John Casey

If you sat down and tried to invent the worst possible person to put in charge of negotiating with the Islamic Republic of Iran — and obviously Donald Trump doesn’t count — you'd have no recourse but to choose JD Vance.

If you didn’t know, and he takes every single opportunity to tell you, he’s the vice president of the United States. And your worst expectations will be met, because he’s leading the way when it comes to negotiating with the wily and wicked Iranian government.

Vance, remember he’s the vice president, is fresh off a book tour for Communion, his memoir about finding his way to Catholicism. I am a lifelong Catholic and, like the Iran negotiations, if I have to invent the worst possible person to explain Catholicism to me, it would again be JD Vance.

This joke of a negotiator and deity is now the face of the most consequential American diplomacy with Iran since arguably 1979. And this joke of a man and his reborn righteousness is now tasked to talk down a regime that has spent four decades building its identity around resisting and rebelling against American foreign policy.

It's hard to imagine a worse match of temperament to task.

I don’t know about you, but I had to pick myself up off the floor when I watched Vance’s press conference from the White House on Thursday. When asked what qualifies him to sit across from Iranian officials, Vance told reporters Joy Behar — who interviewed him on The View earlier in the week — is "way tougher than the Iranians," and that the two are "best friends now."

To say that statement was baffling, bizarre, and ridiculous would be the understatement that trashes all understatements.

Never mind that Behar, and her cohorts at The View, spent the interview grilling him over Trump calling the affordability crisis "a hoax" while Vance scrambled to spin it. The idea that sparring with an 83-year-old daytime talk show host is preparation for negotiating Iran's nuclear program is the kind of line that should disqualify a student from a high school Diplomacy 101 class.

All I could think was that the Iranian delegation heard that quote — they hear everything — and jumped up and down at the prospect of going toe to toe with a neophyte negotiator.

Negotiators who have outlasted six American presidents being told their toughest opponent in Washington uses Joy Behar as his measuring stick. It's not really an insult to Behar. In my previous career as a media relations guy for Kmart and Sears, we had several opportunities to interact, and Behar is as lovely as she is sharp and quick-witted.

But tougher than Iran? It sounds like a self-deprecating remark Behar would make about herself.

But those words from Vance are shocking. It's an admission. If you need a co-host of The View to prep you for the Strait of Hormuz, you've already lost the negotiation before it started.

None of this would really matter much if Vance were just a motormouthed mouthpiece, which he is on his best days. But this? He's leading the actual talks, alongside Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, for an agreement that's supposed to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, restart nuclear inspections, and release frozen Iranian funds during a 60-day window before a final deal gets signed.

Vance has spent days insisting the money picture is being overstated, even as Iran's own Revolutionary Guard puts out its own numbers. They are going to twist him in so many directions, and it should worry all of us that Vance is way over his head.

It would help if Vance had any real track record here. He doesn't. The late Richard Holbrooke spent decades in the foreign service before he hammered out the Dayton Accords for Bill Clinton. Zalmay Khalilzad built a career across Republican and Democratic administrations before George W. Bush sent him to broker political settlements in Baghdad.

And who led President Obama’s successful Iran nuclear agreement, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, or JCPOA? His secretary of state, John Kerry, who was a U.S. senator for 28 years and chaired the Senate Foreign Relations Committee before President Obama appointed him to his Cabinet.

And Ambassador Wendy Sherman, who worked in the State Department and served as President Bill Clinton’s North Korea policy coordinator, handling early negotiations regarding their nuclear and ballistic missile programs.

And J.D. Vance? He spent two years in the Senate, wrote a book about converting to hillbillies and Catholicism, and went on The View. Can’t think of much else.

By the way, Vance's Catholicism tells him a lot about sin and redemption. It tells him very little about Qom.

Many Republicans — and Fox News — seem aghast at the danger, grumbling now about a war powers vote nobody in the GOP had the spine to force when the strikes started. And now they’re biting their nails and trying to bite their tongues about the Iran deal.

And they served two years with Vance, so they know the horror of which they speak.

Trump bombed Iran without congressional authorization, Congress did nothing, and now the administration that has bungled this from the start chooses to send its most combative, least diplomatically tested official the job of ending a war and signing an agreement?

Trump outrageously told Axios that Iran unconditionally surrendered. So if that’s what he and Vance think, they haven’t read the fine print of the Memorandum of Understanding signed this week.

Floating words like "surrender" to describe a deal that looks more lopsided by the day is a great place for JD to begin negotiations — I’m being facetious, of course.

It's reminiscent of how Trump kept calling the new Reflecting Pool a triumph right up until the algae bloomed and the paint started to peel. Vance can narrate this as a historic win for as long as he wants. The cracks are already showing, and his false diplomatic veneer will peel off faster than the reflecting pool.

The real risk isn't just that Vance fails. It's how. Iran has sixty days to extract concessions from a man with no negotiating record and a touchy temper. Remember when he ridiculously lectured Volodymyr Zelensky in the Oval Office?

And, remember, he has that annoying habit of constantly describing himself as "the vice president of the United States." Iran will be fed up with that brag after one hour.

If this deal collapses — or worse, holds together! — the fallout will land squarely on Vance, not Trump. Is Trump trying to set him up for failure and doom his chances at the presidential nomination in 2028?

If Vance, just one last reminder that he’s the vice president of the United States, hopes an Iran deal becomes his calling card for 2028, he’s way out of his league. Just ask Joy Behar.

Why, oh why does everyone jump through hoops when Donald Trump announces yet another deal with Iran? It’s become such a joke that when “breaking news” notifications pop up on my phone these days, I always say to myself, “Trump’s touting another Iran deal.”

Only a fool would believe Trump when he says a deal is “complete.” Because once again, the man who wrote The Art of the Deal, or more accurately, paid Tony Schwartz to write it, says a deal is done. It is set to be signed this Friday in Geneva, and the entire world is responding the way it always does: by believing something Trump says and breathing yet another sigh of relief.

This war has been a shambolic, haphazard pigsty of epic proportions. Come to think of it, didn’t J.D. Vance go to Pakistan to sign a deal? Or was it Marco Rubio? Or was it Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff? Or did they all go together? Or did they go to Qatar?

See what I mean?

Yes, I know there was a preliminary deal signed on Monday, but...

Here’s what we supposedly have. The U.S. and Iran say they’ve reached an agreement to end more than 100 days of war, reopen the Strait of Hormuz, lift the U.S. blockade — and God knows what it'll do about Iran’s nuclear program.

Trump stated over the weekend and on Monday that Iran no longer wants to pursue nuclear weapons. That comment defies explanation and forces you to let go of any sense of reality.

The formal signing is scheduled for Friday in Switzerland, mediated by Pakistan and Qatar. I guess you have to invite them at this point. Maybe everyone thinks the third time is a charm? Or is this the fourth attempt to sign a deal?

Trump is telling reporters the actual text of the memorandum “may not be released until after Friday.” Which means nobody knows what the hell they are going to sign on Friday because, just like the war, this so-called memorandum is a shambolic, haphazard pigsty.

But details are leaking. There are reports that Iran will receive a whopping $300 billion for reconstruction. Only an idiotic fool would hand this intensely crooked regime that absurd amount of money,

And Trump says the Strait of Hormuz will be open. But it appears there’s a significant diplomatic dispute over Iran's plan to charge commercial vessels, because the strait’s territorial waters belong exclusively to Iran and Oman,

Tehran asserts it has the legal right to co-manage the waterway and levy charges

Who can trust either side? And more pointedly, who can trust Iran to begin with, let alone trust them to sign something 72 hours away? Then there’s Netanyahu, who you’d think might have an opinion on a deal involving his own backyard. Yet his office released a statement clarifying that Israel isn’t even a party to it.

Iran says one thing. Trump boasts about another. Iran says what Trump says isn’t true. Israel and Lebanon exchange fire. Iran makes an irrational, late stage demand. American officials say that’s not how any of this works.

And on and on.

If this all feels familiar, it’s because we’ve watched this before. Donald Trump has always, from his earliest days, failed to shepherd lasting deals to successful completion.

Back in 1983, a younger Donald Trump bought himself a football team, the New Jersey Generals, and by 1986, it all went bankrupt.

He decided the USFL’s best move was to challenge the NFL head-on in court with an antitrust lawsuit Trump was sure would force a merger or a massive payout.

He testified. He guaranteed victory. He bloviated. And the USFL did, technically, win. A jury found the NFL had acted as a monopoly. The prize? One dollar, tripled to three under antitrust law.

The league folded within days, and Trump walked away from the wreckage of a deal he’d personally engineered with nothing to show for it but failure.

And 40 years later, we have the same mess, but with much bigger stakes, and still the same failure of a man trying to win. He will lose. He always does.

That’s the Trump pattern. Announce it loudly, skimp on the details, let everyone else clean up later. A “very strong memorandum of understanding,” that Trump himself admits is “a little conceptual,” is not a peace deal.

This reminded me of the September 2024 presidential debate, when pressed on his decade-long promise to replace the Affordable Care Act, Trump famously blurted out, “I have concepts of a plan.” Doesn’t that sound familiar to “a little conceptual?”

One wonders what happened to those “concepts?”

Finally, there’s one aspect of this fragile deal that could kaput the whole thing: Trump’s Truth Social ramblings, attacks, and verbosity.

His short fuse and fat, fast fingers could blow the whole thing apart. If Iran makes a noncommittal statement, or if someone says Trump is TACO’ing again, or doing what Obama did with this shoddy Iran deal, Trump won’t be able to control himself. He will flail.

And Iran will say, OK, if that’s how you feel, we ain’t signing. The bottom line is that Iran has Trump over a barrel because he wants to put the war “in the rear view mirror.”

But that looks more and more impossible as Friday looms. Late on Tuesday, the Trump mouthpiece New York Post editorial board posted a column titled, “Trump’s Iran deal gives the Islamic Republic big wins upfront — and America nothing."

Now, if by some miracle this “nothing” deal gets signed Friday without incident, the real test starts the next day, with 60 days of negotiations over the issues that actually matter. Run by Trump’s gut, they will surely fall apart, just like his New Jersey Generals exactly 40 years ago.

As Iran festered and inflation rose earlier this month, Donald Trump talked about a far more urgent matter. The Reflecting Pool.

It’s inexplicable why Trump pays so much attention to his ballroom, his arch and the Reflecting Pool. Maybe, as he watches his approval ratings plummet to historic lows, he is turning to real estate since he thinks that’s the only thing he was ever good at.

He wasn’t, of course.

Using a chart he’d had prepared for the occasion, Trump compared the scale of the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool to the height of three famous buildings. The chart had an absolutely ridiculous and childish title, “Our Pool is Bigger than Skyscrapers.” And for the rumored size-challenged Trump, brilliantly depicted in South Park, it seemed like a desperate attempt to heighten his manhood.

Trump announced that the final coat of protective seal had been applied, completing the repairs in preparation for the nation’s 250th birthday. Happy birthday, America! The whole country, we were told, should be beside itself with exhilaration about the Reflecting Pool paint job.

There was just one small problem. By the weekend, the pool was green again.

Days after the basin was refilled in its new “American Flag Blue,” algae bloomed across the surface, turning the reflection of the Lincoln Memorial into a mossy swamp. Interior Department officials insisted this was merely “residual algae” left over from supply lines that had sat dormant during construction, and that nanobubblers would soon keep things pristine.

National Park Service workers were photographed wading in with hand tools to scoop it out but, by the next morning, the green was back.

The renovation, which Trump originally said would cost $1.5 to $2 million and take about a week, instead took six weeks and ran to $14.2 million, awarded through a no-bid contract to a firm that had previously done work at one of Trump’s golf clubs.

According to the New York Times, the renovation is largely cosmetic. The crumbling underground pipes that actually circulate and filter the water, which has been a documented problem for decades, remain untouched.

The basin may be freshly sealed and painted American Flag Blue but the infrastructure underneath is still rotting, which means all that slime will keep coming back.

Which brings us to Bill Pulte.

Trump’s plan was to install Pulte, the 38-year-old director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, a man with zero, zilch, intelligence experience whatsoever, as acting Director of National Intelligence, handing him oversight of the CIA, the NSA, and 16 other agencies that form the backbone of American national security.

If the Reflecting Pool is Trump’s favorite metaphor for shining restoration, Pulte is its antithesis, a dark mirror.

Pulte didn’t build his thin résumé and questionable reputation by fixing things. He built it by digging. At FHFA, his signature move was using access to vast mortgage records to excavate dirt on Trump’s political enemies and refer them for prosecution, turning a boring regulatory backwater into an opposition research shop for his real estate crony in chief.

Most people had barely heard of the guy until he turned up as the wacko behind that infamous AI-generated image of Trump as a Christ-like healer, the one Trump gleefully posted to Truth Social.

The plan was to seat Pulte on June 19, even before Tulsi Gabbard’s official departure. It set off a bipartisan revolt.

Lawmakers from both parties balked at handing the nation’s entire intelligence apparatus to a mobile-home-park financier with no background in the field, and Democrats made clear they wouldn’t support renewing Section 702 of FISA, one of the country’s core surveillance tools, while Pulte was anywhere near the job.

Facing the fallout, Trump did what Trump does. He TACOed. Trump announced he would nominate Jay Clayton, the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York and former SEC chairman, and Trump loyalist and toady, as the permanent Director of National Intelligence.

The Senate was to confirm him at lightning speed, circumventing Pulte’s acting duties. Pulte, it turns out, eroded faster than the Reflecting Pool pipes.

But Trump, on a whim, impulse and switch-a-roo, decided to stall Clayton’s confirmation Wednesday to compel Congress to pass the SAVE America voter ID bill and to force the renewal of FISA Section 702.

Furthermore, Trump seeks to keep Clayton in his current SDNY role until his successor is confirmed, while accusing Democrats of reneging on a deal regarding surveillance programs.

So, what this means is that Pulte will now be allowed to run amok, because the SAVE bill has no chance of passing in the Senate.

Gabbard already hollowed out the intelligence community, pushing out veteran analysts and draining institutional knowledge on her way out the door, so it’s hard to even imagine just how devious Pulte will be while Clayton waits his turn — if he ever gets it.

Our adversaries, Russia, China, Iran, no doubt saw the gaping holes Pulte’s ineptitude will open up, regardless of how temporary the appointment might have been. And our allies see Pulte approaching and questioning just how safe the intelligence they provide to the U.S. will be.

But Trump couldn’t care less about any of that, which is why he’s still focused on the simpleton stuff. Like the Reflecting Pool. It may look clean again by July 4th, but who cares in the whole scheme of things?

Yes, the surface may gleam in the summer sun as fireworks light up the sky over the Lincoln Memorial to celebrate the 250th. But the pipes underneath will still be cracked. And the algae will still accumulate.

And in the halls of the intelligence agencies Pulte is now destined to control, the damage to those leaky pipes is far more ominous.

My 62nd birthday was this past Friday.

I celebrated by running nine miles with a guy from my gym who is 32 years younger than me and has the most insane 90-minute workout regimen you’ve ever witnessed. I’m proud to be 62. But after June 12, it all goes downhill.

That’s because two days after my birthday, Donald Trump turns 80.

He doesn’t seem nearly as proud of getting older as I do.

Watch the man for five minutes and you’ll understand why. The bad paint job on his face. The mangled wire of cheaply dyed blonde hair sitting on top of his head. The foundation he cakes on before he goes on camera. He’s phoney like baloney.

Everything about Donald Trump’s public presentation is designed to make you forget that he is, by any measure, an old man. He’s an octogenarian. A person who, if he were anyone else, might be spending his weekends at a great-grandchild’s soccer game rather than posting unhinged memes at 2 a.m. on a Sunday morning.

But Trump isn’t aging gracefully — at all — and the fakery of his facade is starting to bust out like his cankles.

When he was on his way back to Washington after attending the Knicks vs. Spurs NBA Finals on Monday night (I believe the Knicks lost because he was there), he stepped off Marine One, and lit up social media. Trump serpentined across the tarmac like a senile old man who forgot the difference between left, right and center.

He clutches railings going up and down the steps of Air Force One, wobbling gingerly and slowly. It is only a matter of time until, like Joe Biden before him, he gets quietly rerouted to the smaller, lower stairs tucked underneath the plane.

The ones reserved for men in their 80s, said with all due respect to President Biden.

For his 80th birthday, Trump is planning a blood-and-gore celebration UFC match on the White House lawn. What better way to mark eight decades of life than watching people getting punched in the mouth — which, even on a good day, should happen to Trump.

But while Trump parties, the rest of America will be celebrating his birthday differently, by paying for it due to his ineptitude and mistakes.

This week, the Consumer Price Index (CPI) report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics revealed that annual headline inflation accelerated to 4.2%, the highest level in three years.

Inflation is surging. Grocery bills are climbing. Gas prices are up. Electric bills, car prices, flights, vacations, the basic architecture of a decent American life is getting more expensive by the day.

Trump is so happy that you are paying more for everything. On Wednesday, in what may be the most honest — and stupidest — thing he’s said in months, Trump told the country, “I love the inflation.” That’s your birthday message from the White House.

Happy Trump’s birthday, America. You'd better live it up, while you can still afford to.

Meanwhile, Americans are watching what was once described as a two-week “excursion” into Iran stretch into its fourth month, with no end in sight and no deal materializing despite Trump’s near-daily promises that one is just around the corner.

On Thursday, he went from “taking total control” of Iran’s oil industry with military action, to canceling military strikes. Why? You guessed it. Because a deal is near — BREAKING NEWS!

And here’s another thing you didn’t ask for, but you’re getting from Trump for his birthday. A new ballroom. At your expense — trust me, we’ll pay for this somehow. Trump is tearing down the East Wing of the White House to build us all a ballroom.

Oh, wait a minute. It’s his ballroom. A ballroom, he has assured us, “the finest ballroom anywhere in the world.” He will celebrate in it. His donors will celebrate in it. You will never set foot in it.

But perhaps you’ll feel better about the inflation and the war and the ballroom knowing that at the White House, there is another very beautiful room that you are not allowed to enter — a new gold-plated luxury bathroom in the Lincoln bedroom where you will never lodge.

In April, in a speech (or diatribe) at The Villages in Florida, surrounded by senior citizens, Trump mocked the very demographic he belongs to. He stood before a crowd of older Americans and sneered at them, “Look at you old guys.” The proverbial pot calling the kettle black.

At himself, though he’d never see it that way. The man has no capacity for self-awareness, and apparently no capacity for shame, and no capacity for realizing that those “old guys” in front of him were probably in better shape than he is.

Trump wears his age the way he wears everything, as a lie and a con job, masking the truth with unadulterated B.S. Trump’s age is a thing to be managed and obscured. He is declining in plain sight, and the country is watching a man who cannot admit weakness preside over a government that is increasingly cracking apart because of it.

And because the damage being done in his name, to real people, in real time, is nothing to celebrate. And because a man who sneers at the elderly, denies his own frailty, and tells Americans he loves inflation while they struggle to buy groceries has earned nothing in the way of goodwill or good wishes.

So, maybe you will go to the grocery store this Sunday, and be horrified at the number that appears on the cash register as you check out. If so, then think of that as Trump’s costly birthday present to you.

The Pentagon was locked down Thursday and partially evacuated after a hazardous materials alarm triggered a full emergency response, gas masks, hazmat teams, the works. Multiple floors and corridors were locked down and others evacuated before sources confirmed to CNN it was a false alarm.

Officers in chemical suits rushed through corridors, protecting a building from nothing.

Fitting, really. Because Pete Hegseth has been pulling false alarms at the Pentagon since the moment he walked through its doors.

Hegseth was sworn in on January 25, 2025, as the 29th Secretary of Defense, after the Senate deadlocked 50-50 and Vice President JD Vance cast the tiebreaking vote. Everyone knew he’d be a disaster, a metaphorical hazard human who wreaked havoc on our nation’s defense.

That’s why the squeaker of a confirmation was a warning. What followed has been a systematic evacuation of experience, dignity, and any pretense of seriousness.

He started with the people. In February 2025, Hegseth fired Admiral Lisa Franchetti, the first female chief of naval operations, and recommended that General Charles “CQ” Brown, the second African American Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, be removed for his focus on diversity, equity and inclusion.

That decision left no women in the top ranks of military leadership. It didn’t stop there. Hegseth intervened to stop the promotions of four Army officers, two Black men and two female soldiers, who were on track to become one-star generals.

It was highly unusual for a defense secretary to intervene. Scratch that. It was a racist and misogynistic move by the defense secretary.

And he did it again last week, personally intervening to remove numerous highly decorated Black and female Navy service members from military promotion lists, preventing them from advancing to one-star general or admiral.

The pattern is impossible to ignore: the only generals welcome in Pete Hegseth’s Pentagon are straight, white, and male. Everyone else gets evacuated.

Then came the language. He replaced diplomatic and peace-driven messaging with rude, macho and warmongering bloviating. His chest-thumping (not to be confused with his chest presses), testosterone-drenched vocabulary of a man auditioning for a B-war movie rather than running the world’s most powerful military.

His garbage tongue wagging about “Warrior ethos.” “Lethal.” “Annihilation.” “Unleash overwhelming and punishing violence.”

He replaced strong and bold leadership with insecure and dubious chest-thumping. In the single most embarrassing moment in modern Pentagon history, Hegseth summoned 800 generals and admirals from around the world to Marine Corps Base Quantico on September 30, 2025 for an unprecedented and needless gathering where he dressed them down like a potty-mouth, crazed football coach.

Pacing back and forth in front of a giant American flag, Hegseth declared it “completely unacceptable to see fat generals and admirals” in the Pentagon. He railed against “dudes in dresses,” “climate change worship,” and “fat” soldiers, rattling off a long list of culture war grievances before the assembled brass.

Men and women who had served in combat zones across the globe, who had commanded forces, buried colleagues, and carried the genuine weight of war, sat and listened to a lowly and combustible former Fox News host tell them they weren’t skinny enough.

His garbage tongue again wagged, bragging about his plan to “intimidate, demoralize, hunt and kill the enemies of our country” and how America would no longer be constrained by what he called “stupid rules of engagement.”

Hegseth talks like someone who has a screw loose, and is so insecure about himself that he tries to sound like a leading character from an action movie versus rather than somebody with the decorum of a defense secretary.

Retired generals called the speech “shocking” and “offensive.” It was not a warrior’s address. It was a Fox & Friends segment with a live studio audience of four-star generals.

Of course, all of this preening about warrior culture comes from a man who ordered a makeup studio installed in the Pentagon so he could freshen up for TV appearances and motor-mouthed speeches to generals.

In the process, he evacuated humility from the Pentagon and replaced it with vanity, arrogance and conceit.

He posts videos of himself bench-pressing 300 pounds with his teenage son spotting him. He frequently participates in physical training alongside deployed U.S. service members and works directly with new recruits at military entrance stations.

He’s doing that, not as some goodwill gesture, but to show off.

He was caught applying makeup with his personal supply before a key war meeting with top Ukrainian officials. He wears a pocket square flag to press briefings, thinking that makes him patriotic.

He’s trying to evacuate a Defense Department driven by peace and replace it with one that is obsessed with War.

On September 5, 2025, Trump signed an executive order authorizing the use of the titles “Secretary of War” and “Department of War,” a rebranding that virtually no one outside of MAGA media takes seriously, and that most of the world’s military establishment greeted with bewilderment.

Nobody, not allies, not adversaries, not career defense officials, uses it with a straight face. And certainly not journalists, unless it's Fox News. Hegseth, like Trump, believes renaming something makes it so.

Thursday's false alarm at the Pentagon was resolved within hours. The real evacuation, of competence, of inclusion, of decency, and decorum, has been ongoing for 17 months and shows no sign of stopping.

The building was briefly cleared of bad air, but the foul odor of Hegseth still lingers.

I have several female friends who have been victims of domestic abuse. Over the past decade, they have confided in me because I’ve been open about my mental health struggles. When you make yourself vulnerable, it often gives others permission to do the same.

It is difficult to hear their stories. That’s one reason it has been personally difficult for me to hear what some of the women involved with Graham Platner have described. One friend once told me, “You will never know what it’s like when someone grabs your throat and you see that look in their eyes.”

That comment haunts me.

The allegations against Platner have rightly thrown Maine Democrats into a genuine crisis of conscience: How do you hold your candidate accountable for alleged harm done to women while keeping your hopes of winning a Senate seat alive?

It is an ugly situation, and one I’ve been asked about repeatedly. “What do you think about Graham Platner?” My answer is simple. He should have never entered the race. if you have skeletons in the closet, especially bad ones like his, they eventually come out.

Anyone considering a run for public office should understand that. If there is something significant in your past that you are hiding, the odds are beyond good that it will become public, and when it does, the consequences can be devastating.

Not just for the person, but their party, and the electorate.

Just ask Graham Platner.

But here we are. And now, the question is what happens next.

Putting personal feelings aside and looking at this purely as a political campaign, I increasingly see a race between two flawed candidates. Some flaws are more serious than others, but none of us are without them.

As Democrats wrestle with Platner’s past, I have found myself looking more closely at the other candidate, Susan Collins. And in doing so, I realized something. Watching her play the role of the appalled bystander, the righteous observer who would never tolerate such conduct, for example, has become difficult for me.

That is not a role she has earned. And I say this not to rationalize, or to try and make an excuse or reason to vote for Platner.

When The New York Times published its account of Platner’s past behavior toward women, allegations of intimidation, emotional abuse, and conduct that left former partners frightened, I waited to hear Collins respond. She eventually did.

“The allegations in the latest story are troubling,” Collins said. “I believe that Graham Platner has a lot of questions to answer.”

She is right. He does.

And so does she.

The irony that keeps getting buried in campaign coverage is that Collins has her own record when it comes to accountability and harm toward women.

I have known several women who have had abortions, and I am humbled that they trusted me enough to share those experiences. Every one of them described the decision as painful, emotionally complicated, and deeply personal.

And immensely hurtful.

Even two friends who needed abortions because of serious medical concerns described feelings of grief and guilt.

After Dobbs, many of those same women expressed gratitude that they had at least been able to make the decision themselves and access appropriate medical care. They felt profound sympathy for women in states where that choice suddenly disappeared.

As one of them told me, the experience is difficult enough. Having the choice taken away makes it immeasurably worse.

That kind of harm demands accountability. It demands more than carefully worded statements issued when political pressure becomes unavoidable. It requires us to look directly at the people who enabled it and ask: What did you know, and what did you do?

By that standard, Collins does not get to stand at the podium and point fingers.

In 2018, Brett Kavanaugh was accused of sexual assault by Dr. Christine Blasey Ford, who testified before Congress about her allegations. Collins described Ford’s testimony as “heart-wrenching, painful, and compelling.” She said she believed Ford had experienced sexual trauma. Mind-bogglingly, she then said it was not at the hands of Kavanaugh.

And then she voted to confirm Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court.

Collins insisted she had “full confidence” that Kavanaugh would not vote to overturn Roe v. Wade. He had signaled as much during the confirmation process, and Collins chose to believe him.

She chose to believe him despite warnings from women across Maine who flooded her offices, attended demonstrations, and shared deeply personal stories — like the ones I’ve heard — about assault, reproductive freedom, and the stakes of the confirmation vote.

She voted yes anyway.

The consequences are now part of the historical record.

Roe was overturned. Abortion access disappeared across much of the country. Women have been denied miscarriage care, forced to continue nonviable pregnancies, and left navigating legal uncertainty during medical emergencies. The physical and emotional consequences are real, documented, and ongoing.

Yet Collins has never expressed regret. She continues to say she stands by her vote based on the information available at the time.

But many people looked at the same information and reached a different conclusion.

Many Americans believed Kavanaugh would help overturn Roe. They said so repeatedly. They protested, organized, and warned exactly what was coming. Collins dismissed those concerns and cast one of the most consequential votes of her career.

Now she wants to talk about accountability.

To be clear, Graham Platner is not off the hook. The allegations against him describe behavior that many women have characterized as frightening and abusive. His apologies, whatever one thinks of them, cannot be the end of the conversation. Voters and his party are right to scrutinize his record and demand answers.

But accountability is not a one-way street, and it does not expire when the news cycle moves on.

The harm resulting from Collins’ vote to confirm Brett Kavanaugh did not end after he lied to her and went on to overturn Roe. Its effects continue to negatively and hurtfully shape the lives of millions of women across the country.

That reality makes Collins something more than an observer in this debate.

She is a participant.

The question Maine voters should ask is why she has never truly been required to answer for it.

Graham Platner has apologized, however imperfectly and however late. Susan Collins never has.

I had a great uncle who was notorious for sleeping sitting straight up in his chair. His eyes would glaze over as family conversations swirled around him. Inevitably, his eyes would shut, and whether it was a dream or the shrill sound of his wife’s laugh, his eyes would pop open.

He was always teased about his frequent chair napping, and he always, always denied he was sleeping. “Just resting my eyes,” he would insist. Then he’d “rest his eyes” again a few moments later.

Nobody was fooled.

Asked by Rep. Ted Lieu whether he’d ever seen Trump fall asleep during a Cabinet meeting, Secretary of State Rubio responded defiantly like my great uncle. “That’s false. I’ve never seen him fall asleep. On the contrary, the guy doesn’t sleep — he calls me at 2 in the morning. He calls me at 5 in the morning.”

Lieu’s response was to pull up a clip of Trump with his eyes shut while Rubio himself was speaking at a Cabinet meeting. Then he played another one.

Rubio, it turns out, might be the one who is just resting his eyes, asleep at the switch while his hypersomniac boss drifts into never-never land.

Look, I get it. Meetings are boring, especially when you don’t have the floor. I’ve spent three decades in corporate America. I know exactly what it looks like when the boss, and myself, and others in the room, are losing the battle with drooping eyelids in a long meeting.

Most of us have been there. However, most of us weren’t 80 years old, running on a diet of fast food and anger, and posting Truth Social memes until 3 a.m., and theoretically steering the most consequential country on the planet the next day.

There is a whopping difference between a bored executive or subordinate and a president who can’t stay awake at his own events, and the documented record of the last seven months makes it impossible to look away.

November 6, 2025: During a White House drug pricing announcement in the Oval Office, Getty photographer Andrew Harnik captured Trump slumped at the Resolute Desk, eyes closed, surrounded by aides who kept right on talking. The Washington Post reviewed multiple video feeds and calculated Trump spent nearly 20 minutes fighting to keep his eyes open.

Sure sounds like Uncle Lawrence.

December 2, 2025. At a two-hour Cabinet meeting, Trump repeatedly shut his eyes while his own senior officials spoke. He later offered this explanation, which I will grant is at least honest: “They’re boring as hell.” He added: “I didn’t sleep. I just closed them because I wanted to get the hell outta here.”

Spoken like my cranky Uncle Lawrence.

February 19, 2026: Two and a half hours into his own “Board of Peace” Gaza summit — a joke of a meeting he convened, with leaders from two dozen countries that no one has heard of — cameras caught Trump with his eyes closed. He didn't sleep. He was just deeply concentrating. With his eyes shut. For an extended period.

Wake up Uncle Lawrence!

May 11, 2026: During a maternal health event in the Oval Office, video showed Trump’s eyes closed for roughly 17 seconds at the Resolute Desk. The White House’s official Rapid Response account fired back at a Reuters post, one that hadn’t even accused Trump of sleeping, just included a photo, with: *“He was blinking, you absolute moron.”

The response became an instant meme. Rep. Lieu replied: “That is a verrrrrrrrryyyyy long blink.” The Democrats’ official account dubbed him “Commander-in-Sleep.”

May 26, 2026: Memorial Day at Arlington. At the National Memorial Day Observance, with Gold Star families in the audience honoring the 13 service members killed in the Iran war, cameras caught Trump with his head bowed and eyes closed during Pete Hegseth’s remarks.

He was sleeping standing up! That’s something Uncle Lawrence could never do.

It should be noted that his third hospital visit in 13 months came the following day. The White House said he wasn’t sleeping.

This whole thing is so comatose with irony.

Trump spent years weaponizing “Sleepy Joe” against Biden. In 2021, when Biden appeared to nod off at a climate conference, Trump sent a mass email: “Nobody that has true enthusiasm and belief in a subject will ever fall asleep!”

He yammered and hammered the “Sleepy Joe” label through 2022, 2023, and deep into the 2024 campaign. “He falls asleep at every single event,” Trump barked in June 2024.

And if this doesn’t make you double-over with laughter, Trump once said, “How do you fall asleep when cameras are raging, right?”

Then, on May 7, 2026, right in the middle of his own napping spree, Trump posted an AI-generated image on Truth Social showing Biden asleep in the Oval Office wearing pajamas, with Barack Obama wheeling in a box labeled “AUTOPEN.” Caption: *“A highly accurate depiction of the Sleepy Joe Biden Administration. Tremendous damage done but, WE’RE BACK!!!”*

Admittedly, my Uncle Lawrence was not a warm and fuzzy guy, but he wasn’t a conceited, hypocritical jerk like Donald Trump. And what’s more? Uncle Lawrence was in his mid-80s, so his battle with keeping his eyes open is a harbinger for Trump.

Trump turns 80 in a week. These incidents will not decrease. They will increase. His eyes will become heavier and heavier. The question Rep. Lieu was really asking Rubio what happens in the situation room, for example, when the cameras aren’t there. It never got answered, because Rubio just kept talking with his eyes wide shut.

So while Trump sleeps on the job, don’t worry, because your grocery bill isn't keeping him awake. Or your gas bills, your electric bills. Trump, who promised he’d fix all of it on Day One, has more pressing matters — his eye-lids pressing against each other.

I was a news junkie long before it was cool — was it ever cool? — or even common.

Growing up in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, I was probably the only kid on my block, maybe in the entire city and state, who planted himself in front of the television every night to watch Walter Cronkite on CBS News.

When I was about eight years old, I could even do an impression of him, articulating his famous sign-off, “And that’s the way it is.” I can still do it today, though you have to be someone of a certain age to appreciate it.

I had a fixation with presidents, with war, with history, and nobody delivered the news with more authority, more gravitas, or more sheer trustworthiness than Cronkite. It wasn’t just my opinion. Year after year, he was named the most trusted man in America.

When he retired in 1981, I was in high school, and it felt like a seismic event. A seminal moment. Who in God’s name could ever replace the God of the evening news, Walter Cronkite? Dan Rather stepped in and did a terrific job.

Now it’s anchored by the woefully incompetent Tony Dokoupil. Who? Exactly. This neophyte wouldn’t have been qualified to be Cronkite’s junior intern.

But my devotion to Cronkite was only the beginning. There was also 60 Minutes. I watched that too, for as long as I can remember. Mike Wallace and Ed Bradley were my guys. And I loved Andy Rooney. I can do his impression too, but again, no one knows who he is anymore.

The fearlessness and tenacity of the show’s correspondents, and their refusal to let the powerful off the hook, were legendary. It was what journalism looked like at its absolute finest.

It was perhaps the love for Cronkite and 60 Minutes that drove me into media and public relations, where I spent 30 years working with hundreds of reporters and media outlets.

For a long time in PR, we had two holy grails — a front-page story in the New York Times and a segment on 60 Minutes, positive ones, of course. I was fortunate enough to land five front-page Times stories over my career and one 60 Minutes segment in 1999, tied to Y2K preparedness.

Which makes what is happening right now to that network all the more gut-wrenching.

Since the loathsome Bari Weiss took over CBS News and Donald Trump began his assault on Black Rock, the nickname for the former CBS headquarters, the network has been in a death spiral of its own making.

Weiss has no business running a major network news division. Under her watch, CBS News has become a shadow of itself, and its anchor has devolved into little more than Trump state television. The news division is collapsing at breathtaking speed.

And then there’s the tragedy occurring at the beloved 60 Minutes.

60 Minutes debuted in 1968 and became, arguably, the most important television program in American history, and remains that today. And, not just in news, but in the entirety of television. Year after year, it ranks among the most-watched programs on the air.

It broke stories that changed the country. It featured the most iconic correspondents in broadcast history. It was appointment television, 7 PM on Sunday night, or whenever the late NFL game ended in the fall, you made sure you were parked in front of your set. You were spellbound.

It’s now in a freefall.

Weiss shockingly dumped the show’s long-time veteran and executive producer, Tanya Simon, and appointed Nick Bilton, a technologist with no traditional broadcast experience, to lead 60 Minutes. He subsequently fired veteran producers and correspondents Sharyn Alfonsi and Cecilia Vega.

The decision caused intense internal backlash, and that’s putting it mildly. It's being murdered, and I’m not the one using such draconian terms. And those firings were only the beginning.

Scott Pelley, the former CBS News anchor and 60 Minutes correspondent, blew up — and rightly so — this week, tearing into the new leadership of 60 Minutes, calling out the way staff have been treated, the firings, the gutting of the show’s editorial independence. He said Weiss was “murdering” the show.

After sticking up for his show, and his colleagues, Pelley was fired, and simultaneously proven wrong. The Trump/CBS paramilitary isn’t murdering the show. They are executing it.

Steve Kroft, another legendary 60 Minutes correspondent and my “friend” from the Y2K days, was more blunt, more direct, and more correct. He said, “I never expected it would be executed by the President of the United States.”

Trump is doing to 60 Minutes what he did to Stephen Colbert and the CBS Evening News.

This trifecta represents the cowardice at CBS toward Trump. It is a direct testament to how thoroughly Paramount and CBS have prostrated themselves before Donald Trump.

Here’s the business reality that CBS executives apparently cannot grasp: everyone who has ever bowed down to Donald Trump eventually gets kicked in the teeth. Trump never rewards loyalty. Ever. And CBS is going to pay a big, and perhaps fatal, price.

Having worked in the media for so long, I know that the advertising exodus is coming. Without credible news programming and without marquee late-night talent, what exactly is CBS selling? The NFL? Sure, football delivers ratings, but a network cannot survive on four months of ad revenue.

Once the big advertisers bolt, and they will bolt, CBS will be left hawking gold coins, commemorative silver plates, and 1-800 numbers, the same bottom-of-the-barrel inventory that clutters Fox News and late-night infomercial block. That is the road CBS is now on.

What is being done to CBS is a demolition. And when the last advertiser walks and the last credible journalist quits, Donald Trump will have claimed his most significant media scalp yet.

His accomplices, a cowardly corporation and one inept executive, are helping him tear it down.

And, that’s the way it is. And it’s a damn shame.

In 1971, Don McLean wrote an eight-and-a-half-minute elegy for the American soul. “American Pie” begins with a plane crash in an Iowa cornfield in 1959 that killed rock and rollers Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, and the Big Bopper.

But the song was never really about the crash. It was about what happened after: the loss of innocence, the corruption of joy, the day a culture stops believing in its own music. McLean called it the day the music died.

Almost 55 years later, Donald Trump is living his own bye-bye Miss American Pie moment. And it’s unfolding, with exquisite irony, on the National Mall.

If the music died in a cornfield in February of 1959, it’s going to die again on the Mall — albeit ever so briefly — in June, 2026.

This week, the White House-affiliated “Freedom 250” organization unveiled the lineup for the Great American State Fair, a 16-day patriotic extravaganza on the Mall running June 25 through July 10, billed as America’s grand 250th birthday party.

This is the same organization responsible for the blood-and-guts UFC match on the White House lawn on June 14.

The roster included Martina McBride, Young MC, Morris Day and the Time, the Commodores, C+C Music Factory, Bret Michaels, Milli Vanilli, Flo Rida, and Vanilla Ice.

The lineup was announced Wednesday. By Friday, it was, as Tom Petty might sing, free fallin’ with half of those slated pulling out. And panic set-in.

Morris Day and the Time dropped out within hours, posting simply: “It’s a no for me.” Young MC followed, writing that “the artists were never told about any political involvement with the event.”

Milli Vanilli’s surviving original vocalist said he was “shocked” to see the group’s name on the bill. Then the headliner, Martina McBride, walked, saying she’d been misled about the event’s nature.

Of the performers featured on the original promotional poster, only two are now understood to still be taking part. They’re not worth mentioning.

But never fear! Trump took to Truth Social on Saturday and announced a replacement act.

“DONALD J. TRUMP, to take the place of these highly paid, Third Rate ‘Artists,’ and give a major speech, rallying the Country forward like I have done ever since being President!” He wrote.

Third-rate? Well, he’s right, but if they are, why were they invited in the first place?

None of these withdrawals should be surprising. This is the defining pattern of the entire Trump era. Musicians don’t want to be associated with him. They never have.

The list of artists who have sent Trump cease-and-desist letters, demanded he pull their music from rallies, or publicly recoiled at the association reads like a Hall of Fame roll call: Neil Young. The Rolling Stones. Aerosmith — twice. R.E.M., whose Michael Stipe called the unauthorized use of his music “a moronic charade.”

There were others, ABBA. Celine Dion. Beyoncé. Foo Fighters. The estate of Sinéad O’Connor. Creedence Clearwater Revival’s John Fogerty.

And then there was the “day the music died” at the Kennedy Center: February 9, 2025, when Trump appointed himself as chairman, and then went on to add his name to the monument for President John F. Kennedy.

Thank the Lord that a whip-smart federal judge on Friday had the good sense and decency to tell Trump to end another of his moronic charades and take his name off the building asap.

But once Trump effectively took over the Kennedy Center like a mad dictator, what followed was a massive cultural exodus.

One of the first to cancel was a touring production of Hamilton. Then, Folk singer Rhiannon Giddens announced she could not “in good conscience” play there.

Jazz pianist Chuck Redd, who had led the center’s annual Christmas Eve “Jazz Jams” since 2006, canceled the moment he saw Trump’s name on the building.

The Cookers called off their New Year’s Eve gig. Doug Varone and Dancers said their cancellation was “financially devastating but morally exhilarating.” Renowned composer Philip Glass followed, withdrawing the world premiere of his Symphony No. 15 (“Lincoln”) from the National Symphony Orchestra.

Hamilton. Folk. Jazz. Dance. Opera. Country. Symphony. Every genre, every discipline, walking away from a stage that once represented the summit of American artistic life.

Last week, while performers were also furiously dropping out of the Great American State Fair, someone else was furiously going after the Trump administration.

Bruce Springsteen’s “Land of Hope and Dreams” American tour, a sold-out, three-hour-a-night referendum on Trump’s America, with Tom Morello of Rage Against the Machine as guest guitarist, wrapped its American leg Wednesday night in Washington, D.C.

At Nationals Park, Springsteen used the capital stop to directly confront Trump.

He opened with a declaration: “Our democracy, our constitution, our rule of law are being challenged right now as never before by a reckless, racist, incompetent, treasonous president.”

He led the crowd in “ICE out!” chants, then bellowed: “Let them hear you at the ... White House!”

Trump responded on Truth Social by calling Springsteen a “dried out prune” of a rocker.

But Trump, the real dried prune, is desperately trying to control the musical soul of the country while the music community refuses to sing along. Not at the Kennedy Center, not at his rallies and not at the Great American State Fair.

The month-long event this summer was supposed to celebrate 250 years of American freedom. Instead, it’s being abandoned by B-list talent in favor of a wannabe authoritarian dictator. The irony is as rich as it is offensive.

Don McLean drove his Chevy to the levee, but the levee was dry. When Trump drives to the National Mall this month, he’s going to see that it will be dry too.

I was stumped.

On Wednesday, I watched Trump’s Cabinet meeting. I’m not only a glutton for punishment, but I will not be handing out compliments for a very long time.

Stunned, I have been mulling over what to write about that beyond-cringe meeting, trying to figure out what prompts middle-to-older-aged, white adults - educated, although… - suck up to a man like this.

I’ve been around and followed politics long enough to know that sycophancy is as old as licking George Washington’s revolutionary boots. I worked on Capitol Hill in the 1980s and 1990s, and believe me, members of Congress lived in self-constructed bubbles where staffers, lobbyists and hangers-on told them exactly what they wanted to hear.

But there is not a gross enough word that can even begin to describe what happened in the White House Cabinet Room on Wednesday, an over-the-top lesson in leeching that made your skin crawl, your mouth gape, your stomach churn, your ears melt, your eyes cross.

The sensation of watching it was a full-body blow of epic adulating proportions. And if you think I’m exaggerating, try and watch the whole thing as I did. But don’t watch it more than once.

Small Business Administration head Kelly Loeffler looked Donald Trump dead in the eyes and said, “Mr. President, you have made us a nation of builders again. You’re leading us to the greatest economy that the world has ever known… I hear it everywhere I go: ‘Please thank the president for putting us back on track. Thank you.’ They love you.”

They love you. Bleck!.Yuck! That is now part of the historical record. And I don’t know whether my eyes were crossed and I wasn’t seeing straight, but she looked like someone AI-generated not only her, but her words.

Speaking of bleck and yuck, there was Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. When he opens his “manly” moronic motor-mouth, it’s akin to watching a blue whale dump 50 gallons of excrement on your head. His words are that abhorrent and that disgusting, and so hard to wash off.

He defecated praise on Trump’s renovations to the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, describing the maintenance efforts as "a great segue" and linked it to the Iran war.

What?

But then again, maybe Hegseth knows of what he speaks. Because Trump said that the reflecting pool was a “disgusting place,” and that crews had to pull "more than 10 dumpsters" of accumulated garbage and waste from it.

The reflecting pool sounds an awful lot like Hegseth.

Hours before the meeting, as if they knew the tragedy that was about to transpire, the New York Times ran an analysis article titled, “Trump is the Only Person Who Can Save America, According to His Cabinet.” If you haven’t read this, read it now.

It found that at least one in six sentences spoken by Cabinet members contains praise for Trump, attributes every administration success to him personally, or attacks Democrats. One in six sentences. Watch yesterday’s Cabinet meeting and you will see that come to life.

Six sentences go by fast, so your head will start to spin once your brain starts catching on. It’s almost like each Cabinet member goes five sentences, and then Trump pushes an electrical shock button, and that sixth sentence of praise is jolted out.

When you are watching, you have to keep reminding yourself that these are the people running the most powerful government on earth. And they spend a sixth of their time essentially writing pseudo-Hallmark cards to a man who eats McDonald’s everyday and calls people “piggy,” “dummy” and “scum” on social media.

This is a man who reportedly emits a bad odor. And if you believe the viral videos from yesterday — and other instances — did Trump have an accident in front of the White House after returning from his medical check-up?

Here’s what these people need to understand. You are making absolute fools of yourself and you're wasting your time and your careers tripping over yourselves and fighting each other in order to get a quick lick in on this man’s odorous derriere.

History is littered with the political corpses of people who kissed Donald Trump’s ring and got nothing but humiliation in return. Pam Bondi spent years fawning over this man. Gone. Chris Christie practically built a shrine to Trump after 2016. Trump mocked his weight publicly and called him a loser.

Even John Cornyn, a senator in his 70s who should have known better, genuflected before Trump and still got crushed in his primary by Ken Paxton, a man with one of the most scandal-ridden records in history.

Where do these people go when Trump is done with them? They end up as guests on NewsNation. They write books nobody reads. They show up on panels where the other panelists are also people Trump fired or humiliated.

Do they then try and kiss up to Sean Hannity, thinking that’s their way back into Toady Trumpland?

Earlier this year, The Bulwark writers Sam Stein and Andrew Eggers did what I did and watched an entire Cabinet meeting. They posed a straightforward question this week: “Do we think the Cabinet members have a side contest with each other over who can be the most over the top and obsequious in their praise of Trump at these meetings?”

In April, even conservative commentator Ann Coulter called out the “Kim Jong Il-style tributes” on display.

These North Korea-like meetings consist of a room full of 50 and 60-year-old adults, ostensibly educated, experienced, powerful people, performing like children competing for a gold star from a teacher who is more stupid than they are.

And now I’m going to take a shower and say the rosary to fumigate the pathetic, ego-stroking residue left by those spineless sycophants who ruined a perfectly good afternoon.

Donald Trump loves the words sleazebag and scumball, so much so that he’s surrounded himself with the very definition of those two offensive terms. And it’s hard to be more offensive than Texas GOP Senate candidate Ken Paxton, unless you’re Donald Trump, of course.

Last night, Paxton, impeached, indicted, accused of bribery, and credibly alleged to have used the Texas Attorney General’s office to benefit a donor who was simultaneously employing the woman he was having an affair with, won the Republican Senate primary in Texas by a landslide.

He is now the face of the Republican Party’s 2026 midterm campaign. And if you want to understand just how far the GOP has fallen, just how morally and ethically hollowed out it has become, look at Ken Paxton.

Well, again, look at Trump first, because the GOP has now come full circle, putting up a guy who is as big a scumbag and sleazeball as Trump.

This is a man whose career reads like a mafioso rap sheet.

The scandal-plagued career of Paxton reads like someone dared crime writer John Grisham to pen fiction about every possible form of corruption into a single Southern Gothic crime lord. Bribery. Abuse of office. An extramarital affair. A wealthy donor allegedly employing his mistress as a favor.

That same donor allegedly bankrolled renovations on Paxton’s home while Paxton’s office did him favors in return. His own conservative staffers, Republicans, people who worked for him, were so alarmed they went to the FBI. Not Democrats. Not liberal activists. His own people. Four of them later sued him, and Paxton ended up apologizing and cutting a $3.3 million check.

Did I mention he did that with taxpayer money to make it go away? Paxton’s story reads less like a Grisham novel than a Stephen King horror tome.

And still, somehow, there was more. The Republican-controlled Texas House, again, his own party, his own state, had seen enough. They drew up 20 articles of impeachment and made him only the third officeholder in Texas’ nearly 200-year history to be impeached. Twenty articles.

The list of offenses was so long it needed its own table of contents. If we’re going to compare, I suppose Paxton’s list was short, given that Trump’s would entail volumes, like an encyclopedia set, if anyone knows what that is anymore.

Just like if anyone in the GOP knows what moral and ethical values are.

Paxton was ultimately acquitted by the Texas Senate, though that had absolutely nothing to do with his innocence and more to do with his chummy colleagues saving him.

And after all of it, Donald Trump looked at this man and called him a “true MAGA Warrior” worthy of the United States Senate.

This is what the bottom of the barrel looks like, and in light of slush funds, ballrooms, gas prices, the Iran war, Trump has now taken the GOP, and his “true MAGA Warriors,” about as far down as you can go.

The GOP has come full circle. The party that once screamed moral outrage about Bill Clinton over a lie about an affair has now enthusiastically nominated a man whose corruption scandals make Clinton’s look like … how do I put this … child’s play, and no pun intended whatsoever.

The party that used to run on “character counts” has now made Paxton the poster child of the new GOP candidate. The Republican Party in 2026 has decided that corruption, scandal, and ethical rot aren’t disqualifying. No, they’re practically credentials to be included in campaign ads, because Paxton’s scandals are the only thing he’s ever accomplished in public office.

Paxton isn’t an aberration. He is a reflection. He mirrors Donald Trump almost perfectly: the indictments brushed aside as political persecution, the abuse of office recast as fighting the establishment, the personal moral failures ignored by a base that has decided winning is the only virtue that matters.

The sanctimonious heathens that are Southern Christian conservatives view Paxton as a steadfast champion of religious liberty, the pro-life movement, and traditional family values, which means anti-LGBTQ+. Like Trump, Christians give Paxton a pass.

If you take this theory at face value, the only thing Paxton hasn’t done is kill anyone — well, women in Texas did die trying to get life-saving abortions, but then again, that’s okay for the religious right, so he gets another pass. It never ends.

Emulating Trump, Paxton watched all of this, took careful notes, and ran as a mini-me Trump in Texas and won. Why wouldn’t he? The party and its base taught him that none of it matters.

And — said with glee — Paxton’s ascension is devastating for Republicans in the general election. While Trump won Texas by 14 points in 2024, Democrats believe they have a shot this year as his approval rating has dropped.

They have a candidate in James Talarico, who raised $27 million in the first quarter of 2026 alone, the largest-ever haul for a Senate candidate in any state in the first quarter of an election year.

Prediction markets now show Democrats with a 47% chance of winning the seat, up from 30% just a few months ago.

But honestly, whether Talarico turns Texas blue should be the least of Republicans’ concerns right now. Their bigger problem is that they just told every independent voter, every suburban woman, every soft Republican in the state of Texas that this is who they are.

Good for them! They deserve to be swallowed-up by the blue tsunami coming.

Ken Paxton is now a feature player in the GOP. He is what happens when a party follows Donald Trump and abandons every ethical standard imaginable. Paxton is the culmination of a decade-long race to the bottom.

The GOP made its bed. Now it gets to lie in it, right next to Ken Paxton. And I think I should stop there because that’s a dangerous and disgusting place to be.

The unofficial start to summer in the Northeast was a washout, cold, damp, murky, and gray. It was, in retrospect, the perfect meteorological metaphor for what Donald Trump is doing to nuclear negotiations with Iran: a drenching, dispiriting mess with no sun in sight.

While millions of Americans were dodging raindrops this Memorial Day weekend, Trump was being dodgy on Truth Social, contradicting himself over and over again, lurching between triumphant exaltations and terrorizing threats, showing his desperation and stupidity to a world that is watching, and not laughing.

Saturday: a peace deal was largely negotiated. Sunday: slow down, don’t rush. Monday: Iran will be in “great danger” if talks collapse. Three days, three completely incompatible postures.

What blew my mind apart on Saturday were the “breaking news” alerts exploding across my phone as the gullible media tripped over itself to declare that a peace deal was “imminent.” “Are you kidding me with this?” I said to no one in particular.

They based their reporting on one of Trump’s flimsy, historically lie-ridden Truth Social posts. I honestly didn’t know who was stupider, Trump or the media outlets breathlessly announcing that a deal was coming.

The media seemed as desperate for holiday weekend clicks as Trump is for a peace deal. This is a man drowning and flailing for anything within reach, and the media treated every erratic outburst as cause to interrupt a holiday weekend.

Anyone paying the slightest bit of attention knows, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that Iran has Trump in a vise, and it knows it. Since the astonishingly reckless decision to launch military operations against Iran on February 27, Trump has handed Tehran virtually everything it wanted without extracting anything of lasting value in return.

If Hollywood made a movie about what has happened since then, no one would believe it. It reminded me of a very serious and realistic friend who reluctantly agreed years ago to see the film Dumb and Dumber with me. He hated it. “People just aren’t that stupid,” he remarked.

I’ve been thinking about what he said all those years ago, so I texted him on Monday, reminding him, and asking what he thought about the Iran war.

“I was wrong,” he replied succinctly.

Trump’s utter stupidity never considered the following: the Iranian regime has survived. It has depleted American weapons stockpiles worth billions. It has forced the U.S. government to spend tens of billions of dollars. It has retained its uranium. It has preserved the bulk of its military arsenal. And it has discovered, with almost gleeful efficiency, that launching cheap drones while threatening to choke off the Strait of Hormuz is enough to send the world economy into a tailspin and Donald Trump into a tailspin of a panic attack.

Iran has not been defeated. Iran has been empowered. It has emerged from this conflict with arguably greater regional leverage than it had before. That is horrifying on every level. And Trump’s stupidity owns every line of it.

When I asked him for advice on a career dilemma I was having, my grandfather once told me that the most pathetic people in the world are those who are both stupid and desperate. It was as sage a piece of advice as I’ve ever received.

I’ve thought about that a lot this weekend too. Because right now, Donald Trump is the living embodiment of that description, and the stakes are infinitely higher than my little work snafu ever was. This isn’t a job situation gone sideways. This is war. And war is a lethal, dead-serious business.

What makes the current conflict even more alarming is the combination of the players at the negotiating table. You have undoubtedly the most untrustworthy man in American political history negotiating with one of the most untrustworthy regimes on earth. Put in terms Trump might understand: a scumbag dealing with sleazeballs.

The Iranian government has violated nearly every agreement it has entered into since seizing power in 1979. And Trump’s “deal-making” has proved that his book, Trump: The Art of the Deal, is the biggest piece of fictionalized mythology ever written.

How will these two devious players ever reach a genuine agreement? The U.S. wants Iran to surrender its stockpile of highly enriched uranium. Iran wants frozen assets released, sanctions lifted, and 30 to 60 days to “finalize details.” Right, and Rome was built in a day. More applicable, it took 20 months of intensive negotiations to finalize the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), Obama/Iran nuclear agreement reached in July 2015.

Iran is simply running out the clock on a desperate president. And even Trump’s most hawkish Republican allies know it.

Senator Roger Wicker called the rumored 60-day ceasefire framework a “disaster” that would render everything achieved by Operation Epic Fury meaningless. Ted Cruz warned that allowing Iran to retain enrichment capabilities while halting military pressure would be a “catastrophic mistake.”

Lindsey Graham — stupid and desperate when it comes to anything related to Trump — said any deal that doesn’t permanently secure the Strait of Hormuz from Iranian aggression isn’t worth making. Senator Thom Tillis went on CNN and asked the obvious question no one in the administration wants to answer: if Iran’s defenses were truly “obliterated,” why are we letting them keep nuclear material?

Trump’s response to these critics? He called them “losers” on Truth Social.

There will never be a real deal between Trump and Iran. Mark these words. Iran will never surrender its nuclear program. It will never relinquish its newfound stranglehold on the Strait of Hormuz, not after realizing the leverage it now holds over the world economy.

Iran would rather burn the world down than watch itself slide back into irrelevance.

And Trump, desperate and stupid, lacks the patience and intellect to force meaningful concessions from a regime thrilled to have an ignorant American president exactly where it wants him.

What that means for the next two years is a world on tenterhooks: ships uncertain of safe passage, oil markets subject to Iranian whim, a nuclear program advancing behind a worthless ceasefire, and a president calling his critics un-American while overseeing one of the most genuinely un-American foreign policy catastrophes ever.

That is why treating Donald Trump as a credible source for breaking news about peace negotiations is stupid and desperate, and how a man so desperate and this stupid is not someone the world should trust to deliver peace.

I think Mike Johnson is one of the most loathsome human beings on the planet, and I have license to say anything I want about him. That’s because, as a gay man, Johnson has attacked me in more ways than I can count.

But this isn’t about my dislike of Johnson. Putting personal feelings aside, I can state that Johnson will go down as the worst Speaker of the House in American history for the damage he’s done to this country. Guaranteed.

And, given the way the tide is turning in Congress, Johnson may be history soon enough.

From the moment Johnson grabbed the gavel, he made a choice, and that choice was Donald Trump, every single time, without hesitation, dignity or the Christian spine he endlessly claims to possess.

What Johnson delivered was far from leadership. It was a masterclass in submission. His boot-licking devotion to Donald Trump became institutionalized, so complete and abject it strains belief that this man once took an oath to defend the Constitution of the United States.

And now it’s coming back to bite him. Hard.

The war powers vote the House had to cancel before the Memorial Day break. The White House ballroom $1 billion boondoggle stalling out like a dilapidated Chevy on the House floor. And perhaps most grotesquely, Trump’s DOJ slush fund - $1.776 billion earmarked to compensate people Trump’s administration deemed wronged under Biden, including January 6 insurrectionists - is beginning to stink even to Republicans.

That’s because people like Michael Lindell of MyPillow infamy, Rudy Giuliani, and others who spent years lying through courtrooms and losing defamation judgments are ostensibly eligible for taxpayer dollars.

All while the rest of America struggles to fill up their tanks.

Mike Johnson is now the point man trying to force the war powers, ballroom and slush fund legislation through the House against a growing tide. Ever Trump’s loyal toady, he fled town in a hurry to avoid the embarrassing defeat of the war bill for starters.

If you recall, Johnson has disappeared before. He deliberately kept the chamber out of session to avoid seating newly elected Arizona Democrat Adelita Grijalva in order to block her from becoming the crucial 218th signature on the Epstein discharge petition.

So to bottom-line this, Johnson wants Trump to retain authority to wipe out a civilization without oversight while shielding him from scrutiny over Epstein.

This is what the self-proclaimed man of God chooses to champion.

Johnson is now trapped in a conundrum of his own making. As more Republicans begin pushing back, he must either address his caucus’s concerns or once again kowtow to Trump.

Either way, Johnson loses. Some pointed to the fact that Johnson skipped a White House meeting this week as a sign of defiance on his part. Maybe, but I doubt it because Trump removed Johnson’s spine two years ago. Was it a signal to placate the growing resentment in his caucus? Perhaps, but he always finds a way back to Donald.

Some House Republicans are waking up, embarrassingly late, to the reality that they surrendered Congress as a co-equal branch of government on January 20, 2025, and the country has been paying for it ever since.

And they did it with Johnson leading the way.

This change of heart, if you can call it that since the GOP has no heart, is driven less by principle than by panic. These members are looking at purple, swing and even red-district polling and freaking out. Trump’s poll numbers are sinking fast.

So are theirs, through guilt by association. That’s what happens to members of Congress who rubber-stamp Trump’s abhorrent legislation.

The midterms are coming, the biennial march toward self-preservation.

What does this mean for the wimpy Johnson? It means the votes he bent over backwards to deliver for Trump are now at risk of collapse. And when these measures fail on the House floor, because they will, Trump will need someone to blame.

And Johnson, having turned himself into a political Depends for Trump’s excesses while surrendering every shred of independence, has no leverage, and no base of his own. He is the perfect scapegoat, compliant enough to enable everything, weak enough to take the fall for it.

Trump will tear him apart just like he did the East Wing of the White House.

Johnson’s phony Christian faith won’t save him from the demonic Trump.

Johnson championed legislation that hurt vulnerable people, stripped protections from the poor and rewarded the powerful. He never once found the courage to say publicly and without equivocation that these things were wrong.

When our children and grandchildren read about this period in history, they’ll notice two recurring names. They will learn how America slid toward autocracy, how its global credibility eroded, how its institutions were destroyed by one man’s ego and the servility of those supposed to check him.

When that history is written, Mike Johnson’s name will be glued to Trump’s.

He will be remembered as a small man, small in so many ways, who had every opportunity to stand up and chose instead to kneel at Trump’s swollen legs.

Kissing up to Donald Trump has never ended well. The list of those tossed overboard is too long to recount here. Mike Johnson’s name will soon join the ranks of the meek and mindless.

The only remaining question is whether Johnson leaves on his own terms in January 2027 or gets shown the door sooner, by Trump losing patience, House Republicans finally reaching their limit, or voters in November 2026 who have had enough.

Either way, Mike Johnson will be relegated to the trash bin of history, where hollow sermons and moral cowardice decompose together.

I met David Letterman twice. Once when he first began his show, walking up 53rd Street. Such an approachable guy. And once again, after he’d left, at a Starbucks in my apartment building.

He said he remembered meeting me 30 years ago. Of course, he was kidding.

I love Dave, and was sad to see him go, and let out a meh when Stephen Colbert was named to replace him. But Colbert grew on me, and I find myself not only sad about his exit, but angry about it too.

CBS will tell you it was a business decision. Paramount will parrot that. The numbers, they’ll say. The shrinking late-night audience. The economics of a changing media landscape. Don’t believe a word of it.

I spent 30 years in corporate PR, and when they lay it on thick about all the reasons Colbert was cancelled, and The Late Show franchise with it, they are lying through their teeth. They cover one falsity with another, desperate to bury the truth.

Stephen Colbert didn’t lose his show because of the bogus claims by CBS. Donald Trump took it away from him, and away from us.

In doing so, Trump continues his systematic destruction of the one thing Americans have always used to survive their darkest political moments: the joke.

It really doesn’t need to be said, but Donald Trump is not funny. Not in any way that matters. He thinks he’s funny, like he thinks he’s always right, like he’s the greatest president, like he won in a landslide, like the Iran war will be over soon. If Trump thinks he’s funny, that’s a lie too.

Every president in modern memory has understood that self-deprecating humor is a form of leadership. It signals humanity, from the Irish wit of Reagan and Biden to the humor of every president in between.

My grandfather, the funniest person I ever met, said having a sense of humor was a sign of intelligence.

He was right. Trump’s lack of wit only validates his dim-wittedness.

Trump does not make fun of himself. Ever. His humor is a weapon aimed at people he despises. Reporters are “dummies” and “piggies.” His enemies are vermin, scumbags, or simply scum. Everything he does is not a setup for a punchline, but an actual punch in the face.

Think about the past few months. ICE raids tearing apart communities. January 6 insurrectionists eligible to be compensated from Justice Department funds. Death and destruction involving Iran and Venezuela. Casual talk of “wiping out” civilizations and bombing places back to the Stone Age.

Trump doesn’t calm fears. He eggs them on and feeds off them. Trump is constitutionally — pun intended — incapable of that.

So into that void step the late-night hosts. And now one of the best of them is gone.

Colbert was never just doing jokes. In my view, he was performing a public service, taking the daily avalanche of outrage and turning it into something bearable through laughter.

Late-night television used to be a war, with networks circling each other and hosts competing. Since Colbert’s exit was announced, Seth Meyers, John Oliver, Jimmy Kimmel and Jimmy Fallon have come together, recognizing the ironic seriousness of the moment.

And speaking of irony, we lost Barney Frank this week too. I keep coming back to that.

Frank was perennially the funniest person on Capitol Hill. He was brilliantly, bitingly funny. Arguably, his sense of humor helped make his coming out in the late 1980s more palatable and accepted.

I observed that from experience. I was always the class clown, the funniest guy in the room. I knew I was gay underneath, and when I came out, it was my humor people cited first. “You’re the funniest person I know,” was the standard response.

I say that with undiluted humility.

That’s why, as someone with humor, I’m unusually sad for another reason. There are no funny politicians anymore. Nobody in Washington is laughing. Everyone is pointing, accusing, outraged, and that includes Democrats, who have caught enough of Trump’s disease to forget how to be warm, how to invite people in.

Even Obama recently said Democrats need to stop being so easily offended over accidental slights and remember that people ultimately want to enjoy their lives.

As he put it, they need to stop being a “buzzkill.”

Trump has made the atmosphere of American political life airless, joyless, and mean.

Colbert’s exit isn’t about television. It’s about a president who has made it professionally dangerous to mock him. That’s why a mentalist was chosen to perform at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner. Trump didn’t want anyone telling jokes about him.

Because he is ridiculous, and he knows it, and he cannot bear for anyone else to know it too.

We used to be able to laugh at our leaders, but not in the way we laugh at Trump, because there is no humor around him. We laugh at a buffoon who is subversively crushing our sense of humor.

This week Barney Frank, who knew wit was a form of wisdom, left us. And Stephen Colbert, who knew the monologue was a form of resistance, was pushed out the door.

The mood is heavy. It starts at the top, with a killjoy of a man who has never once laughed at himself, and who would rather America be full of fear than full of laughter.

Kentucky’s Thomas Massie, a provocateur libertarian and professional pain-in-the-butt to House leadership and Donald Trump, lost his primary yesterday. That was a foregone conclusion given how Trump’s endorsements have won primaries almost across the board.

Those endorsements are going to come back and haunt the GOP in November, but that’s another story for another time.

Back to Massie. He is now a lame duck. And with 36 Republican House members and seven Republican senators already choosing not to seek reelection, there is a growing class of Republicans in Congress with nothing left to lose.

So here’s my question for all of them: What the hell are you waiting for? Grow some and turn your cloakroom whispers about Trump into loud screams to remove him from office. Finally!

Call them the Massies and Cassidys, the GOP members who are done, departing, or already in the crosshairs of a MAGA primary. Senator Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, who lost his primary last week, just voted with Democrats on a resolution to end Trump’s war on Iran, a disastrous military engagement launched without congressional authorization — which is to say illegally.

Massie has been a lonely voice of dissent for years. These are men who clearly see what’s happening. Massie knows what’s in the hearts of some of these departing members. They just won’t say it out loud, not loudly enough, not together, and not in a way that actually matters.

Massie in the House and Cassidy in the Senate can help change that now, before it’s too late.

Trump is quickly going off the rails and barreling toward autocracy at the speed of light. Let’s tick through what this president has done in recent weeks, because the pace of brazen lawbreaking has become staggering.

Start with the nearly $1.8 billion slush fund, money being made available to Trump’s friends, donors, and yes, January 6 insurrectionists. This is an illegal and stunning grift conducted in broad daylight, a corrupt reward system so far-fetched it would embarrass a banana republic dictator.

And just as unbelievable, the Department of Justice's move to permanently shield Donald Trump, his family, and his businesses from IRS audits essentially means they don’t pay taxes. How can GOP members sleep at night knowing something like this?

Just for these, Trump could be impeached.

Then there are the outrageous stock trades. Trump’s latest financial disclosures show that he or his investment advisers made more than 3,700 trades in the first quarter. That’s more than some financial firms make in a quarter. It is breathtakingly corrupt.

These trades total tens of millions of dollars and involve major companies with dealings before his administration and companies he’s overtly endorsed from the Oval Office. Wall Street insiders were stunned. Matthew Tuttle, chief executive officer of Tuttle Capital Management, called it “an insane amount of trades,” adding that it looked more like something done by “a hedge fund with massive algo trades” than a personal account.

Trump scooped up shares of AI software maker Palantir weeks before he lauded the stock by name on Truth Social. He purchased Nvidia stock just a week before Nvidia announced a major deal with Meta, and bought AMD stock just before the Commerce Department approved AMD chip sales to China.

Just for this, Trump could be impeached.

Then there’s the war with Iran, launched singularly and illegally by Trump without congressional authorization, in violation of the War Powers Act. Cassidy saw it. He voted to push back. Where are the rest of the dozens of Republicans who are on their way out the door?

Just for this, Trump could be impeached.

And let’s not forget the construction of the White House ballroom, which could cost taxpayers close to a billion dollars. That too is illegal, at least in my view and in the view of many others, including a federal judge who ruled the project likely requires congressional approval.

Again, just for this, Trump could be impeached.

Or consider the collapse of alliances with democratic partners across Europe and Asia, systematically torched by a president who openly coddles thugs like Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin while treating NATO allies like garbage.

For traditional Republican members of Congress, who value a strong diplomacy-driven foreign policy, this has to be something they want to rectify immediately. Every day is a lost opportunity to mend fences.

Trump’s behavior is accelerating, and as he approaches 80, questions about his mental acuity, his stability, and his grip on reality grow with every passing day.

His overall health is openly discussed by people around him.

Republicans in Congress have been whispering about all of this. In private. Off the record. Never on camera, never on the House and Senate floors. The country deserves to know how members really feel.

Yes, the conventional Beltway wisdom says wait for the midterms, wait for Democrats to take back the House and Senate, then impeach. And maybe that’s how it goes. But given the speed at which Trump is becoming a king, why not now?

Seven Republican senators are walking out the door. If even a fraction of them found their nerve, found each other, and found Democratic partners willing to move, impeachment proceedings could begin now.

Republican congressional leadership has spent years rolling over, playing dead, and handing Trump everything he’s demanded. It would be the biggest middle finger to this ongoing spineless accommodation that Washington has seen in a generation.

And if they want to be selfish about it, they can dump Trump now in an effort to save their party’s candidates around the country who will face the wrath of moderate Republicans and independent voters.

The call of history is on the side of the Massies and Cassidys. They have nothing left to lose politically. They have everything to gain morally. And the country, whatever is left of its democratic institutions, is running out of time.

Step up. Speak out. Do the right thing while you still can.