Tara Dublin

Hey, wanna see a cult that’s been fully triggered by a public display of basic human goodness and decency?

Head on over to Twitter or Threads, where all of MAGA is short-circuiting over their guy’s last few days of global embarrassments, which began with his UFC slapfest birthday party tanking in the ratings, then continued with his weak and shambolic performance at the G7 conference.

Add the lack of any real musical acts performing at the upcoming “America 250” concert on July 4th and the literally swirling controversy over the Reflecting Pool’s algae blooms and peeling paint, creating yet another perfect visual metaphor representing all of Trump’s failures.

Now you’ve got a perfect storm of whining about the Trump-free grand opening of the Obama Presidential Center in Chicago last week, which was a reminder for the country and the rest of the world about what we’ve truly lost, and what we deserve to have again.

During events leading up to last Thursday’s ceremony, the Obamas continued to demonstrate the class, elegance, and dignity they always brought to the White House. Defying the crass UFC fighter who misgendered her and the racist MAGA trolls who continue to depict the Obamas as apes, Michelle Obama wore a skirt showcasing a gorgeous photo of her mother, Marian Robinson, with whom President Obama was also very close.

That throughline was very much present on Thursday, when four living presidents showed up to celebrate Barack and Michelle’s Big Moment, and none of the musical acts who were announced ahead of time dropped out.

This visual is another glaring example of what MAGA will never have.

The racist Red Hat Death Squad couldn’t cope at all after seeing videos of the likes of Eddie Vedder, Bruce Springsteen, and Jennifer Hudson bringing the crowd to tears, for example, because they have to pretend they’re stoked about Vanilla Ice and three hours of Trump doing his dance to “YMCA.”

Melania Trump wasn’t even invited to represent the worst First Couple in American history while her husband further weakened America by surrendering to Iran at Versailles. Their absence was noticed and occasionally referred to for comedic effect. Thanks to Michelle Obama’s epic speech about her husband's real achievements, we now have glorious memes thanks to the phrase “Won a Peace Prize.”

That’s the vibe I want back in the White House.

Americans watching the star-studded show, which had even more celebrities in the audience than on stage, were almost reawakened by the goodness and decency demonstrated by every single speaker and performance. After 11 years of Trump flinging his loaded diaper all over our political norms, it was a joy to listen to President Obama speak about the importance of preserving his legacy in a fully selfless way.

Instead of bragging about his accomplishments--something his wife did for him in her speech, because that’s not his style —President Obama spoke about collaborating on the exhibits. Instead of taking all of the credit, he highlighted his wife’s contributions to his life, openly expressed his gratitude to his former VP and “member of our family” Joe Biden, and praised his daughters.

FULL SPEECH: Barack Obama at opening of Obama Presidential Center

And MAGA cannot cope at all. Their posts about the ceremony are the stuff of third-grade bullies, claiming to be “laughing” at our joy over the whole thing because they just can’t deal with their own jealousies.

You can also tell Trump is very jealous about all of the positivity surrounding the Obamas because he’s already whining that the Iran deal isn’t set, while also lying about the Italian Prime Minister “begging” him to pose for a photo with her.

And he’s bullying another female journalist, albeit one who’s been a major “MAGA loyalist,” because she’s unhappy with the Iran deal.

You really have to wonder when the remaining MAGA faithful will just stop letting him lie to them and grift them when he’s broken every promise he’s ever made. Like the Reflecting Pool, they’re currently not capable of reflection, but the questions they’ll never answer remain: Why do you keep letting him do this to you? Don’t you miss having a president who actually took care of the country and didn’t embarrass us? Can you point to a time over the last 11 years when any of you ever “owned the Libs” in any way?

I know you can’t really reason with a cult member, but I find it all fascinating from a cultural and sociological standpoint. I’ve had to live under several Republican presidents in my lifetime, and I never agreed with them, but at least I never felt like they were trying to end America instead of protecting the country. George W. Bush never even wanted to be the president, and he was flawed in multiple ways, but he never sold us out to foreign dictators to enrich himself. GWB is a good ol’ boy through and through; he’d rather be painting than picking petty fights with a prime minister.

The Obamas, Bidens, and Clintons are constantly under attack from MAGA because of their combined jealousy over the respect they continue to receive. It’s why they troll Hunter Biden’s Twitter account, because they don’t have any real examples of goodness, kindness, and familial love to follow. I wish there were a way to make MAGA understand that Democratic presidents always took better care of them than Trump has, but proof and facts have never mattered to them.

That’s why we must vote for the decency we want to see back in our government, so that we can once again lead by example, instead of being a cautionary tale.

If the chaos of this last year and a half week has shown us anything, it’s that every distraction Donald Trump has manufactured to stop people from talking about the Epstein Files has failed spectacularly.

The UFC fiasco kicked off a week that ended with a full surrender to Iran at Versailles, which was glaring enough. But the Reflecting Pool scandal has also been an excellent visual metaphor representing all of Trump’s failures to distract from his entire administration’s involvement in the biggest political cover-up in American history.

From his initial “I have the best pool guy” promise to calling the algae-green swampwater “American Blue” to pieces of the bottom literally peeling off, it’s just the latest example of Trump never once delivering on his promises, and then shifting the blame to anyone else he can when he fails. He’s seriously blaming “vandalism” for all of the issues when he’s the vandal.

Trump also revealed his brand-new Air Force One, a bribe gift from Qatar that he turned into yet another grift on the American taxpayers. His predecessors managed just fine on the current AFO, but, then again, we’re talking about the same guy who had Jeffrey Epstein’s legendary Lolita Express repainted instead of just borrowing a plane from some rich friend of his. The audacity of this is staggering.

Astonishingly, no one from the Harris/Walz campaign pointed out that Trump was flying around inside a crime scene. When I found out about it, I screamed into the abyss of Twitter to beg them to make a “Black Lights Matter” joke or SOMETHING to call attention to Trump’s decades-long friendship with the world’s most notorious dead pedophile and his partner-in-unspeakable-crimes, Ghislaine Maxwell.

I tried my best to warn MAGA as well, but it’s fine, what do I know about politics? It’s not like he’s repeatedly blasted them for wanting him to deliver on his campaign promise to release the full Epstein Files.

Oh, wait. Yes, he did.

And for a moment, it seemed like the biggest MAGA accounts on Twitter were ready to finally start acknowledging what we’ve known all along.

But he somehow fooled them again and again, and you won’t be shocked to learn that those and other paid MAGA shill accounts are back to either calling the Files a “hoax” or saying they’ve been fully released, which we know isn’t true.

Nothing they say or do will get us to stop talking about the Epstein Files. You can count on me to stay on this story until the Trump regime actually complies with the Epstein Files Transparency Act, instead of continuing to violate it every day for the last 210+ days.

The top news story every day should be that JD “Vladimir Futon” Vance led a secret staff meeting in the SITUATION ROOM nearly a year ago to discuss how to better cover up the Epstein Files to protect Trump, rather than seeking justice for any of the victims and survivors. Aside from the egregious misuse of the Situation Room, we know the entire administration is involved.

Of course, that’s kind of tough with so much of the media under Trump’s sway while he continues to bully anyone who dares to tell the truth about him or ask any questions that might force him to think about things he doesn’t want to think about.

We now know that FBI was told that Trump Tower was a “hunting ground” for “recruiters” to find young women for him to have sex with. And thanks to yet more bombshell reporting, we’ve also learned that at least three million more pages of Epstein documents are still being held back by acting AG Todd “Trumpsimp” Blanche, who seems super excited to be the first to go to prison for Trump.

Blanche will once again face questioning by the Senate, and I was fortunate to grab a moment with my Senator, Ron Wyden (D-OR), on Friday after a press conference centered around Juneteenth and Pride.

“Sen. Chutzpah” is the ranking Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee and also sits on the Senate Intelligence Committee, among his many other responsibilities. He promised me last year that he’d never give up on Epstein, and he continues to deliver on that promise, as evidenced by his most recent questioning of Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent. He also ripped Bessent over the latest Trump grift that was created to enrich his two older adult sons.

As Wyden and I walked out of the press conference, I quietly asked him about the Situation Room meeting. “Wasn’t that something?” he replied.

“So, what people want to see is accountability,” I said. “Do we have to wait until Democrats get the majority back before that happens?”

“Nope!” Sen. Chutzpah immediately responded. He then told me that more hearings were coming, and specifically mentioned Blanche.

As I said, he’s been good about delivering on his promises, and I have no reason to doubt him now.

The issue we currently face with Epstein is keeping the story at the top of a news cycle that’s already full of Trump’s other failed attempts at distracting from Epstein. From the ballooning ballroom budget to his UFC fiasco to the upcoming “America 250” concert that’s also destined to fail, everything Trump does to distract from the Epstein albatross that he carries on his padded shoulder only draws more attention to it.

All Republicans should be asked about the Epstein Files Situation Room meeting and nothing else. Epstein needs to stick to them just like it’s sticking to Trump, and it’ll be up to all of us to make sure Democrats keep holding them accountable.

Overcompensation is a hell of a thing.

Donald Trump knows he’s not universally beloved or widely respected like Barack Obama and Joe Biden are, and his entire miserable existence is one of constantly trying to make up for everything he wishes he had. Which is why he’s always making things up about himself that he wishes were real.

It’s why he used to call in to talk radio stations in New York pretending to be his own PR person, “John Barron.” No one would say the things about him that he wished were true, so he did it himself. That’s also where his famous “Many people are saying” thing comes from — because no one was actually saying whatever came next. It was the propaganda he wanted to see in the world, because he didn’t see what he really wanted when he looked in the mirror.

Over the last 11 years, we’ve watched him use the techniques he learned from his dual Daddy Replacements, Roy Cohn and Vladimir Putin. They taught him how to talk about himself like the person he wanted to be, not the loser he was. They taught him to keep repeating the same lies over and over until everyone believed them. There was a point where Trump crossed the Rubicon from knowing he was lying to not caring that he was lying, and then he learned how to use blackmail to compromise his former critics, and here we are.

Trump knows he isn’t respected on the global stage, unlike his two Democratic predecessors, as evidenced by the way he’s behaved and has been treated at the G7 summit this week. Every other world leader has represented like the adults they are, while Trump, fresh from his lame birthday party slapfest that barely made a blip in the TV ratings, was sluggish, hoarse, and seemed fully lost every time the cameras were on him.

It’s just so embarrassing. Look how weak he is. Listen to how weak he sounds. No wonder he railed against Barack Obama every chance he got, just days after a UFC fighter yelled out, “Michelle Obama is a man!” after thanking Jesus for helping him win his not-at-all-gay all-male slapfest in a cage while wearing the smallest and not-at-all-gay white booty shorts.

Trump calling Barack Obama a “son of a b---h” at the G7 is the kind of pettiness we've come to expect from the pettiest PAB in history.

The false bravado posturing is all part of the show for MAGA. Bullying is weakness, not strength. Bullying is rooted in jealousy, growing out of the low self-esteem that all bullies feel, yet can’t quite name. They can’t stand to see anyone they’ve deemed as “less than” succeed, and they also can’t possibly ever be wrong on the internet. It’s honestly impressive that they can even hold their phones with those heavy chips on their shoulders.

Trump’s obsession with the Obamas is similar to his obsession with the Bidens, because he knows they’re beloved and respected on the world stage. Except it’s worse with the Obamas, because they set off every racist trigger he’s got under his thin skin.

MAGA loves it, because they’ve been allowed to be free-range racists for the last 11 years, along with all of the other “-isms” and “-phobias” they deny having. Their fixation with the Obamas long predates Trump’s own assault on our political norms. An early proponent of Twitter, the petty, short-fingered vulgarian was at the forefront of the birtherism BS, demanding Barack Obama’s “longform birth certificate” and always emphasizing that the President’s middle name is Hussein.

That’s just one racist trope Trump and MAGA still use, along with misgendering Michelle out of pure jealousy and spite. Michelle and Melania have nothing in common other than having the same first initials and the title of first lady. But only one has behaved like an actual lady in public, and it’s not the former nude model whom Trump met thanks to his pal Jeffrey Epstein.

Trump is also fixated on the Obamas’ shared track record of success, both in and out of the White House. He hates always being compared to a Black man and coming up short, literally. Shoelifts McCankles can’t hoist himself out of a chair by himself these days, another reason why he’s jealous of Barack and his basketball skills.

Conversely, the Obama Presidential Library is opening to the public in his hometown of Chicago, and this video of the Best First Couple EVER has gone viral for simply showcasing their connection and real love for each other.

MAGA doesn’t have a happily married First Couple or a tight-knit, loving first family to emulate. Both Presidents Obama and Biden are fantastic fathers who have set the standard for being supportive parents while living under the world’s biggest microscope. MAGA can’t stand their goodness, because none of them had a good example of parenting in their own homes.

They compare the Obamas to apes and won’t leave Hunter Biden alone. Since every accusation is a confession in Trumpworld, MAGA fabricated false accusations about President Biden abusing his daughter, Ashley, with Project Veritas going as far as creating fake entries in her stolen diary. Because Trump is in the Epstein Files and used to brag about wanting to date his preferred daughter, Ivanka.

MAGA is boosting a clearly weakened Trump at a time when we’ve learned his entire staff is involved in the Epstein Files cover-up. They got mad when Michelle Obama planted a vegetable garden, but are still making excuses for Trump's Epstein connection while celebrating the vulgar destruction of our White House.

All because Trump’s racist parents taught him how to be a terrible person instead of just loving him. All because he’s in the Epstein Files. All because Trump is jealous of a Black man with whom he can never truly compete.

And he knows it.

Overcompensation is a hell of a thing.

The biggest political cover-up in American history has been taking place in plain sight for the last two years, and it’s finally reached a point where even the most loyal of Trump supporters are being forced to admit it.

Jeffrey Epstein has been Donald Trump’s political albatross ever since he returned to office. Trump kept promising to release them while on the campaign trail — all while flying around on the repainted Lolita Express, a screaming confession burning fuel above everyone in the sky.

Calling the Epstein Files scandal “Trump’s Watergate” isn’t nearly strong enough. Nixon had some guys break into a hotel room. What Trump has done to this country is exponentially worse because the ripple effect is impacting the entire world.

Along with never challenging the 2024 election, I’ll never understand why the Harris/Walz campaign never used Trump’s well-documented friendship with Epstein against him, especially after thousands of pages of previously sealed evidence were finally released in January 2024. The whole “we go high” thing has never really worked for Democrats in this current garbage fire of a political climate, and it’s well past the time for the party to start playing dirty.

The bombshell revelation that Trump’s staff met nearly a year ago to discuss the Epstein Files is compounded by the fact that they did it in the Situation Room. It probably shouldn’t surprise anyone that the most criminal administration in history further sullied the People’s House by using that space to figure out how to keep protecting Trump instead of focusing on bringing justice to victims.

Covering up the Epstein Files, or at least distracting from them whenever possible, has been Trump’s main priority for the last 17 months. It’s why he keeps bombing Iran, because if the Iran War ends, he’ll have to figure out a different country to bomb. It’s why he keeps vaguely threatening Cuba; he’s got to have multiple distractions on hand, just in case.

This cover-up includes literally everyone who works in the White House, with JD “Vladimir Futon” Vance at the helm. If he had the sense of a goat, Vance would’ve sprinted to the press with the Epstein Files to declare to all the world that Trump is indeed implicated.

They turned the Situation Room into the Epstein War Room.

The Vice President and every member of the administration have been complicit in the Epstein Files cover-up all along. Every lie they’ve told the American people matters, especially the ones told during any of the hearings that have already been held.

As an additional sidebar, this is also another example of journalists learning damaging information about Trump and his staff, but sitting on it until their book about it was being released, a la Bob Woodward. I can’t reconcile any reason to sit on the knowledge that Trump understood just how deadly the Coronavirus was, but, then again, I also can’t comprehend anyone choosing loyalty to Trump over our country. Silly me needing to have morals and whatnot.

But returning to the “How is this even happening” of it all, what we’re talking about is far beyond a hotel break-in and enters right into a very serious and real discussion about removing this corrupt regime that has defied everything that the presidency is supposed to stand for and continues to evade any accountability.

They are covering up potential evidence that Trump was part of Epstein's awful crimes. It’s time to stop sugarcoating anything about the Epstein Files and start laying the groundwork to end Trump’s reign of terror.

Article Two, Section Four of the Constitution lays out the framework to do just that. In my heart of hearts, I want to believe there’s already a Shadow Cabinet in place, but I also wanted to believe Democrats were going to fight a lot harder for Kamala Harris. Anyway, it states that the President, Vice President, and “all civil officers of the United States” can be removed from office “if convicted of treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors.”

All of those things have already been happening all day, every day, starting from the day Trump wouldn’t put his tiny hand on the Bible when he was sworn in during an indoor ceremony because it was too cold out for him, plus he didn’t want to have to face yet another sparse inauguration crowd.

Democrats need to sweep the midterms in both the House and Senate so we can have our version of the Nuremberg Trials in January 2027. And the Epstein Files need to remain front and center every time Democrats are in front of cameras or are otherwise speaking on the record. That’s five months' worth of daily accountability, and we’re all going to have to stay on our elected officials to stay on message.

If you’re GenX or older, then you’re old enough to remember the excitement around America’s Bicentennial in 1976.

I was only seven years old, and my memories are hazy from that time, but I do recall that my family spent the celebration at a resort in upstate New York. I can’t remember which one, but it was probably one where a lot of Jewish families stayed. I don’t remember who else was there, but I know I went shopping for special outfits with my mother for the trip, probably at KMart. Everything was red, white, and blue that summer and everybody talked about their plans for the bicentennial and basically nothing else. I know my dress to “go down to dinner” on the 4th was a sleeveless red-and-white gingham sundress with frills on the shoulders.

Everyone was so happy and so loud. All of the adults were drinking and smoking, kids were running around with sparklers and, of course, there were fireworks. A proper slice of Americana, like something out of a movie.

And here we are again, on the brink of celebrating America’s 250th birthday, and it’s going to yet again be like something out of a movie.

Except that movie is called Idiocracy.

The White House is currently obscured by a giant UFC Octagon ahead of Toddler Trump’s 80th birthday party on Sunday. Of all the mortifying things Trump has done, this has brought the kind of global embarrassment that can’t be calibrated by even the most advanced of scientific instruments. Shirtless men are going to beat the crap out of each other in front of what’s supposed to be a symbol of leadership.

Now, it’s the White Trash House.

It looks like the three-ring circus it is. It breaks my heart every time I look at it. Because, despite everyone joking about it and making clever memes about it, Trump has deliberately destroyed the People’s House because he hates America.

Tara Dublin/X

But they need a ballroom to feel safe?

None of this destruction should have been allowed. He could’ve built it on his own property, and it would even be on brand for Florida. But instead, he used who-knows-whose money (not his) and turned the South Lawn into a Carny Paradise. The attendees will revel in the spectacle of shirtless men beating the crap out of each other as a birthday present for an 80-year-old criminal fraud at the center of the biggest political cover-up in American history.

We’re still learning even more about the Epstein Files cover-up, something our Founders never could have imagined when they created this non-Christian nation conceived in liberty. While Trump was fixating on turning DC into Mar-A-Lago on the Potomac, his entire staff was meeting in the Situation Room to figure out how to keep protecting him, instead of giving the victims the justice they all deserve. They’ve all known for far too long what’s in those files, and they’ve done nothing about any of it.

Also, the mere thought of them meeting in the Situation Room, where important decisions about national security are made, is just another infuriating mental image to add to all of the terrible real ones we’re subjected to every day.

Now add what it’ll cost to have a proper backyard barbecue this year, thanks to skyrocketing grocery prices, and everyone staying closer to home because a road trip like the one my family took in 1976 is out of the question, thanks to the current gas prices.

So yeah, you’d have to forgive us for not feeling all that proud to celebrate the country’s upcoming birthday.

However, I always want to inject optimism and positivity wherever I can. We have reasons to celebrate this year, I promise!

As I write this, workers are removing Trump’s name from the Kennedy Center, an actual victory for America instead of the pyrrhic ones we’ve been forced to endure thanks to that dozy bulldozing ingrate. People held watch parties across the country to see it happen in real time, just like people had Knicks watch parties all over Manhattan to resolutely boo the most unpopular person to ever fall asleep behind the Resolute Desk.

There’s been terrible weather in Washington all week, with thunderstorms predicted on Sunday to make Trump’s party a literal washout. You can almost believe in divine intervention when the weather seems this targeted.

You love to see it! Too bad they can’t move the event inside to the incomplete Epstein Bunker, huh?

If you’re lucky enough to live somewhere with great weather on Sunday, No Kings protest marches are scheduled all across the country to make sure Trump has the most miserable birthday of his entire life. It’s going to be 92 degrees here in Portland, and along with the main march downtown, there’s going to be a more family-friendly carnival-type thing in a park with A LOT of trees providing shade. I think I might opt in for that instead of baking in the streets and feeling mad.

Speaking of Portland, I’m extra proud to be an Oregonian after learning that our state was the first to drop out of Trump’s dumb “America 250” State Fair. I’m sure Oregon won’t be the last Blue state to drop out. It’ll be just like when all of the artists dropped out of Trump’s dumb “America 250” concert, which is now just him and Vanilla Ice. The “State Fair” will probably just be Alabama by the time July 4th rolls around.

One last bit of good news: Democrats now have an 82% chance of taking back the House in November! And those odds might even increase now that we have a new catchphrase to use against Trump in every campaign ad for the next five months.

ICYMI, the Republican Party has been heavily invested in trying to control the American population by controlling women’s reproductive rights for decades.

I will forever contend that no government has the right to micromanage the bodies of its constituents, and I also will never understand how the GOP was ever allowed to turn any of our bodies into their personal battlegrounds. They have always ignored the basic human rights of women in this country, regardless of skin color or political party.

The Evangelical Christians somehow managed to take a woman’s right to bodily autonomy and weaponize it, rather than support it in a loving and Christlike way. As my friend John Fugelsang writes in his essential book, Separation of Church and Hate, Jesus never once talks about abortion, although there are passages in the Bible that describe how to perform one to save a woman’s life. Neato, huh? Keep that in your back pocket the next time a self-avowed “Jesus follower” in the MAGA cult mentions the Bible in a discussion about an often life-saving medical procedure that’s literally no one’s business except the doctor’s and the patient’s.

I also like to bust out a snarky, “And which of Trump’s qualities is the most like Jesus? Point to the passage in the Epstein Files to support your argument.”

They really don’t like that one, especially since I identify as an atheist.

Anyway, men who have no business anywhere near a uterus are doing all they can to make sure they get to decide when women start families, not the women themselves. Seems like a weird way to run a country, yet that’s what they’re doing.

It’s bad enough that RFK Jr has been put in charge of our nation’s healthcare systems (thanks for nothing, Rep. Bill Cassidy), seemingly out of spite on Trump’s behalf. He’s been joined by fellow buffoons Dr. Mehmet “I Put the MEH in Mehmet” Oz, Dr. Phil “All Oprah’s Fault” McGraw, and others who should all have already lost their medical licenses — if they even had one. Trump keeps nominating egregiously underqualified and unlicensed medical practitioners for Surgeon General while also hiking insurance premiums. The pro-life party? Not even close.

Not when they’re cutting Medicaid, Medicare, and Social Security next year. That’s fine, only the Libs need any of that, right MAGA?

The Trump regime just keeps proving that it wants all of us dead as fast as possible. The deliberate decimation of the FDA, CDC, and NIH is frightening and all part of the Project 2025/2026 plan from the heretics at the Heritage Foundation. Controlling women’s bodies has always been their focus, and they’ve already begun the process of turning America into the White Christian haven they all think America was founded to be.

While real medical doctors are being prevented from sharing information at medical conferences, the FDA is now deciding to also once again “review” the use of Mifepristone via an “anonymous” outside researcher. The drug, which is used as the first in a two-step process for a medical abortion, is used in combination with misoprostol (hey, guess what they’ll go after next) to stop a pregnancy from growing. It’s been safely used for the last 25 years, but now that RFK Jr — who works out topless in jeans and boasts about snorting coke from toilet seats — is in charge, look for that “review” to take place later this summer.

At the same time, a new government website is being promoted as a resource for “addressing the needs of mothers and fathers who face difficult or unexpected pregnancies and ensuring the well-being of mothers and the health of American families.” It’s even got a super-patriotic and pro-woman-sounding name: “Moms.gov”

Except it’s some serious anti-choice propaganda, sending a user to faith-based resources that will end up encouraging those seeking abortion care to alternative options.

It’s as if the government took all of those people who protest outside abortion clinics, who yell things like, “We’ll take your baby!” and made them into a website that guilts and shames people already facing one of the hardest decisions they’ll ever make.

“I don’t call them the pro-life party,” says Rep. Suzanne Bonamici (D-OR), “I call them anti-choice.” Bonamici, who I’m proud to say is my Representative, told me on Tuesday that she and her colleagues will be investigating the website.

Just check some of the language on the Moms.gov landing page about resources for “pregnancy centers”:

Pregnancy centers provide supportive services for mothers and families. Many centers offer pregnancy tests, ultrasounds, STD/STI testing and treatment, parenting support, childbirth classes, medical referrals, and material goods like clothes and diapers—at no cost to you. There are more than 2,750 pregnancy centers across the country. The majority of pregnancy centers offer limited medical services.

“Limited medical services” means the “pregnancy centers” linked from this government website won’t offer any abortion care. And all of the “centers” are Catholic- and Christian-based.

It also includes a link to “Enroll Eligible Children” for a Trump Savings Account that’s not at all another grift from the Grifter-In-Chief. Despite my curiosity, I’m certainly not clicking through to find out what makes a child “eligible” for a Trump account. Maybe who their dad voted for? I don’t know, but I bet even checking it out puts you on a special list where you start getting weird emails or ads about “Pregnancy Centers” or “Adoption Resources.” I mean, I’m waiting for my turn to be added to the White House “Leftist Influencers” Enemies List, plus I’d never ask this regime for help with anything.

No site ending in “.gov” can be trusted right now except for the official pages for Congressional Democrats. If you need a proper resource for reproductive healthcare, look no further than Planned Parenthood.

The juvenile delinquents who have been put in charge of the White House website and social media have officially gone full Nazi by creating an “Enemies List” of “Leftist Influencers” on WhiteHouse.gov

The list is fairly short for now, but the fact that it exists at all is proof that the Trump-controlled government is continuing to follow a propaganda playbook that was originally written in German in the 1930s. It was then later translated into Russian before finally reaching our shores and becoming a hybrid of their most horrifically successful tactics, with just enough of The Handmaid’s Tale for good measure added in over the last few years.

All of which has been boosted by MAGA-dominated social media for more than a decade.

Trump’s attacks on the press began almost exactly 11 years ago, when he first descended the tacky gold escalator in his tacky gold tower to fling his loaded diaper all over our political norms. It was then that he began poisoning the vernacular with the term “fake news media,” which is now so common that it’s used by Republican members of Congress who allowed themselves to be compromised thanks to blackmail (Russian Tactics 101, for those of you who are new to the subject). Those who once spoke out against Trump are now fully owned by him, as is the right-wing media, which helps boost his lies instead of exposing them. CBS News has already fallen to him, but that’s not enough.

Hitler had his Lügenpresse; Trump has “Fake News Media.”

Which is full-on projection language, considering he’s been abetted by Fox, Newsmax, and OAN, along with “MAGA journalists” like Nick Shirley, who are on the White House payroll to create distractions from the Epstein Files.

THIS is what the real Fake News Media looks like.

Why yes, that’s my tweet from October 2025, when these kids with cameras in their phones were calling themselves “journalists” because it would continue to delegitimize the work done by actual, real journalists who were exposing the truth about the Trump administration.

Like everything else Trump does, that move came with a body count in Minneapolis.

I’ve written here before about his specific attacks on women in the media, which happened yet again this week when he attacked CNN’s Kaitlan Collins during a press briefing in the Oval Office--before she had even said a word.

Trump’s attacks on the media have escalated drastically over the last few months as both his mental and physical health have been rapidly declining in front of the entire world. Interestingly, the “Leftist Influencers” who are being targeted have all reported on Trump’s health.

David Pakman, Ed Krassenstein, and Brian Tyler Cohen are all on the WHITE HOUSE WEBSITE, each of them being made out to be enemies of the State. They’re all essentially being doxxed by Donald Trump, all for daring to always tell the truth about him.

A quick word about Ed Krassenstein and his brother, Brian. They’ve had a bad rep for being opportunistic grifters for as long as I can remember. They claim to be Democrats, but have tweeted support for Trump in the past, and have even justified buying a Cybertruck. These aren’t all of the things about them, but this is my way of saying that they are not universally beloved by liberals, and that would include me.

Also, not all liberals are Leftists, just to be clear.

Anyway, any controversies connected to the Krassensteins are besides the point; neither of them deserves to be targeted by the White House as a distraction from the Epstein Files. Freedom of the Press is guaranteed by the Constitution, as is Freedom of Speech. Any attack on any member of the press is an attack on all of our First Amendment rights.

Those of us who’ve also been writing the truth about Trump for a long time are wondering when we’ll be added to that list. It’s not as if we don’t have digital footprints like those I’ve mentioned; some of us have larger platforms than others.

And a few of us are blocked by Trump on Twitter. I’ve been blocked since August 2015, which is why I’m probably not on the list yet.

But it’s not just those “influencers” being targeted for talking about Trump on their podcasts. The White House is now also threatening people for simply posting on social media about Trump, Jeffrey Epstein, and Melania.

Writer Anthony Andrews tweeted on Saturday that he had received a “cease and desist” order for his Twitter posts and shared screenshots from the order.

I don’t care if you voted for Trump three times; that should make you furious. MAGA tweets far worse things than that about Democrats all day, every day.

I’m especially rolling my eyes at the “GOVERN YOURSELF ACCORDINGLY” part, considering that Andrews was doing exactly that. He was exercising his Constitutional right to free speech, which includes being able to openly criticize any member of the United States government. He was sharing knowledge about the Epstein Files. Discovery on this alone could end the entire GOP, so I’m not sure why Trump is going after individual Twitter accounts.

But it’s not going to stop anyone from telling the truth about him.

The website you’re reading this on could very well be targeted at some point, since all we do here at Raw Story is tell the truth, even when we’re writing Commentary. In my case, I’ve never stopped telling the truth about anyone in politics, because the truth doesn’t care how we vote. The truth about a Republican isn’t any more or less true than the truth about a Democrat. Like Scott Pelley, I won’t be told what to say or write.

It’s up to all of us to keep making the truth matter and stand up to anyone who tries to silence it.

I’ve often said that the best way to trigger MAGA is to use its own tactics and words against it, because it’s an incredibly effective way to showcase how bad they are at doing everything, including their internet bullying.

They don’t like to be ridiculed or told they’re racist, xenophobic, homophobic, transphobic, etc. They don’t want to hear any truths about Trump and Jeffrey Epstein. They use projection and immature juvenile name-calling as a replacement for discussing policy, as Trump has no policies other than enriching himself. They ignore all of Trump’s failures, bankruptcies, affairs, and multiple crimes against the United States, all in the name of “owning the Libs.”

I can’t speak for all liberals, but I don’t think any of us have ever once felt owned by the Red Hat Death Squad, considering they share a collective IQ point. But plenty of people on our side of Twitter and other apps have repeatedly owned them.

California Governor Gavin “Studly” Newsom and his digi team were the first to truly understand how to get under Trump’s legendarily thin skin like no one since Hillary Clinton. And all they did to trigger the Trumpflakes was use the Trump Template of braggadociously bloviating all-caps and lots of exclamation points.

More recently, Paulina Mangubat, the DNC’s Deputy Chief Mobilization Officer, used a totally MAGA tactic in a reply to Kapo Nosferatu Stephen Miller.

MAGA really didn’t like that, with a mass pearl-clutching at a Democrat daring to speak out against the Regime.

Which is what we all should be doing, but some of us are suppressed on Twitter.

But now, a new hero has emerged on Twitter, one whose name alone can set off a blizzard of MAGA snowflakes like no one else:

Hunter Biden.

The beloved only surviving son of Joe and Jill Biden, Hunter’s struggles with drugs and alcohol have been well-documented. It’s so profoundly stupid that MAGA’s dual obsessions with Hunter are his addiction and his laptop. I’m not sure how they would go about trolling him if projection language wasn’t a thing, because they love to accuse Hunter of profiting from his father’s presidency while Trump’s Large Adult Sons are raking in millions between Bitcoin and shady investments.

We also have to talk about former Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene’s full-on obsession with the handsome Hunter, because she kept bringing giant thirst trap photos of him (along with graphic pics) to Congressional hearings in 2023. I always imagined the employees at the Kinko’s closest to the Capitol cringing every time one of MTG’s staffers came in with another hard drive full of photos of Hunter that made him look like a Calvin Klein model shot by Herb Ritts in the '90s.

All bullying is rooted in jealousy, and MAGA doesn’t have anyone nearly as dreamy as Hunter Biden. Even the most unflattering photo of Hunter is better than any shot of Don Jr and Eric. Also, Hunter doesn’t seem to have gotten any plastic surgery, unlike literally every member of the Trump family and all of the women who work for them or marry into the worst family this country has ever produced.

Hunter Biden didn’t come to Twitter to play games, my friends. He hit the algorithms swinging, and everyone on the left was delighted by watching his DGAF takes on everything MAGA.

He’s also killing it in the replies.

Hunter Biden triggers Trump and Trump Jr like no one else, because he has something neither of them will ever have:

A loving father.

That photo haunts Don Jr, whose father is so incapable of expressing love that he wasn’t even at his namesake son’s most recent wedding.

Those are some very toxic Trump family dynamics. Meanwhile, no matter how hard things got for Hunter, from rehabs to relapses to facing federal prison, the one thing he never lost was the love and support from his father and the rest of his family.

It seems most of MAGA were raised without unconditional love, because they see that photo and can’t recognize the pure paternal love expressed. They can’t see themselves in Hunter because they’ve never felt that acceptance. And so they mock what they’ve never had and never will have, just like their petty, jealous Dear Leader.

What sets Hunter’s tweets and trolling apart from anyone else who’s taken on MAGA is that he’s mocking his past with the same kind of self-deprecating Irish humor his father often uses. If you can make fun of yourself, then it takes the power out of anything else anyone says about you. Joe Biden was the first to bring up his age before anyone else could, remarking that “I know I look a lot younger” than his actual age.

Hunter’s sass and fearless MAGA stomping already have plenty of people calling for him to run for office.

As for me, I’m happy to see anyone poking MAGA where it hurts them the most. I’d also love to land him for an interview, as I’m filling in for Dean Obeidallah on SiriusXM Progress on Tuesday, June 9th, and I can’t think of anyone I’d rather interview more right now. What a blast it would be to let Hunter Biden speak his mind, swears and all, for up to 40 minutes of live radio!

Until I can land that for sure, I fully encourage you to keep up with Hunter Biden. Truth matters now more than ever, so if he doesn’t run for office, he should at the very least have his own podcast.

Preferably with his dad and me as the first guests on the premier episode. Welcome to the Resistance, Hunter Biden!

When I was growing up in the pre-cable, pre-streaming '70s and '80s, there was this thing called “appointment television.” It meant a lot of people were watching the same show at the same time, because it was only on once. If you missed it, you’d have to wait for this thing called a “rerun” in the summer, when there was almost no original programming. Instead, the three networks, which were all we had besides a local channel here and there, just recycled all of the shows from their seasons, while everyone took the summer off, as if Hollywood were a school.

“Appointment television” in my house meant watching 60 Minutes every Sunday night on CBS. My mother would order Chinese food (Jewish, New Jersey, ‘nuff said), and my father would go pick it up, returning with a giant box stuffed with all of our Americanized favorites. It was the only meal of the week eaten in front of the TV as a family. We sat on the couch and ate off of small square side tables, each of which had a border of fake jewels, one of my earliest tactile memories.

My younger brother and I weren’t allowed to talk very much during 60 Minutes because we were LEARNING. “Sha!” my mother would hiss if we talked over Morley Safer or Harry Reasoner. “Quiet!” my father would yell if we dared say anything during Andy Rooney’s closing segment, his favorite part of the show. I’m now old enough to understand that my father wasn’t smart enough to absorb a lot of what we were LEARNING, which is why he preferred Andy’s pointed humor. Rooney smartly mocked dumb people, which included my father. Imagine if Donald Trump drove a delivery truck in Jersey; that’s who we’re talking about here.

The lineup of correspondents may have changed and expanded over the years, but one thing about 60 Minutes has always remained consistent:

Telling the truth.

60 Minutes has a venerable track record of exposing lies, cover-ups, and scandals, as well as interviews and human interest stories that made Americans aware of the world at large. No matter the subject, there was never a time when the audience questioned the veracity of what they were being told and shown.

But oh, how the mighty “Tiffany Network” has fallen.

Remember the heavily edited 60 Minutes interview Trump finally did just before the 2024 election, after whining about the interview Kamala Harris did? You might recall CBS News paid Trump $16 MILLION after he whined that her interview, which had been full of facts, was “deceptively edited,” causing him “mental anguish” and “confusion among voters.” When Trump finally sat for the interview, 60 Minutes ran one heavily edited version, while Trump released a heavily edited 73-minute version that was “more favorable.”

That was a glaring sign that we were headed down a very bad path, one paved with Putin propaganda.

CBS/Paramount is now under the control of a bunch of Trumptraitors, which is an astonishing thing to witness. The Ellison family has pledged loyalty to a convicted felon adjudicated rapist whose name appears in the Epstein Files nearly as much as Jeffrey Epstein's. They pushed Stephen Colbert out and pressured CBS News journalists to placate Trump instead of pushing for the truth.

But now the control of CBS News, the former home of Edward R. Murrow, was somehow handed to an inexperienced book editor whose biggest gigs were writing op-eds and reviews for The Wall Street Journal and The Forward, where she took a proud Zionist stance.

Bari Weiss is about as qualified to be the Editor-In-Chief of CBS News as I am to fly a rocket. Interestingly, she’s been following me on Twitter forever, but she’s never once responded to any of my tweets that challenge her loyalty to Trump over the United States of America.

Weiss has just hired equally inexperienced tech blogger Nick Bilton to help her commit treason and lie to the American people via CBS. Bilton tweeted that it’s “the honor of my career" to become the executive producer of 60 Minutes and then shared this tech bro-y introduction to his colleagues that set my skin on fire.

Poorly written propaganda isn’t supposed to be anywhere near legitimate news networks. Nothing about this is normal, yet it’s being normalized.

Bilton is the one who officially fired longtime 60 Minutes correspondent Scott Pelley on Tuesday, all because Pelley has this annoying habit of maintaining his journalistic integrity.

You can almost hear that in Trump’s voice, can’t you? Minus the bigger words, that is.

Scott Pelley was fired because he refused to comply with orders from Weiss and Bilton to lie to protect Donald Trump.

Read that again, because it’s true.

It’s 2026 in the United States of America, but Weiss and Bilton are deploying Nazi tactics from the 1930s to silence the truth.

Pelley responded to the firing by exposing the real reasons behind it. "New management has instructed me to inject falsehoods and bias into a politically sensitive story,” Pelley said in a statement. “I’ve been told to include assertions that are unverified. To date, in every case, I have managed to ignore these instructions or refuse them.

"Finally, incompetence and unprofessionalism in the new management have wreaked havoc. In a case involving one of my stories, the entire program came within 19 minutes of not getting on the air at all.”

Pelley has received tons of support online from his fellow journalists and other longtime admirers who respect him for standing up to the Trumpocrites. Meidas Touch has already offered him his own show on their network. Perhaps he can reunite there with Anderson Cooper and Cecilia Vega.

What will 60 Minutes be covering going forward? Segments about how we could all learn a lot from re-reading Hitler’s Reichstag speech?

Bye, Bari.

It’s so weird how Donald Trump just can’t stop defaming the one woman who’s ever held him legally accountable for his sexual violence.

Trump just can’t be told “no,” so he keeps appealing the case that writer E. Jean Carroll famously won against him after enduring years of his well-documented defamation, both online and off, after she accused him of sexually abusing her — which a jury later found him civilly liable for.

Even though he keeps losing the appeals, he’s never stopped defaming her for daring to tell the truth about him.

I keep a screenshot on my phone of a Washington Post headline: "Judge clarifies: Yes, Trump was found to have raped E. Jean Carroll," because far too many of the MAGA trolls who gleefully continue to blame and shame all of Trump’s victims don’t understand what a court ruling means

Yeah, they don’t like this one because Trump said he didn’t do it. It’s that simple for them. The truth messes with their cult ideal of Dear Leader, as well as their self-identities; they just couldn’t have been wrong about him all along.

They hate it when you remind them about this L from last year — his bid to overturn the $83 million damages awarded to Carroll was lost in September, then an appeals court refused to rehear the case in April this year.

So, here we go again.

The pesky thing about the truth is that it’s always true, whether a cult wants to believe it or not. If they were capable of reading anything longer than a Truth Social post full of the lies they feed on, they could actually (GASP) learn truthful things. I know the truth actually doesn’t matter to them, and there are a lot of things they don’t know about Trump because no one’s ever told them.

For example, Carroll shares previously unreleased details about the trial in her excellent memoir, Not My Type, the title of which co-opts Trump’s most infamous claims of his innocence, as if a woman’s physical attractiveness is the deciding factor when it comes to committing physical violence against them.

Aside from cataloguing the amazing outfits she wore to court, Carroll takes the reader through the entire process, from voir dire to the jury’s unanimous decision to award her $83.3 million in damages.

One of my favorite details from the book that MAGA doesn’t know is that one of the jurors had revealed during voir dire that he got his news exclusively from MAGA podcaster Tim Pool. Carroll's lawyer, the unbreakable Robbie Kaplan, tried to have him dismissed, but Trump’s lawyers argued for his inclusion to keep the jury “fair and balanced.” When questioned by Judge Lewis Kaplan (no relation to Robbie), the juror testified under oath that he’d only listened to Pool's podcast “three or four times” in the preceding six months. He testified that he considered the show "balanced," had never heard of Carroll before the trial, and was confident he could remain fair and impartial.

And then he voted with the other jurors to award Carroll her big money, which she’s still waiting for as Trump’s legal team repeatedly keep appealing the ruling at his behest.

MAGA still can’t cope with the decision and continues to parrot Trump’s disparaging remarks about her credibility, from bagging on her looks to pointing out that she named one of her cats after female anatomy. I guess because they think that word is worse than what Trump did to her in a Bergdorf dressing room.

They love to blame all of Trump’s victims of sexual violence, from Carroll to any potential connections in the Epstein Files, because they just can’t allow themselves to consider that they might have been wrong about Trump. They still believe Bill and Hillary did the unspeakable things with Epstein, and yet they have no answers when I ask them why Trump hasn’t testified like the Clintons did. Innocent people have no problem showing up to testify about their innocence.

Trump is now weaponizing his Department of Justice against Carroll, forcing it to launch a manufactured criminal investigation into the trial. He’s never once even threatened to sue anyone who’s accused him of being in the Epstein Files, or demanding the arrest of anyone named in them. He’s not using his DOJ to get a do-over for his 34 felony fraud convictions.

Nope, he’s fully fixated on this one blemish on his spotty record, thanks to this one woman.

And right before this new investigation was announced, Trump rewarded his disgraced former Attorney General, Pam Bondi, with a new job in the White House, right before she was called to testify about the Epstein Files again.

Weird timing, huh?

This is the kind of “witch hunt” Trump whines about the Democrats launching against him any time anyone dares to call him out. This goes deeper than “Trump can’t be wrong” about anything; it’s yet another confession that he covers up with accusations. Trump is also siccing his DOJ on anyone who supported Carroll, like LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman.

MAGA has been more than happy to resume this narrative to move the goalposts away from the unpopular war in Iran, the Epstein Files, and the clear implosion of the GOP as Trump’s health is rapidly declining. He’s also facing the embarrassment from the failing “America 250” concert that all but two of the artists have dropped out of because they don’t want to perform for Epstein’s Bestie and his cult.

Trump will fail at this new attack on Carroll like he’s failed at all of his previous attempts. His scapegoating never works for very long because both he and MAGA have short attention spans. They’ll always be able to gin up a new outrage distraction when Trump lets them down, because just like him, they can’t stand to be seen as the losers they know they are.

Meanwhile, Team Carroll is already reassembled and ready to go another round against the biggest loser this country has ever produced.

MAGA is in full implosion mode thanks to a single not safe for work tweet sent out from the official Democrats Twitter account on Wednesday.

Yes, the same bully cult that prides itself on trolling liberal accounts all day, every day on every possible social media platform, is clutching their collective pearls over a five-word tweet clapping back at Kapo Nosferatu Stephen Miller.

We don’t have enough time or internet space to delve into everything that’s terrible about Miller, but as an American Jew (who’s also a staunch atheist), I can tell you that no one in the Tribe claims such a glaring example of Jewish self-hatred. The guy who separated breastfeeding infants from their mothers at the border (presumably to drink their blood, although I can’t confirm that), describes human beings as “illegals,” and tweets hateful propaganda about all minorites got his vampiric snowflake feelings hurt over the kind of reply liberals usually get from MAGA trolls.

Stephen Miller's X account.

I realize that’s not the height of political discourse, but it’s just perfect. Short, succinct, and hits MAGA right where they live. I have live replies right now from MAGA trolls that are far worse than that, and it doesn’t even matter when you’re reading this. Because they’ll always be the worst part of social media as long as their cult exists.

Liberals immediately began sharing screenshots of the “shut up you ugly f--k” reply to use as evergreen responses to MAGA’s weaker meme game. MAGA snowflakes started with their usual manufactured outrage because their entire default setting is one big perceived slight.

Things escalated rapidly thanks to Nosferatu’s wife, Katie, who decided to take it further by revealing the tweet was written by Paulina Mangubat, the DNC’s Deputy Chief Mobilization Officer. Maybe it was just her pregnancy hormones getting the best of her, because Katie is currently carrying their fourth unholy spawn, but she went full MAGA Mean Girl on Paulina.

“She’s 30, unmarried with no kids. Put your name on it next time. This is what a sad, unhappy, female Liberal looks like,” KKKatie tweeted, along with a photo of Mangubat. “It’s why Pew reports 50% of them have been diagnosed with a mental condition.”

We haven’t been, btw. Single liberal women are pretty happy not to be stuck with an ancient traitorous succubus hanging upside-down all night above our beds, for example. I often find myself hoping that the Millers have designated actually decent people as godparents for their kids, because once both of them are in prison forever, someone needs to make sure those kids unlearn any hate they’ve been carefully taught.

Anyway, Paulina has plenty of support online from her co-workers, who understand exactly how effective her tweet was.

Paulina also went on the Meidas Touch podcast and was basically all, “I said what I said.”

I love her SO MUCH. This is the non-apologetic energy we need to be seeing from Democrats until November. We have only good things to promote about our candidates, while MAGA continues to align behind the worst traitors this country has ever produced.

Gone are the days of “When they go low, we go high,” my friends.

Democrats are all too often accused of not fighting hard enough, but we’ve seen enough “Nerds vs Bullies” movies to know that we’ve hit the moment in the third act when we build a clubhouse during a montage that’s set to “New Song” by Howard Jones and start doing some serious PT to get ready for the final battle.

What first started with Gavin Newsom’s digi team co-opting Trump’s posting style to mock him has now become a full-on campaign tactic for the Democratic Party. Using MAGA’s methods, as well as their own words, is such an incredibly effective tactic.

All it took was a little creative use of AI, and boom, MAGA Snowflakes falling everywhere.

You know MAGA is worried about the midterms just from the way they’re attacking James Talarico, who’s running for Senate in Texas. Aside from falsely framing him as a vegan in the meat-loving Lone Star State, Stephen Miller’s tweet suggesting Talarico is transgender is full-on defamation. Talarico’s opponent, sex offender Ken Paxton, actually called the devout Christian “Talafreako,” because projection language goes hand-in-hand with their bullying.

So what did Talarico’s team do? They took a note from “Dark Brandon” and co-opted his bully’s words to start a trend instead.

You can now purchase “Talafreako” t-shirts on his official campaign website. BRILLIANT!

I’d wear that and I spent plenty of time tweeting my support of Jasmine Crockett over James Talarico, because I understand the importance of boosting ALL Democratic candidates in ALL states.

And I also understand the importance of never letting up on MAGA. We know how to hit them in the feels, and that’s where we need to keep hitting them. Mocking their defense of Trump with screenshots from the Epstein Files is especially effective because they can’t come up with any excuses for defending him. Every time I ask one of them why both Bill and Hillary Clinton had to testify under oath about Jeffrey Epstein but Donald Trump still hasn’t, they either disappear or reply with a dumb meme about Joe Biden smelling a kid’s head, which is just a strange thing to be fixated on. MAGA has yet to learn the difference between “good touch” and “bad touch,” and that’s putting it mildly.

The true profanity here isn’t the F word; it’s Trump himself and any justification for his sexual violence against women and children. He’s even going after E. Jean Carroll again, with MAGA’s gleeful blessing, just so they never have to admit he’s an adjudicated rapist.

This is who MAGA still is, and we have every right to still mock them for it, with or without swears.

Almost 250 years ago, our Founding Fathers survived a brutal war and established a new nation where all could live free from the oppression of the King of England. We take time every July 4th to remember what the early settlers lived through to create a new nation conceived in liberty, dedicated to the proposition that all of us are created equal.

That’s right, those of us who were raised on Schoolhouse Rock can quote the Gettysburg Address and sing the entire Preamble to the Constitution. We understand the solemnity of the Declaration of Independence and what it means to feel the swell of patriotism every year on July 4th.

Sadly, nothing we ever sang about on Saturday mornings over bowls of Lucky Charms could’ve prepared us for what’s being planned for America’s Semiquincentennial celebration in Washington.

Mainly because the people planning the official celebrations from DC are too dumb to pronounce “Semiquincentennial.”

The deliberate dumbing-down of America began the moment Donald Trump descended that tacky gold escalator in his tacky gold tower and flung his loaded diaper all over our political norms. The early responses to his egregious lack of respect for our country were those of astonishment: “How can he get away with that?” as he kept getting away with it. Trump’s earliest enablers were the ones waiting for permission to be openly hateful towards anyone they perceived as a threat to their livelihoods, when literally no one has ever actually threatened them.

We are now witnessing the dismantling of the Department of Education as they rebrand into the Department of Re-Education. The Heritage Foundation’s implementation of Project 2025 - 2026 is going full steam ahead with the deliberate whitewashing of our history, crafting a “Good Parts Only” version. If we don’t destroy Republicans in the next few elections, future generations of American kids will be taught that white men are always in the right, that slavery was a “career choice” where Black Americans “learned useful skills,” that we’ve won every overseas war, and that there were never any Japanese internment camps. They’re also reframing the truth around the 2020 election as well as January 6th, and there are new plaques in the White House using MAGA language to bully former Democratic Presidents.

The longer the dumb, loud people keep getting away with being dumb and loud, this country has nothing to celebrate. I’ve been saying for too long that I wish I could force all of Trump’s MAGA loyalists--both in and out of Congress--to watch Hamilton “Clockwork Orange-style” until they could recognize what real patriotism feels like.

Seriously, I defy anyone to sit through “The Battle of Yorktown” without getting a lump in their throat when the ruffians of the Revolution sing out, “We won, we won, we won, we WON!”

Trump and MAGA continue to find new ways to embarrass us on the global stage, but nothing has lit a fire in me quite like watching him get away with his destruction of the White House.

That’s OUR House. That’s the PEOPLE'S House. Trump is already illegally squatting there, but the same party that screamed over a basketball court and a vegetable garden is now enabling a full Trumpification rebrand of a property he doesn’t own.

Trump has demolished the entire East Wing to build a big bunker disguised as a ballroom. He paved over the Rose Garden and made it look like yet another tacky patio at Mar-a-Lago. The Oval Office now looks like a Hobby Lobby in Moscow threw up all over the place.

He’s also destroyed the Reflecting Pool and has demanded the construction of an Ego Arch that’s not at all inspired by the Nazis. But wait, it still gets even dumber.

In dual celebration of Trump’s 80th birthday (June 14th) and America’s 250th, the palookas from the UFC are building a CAGE ON THE WHITE HOUSE LAWN and there will be a CAGE FIGHTING MATCH ON THE WHITE HOUSE LAWN.

And they claim Democrats are the “party of violence”?

I cannot primal scream into the abyss hard enough. It is beyond what Americans should be forced to endure. It’s literally a celebration of violence in front of what’s supposed to be the ultimate symbol of global stature.

Instead, it’s a global embarrassment.

Trump is obsessed with violence. It’s why he watched MAGA attack the Capitol on January 6th on TV. It’s why he’s ringside at UFC fights, fanboying over big sweaty men.

That includes Dana White, who’s also made a career out of overcompensation. He’s a dude named Dana (no slam on anyone presenting as male with that name, but it hasn’t been a name associated with men since the 1940s), so he started hitting people who made fun of him. Now he’s being normalized on the covers of both TIME and Rolling Stone ahead of the Summer of SuperSlam.

That’s who’ll be leading America’s celebration. But it gets even more cringe-inducing. Wednesday saw the announcement of something called “The Great American State Fair,” with a concert featuring a dubious lineup of MAGA-leaning performers one would expect at a state fair…in maybe 1997.

The inclusion of Milli Vanilli, the lip-synching duo from the 80s, with only one original member (because the other one died), is fully on brand for the Fake President’s Ego Celebration. The one-hit wonder lineup is also perfect for the Red Hat Loser Brigade. It’s all deliberate, it’s all dumb, and it’s the White Trash House now.

Yes, I said White Trash, and I’ll keep saying it.

I lived in Georgia for eight years, so I know what I’m talking about. White Trash isn’t limited to the South, you know. It exists in all 50 states; only the regional accent changes.

Dana White isn’t nearly the best of us. We all deserve better than this Idiocracy.

There are a million ways that prove Donald Trump sucks more than all of his predecessors, but there’s no bigger difference, personality-wise, than his complete lack of a sense of humor.

Think of President Joe Biden’s Irish humor, where he makes fun of himself before others can. Or President Barack Obama adopting his critics’ sarcastic “Thanks, Obama,” creating one of the first truly political viral hashtags, along with this evergreen moment that never fails to trigger MAGA.

Republicans aren’t naturally funny, but at least most of them are capable of taking a joke. Several of them managed to survive the annual gentle roasting at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, but Trump couldn’t even handle it from the audience when he was targeted by host Seth Meyers in 2011.

Many people said that was the night he decided to embark on the revenge tour that became his political career, leading to the current garbage fire landscape of him picking off his enemies based on his snowflake feelings.

In full defiance of the First Amendment, Trump pressured his pals at CBS to cancel their top money-making and highest-rated show, The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, all because Colbert dared to do his job of entertaining his massive audience by mixing political humor in with the rest of his content.

It’s only what all the late-night talk show hosts have done since the genre was invented. As someone who grew up in New Jersey in the '70s and '80s, I can tell you that none of the stories we saw on the news or in the papers about Trump were about his demands to have any comedians fired for making jokes about him. There was a time when he didn’t care what people said about him, as long as they were talking about him.

If you’re wondering what’s changed since then, it might have a little something to do with the advances in his criminality. He definitely doesn’t want anyone talking about any of that, particularly the whole Epstein Files thing. But Colbert centered that and all of the other glaringly felonious, fraudulent facts about Trump and his compromised co-conspirators.

It’s abhorrent to watch anyone bend a knee to a convicted felon in the pocket of Vladimir Putin, but the collapse of any mainstream media outlet, along with compromising an entire news network, is against every belief our Founders wrote about in our Constitution. We have a First Amendment for multiple reasons. It protects Trump’s dumbest remarks as much as Stephen Colbert’s smartest ones. What we’re witnessing is the eradication of our fundamental American rights.

In fact, let’s check in with current FCC Chair Brendan Carr, who’s undergone some profound changes since he tweeted this in 2019, unlike the First Amendment.

A tweet from FCC chair Brendan Carr (X).

It’s just another example of Trump actually being a terrible businessman. Instead of silencing Stephen Colbert on network television, Trump could’ve mined it for even more grifted MAGA gold. Now Colbert will be more powerful without any network restrictions on him, you big dumb snowflake.

Tributes to Stephen Colbert have been coming in from all over, from his fellow late-night hosts to his favorite Broadway stars and other musical acts. Foo Fighters performed a medley of the first and last songs they ever played on David Letterman’s show in the same Ed Sullivan Theater. Andra Day popped up to surprise Stephen on Tuesday night’s show thanks to his old friend, Jon Stewart, who delivered a First Amendment Masterclass, along with the world’s best barcaloungers.

My own love for Stephen Colbert dates back to his sketch comedy days, but it really took hold with The Colbert Report on Comedy Central. My older son, Jack, was also a huge fan, and even though he was only 15 at the time, I was able to get him into a taping of the show on a trip to New York City in 2014. A friend of mine via the Emerson College network, Eric Drysdale, was on the writing staff, and not only did he arrange for us to get tickets, but he also gave us a full VIP backstage tour. While we didn't meet Stephen, we saw his office door, which had a sign on it that read "Mandy Patinkin."

Before the show, Colbert did an audience Q&A as himself, and I got to ask him a question, which was, "Who's a guest you've been trying to book, but you just can't?"

Without missing a beat, Stephen Colbert said, “Jesus.”

Once the laughter died down, he said, "But seriously, anyone from the George W. Bush administration, especially Donald Rumsfeld, but we never hear back from him."

After the show was over, Jack and I were the only ones who were allowed to take a photo at the famous desk, and I officially won parenting for that day.

(Tara Dublin/Raw Story)

I took another trip in 2017 and saw a different taping with my mom, related in this thread on Threads. That time I asked him for the best advice his mother had ever given him. He said she would tell him (and I'm paraphrasing) that when things get hard, picture yourself as a member of an audience in a theater, sitting in the balcony and watching the story of your life play out. Then imagine what you would do next, and then do it.

So, to honor Stephen’s mom’s advice, here’s what I want Colbert to do next.

I want him to take his team to Meidas Touch or another place online & bring back THE COLBERT REPORT 2.0(26): ELECTRIC BOOGALOO. Most importantly, we need the "BETTER KNOW A DISTRICT" segment he did back in the day more than ever now that the Voting Rights Act has been gutted.

Without the Trump administration micromanaging his monologues, Stephen can give Democrats the kind of airtime they’d never get on CBS. He could have a real impact on the midterms, and we’d still get to watch him every night.

Thanks for the memories, Stephen! Now let’s make some more.

Your Honor,

I’m here to claim my share of the Trump Administration’s $1.8 billion slush fund payouts based on the severe emotional trauma I experienced on January 6th. The residual PTSD from that day has left me incapable of finding a full-time paying job in politics, and I still haven’t landed a book deal yet. I realize neither of those things has a direct correlation to the events of the day. Still, since so many MAGA snowflakes are whining about how they’ve “suffered” once people found out they plotted to overthrow our government, I figured I could claim similar residual trauma and financial stresses.

While I wasn’t physically at the Capitol, I did watch the day’s events play out live on television and on Twitter, and the images from that day have never left my mind. I was already living with the daily trauma of being trolled on Twitter by MAGA all day, every day, since the early days of the Trump campaign.

Plenty of us were already under a lot of duress by the time the 2020 election was meant to be certified, and January 6, 2021, was supposed to be our redemption for suffering through four years of Trumpism, complete with a pandemic to make it even more of an Orwellian nightmare. We didn’t even have COVID vaccines yet, and we were still trying to figure out how to function as a nation under continuing quarantines and lockdowns. After holding our collective breaths for nearly a week in November while the election results were tabulated, we finally got the emotional lift we needed when Joe Biden and Kamala Harris were declared the winners.

The silver lining of the Coronavirus was drawn across millions of unhackable paper ballots, and as Congress gathered to certify the results, I sat at my desk to watch then-Vice President Mike Pence hand our country back to actual patriots, instead of the lunatics who’d swarmed the Ellipse to listen to Donald Trump lie to them in person for a change.

I remember laughing out loud, as the kids say, when Trump promised to walk to the Capitol with them when he doesn’t even walk between holes on the golf course. And once they got there and stood behind the barricades, I remember saying to the TV, “Yeah, yell all you want, that’s not going to stop them from certifying the election.”

And then, Your Honor, I watched as the same crowd who claimed to love our country pushed through the security barriers, attacked our Capitol Police, and breached the seat of our government.

I saw them break windows. I watched them climb up the outside walls of the Capitol. I gasped in horror at the images they were livestreaming, the bear spray, the flagpoles, and the screaming as they maniacally marauded through the halls of the Capitol. I heard them chanting Nancy Pelosi’s name. I heard them yelling, “HANG MIKE PENCE!” Soon after, I saw the images of the gallows someone had constructed. After they hung Trump’s Vice President, who would be next?

You know, just another tourist visit.

I couldn’t comprehend what I was seeing in the moments before Ashli Babbitt was shot as she attempted to enter the Speaker’s Lobby. I thought I was going to watch this police officer die live on camera, and I couldn’t stop crying.

I saw this guy brag about stealing classified information from Nancy Pelosi’s office.

All of my tweets from that day are still live, as are the tweets from Republicans demanding Trump call off his crowd. Lindsey Graham had a spine for a second, not that anyone seems to remember.

All of this, Your Honor. We witnessed all of this, and any repeat viewing brings back the same feelings of violation from that day. As if they’d broken into all of our homes, destroyed all of our property, and smeared their bodily fluids all over our walls.

And it’s only gotten worse in the subsequent years, Your Honor, because nobody has ever held Trump accountable for staging a failed insurrection against the United States of America. Trump should’ve been arrested the moment he finally and unceremoniously shuffled away from the White House on the day Joe Biden was inaugurated.

I don’t know why that never happened, or why he was never convicted for any of his 34 felony fraud convictions after he was arrested FOUR TIMES IN THE SAME YEAR, which was 2023, and not 2021, for reasons we will never know.

My personal trauma was compounded even further when Trump was allowed to run for President again in 2024, which really shouldn’t have happened because he’s a convicted felon and adjudicated sexual abuser who still owes E. Jean Carroll $84 million. Even worse, we watched him steal another election from a far more accomplished woman because he and his Epstein Besties would otherwise end up in prison, where they all belong.

I’m not the only one countersuing, Your Honor. Allison Gill, whom you might know better as Mueller She Wrote, has her own lawsuit going against Trumpsimp Todd Blanche, who really needs to be the first one sent to prison once treason has consequences again.

In closing, Your Honor, I am asking for $5 million in emotional damages so that I never have to use Twitter as a means to find work, and so that I’ll never have to worry about feeding myself or my cats during this garbage fire of an unimaginable Constitutional Crisis.

And could you please FINALLY arrest Trump?

Once upon a time, a reality TV star with a dubious track record of personal bankruptcy, bad business deals, terrible public behavior, and mistreatment of women — but no experience working for the government at any level — decided to run for one of the most high-profile political roles in the country. He was buoyed by large, right-wing social media accounts, as well as rich benefactors, many with their own connections to reality TV. His entire platform was one based on his belittling his female opponent, mirroring back the hate from the people who were more than happy to platform him. Despite having no policy other than parroting some propaganda, he was normalized by the media and others who turned around any criticism of the candidate to bully his critics.

If you were picturing Donald Trump that whole time, you’d be both right and wrong. Because in this case, I don’t mean him.

I mean Spencer “Bel Airstream” Pratt, the current Republican candidate for MAYOR OF LOS ANGELES, which is the second largest city in the United States. Spencer is running on a platform that’s essentially “I’m a white male Republican who’s not Karen Bass” while turning the loss of his home in the devastating Palisades Fire into just another MAGA grift.

Pratt became famous as Heidi Montag’s villainous boyfriend on MTV’s reality series The Hills, which ran from 2006 to 2011. But he had appeared on a show called The Princes of Malibu in 2005, which I’m glad I didn’t know existed until I started researching him for this piece, because I can only imagine the level of douchery on that show.

I’ve also never watched an episode of The Hills, its predecessor, Laguna Beach, or anything else related to the franchise, because I lost all interest in watching reality TV (minus cooking shows and home reno content on HGTV) after the New Orleans season of The Real World. What I knew of any of them was limited to what I absorbed by pop culture osmosis, plus eventually Lauren Conrad had a clothing line at Kohl’s. Otherwise, I couldn’t have had less interest in a bunch of rich teens whining about each other, and I could still be blissfully ignorant of everything about them right now, if only Spencer Pratt hadn’t somehow weaseled his way into California politics.

Pratt embodies the false bravado of all empty MAGA men, pretending he offers more substance and experience than he actually has. Long before he and Heidi lost their house, they went bankrupt after a gleeful shopping spree in 2012 when they thought the world was ending and therefore wouldn’t have to pay for everything they charged on their credit cards.

The only other “job” Pratt can claim on his “resume” is owning a crystal shop after spending even more millions on crystals. He would probably still be working the counter there if it weren’t for the Palisades Fire, which he blamed on California Governor Gavin Newsom for his “mishandling” of the disaster. He is running to "expose the system" which failed to “protect his family.”

MAGA blaming the winds and dry conditions thanks to the current climate emergency they keep denying is fully on brand, but in Pratt’s case, his family’s current “homelessness” — back to that in a moment — is his own fault for not buying homeowner’s insurance despite living in an area prone to earthquakes, mudslides, and wildfires.

Dude, even Trump insured his hotels.

Pratt is otherwise following the Trump playbook, adopting the carnival barker personality and proudly trying to make people believe it’s sunshine coming from his dark side.

Like Trump, Pratty is always making false promises while grifting donations by claiming his family is being forced to live in an Airstream trailer on his scorched property.

In reality, Pratt is living in the Bel Air Hotel, where room rates start at $1,000-a-night and can go as high as $10,000 a night. He blamed that on Karen Bass as well, as if there wasn’t a Motel 6 nearby, or at the very least a Kardashian’s guest house where they could crash, considering they’re openly supporting his run.

Like Trump, Pratt is doing what he can to profit from his candidacy, inking a deal for yet another reality show. Viral videos showed Pratt at the center of a fundraiser hosted by David Foster and Katharine McPhee this week after his weirdly Trumpian performance in last week’s LA Mayoral debate against Bass and the other remaining candidate, Los Angeles Councilmember Nithya Raman.

My cringe has cringe.

There’s plenty of opposition to Pratt among California liberals, of course, with many celebrities taking the time to point out the similarities between Bel Airstream and Epstein’s Best Friend.

Fresh off of reducing MAGA comedian Kill Tony to ashes at Netflix’s Roast of Kevin Hart, Chelsea Handler used her Threads account to remind everyone of what they’re seeing play out in real time.

And like Trump, he doesn’t like it when people remind him that he’s a lying, bankrupt, grifting loser who isn’t qualified to run a crystal store, let alone the City of Los Angeles.

Or the United States of America.

Come on LA voters, I know you’ve had it rough, and I know Mayor Bass hasn’t been performing to your highest standards lately, but you need to learn from history and never repeat it. LA needs a Democratic Mayor who understands the basic concepts of math and government, not another Trump.