asset, with strategists whispering that MAHA could stave off midterm losses.

This thought process is more ridiculous than whatever results in wearing jeans to the gym.

Over at Politico, GOP insiders are described as being as brain-wormed as their health secretary. RFK Jr. is the belt-tightening Beltway guru, a Washington fascination, endlessly debated in conference rooms and catered luncheons — and, dare I say, in unpasteurized Capitol Hill hot tubs. So much for draining the swamp.

The fact that some Republicans are pinning their 2026 hopes on a health crusade led by RFK Jr. is just bonkers. What was once — pre-Trump — a party with a coherent platform is reduced to stumping for a fringe health scheme.

It’s a scheme that has gained traction with weird online wellness influencers and conspiracy-tinged critics of Big Pharma, and which polls show does not address top concerns of most voters, like high costs and low wages.

And that’s the point: the Trump quagmire has lost its association with the MAGA base if it thinks MAHA will inspire flags, bumper stickers, placards, and lines outside polling stations.

In deep-red districts, food choices are cultural signals. Steak and beer versus salads and a smoothie. Telling MAGA voters to reject vaccines while embracing quinoa is not a strategy. It’s an electoral nightmare.

The contradiction is glaring. RFK Jr. rails against the government “telling you what to put in your body” when it comes to vaccines, yet embraces a moralizing, top-down approach to diet and wellness that feels exactly like the elitism MAGA voters despise.

Freedom, corruption, and riches for me. Discipline, disease, and raw milk for thee.

What’s more, this strategy ignores the lived reality of low-income Americans. Healthy food is expensive. Access is unequal. Food deserts are real. Time poverty is real. Equipment costs money. Transportation costs money. Groceries cost money — more and more each week.

MAGA voters are feeling the pinch, so telling them to replace boxes of mac and cheese for ninety-nine cents with one piece of daily broccoli for around $2 borders on a bum steer — and I don’t mean the sort of cow that doesn’t produce hot-tub milk.

The GOP’s Beltway brain trust can celebrate salad bars and rail against processed foods all it wants, but in many rural and working-class communities, grocery stores are miles apart, fast food is ubiquitous, and budgets are tight.

I have friends in deep-red areas who mock my plant-based diet as “liberal,” i.e., “Casey, you are now part of the far-left.” It’s not because they’ve studied science or the new upside-down food pyramid from Kennedy’s HHS, but because culture and identity shape food in ways Washington consultants misunderstand.

We’ve seen this before. When Mayor Michael Bloomberg tried to regulate soda sizes in New York City, the backlash in rural America was swift and scathing, framed as nanny-state overreach, an urban billionaire telling regular people how to live.

On that note, how many people in rural America — and elsewhere — do you know who own a sauna or have access to one? There you go.

The end result is a MAHA movement that manages to insult MAGA voters who don’t want their food policed and low-income Americans who can’t afford the lifestyle being preached.

MAHA is about as far from a populist uprising as can be. MAHA is an inside-the-Beltway wellness, a grass-fed fixation being twisted into something that it is not — grassroots.

John Casey was most recently Senior Editor, The Advocate, and is a freelance opinion and feature story writer. Previously, he was a Capitol Hill press secretary, and spent 25 years in media and public relations in NYC. He is the co-author of LOVE: The Heroic Stories of Marriage Equality (Rizzoli, 2025), named by Oprah in her "Best 25 of 2025.”

This American giant fought for hope, love and equality — values our current leader hates

For those of us who grew up watching the Rev. Jesse Jackson, who has died at 84, he didn’t just march for freedom and rights. He charted a deeper path. For six decades, the man who stood on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel in Memphis and watched his mentor, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., struck down by an assassin’s bullet, carried King’s message of the “Beloved Community” for the rest of his life.

King’s Beloved Community was a vision of a society rooted in justice, unconditional love, and nonviolence, a place where poverty, hunger, and hate are replaced with reconciliation and inclusivity. For the stubbornly determined Jackson, it was not a fantasy. It was achievable through collective action to dismantle systemic inequality and promote peace.

Those were Jackson’s causes. His dying wishes. He never wavered. For a long time, he was the moral compass in America. But now, as we mourn him, we find ourselves in a country that isn’t just losing its way — it is actively ripping apart the Beloved Community.

Jackson believed in the Beloved Community. Donald Trump pushes “America First” and “Us versus Them.” A town square where Black, brown, and marginalized people don’t belong.

Consider the nature and temperament of these two men. The contrast is stark.

Jackson’s life was defined by sacrifice that included arrests, threats, and racism, the grinding work of coalition-building among people who didn’t always agree but believed in shared dignity. He was steeped in a theology of service. He was convinced leadership meant standing last in line and speaking first for those with no voice.

Trump’s public life is defined by vilification of others and glorification of self. He looks down on the downtrodden. He denigrates marginalized communities, mocks the disabled. He stokes division, hoards wealth, exalts power. After brushes with death, he suggests God spared him so he could impose policies that cause suffering.

Jackson absorbed blows for the powerless. Trump deflects responsibility to them. One saw public office as a crusade for morality. The other treats it as a platform for retribution and enrichment.

History will record that one man bent over backward to widen the circle of American democracy while the other narrowed it to fit the dimensions of his own: white, straight, nationalistic, shielded by phony Christianity.

Where Jackson possessed moral courage, willing to lose elections but win ground for justice, Trump has shown the instinct to dominate rather than persuade, to mock rather than minister. Jackson accepted defeat. Trump calls losses “rigged” and a “hoax.”

Jackson’s masculinity was rooted in empathy. Famously, he cried when Barack Obama was elected president. He prayed with striking workers and linked arms with immigrants, laborers, civil rights marchers, and LGBTQ+ Americans, long before it was politically safe.

Trump’s brand of strength is transactional, not transformative. He uses ferocity as proof of toughness, a barrage of insults to telegraph a dark vision.

To Jackson, the marginalized were people. Trump calls them threats.

In the measure that matters, character, Jackson towered. Trump stands diminished by the smallness of the ideals he champions. Trump is unforgiving. He is beyond imperfect — lecherous, unrepentant, remorseless.

This is not to canonize Jackson. He was flawed. He fathered a child out of wedlock, made antisemitic remarks, could be vindictive. But when he was wrong, he apologized.

When last week Trump posted a grotesque video depicting the Obamas as apes, he refused to say “I’m sorry,” one of countless wrongs left unacknowledged.

On Tuesday, Trump used his tribute to Jackson to aggrandize himself and take a pointless swipe at Obama.

The timing of Jackson’s death is more than tragic. It is darkly ironic. He leaves as the “Rainbow Coalition” he painstakingly built, synonymous with the Beloved Community, is being dismantled, color by color, by an administration that treats civil rights not as a moral imperative but as “woke,” discrimination against white men.

Consider the blatant assault on civil rights enforcement. Jackson spent his career forcing corporate America to reflect the nation’s diversity. On his first day back in office, Trump signed an order effectively criminalizing diversity, equity, and inclusion in the federal government. This administration has deployed the Justice Department against institutions that prioritize diversity.

Trump’s siege extends to the ballot box. Jackson’s life was defined by voter registration drives and barrier-breaking campaigns. Now we witness the most aggressive rollback of voting access since Jim Crow.

By championing restrictive voter ID laws, gutting the Voting Rights Act, and redistricting Black seats, the Trump administration is ensuring the Rainbow Jackson envisioned is systematically clouded over, voting turned into a laborious chore for the marginalized.

Perhaps most heartbreaking is the calculated dismantling of the social safety net and Jackson’s dream of economic justice. He understood that freedom is hollow if the poor go hungry. That belief is being trampled by Trump’s so-called “Big Beautiful Bill,” that slashed Medicaid and SNAP benefits for the most vulnerable.

While Jackson fought for health-care access and student debt relief, the Trump administration moves to cut aid and strip protections.

Trump tells the poor poverty is their own fault.

Even the basic protections for the “outsiders” Jackson embraced are being incinerated. ICE deportations tear families and communities apart, the antithesis of Jackson’s call for a path to citizenship. The reinstatement of bans on transgender service members and the removal of protections for LGBTQ+ people are not mere policy shifts. They reject the inclusive rainbow humanity Jackson preached from every pulpit.

It is no coincidence the LGBTQ+ flag is a rainbow too.

The tragedy of Jackson’s death in the Trump era is that the Rainbow is being bleached white. The man who told us to “Keep Hope Alive” is gone. The man in the Oval Office demands surrender to despair.

There will never be another Jesse Jackson. If there is justice in history, there will never be another Donald Trump.

John Casey was most recently Senior Editor, The Advocate, and is a freelance opinion and feature story writer. Previously, he was a Capitol Hill press secretary, and spent 25 years in media and public relations in NYC. He is the co-author of LOVE: The Heroic Stories of Marriage Equality (Rizzoli, 2025), named by Oprah in her "Best 25 of 2025.”