The Trump administration, and in particular, JD Vance and the head MAGAman himself, have been the butt of jokes and criticisms in the wake of Pope Francis‘ death. Vance started off the previous week by meeting the national champion Ohio State football team in the Oval Office, fumbling and breaking their hard-won trophy in the process. One contributor on X posted that anyone scheduled for meetings with Vance should be shaking in their boots, and with the death of the Pope on the Monday following Vance’s visit on Easter Sunday, the floodgates were opened on social media, making the VP the butt of jokes, confirming him as the anti-Christ. One X user shared similar sentiments, writing, “JD touched a trophy and broke it. Then, he touched the Pope and he broke. I hope he shakes Donald’s hand this week…” Satirist Andy Borowitz contributed on his The Borowitz Report: “JD Vance will represent Satan at Pope Francis’s funeral this weekend, the Devil confirmed on Thursday. In a rare public statement, the Prince of Darkness said that he could not attend the funeral himself because it conflicts with a Tesla board meeting. Explaining his choice of Vance, Beelzebub said, ‘If you can’t have me, JD is the next best thing.’ But longtime Vatican-watcher Harland Dorrinson criticized Satan’s decision to send Vance, noting, ‘With Trump in attendance, this seems like overkill.'”

And indeed, Trump was in attendance as he made doubly sure he was seen, finagling a prized front row seat, though protocol had him, along with First Lady Melania, initially assigned to a third row position. In what was mostly a somber sea of black-clad attendees who followed the requested dress code, there he was resplendent in his bright blue silk suit and blue tie, missing only his bright red clown nose. Melania was respectful in her stylish all-black outfit — blazer dress, gloves, and lace veil, acting as sort of a peace maker between her childish and snub-prone husband and France’s Macron, encouraging him to shake the French president’s hand in the Sign of Peace  portion of the mass in following the custom of shaking hands with other mourners. Several photos reveal that he was probably napping — unlikely that prayer was on his mind — and an adult should have taken away his cell phone which was a playtoy during some of his time at the service. Prior to being seated for the ceremony, Trump and Ukraine’s Zelensky were able to have a short face-to-face meeting, both of whom shared positive words of their discussion afterwards, along with an announcement of a meeting to follow afterwards. Zelensky, also seated in the front row, wore all-black, but kept his vow not to dress formally until the Russian invasion of his country is history. Upon the Ukrainian leader’s appearance as he was seated, spontaneous applause from the assembled echoed across the plaza, which likely raised Trump’s hackles since he got no recognition.

Not willing to extend the Sign of Peace to former president Biden for such a momentous occasion, Trump declined to allow Biden and his entourage to fly with him on Air Force One to the Pope’s funeral, despite President George W Bush’s precedent of inviting his father and Bill Clinton to accompany him to the funeral Mass of Pope John Paul II in 2005. Trump has kept his predecessor front and center as his scapegoat, with The New York Times keeping score on his mentions of Biden at 300 in the first 50 days since January 20 — as he whines about the porous southern border, calling him “the worst president in American history.” In 2022, Trump mocked then-President Biden for his placement in the 14th row at Queen Elizabeth II’s funeral, maintaining that it was proof that “there’s no respect for the US anymore,” suggesting that if he were still president, he would have received front-row seating. For the Saturday funeral of Pope Francis, Biden was seated much further back, dressed in his black suit and non-protocol blue tie! Doubtless, the Trump-seating brouhaha would have raised the eyebrows of Pope Francis, who dedicated much political capital into confronting The Don, viewing his immigration policies as “un-Christian” and making his concerns known to JD Vance in the hours before his death. Many are saying that the pope rebuked Trump from beyond the grave through Cardinal Giovanni Battista Re’s homily in the Mass, saying, “Pope Francis incessantly raised his voice, imploring peace and calling for reason and honest negotiation to find possible solutions. ‘Build bridges, not walls,’ was an exhortation he repeated many times.” The Cardinal ensured that Trump’s call for building a border wall got the final criticism from Pope Francis, which the president had called “disgraceful,” labelling the Pope as “a very political person,” who was questioning his faith. There was no missing the finger pointed at Trump in view of the audience of millions worldwide — yep, the so-called world leader in the embarrassing, look-at-me fluorescent blue suit! It’s doubtful the Vatican could have provided a high chair for the occasion.

The Economist magazine blisters Trump with its latest cover, showing an illustration of a wounded and bandaged US eagle, accompanied by the headline, “Only 1,361 Days to go.” Ron Dicker of HuffPost writes, “The Economist is counting the days until President Donald Trump’s second term is over, showing the amount of time left after his first 100 days is up. He has spent his first months dismantling government agencies, sparking a trade war, defying courts over deportations and trying to strong-arm Ukraine into submitting to its invader, Russia. The Economist summed up his strategy in the cover story, which examines the ‘lasting harm’ he has already done: ‘The method is to bend or break the law in a blitz of executive orders and, when the courts catch up, to dare them to defy the president. The theory is one of unconstrained executive power — the idea that, as Richard Nixon suggested, if the president does something then it’s legal.’ This injured eagle might need more than bandages to heal.” Something legal in Trump’s plans is the installation of two 100-foot flagpoles on the White House grounds. On the Jimmy Kimmel Show, Kimmel said, “Trump took a little stroll around the White House, he did a little location scouting just like he would do at one of his golf courses in deciding where to bury an ex-wife.” Kimmel joked that by installing the flagpoles will “clear up a lot of confusion. For years, whenever I’d see a picture of the White House I’d think, ‘Well, that’s a nice building, but what country is it in? You do have to admit, it is crazy the White House doesn’t have a flag — other than that giant one on top of the White House.” He says the new ones will be high enough to be out of Trump’s hugging range.

Raw Story’s David Edwards posts about a historically Jewish newspaper’s comparing President Donald Trump’s tactics to those used by Germany’s Adolf Hitler prior to WWII: In an op-ed for Forward, author Terrence Petty likened Trump’s demonization of his self-declared enemies to Hitler’s attempt to blame Jews for Germany’s loss in WWI — a tactic known as the Dolchstosslegende, or stabbed-in-the-back legend. “Donald Trump has created an American version of the Dolchstosslegende, propagating a myth that the nation is being led to ruination by Joe Biden and the Democrats, prosecutors who go after Trump, judges who go against him, non-MAGA news media, practitioners of ‘wokeism,’ and elite universities, among others,” Petty wrote. “All of this is utter nonsense, of course, but this American S-I-T-B lie is at the core of Trump’s assaults on democracy.” The author compared Hitler’s first speech as chancellor on February 10, 1933, to Trump’s second inaugural address, which he insisted “reads like a S-I-T-B manifesto.” “For many years, a radical and corrupt establishment has extracted power and wealth from our citizens, while the pillars of our society lay broken and seemingly in complete disrepair,” said Trump in his January speech. Gazing into the future, Petty warns the US may be going through the early stages of authoritarianism, though he notes, “There are signs of hope with some law firms and universities fighting back against Trump’s efforts to coerce them into bending to his will. Citizens are mobilizing, legions of them taking to the streets in protest of his power grabs. Courts have been ruling against his attempts to subvert the law. But none of this seems to faze him, even as appeals play out in rulings against him — he keeps using his authoritarian jackhammer against the foundations of American democracy.”

From the moment he regained office, Trump has been following the autocrat’s playbook, step-by-step by going after universities for disobeying his decrees. He has extorted law firms for existing staff, or previous staff members, who crossed him, and he has targeted for prosecution former aides who challenged him. He has now arrested a federal judge for not helping him round up migrants for deportation, and attacking the free press for not bending to his will. The first day in office saw him release from prison, hundreds of domestic terrorists who assaulted police officers in his name — now a personal militia. Less than 100 days into his term he is straight-up defying the US Supreme Court and is getting away with it — no one being fined, no one going to jail — and terrifyingly, the American public is oblivious to what’s taking place. Trump creates one ’emergency’ after another — the foreign ‘invasion’ by immigrants seeking safety and a better life as did many of our forebears — hardly an invading army of ‘military-aged men’ as Stephen Miller would have it; then, there’s the ‘energy emergency’ for which Trump is trampling environmental laws to allow an increase in petroleum production; next, we have an ‘economic emergency’ prompting Trump to impose outlandish tariffs on any and all countries, despite the fact that the Constitution grants the power of taxation to the Congress. Neither the Supreme Court nor the Congress has an army or a police force to see that the Constitution is followed, so we all are dependent upon the Executive Branch to honor our laws. Yet, simply by fiat, the president can designate any person or group or court judge, ‘terrorist’ or ‘invader,’ should they protest or rule against his policies, then arresting them and sending them away to his gulag in El Salvador. Alarmist? We need to examine our bias of normalcy, our failures of imagination, and remember January 6, 2021 when he unleashed his violent mob on the Capitol. Harvie Wilkinson who served 41 years on the federal appellate court bench, as a Reagan appointee, asks, “If today the executive claims the right to deport without due process and in disregard of court orders, what assurance will there be tomorrow that it will not deport American citizens and then disclaim responsibility to bring them home? And what assurance shall there be that the executive will not train its broad discretionary powers upon its political enemies? We yet cling to the hope that it is not naïve to believe our good brethren in the executive branch perceive the rule of law as vital to the American ethos. This case presents their unique chance to vindicate that value and to summon the best that is within us while there is still time.” Harvie Wilkinson fears for our republic, as we all should be doing.

Trump’s latest attempt to neuter political opposition is his executing yet another memorandum targeting ActBlue, the fundraising platform behind Democratic campaigns and causes, which he claims is accepting foreign contributions, despite the platform’s denial, and an analysis to the contrary by Republican Representative Bryan Stell. The president himself has been accused of accepting Russian bribes, and a political consultant working for Trump-backing Great America PAC, got 18 months in prison for illegally accepting Russian money in 2016. Trump is at present raking in millions from cryptocurrency investors, who are buying his meme coin in a blatantly corrupt pay-to-play effort to meet him, with a dinner and a White House tour — surely with foreign money flowing into his personal coffers. Democratic Senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut wrote on X, “The Trump coin scam is the most brazenly corrupt thing a president has ever done. Not even close.” Senator Elizabeth Warren and Representative Jake Auchincloss have demanded an investigation into the meme coin scam, but Pam Bondi’s Department of Justice has better things to do, of course. The two Massachusetts Democrats say, “Anyone, including the leaders of hostile nations, can covertly buy these coins, raising the specter of uninhibited and untraceable foreign influence over the President of the US, all while Trump’s supporters are left to shoulder the risk of investing in $Trump and $Melania.” Meanwhile, ActBlue continues to raise massive amounts of money, taking in nearly $500 million in 2025 alone as it gears up for the fight against Trump, not being put off by his bullying tactics. Despite assurances from ActBlue that its service will continue, Democratic strategists are “drafting contingency plans and evaluating other options,” leery of a president who has expressed complete disregard for the rule of law, as he attempts to stamp out all political, electoral and ideological opposition. Cory Archibald, communications director at Turn Left PAC, warned, “There is no other fundraising platform that comes even close to the functionality, security, and stability of ActBlue. Democrats need to democratize their campaign tech, and they need to do it yesterday.”

Meanwhile, Trump is still meddling in Canada’s politics, as he fired off another ultimatum on Truth Social as their polls opened on federal election day: “Good luck to the Great people of Canada. Elect the man who has the strength and wisdom to cut your taxes in half, increase your military power, for free, to the highest level in the World, have your Car, Steel, Aluminum, Lumber, Energy, and all other businesses, QUADRUPLE  in size, WITH ZERO TARIFFS OR TAXES, if Canada becomes the cherished 51st State of the United States of America. No more artificially drawn line from many years ago. Look how beautiful this land mass would be. Free access with NO BORDER. ALL POSITIVES WITH NO NEGATIVES. IT WAS MEANT TO BE! America can no longer subsidize Canada with the Hundreds of Billions of Dollars a year that we have been spending in the past. It makes no sense unless Canada is a State!” Travis Gettys of Raw Story writes, “The US president has upended relations between the neighboring allies with steep tariffs on Canadian imports and threats to use ‘economic force’ to annex the country as the 51st state.” Thanks to Trump’s policies, analysts at Goldman Sachs estimate the US economy will take a $90 billion hit in lost tourism and export revenue, with many foreign visitors avoiding the US over increased hostility, and reports about Europeans being detained in immigration centers. Canada, in particular, is boycotting US travel and products — with Canadian summer flight reservations seeing a 70% decline, and a 25% decline in bookings from Europe, an overall 10% drop in international visits compared to this same time in 2024. This could amount to an almost $20 billion reduction in international visitor spending.

President Trump maintains he is “actively” negotiating with China on a tariff deal, but China insists his claim is false, and even Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent states that talks have not started. Trump reiterates that President Xi has called him for discussions, with the US president saying, “He’s called. And I don’t think that’s a sign of weakness on his behalf,” but no particulars have been provided. Guo Jiakun, of China’s Foreign Ministry, chimed in with his take, saying, “As far as I know, the two heads of state have not called each other recently. I would like to reiterate that China and the US have not conducted consultations on the tariffs issue.” Earlier, the Ministry told the US to be more polite: “If a negotiated solution is truly what the US wants, it should stop threatening and blackmailing China and seek dialogue based on equality, respect, and mutual benefit. To keep asking for a deal while exerting extreme pressure is not the right way to deal with China and simply will not work.” Trump’s threatening ultimatums have produced chaos world-wide, and fear across American political and economic life — a dynamic that could ultimately undo his presidency as many of those tantrums ring hollow, as seen with his easing up on attempting to fire Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell. David Faris, associate professor at Roosevelt University, explains on Slate, how Trump’s “depressingly familiar loop” keeps playing out: “This loop is now standard operating procedure from the most chaotic White House in history. In fact, it seems to be more or less the only move that this iteration of Trump has, one that he is deploying against everyone from Canada to Harvard University. And it is eerily similar to the nuclear strategy concept of ‘escalate to de-escalate’ — using a shocking act of aggression to convince an adversary to negotiate on your terms.”

Faris says Trump’s strategy isn’t quite working for him because his opponents have taken note of his weakness and his administration’s incompetence, so they’ve essentially rerouted their long-range plans around the United States. “Trump is fundamentally a weak, lame-duck president, whose paper-thin margins in Congress and embarrassing ineptitude at staffing his administration and carrying out his policies are not kinks that will be ironed out with time but rather inescapable features of his already unbearable and disastrous presidency. That weakness, and the servile paralysis of Congress, is leading him to try the same blunt maneuver over and over again, with predictably diminishing returns. Rather than doing the painstaking work of enacting his lunatic agenda through that narrowly divided Congress, Trump has been acting, since Day 1, like a leader who has to resort immediately to vindictive threats and massively escalatory decisions to get what he wants. If it was a useful tactic, Russia would already have deployed it against Ukraine, and China would have come to the negotiating table to plead with Trump to reduce tariffs. Issuing a never-ending stream of escalatory and often nonsensical threats is also no way to run a country, and voters are fast coming around to the understanding that they made a terrible mistake putting this senescent maniac back in power in November. It is not clear how the United States will even survive another 44 months of this circus with anything resembling the status quo, or our battered psyches, intact. But if Trump’s incipient authoritarians ever allow another Democrat to be elected president, that person is likely to discover that some of the damage to America’s reputation and interests is irreversible,” contends Faris.

King George III Redux inhabits the Oval Office now that we’ve reached the tipping point separating democracy from a dictatorship! King Donald is openly flouting the courts and the rule of law in deporting US residents to his mega-prison in El Salvador, and is now threatening to do the same to American citizens who displease him, one of the grievances against King George enumerated in the Declaration of Independence. The test case seems to be in the person of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a legal resident of Maryland who was whisked off the streets and sent to the notoriously evil prison in El Salvador…admittedly a mistake as disclosed in court by a Justice Department official, who was then axed from the job for committing such an error against the administration. In an Oval Office meeting with Salvadoran dictator Nayib Bukele, Trump declared that, “the homegrowns are next…you gotta build about five more places…it’s not big enough.” If Abrego Garcia can be kidnapped and flown to a foreign country’s prison, then American citizens are in jeopardy. Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote, “The Government’s argument…implies that it could deport and incarcerate any person, including US citizens, without legal consequence, so long as it does so before a court can intervene.” Alaska’s Republican senator, Lisa Murkowski, said, “we’re all afraid” of freely speaking out against Trump, simply because she knows from experience that he will respond with petty vengeance and irrational retribution. She, along with every GOP officeholder, is responsible in some fashion for the destructive rise of Trumpism, so it would be remarkable for any one of them to speak up about the dismantling of our democracy. Murkowski sees that the fear of Trump has risen by degrees not seen before, admitting that she is “oftentimes very anxious” about speaking out, even though she has been one of the foremost critics in her party. Responding to a question from her audience about how we should address people who are fearful of the current political climate, her response was, “We are all afraid.” Allowing that statement to briefly sink in, she then said, “It’s quite a statement. We’re in a time and place where — I don’t know, I certainly have not — I have not been here before. And I’ll tell you, I’m oftentimes very anxious myself about using my voice because retaliation is real. And that’s not right. But that’s what you’ve asked me to do and so I’m going to use my voice to the best of my ability.”

Matt Kerbel from Wolves and Sheep on Substack, writes, “This is a very revealing response, and it seems as though Murkowski recognizes in real time just how revealing it is for a US senator to admit to a constituent she is afraid to use her platform for fear of retaliation and she doesn’t know what to do about it.” Kerbel surmises that she isn’t necessarily worried about political retaliation, since she lost her Republican primary in 2010, but then won re-election through a write-in campaign — a somewhat amazing feat to get over 100,000 voters to spell her name correctly on the ballot — she is worried about her personal safety! Trump’s vindictiveness could also cause problems for Alaska, her constituents and their businesses. Kerbel says, “She is also pulling off the cover of Washington Republicans who are expressing their fears in private.” She expressly said, “We are ALL afraid.” The writer asks, “Is it not right that retaliation is real? That’s what Murkowski appears to be saying, and it is inarguably true. But is she also recognizing as she speaks that it is not right to hold a position of power and be afraid to use it? As Murkowski pivots back to the constituents question, she leaves the impression that what’s not right is her reluctance to speak out.” As she confesses being anxious about herself and using her voice, she then assures her audience, “But that’s what you’ve asked me to do.” Kerbel accuses her of saying less than she probably thinks she does, as she shifts to the future tense, acknowledging things left undone, with a promise that she will do more. He speculates that she will keep a low profile and talk to her colleagues, be a charmer without upsetting the relationships she has built — but in the end, she doesn’t know, and for the sake of the country she needs to figure it out fast. “She will not find an easy answer. But we have reached a moment when, and if, she cannot embrace the uncomfortable, then perhaps the answer is to step aside for someone who can — or let the voters do it next year,” Kerbel concludes.

Murkowski has repeatedly criticized the Trump administration’s policies and the mindless devotion of those within the GOP. She has rebuked the president for casting aside our allies in his alignment with dictator Vladimir Putin, and for his Oval Office performance against Ukraine’s Zelensky. Her opposition to Elon Musk and his DOGE chainsaw’s destruction of government agencies she describes, “as hard as anything I’ve engaged in in the 20-plus years in the Senate,” when she has to face constituents who have been fired from their positions without notice, afraid to speak up from fears of retaliation. Trump backed a challenger in her 2022 reelection campaign, but she was able to be victorious, and even if Musk steps up to finance a challenger for her post, that would not be until 2028. Stephen Colbert, on The Late Show, said the ‘administrative error’ that sent Kilmar Abrego Garcia to rot in the El Salvador prison was a “mistake made on purpose” as a way to publicly threaten American citizens with with same fate. “We’re not on our way to a dictator-ship, we’re on the ship,” as he pondered whether there might be a “break-glass-if-Constitution-stops-working-mechanism.” Colbert also offered his take on Trump’s physician’s comments after the recent physical exam, referring to the president’s “active lifestyle,” especially his “frequent victories in golf events” which contribute to Trump’s well-being. Colbert’s rendering of the statement: “His well-being is also due to a cruel, indifferent universe where good, hardworking people are routinely diagnosed with terminal illnesses, but an objectively evil monster who only eats cheeseburgers and fried chicken lives forever. The world is chaos. There is no God, proven by his frequent victories in golf events.”

Of course the taxpayer is picking up the bill for Trump’s medical care, and also for the physician who narrates the president’s canned, prepared statement on his outstanding condition following the ‘exam.’ Coincidentally, Trump recently signed yet another executive order, this one aiming at a delay in Medicare negotiations for a broad category of prescription drugs, all in response to a lobbying campaign by Big Pharma to fight efforts to rein in its pricing policies. The order, entitled “Lowering Drug Prices by Once Again Putting Americans First,”  puts Robert F Kennedy Jr in the forefront to work with Congress to “modify” price negotiations as established under the Biden administration — negotiations which had previously yielded worthy results, despite the industry’s efforts to have the courts overturn the outcome. One specific aspect of the order calls for a four-year extension of the period during which small-molecule prescription drugs are exempt from price negotiations with Medicare, usually not for a period of nine years after FDA approval. Small-molecule drugs, usually taken in pill form, represent 90% of medications currently in circulation, so the four-year extension represents a significant span in which to earn even more profits. Drug policy advocate Steve Knievel, of Public Citizen, warns that by pushing back negotiation dates for drugs will likely reverse any recent progress on this issue, doing the opposite of the executive order’s loftily titled goal. Knievel sees Trump’s proposal undermining Biden’s singular achievement to address forty years of Big Pharma’s price gouging, a “total capitulation to the demands of drug corporation lobbyists that want to continue to overcharge Medicare beneficiaries and taxpayers.” The advocacy group ‘Protect Our Care’ said, “Trump just caved to Big Pharma — again. The only winners here are the drug companies.” A group called ‘Seniors 4 Better Care’ is revealed to be a front for a lobbyist-led shell group called the ‘American Prosperity Alliance,’ and its ads deceptively appear to be targeting Trump and his MAGA group, while GOP lawmakers receive pharmaceutical industry campaign cash to support the objectives laid out in Trump’s order, which only echoes lobbyist’s language against any negotiations. Merith Basey of ‘Patients for Affordable Drugs,’ says, “This is yet another attempt by Big Pharma to rig the system in its favor — at the expense of patients.”

Gregg Gonsalves writes in The Nation, “The scope and scale of attacks on the National Institutes of Health and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the firings of thousands of staff, and the broader shutdown of programs and slashing of budgets across HHS are unprecedented. Institutions are reeling, imperiling frontline work to protect public health and aborting progress on new advances in the treatment and prevention of infectious and chronic diseases.” Gonsalves questions ‘why’ this is being done, “some framing the cuts as a response to Kennedy’s ‘Make America Healthy Again’ agenda, or an attempt to downsize a government gone wild — anything to try to shoehorn the rationale for these actions into some sort of standard, political logic.” What he sees “is a purge of the administrative state, of universities, of expertise, consistent with China’s Cultural Revolution, or the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia as it dismantled the tsarist civil service, and sans the bloodshed of those events, the comparison is still relevant.” “The goal is to get rid of an entire set of people and institutions in the service of a radical ideology. While the short-term effects of the administration’s policies have been well-articulated, the long-term ones are just as chilling. In less than 100 days, President Trump has created a lasting legacy: We have lost a generation of expertise, of systems built up to care for our nation and provide for our collective future in terms of scientific advances,” he writes. If Trump is gone from the scene, these resources won’t just spring back to life — people are seeking other opportunities, students and trainees are missing their chances to enter their chosen professions and they won’t wait around indefinitely for the political winds to change. Gonsalves says some government agency officials are being offered positions in remote areas of Alaska or Montana to remain in federal service, the consolation being that they aren’t getting a bullet to the head as they are marched into the countryside to face a kind of exile. He writes, “We’re in deep trouble. The midterms, the 2028 elections, should they change the balance of power in Congress or who is in the White House, all come too late. The patient is bleeding out in the waiting room. American science, public health, and healthcare will be damaged for a generation or more.” Answering the ‘why’ this is being done, he concludes, “Because this is what they want — psychologies or philosophies are irrelevant at this moment. We are living through times that are now focused on destruction as a central goal, meant to inflict pain and suffering on millions now and into the future, long after THEY are gone.”

Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr is seeing incoming flak after his claims last week regarding what people living with autism CAN’T do, getting slammed after asserting that the disorder is “preventable” and on an epidemic scale in the US. In a press conference, Kennedy quacked that, “These are kids who will never pay taxes,” which prompted Ronny Chieng of the Daily Show to ask, “Wait, that’s what you’re going to lead with? That’s like a big tragedy for you? It’s not even accurate, I mean, autistic people do pay taxes. Are you thinking of art history majors?” Chieng then played a video of conspiracy theorist Kennedy babbling, “They’ll never hold a job, they’ll never play baseball, they’ll never write a poem, they’ll never go out on a date.” Chieng blasted RFK’s claims as “ridiculous,” saying, “Autistic kids will never write poems? Well, who wants kids to write more poems? That’s something we SHOULD be preventing. Who even made RFK the judge of what makes life worth living? I’m sorry they’ll never know the joy of planting bear carcasses in Central Park.” Rex Huppke of USA Today quotes in his column, Dr. Eric Fombonne, an autism researcher and professor emeritus at Oregon Health and Science University, “Of course it’s ridiculous. If it’s coming from the mouth of the guy who drinks raw milk and brags about eating roadkill, there’s a near-100% chance it’s going to be ridiculous.” Huppke reminds us to not forget who wanted the charlatan in charge of HHS: “This is the Republican Party’s guy. They signed, sealed and delivered him, handing our nation’s health to a snake-oil salesman.”

Under the draconian DOGE budget cuts, the Administration for Community Living will be disbanded and its so-called ‘critical’ programs will be integrated into other HHS agencies — the most important of these being ‘Meals on Wheels,’ known for providing more than 261 million meals to older adults, assistance such as respite care for over 1.5 million family caregivers, and independent-living services to almost 250,000 people with disabilities in 2022 alone. The ACL is budgeted only $2.5 million a year, so it remains to be seen if this is considered a ‘critical program,’ despite Trump’s claim, “We love our seniors.” Richard Festa, executive director of advocacy group ‘Alliance for Retired Americans’ says those are empty words played against the drastic cuts already seen at HHS, leaving many to go hungry due to the needless cuts. Elon Musk’s DOGE posse has already cut billions in funding for maternal health care, research and community programs, leaving providers struggling and expectant mothers without critical care — Brooklyn-based maternal health advocate, Sevonna Brown, had to immediately stop her work after DOGE froze more than $2 million in funding – all this in spite of Musk’s claim that declining birth rates worldwide is a threat to civilization. Time for Musk to go for child number 15? On his show, Jimmy Kimmel reported that Elon has fathered “many mini-Musks” in order to “seed the world in his own image” — not surprising to Kimmel since we already know “he loves babies,” having spent $300 million to get one elected president. Kimmel reports that The Wall Street Journal published “a bonkers account of Musk’s efforts” to recruit women to carry his children, and then buys their silence with multi-million dollar nondisclosure agreements, with sources saying there could be “many more mini-Musks out there that no one knows about.” Kimmel asks, “Who says romance is dead? You’ve heard of ‘Alien v. Predator? Elon might be both.”

The satirical Borowitz Report has Andy writing: “A South African man who invested millions in Donald J Trump is in a ‘state of shock’ after losing a fortune, the man said on Monday. ‘I’m still trying to process what went wrong,’ he said. ‘If Donald Trump can’t make money, who can?’ The man said he was ‘baffled’ that his investment had soured, given Trump’s ‘unparalleled track record of business success.’ ‘I just don’t understand how this happened,’ he said. ‘He seemed so smart on The Apprentice.'”

With the April 15 tax filing deadline behind us, Helaine Olen, managing editor of the American Economic Liberties Project, reports that Intuit, parent company of TurboTax has received its tax refund — in a manner of speaking. TurboTax has spent two decades lobbying against the IRS making it easier for people to file taxes online, and it seems that Intuit’s $1 million donation to Trump’s inauguration committee has done the trick — while claiming the donation was “part of our decades-long commitment to bipartisan advocacy.” The trick is on the American taxpayer who will no longer be able to file simple tax returns online for free, with the administration’s elimination of the IRS’ Direct File program. The National Retail Federation’s annual tax return survey says that 40% of US adults will prepare taxes themselves using computer software, which is a $31 billion market for Intuit and H&R Block, after Americans have spent 1.7 billion hours preparing their returns. Contrast this to more than three dozen countries where government sends eligible taxpayers a pre-filled return, which the filer signs and returns if it is accurate — if not, the taxpayer can dispute it. During the Clinton administration, Congress passed a law ordering the IRS to come up with, by 2008, a ‘return free’ offering for people with simple returns — the clock is still ticking on that. Such a system would not be difficult to create, since we are simply sending the government information it already has on W2 and 1099 forms — the complexity lies with the tax prep industry who earn huge profits by charging to perform a service which should cost nothing — it’s all just a make-work scheme even if we don’t see the truth — but now we don’t even have the free option. Enjoy your refund, TurboTax — baby needs new shoes, or maybe a Tesla.

Here’s one to keep an eye on: Trump’s MAGA team has contacted the IRS to review audits of “high profile” friends of the president, one friend being conspiracy theorist Mike ‘My Pillow’ Lindell. Mikey has told a judge that he’s struggling to pay court-imposed sanctions because his finances are “in ruins” and his credit rating has hit bottom among lenders, and is now unable settle with voting software company Smartmatic. With friends in high places, Lindell may not have to face the pending audit at the IRS, but it is suggested this is all just a misunderstanding and that Treasury may have ‘misconstrued’ the request, having to do with Employee Retention Credit from having to lay off hundreds of employees. Accused of failing to hand over financial documents to the court, Lindell claims he has nothing to hide. “They’re not going to silence me. I will keep going until we get to paper ballots being hand-counted and melt these voting machines down and turn them into prison bars,” he said. Jimmy Kimmel joked, “Lindell may be the only person on Earth whose life was better when he was smoking crack.” Watch this space!

GRIFTING GOLF, BUBBA’S SHRIMP, SWEET KKKAROLINE, BE COOL!

Despite the panic on Wall Street over the Trump tariffs fiasco, the president claimed he was “doing just fine” leading up to his annual physical exam on Friday, posting on Truth Social that he “never felt better,” and that the visit to Walter Reed Army Medical Center “must be done.” Jimmy Kimmel said on his show, “It’s funny ’cause the rest of us have never felt worse,” predicting Trump would get an “excellent” report if it should be released — pointing out that his promised release of medical records during the 2024 campaign never happened. Kimmel quipped, “Let me guess, his physical strength and stamina are extraordinary, his blood pressure is astonishing and he is by far the healthiest president to have single-handedly tanked the world economy overnight. This man has the Diet Coke button-pressing strength of a man half his age.” Since the July assassination attempt, though Trump’s stamina and strength have been scrutinized, Dr. Marc Siegel says the miraculous survival showed an “adroitness” in the MAGAt leader. Last October over 230 doctors, nurses and other healthcare professionals asked for a release of records, with supporters of VP Kamala Harris claiming, “With no recent disclosure of health information from Donald Trump, we are left to extrapolate from public appearances. And on that front, Trump is falling concerningly short of any standard of fitness for office and displaying alarming characteristics of declining acuity.” In November, Florida neurosurgeon Dr. Brett Osborn told Fox News Digital that the president remained in good health, and, “The fact that he attended 120 events in seven months, often multiple rallies in a single day in different states, is proof-positive that Trump has a tremendous amount of stamina, mentally and physically.”

As expected, the Sunday following the Medical Center exam, the White House physician released a memorandum declaring Donald Trump “fully fit” to perform the duties of the presidency, citing his “frequent victories” in golf tournaments as evidence of his robust health. The memo included details of lab work, physical exams, a skin exam and a cognitive test, conjecturing (considering that Trump himself filled in some of the blanks on the document) that The Don is in “excellent health.” Alexa Lisitza reports on BuzzFeed that the president has reportedly spent 18 out of his first 69 days in office on one of his golf courses — working on his swing one-fourth of his second term. From a 2019 Government Accountability Office report, a HuffPost analysis concludes his golf outings have cost the taxpayers about $26,127,531. Social media comments called taxpayer money used on golfing as wasteful, and that DOGE should be looking into reducing this waste of funds, especially since the outings are taking place at Trump-owned facilities where significant chunks of money go directly into his pockets since his entourage of staff and secret service must use the golf carts and other club amenities — no discounts for the help! Another post called his golf habits “the least of my worries, when he’s talking about a third term, with conservatives pretending they care about the Constitution when they demonstrably don’t.” “I’m far less concerned about him golfing than I am with him kicking off wars all across the globe with former allies. Quite frankly, him wasting time golfing is time he isn’t signing more fascist executive orders,” contributed another. Many prefer that he remain on the greens, summed up by UmpireMental7070: “I wish he’d play golf every day. He does less damage to my retirement fund there.”

Chris Hayes of MSNBC’s ‘All In With Chris Hayes’ sees Trump running the US economy like a mad king, saying, “You cannot build a factory or set up a supply line if there’s someone in charge who might burn it down today, or tomorrow, or in 90 days.” Making the US economy analogous to a house in which Trump ignited a fire with his sweeping tariffs, only to watch it burn until he lost his nerve, Hayes says he put out most of that fire, desiring high praise for doing so. Now we’re left with partial, smoldering destruction, unsure of its habitability or whether or not another torch will be thrown into it. Nobody knows, as the domestic and world markets soothe the burns of a loss of over $10 trillion in value following Trump’s initial announcement. Stocks tumbled the day following, and with White House Press Secretary Leavitt’s statement that the president would not change his course, the third day brought another stock plummet — followed by Trump’s social media post asking everyone to “BE COOL! Everything is going to work out well.” A few minutes later he posted a hot stock tip, “THIS IS A GREAT TIME TO BUY!!” Hours later, Trump got cold feet and authorized a 90 day pause on the tariffs, but not before many government officials had taken his hot stock tip seriously and loaded up their portfolios with depressed stocks just in the nick of time as markets rebounded dramatically. Hayes calls Trump, “One erratic man with unilateral power who flits from whim to whim, imposing whatever tariffs he wants whenever he feels like it, doing it mostly to feel powerful and respected to have the rest of the world ‘kiss his butt.’ He is so pleased with himself for saving a few rooms in the house he set on fire. He is also deluded. Prices are still almost certainly going to rise, and growth is likely going to fall. We are still in for that pain. The threat of a global trade war still exists. Fox Business’ Charles Gasparino alleged Trump backed down because…it could destabilize the debt of the US federal government.” Little known fact from history: As Rome burned, Nero signed an executive order on improving shower heads.

A large holder of US bonds — Japan — was allegedly ‘dumping’ its bonds, forcing the administration’s hand. T-Bonds are a foundational asset of the entire global financial system, a famously safe haven in uncertain times, contributing to America’s status as a superpower, with China and Japan being the biggest holders — and not very appreciative of Trump’s antagonistic moves. So with their dumping of bonds, Trump admitted that these actions contributed to his 90-day pause of tariffs, saying, “They were getting a little bit yippy, a little bit afraid…the bond market is very tricky. I was watching it. But if you look at it now, it’s beautiful…I saw last night where people were getting a little queasy.” Chris Hayes says, “Trump thinks that by pressing the PAUSE button and goosing stocks, he has fixed everything. But that gets at another reason why demand for American Treasury bonds is down: the full faith and credit of the US is not what it used to be — not when it is entirely bound up in the whims of one man. You cannot run a national economy — much less a global economy — based on how Trump is feeling and who is kissing his butt from hour to hour.” Stephen Colbert commented on Trump’s ‘BE COOL’ post and his remark that people were “getting yippy,” saying, “Yeah, exactly, Russia was watching Trump tank the economy and going, ‘Yippee!'” On Trump’s boast that the markets had the “biggest day in financial history,” with the S&P 500 index making its largest gain since WWII, Colbert pointed out that ‘biggest’ isn’t the same as ‘best.’ “That’s why on Mother’s Day you don’t give her a mug that says, ‘World’s Biggest Mom,'” he cracked.

A writer on Quora posts: “Our reputation will lie in tatters. Our economy will almost certainly be smaller. Prices will be higher, so quality of living will drop. But that’s the easy part of the forecast. The harder bit? How long it will take to recover. One of the things we learned in Trump’s first term is that a lot of things we thought were laws were really norms that could be ignored by a man without shame or decency. I expected Biden’s four years would be filled with patching those holes, though to a lot of progress was not made due to the split in Congress. Then Retribution Trump returns, and this time even things that are clearly against the law are being violated with impunity. Congress has rendered itself irrelevant, and Trump is now taking aim at both lawyers and the federal courts — which Mike Johnson suggested they just might get rid of, three co-equal branches of government notwithstanding. And we’re only two months in. At this pace, it’s hard to imagine how little of our core principles will be done by the time The First Convicted Felon finishes raping the country. And getting consensus on how to fix the foundational damage will be made worse by the economic issues listed at the outset, as No-One-Has-Time-For-That when you’re struggling to put food on the table. I’ve been asking some smart people how long it will take us to recover. Even among the most optimistic, the fastest prediction I’ve heard is 25 years. Most say, ‘not in my lifetime.’ Which is terrifying.”

Saturday Night Live’s Weekend Update host, Colin Jost, started off the segment last week quipping that POTUS “tried to rescue the economy from the disastrous policies of whoever was president last week” with the 90-day tariff delay, and saying, “It’s like listening to Bubba Gump talk about shrimp.” About Trump’s statement that the economic downturn was like treating an ailment, co-host Michael Che declared, “Yeah, but this feels like we took a whole bottle of medicine with a glass of vodka and laid in a warm bath.” Che got a rise from the audience with his one-liner: “It was reported that Elon Musk personally appealed to President Trump to stop his tariff plan, and it worked! The stock market went up like this,” as a photo of Musk and his infamous Nazi-like salute appeared on-screen. Jost ripped Trump and his chaotic tariffs, as well as the tech CEOs who claimed not to see it coming. “The CEOs of many tech companies who supported President Trump’s campaign have said they were surprised by all of his tariffs — well, yeah, I mean, he hardly ever mentioned them,” he said, which was then followed by a video montage of 2024 campaign promises about tariffs he would enforce if elected. The montage concluded with Trump maintaining, “I love tariffs!” Jost added, “Trump announced he was pausing most tariffs for 90 days. Now, 90 days may not seem like a long time, but remember: Trump has only been president for 82 days. Already it feels like a goddamned decade.” Che addressed Trump’s argument that it would be better if America manufactured all its own products, saying, “A new report shows that if iPhones were manufactured in the US, they could cost up to $3,500, which is a lot, but remember: your kids would get an employee discount.”

Jon Stewart in his Daily Show opening recently, said, “Our economy is in the midst of a beautiful metamorphosis, turning from a simple caterpillar into a dead caterpillar,” as he introduced a new segment called ‘Trade Wars.’ Stewart derided Trump with a news clip of a Truth Social post reading, “Don’t be Weak! Don’t be Stupid. Don’t be a PANICAN,” as he suggested better nicknames such as ‘hystericats,’ ‘Repussicans,’ and ‘cryin-tologists,’ suggesting Trump’s nickname factory must have been shut down in the tariff war. To the lack of response from Republicans, who don’t seem fazed by the economic ripples, Stewart says, “You are all acting like the tariff regime is a tried-and-true remedy. Oh, and of course, this is the medicine that’s always prescribed! Except the last time it was tried 100 years ago we had a Great Depression.” He closed his monologue by musing on the overall issue with the tariffs. “We continue to blame everybody else in the world that we designed and policed after WWII. We’re the richest country in the world, ever! We’re not the world’s victims. If we have inequalities in this country, that’s on us. It’s not a supply problem, it’s not fair trade for the most part. It’s an investment and distribution problem — it’s our fault. And it’s not saying we can’t make adjustments and renegotiate things, but it didn’t have to be this reckless. You killed the hostage and then went, ‘Oh, ransom?’ Hey mom, look, no economy!”

Tom Boggioni writes in his piece on Raw Story, that White House insiders have no clue what Trump’s tariff endgame will be. Politico’s White House Bureau Chief Dasha Burns was asked where the president sees the tariff game going, or is it just sort of ‘every day is another adventure?’ Her reply: “Well, he said this week it’s all about instinct, right? Look, remember how much we were reporting at the outset of this administration that chaos is the strategy? That’s how he’s going about what he’s doing with DOGE. That’s how he’s going about so many aspects of his agenda. He’s doing that with tariffs as well. He wants to keep everyone off balance, he want people to come to the table and negotiate and wonder, you know, how they’re going to do with the White House. The problem is that uncertainty and chaos is not good for markets. It’s not good for consumers and it’s certainly not good for the global economic order and the question of what the endgame is. I think a lot of people around Trump are asking themselves the same thing right now.” Fox News contributor Karl Rove advised President Trump and his administration to stop all the ‘happy talk’ as concerns over the economy grow, urging the White House to ‘temper’ its language around tariffs. Rove explained that consumer sentiment has dropped by 11 points in the last month according to the University of Michigan index, only being worse during the 2008 recession. Rove reminds us: “The important thing to remember is trade makes us richer.”

White House Press Secretary KKKaroline Leavitt was asked why consumer confidence was so low, only to reiterate Trump’s claim that this marked a “period of transition,” and that he “wants consumers to trust in him,” and they should trust in him. “I think there’s great optimism in this economy, great optimism for the American people, a lot of reason for the people to feel optimistic. The president made it very clear when the US is punched, he will punch back harder.”  A writer on Quora posts that “whether Leavitt attended Harvard, or Yale, or a community college isn’t important and it doesn’t appear on her résumé since the job qualifications needed are few — needing only to be a loyal Trump supporter, able to regurgitate everything he says. You can see by the irritable way she responds to questions, even thought that’s her job, that she is simply repeating trigger words and phrases — repeat, defend and praise. That’s it, except for the interjection of a scowl or a condescending remark, or a derogatory comment about Joe Biden which likely gets her brownie points from Daddy, and especially if she makes sure to be rude to as many people as possible while ‘answering questions.’ She doesn’t have to be good at her job as far as providing factual information — she has been proven wrong right to her face as she spews lies to the public. Her job is to honor and worship Trump, promote his false sense of reality, be nasty to any members of the press who oppose his viewpoint, and blame everyone else — no college degree necessary.”

And speaking of education, Education Secretary Linda McMahon spoke on an educational panel last week where she reportedly mistook artificial intelligence (AI) for A.1. Steak Sauce. While discussing the impact of AI on future education and workforce skills innovations, she confused the vinegar-based condiment with artificial intelligence, making the same error repeatedly as she spoke — a bit of an oversight to the former CEO of World Wrestling Entertainment. “Kids are sponges. They just absorb everything. It wasn’t all that long ago that it was, ‘We’re going to have internet in our schools! Now let’s see A1 and how that can be helpful.” Even though the neighborhood kids come home reeking of vinegar, if it’s beneficial, who’s to say otherwise? McMahon’s blunder went viral, and A.1.’s marketing team seized the day by creating an image of a new bottle of their sauce reading, ‘For education purposes only,’ posting it on the company’s Instagram account with the text, ‘Agree, Best To Start Them Early.’ Social media exploded with roasts, critiquing her intelligence, with one person posting, “We’re ruled by the stupidest, most incompetent people in the world,” and another wrote that A.1. Sauce “will help students, and the smarter kids can move up to Thousand Island Dressing.” McMahon is working to dismantle public education and it’s encouraging that she evidently has a head start on everyone.

Satirist Andy Borowitz writes in his The Borowitz Report, that “Attorney General Pam Bondi found a ‘serious breach of the Department of Justice’s code of conduct,’ and that she had terminated a career DOJ employee who was caught with a copy of the US Constitution on his desk. Bondi said that the employee, who had worked at the department for 37 years, had ‘raised suspicions’ by using ‘telltale phrases like due process’ in DOJ memos. At Bondi’s direction, US marshals ransacked his office, discovered the offending document, and frog-marched him out of the building. Bondi took the opportunity to remind all DOJ staffers that the US Constitution is on the Republican Party’s banned reading list.” Earlier this month, the US Naval Academy removed 381 books from its library shelves in response to President Trump’s executive order banning diversity, equity, and inclusion materials and policies in federal facilities. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth ordered the Academy to review its titles listings and remove books promoting DEI, whereupon the Academy officials identified nearly 900 books for review, afterward releasing the list of the 381 removed items. Trump’s order against DEI did not apply to US military academies, but Hegseth took it upon himself to order complete compliance, prompting school officials to also remove historic items honoring Jewish female academy graduates, later declared a mistake, with steps being taken to restore the removed pieces. Hegseth’s aggressive push to erase DEI programs and online content has been met with questions from angry lawmakers, local leaders, and citizens over the removal of military heroes and historic mentions from Defense Department websites and social media pages. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries was quick to point out that Hegseth and the Naval Academy bans works by Maya Angelou, and works on slavery, the civil rights movement and the Holocaust, but excludes Adolf Hitler from its directive. Watch this space…and watch for lots of smoke from the burning pyres.

In an opening monologue last week, Michael Kosta on The Daily Show summed up the first seventy-five days of the Trump administration coup with, “The second Trump administration is off to a roaring start — if you don’t count the economy, inflation, rampant corruption, cyberbullying of allied nations, and we’re all gonna die of measles.” Addressing Trump’s so-called ‘Liberation Day‘ tariffs, Kosta responded to the president’s Truth Social all-caps post (“THE OPERATION IS OVER! THE PATIENT LIVED, AND IS HEALING. THE PROGNOSIS IS THAT THE PATIENT WILL BE FAR STRONGER, BIGGER, BETTER, AND MORE RESILIENT THAN EVER BEFORE. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!!!”), with a deadpanning, “Boy, I feel so much better now.” He advised viewers not to panic about economists’ warnings of a tariff-caused global recession by assuring them that “Trump’s habit of speaking soothing words of comfort in times of need” would see them through the tough times. “Always reassuring when the surgeon comes out screaming at the top his lungs, ‘THE PATIENT IF FINE, EVERYTHING IS GOING GREAT. DOES ANYBODY HAVE A MOP?”, he said, mimicking Trump’s all-caps post. He added, “The thing is, the patient didn’t need major surgery. We just needed a teeth cleaning, keep it clean and shiny. No one wants to wake up from heart surgery to their dental hygienist shouting, ‘I THINK HE’S GOING TO LIVE!'”

Trump kicked off his televised ‘Liberation Day‘ tariffs fiasco with a board charting the list winners and losers among the global community, “like a Hollywood game show host,” wrote David Gardner on The Daily Beast. Gardner described the president as being spray-tanned with lacquered hair, gesticulating and bragging as he unveiled the numbers matching his international contestants in his trade revolution. His catchphrase was, “Let’s make America Wealthy Again,” as world leaders looked on in disbelief, and as the stock market started its tumble, with the dollar sliding worldwide. The tariff percentages ranged from a benign ten percent up to a mind-boggling forty-nine percent, which fell onto Cambodia which charges the US ninety-seven percent according to The Don. Trump’s complaint about “foreign scavengers ripping us off for years” revealed that he was being “kind” by charging the “nations that treat us badly” only about half what they supposedly charge us. What a considerate guy, eh? With his game show host smile he added, “We’re going to start being smart, and we’re going to start being very wealthy again.” He is piling onto China a thirty-four percent tariff on top of the twenty percent already being charged Beijing — claiming that President Xi Jinping should be satisfied since they charge us sixty-seven percent, says the chart-bearing Teletubby. One notable omission on the president’s chart: Russia, along with Cuba, North Korea and Belarus. White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt explained that those exclusions are because existing economic sanctions already imposed “preclude any meaningful trade.” Watch this space!

Objections to the glut of tariffs quickly came to the fore, with Ross Gerber of Gerber Kawasaki Wealth and Investment Management calling the action “a disaster of idiocy,” and even Republican senators Rand Paul and John Kennedy expressing concern at this major escalation in a global trade war which will soon impact American consumers. Gerber, a major investor in Tesla, being interviewed by CNN’s Laura Coates, could only foresee gloom and doom as he sought a silver lining in the long term. His short term worries aren’t causing him to panic, but he cautions, “We went from almost an ideal market environment over the last year or two, to now complete and utter sort of destruction of the system of trade that we’ve had for a very long time, that has benefitted America greatly with lower prices! That’s the whole reason that this is set up the way it is.” Even Musk’s expected exit from the White House would not be enough to turn Tesla’s fortunes toward positive territory, according to Gerber — Tesla needs a new face to regain stability. His anger at Musk has little to do with his DOGE organization’s haphazard slashing of government agencies, but with his constant delivery of insulting comments toward people, and should he step away from his government position, Gerber doubts that Musk’s attention would be refocused on autos, which has seen neglect for years, but on xAI and other artificial intelligence projects. “It’s not a great time to buy the stock,” he advises. Musk’s only addition to the Tesla lineup since buying the company, has been the Cybertruck which seems to be in constant recall, especially since the glued-on parts are falling off the vehicles as they are driven, so most now view the brand as broken and unfixable.

Because Trump included two rocky and remote islands near Antarctica inhabited only by penguins and seals, with ten percent tariffs, he has provided us with some hilarity in spite of his ego-driven disaster. Heard and McDonald islands are not countries, though he may have mistakenly thought McDonald Island was the home of the Big Mac, from which he might have extracted favors in subsequent negotiations. MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow noted that it takes two weeks by sea to get there from Australia — no scheduled airlines and no airports for that quick weekend getaway! She points out that active volcanoes pose a problem, adding, “Those volcanoes, penguins and seals will never menace the American economy again, as they have in the past, by flooding us with their cheap exports of what? Like, fresh air, cool breezes, a waft of eau de penguin, I don’t know. What do they send us? Are you tired of winning, America? Can you just feel the practical economic benefits that MAGA leadership is bringing to us at last? Isn’t it a relief?” The mockery continued with former Representative Tom Malinowski of New Jersey posting, “The Heard Island and McDonald penguins have been taking advantage of us for too long — it’s about time we stood up to them!”

Economists have sounded the alarm over the past few weeks, that any new tariffs will spike prices for domestic consumer products, with import businesses taking on those costs, but then charging customers higher prices to make up for the import costs. Democratic strategist James Carville said, “There’s no policy behind it. It’s just Trump’s ego playing itself out in public, and I think voters are getting very, very apprehensive about this. These policies will hurt a ton of people with new financial burdens you can’t imagine.” He commented that even the Wall Street Journal’s editorial board, some of the most conservative people in the country, shared that concern. Following Trump’s big announcement was a cratering of the stock market the day after, as fears of global economic slowdown brought the worst day of loss since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic. The Dow Jones Industrial Average closed down four percent, losing almost 1700 points, with the S&P 500 down 4.8 percent and the Nasdaq down six percent, marking new lows for Wall Street after months of speculation about Trump’s trade agenda. In his analysis, Michael Arone of State Street Global Advisors said, “The Trump administration may be playing a game of chicken with trading partners, but market participants aren’t willing to wait around for the results. Instead, investors are selling first and asking questions later.”

Trump is quoted as saying, “The markets are going to boom, the stock is going to boom, the country is going to boom. And the rest of the world wants to see if there’s any way they can make a deal.” In the meantime the markets are going ‘BOOM‘ or as Stephen Colbert terms it: “the traditional sound when everything stays intact.” The administration’s officials have diverse messages regarding any deal-making, with Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick offering conflicting guidance stressing no “backing off” on tariffs, but that deals could be a possibility. Lutnick said, “This stuff has got to stop. America has got to stop being exploited, and you’re going to see America prosper. And then, and only then, will Donald Trump make a deal with each country when they’ve really, really changed their ways. That’s not ‘back off.’ That is, let the dealmaker make his deals when, and only if, these countries change everything about themselves, which I doubt they will.”

The Associated Press called Trump’s sweeping new tariffs “a historic tax hike that could push global order to a breaking point,” about which John Stoehr of The Editorial Board asks, “Why are we still wondering what Trump voters want? He promised. He delivered. What’s the mystery? I ask, because our discourse seems to be invested in the idea that his supporters don’t really want this, and I just don’t mean his hardcore supporters. Resolving this tension is important. The Democrats believe if they can show Trump is going to make things more expensive, they can get them to support Democrats in the midterms. But conventional wisdom also asks us to do something we should not do…treat Trump supporters as if they didn’t understand what they were getting into…treating them like children, that they can’t be responsible for what they did. We shouldn’t do that. Treat them as adults who have THEIR way of understanding tariffs…look at it this way — Trump supporters are going to trust him no matter how incoherent, no matter how dumb…the dumber and more incoherent, the more they trust. His choices trigger reactions, forcing people to choose between those who say tariffs are a tax, or trusting Trump who says it’s a tax cut. Trump has swept them up in his story of a cosmic battle between good and evil, in which the chosen people have been taken advantage of by ‘globalists,’ trying to replace them with foreigners who are ‘poisoning the blood’ of the US, leading toward destruction. The story can be told in a way that appeals to everyone, even nonwhites — the challenge isn’t just hardcore supporters. It’s swing voters, too. Liberation requires personal sacrifice and ‘short term pain.’ So if supporters end up recognizing that policies are impoverishing them, they almost certainly will not attribute their suffering to him — they will blame whomever he tells them to, hence his use of emergency powers usually reserved for wartime. Suffering Trump supporters will bind themselves closely to the president, using this as proof of patriotism and devotion to the cause of justice, with their savior the only one who can relieve them of their condition.”

Stoehr concludes with his observation that the last election was about money — not in the way most may think. “The economy was booming, inflation was down, wages were up, unemployment had rarely been lower — Joe Biden really did grow the economy…almost everyone prospered. But that may have been the problem, because he did more than any president to expand the economic pie to include all those who are usually left behind, especially Black people — Whites feel something is wrong, that something is being taken from them, someone is cheating them, despite their own prosperity. It’s white-power’s zero sum — if America includes ‘them,’ it excludes ‘us.’ Democrats’ beliefs that Trump voters can be won over with economic politics in everyone’s interest won’t cut it. They want economic policies for them, not everyone. And if tariffs end up hurting them, they take comfort in knowing Black people are hurting more. These tariffs are the biggest tax increase of our lifetimes. But that’s what they wanted. He promised. He delivered. No mystery.” Reactions on social media brought one tweet with a Rodney Dangerfieldesque response: “Just got off the phone with my financial advisor; he just told me my 401k is now a 400k.” Another posted a stock heat map, nearly all red, with a superimposed image of VP JD Vance asking, “Have you even said thank you once?”

Trump insists that his ‘Liberation Day‘ tariffs levied around the world will be borne by his victimized nations and not American buyers, but skeptics within his own MAGA gang are not so sure. Republican senators Rand Paul, Lisa Murkowski, Mitch McConnell, and Susan Collins joined with Democrats in voting against the emergency powers Trump is using to impose a 25% tariff against Canada. And while Senator John Kennedy did not join them, he made known his concerns in a Newsmax interview with anchor Rob Schmitt, saying, “What the president is saying, is if you want to sell stuff to Americans, move your business to America and hire Americans and contribute to our economy, don’t just sell stuff. In the long run, he’s right. But in the long run, we’re all dead.” He added that he’s heard both favorable and disastrous assessments from economists, and even “late-night psychic hotlines” are more accurate in their predictions, as he slammed blind supporters of the policy. “It may not lead to inflation this time. Am I predicting that it will or won’t? No. I’m going to say it again. We’re in uncharted waters and we don’t know. And anybody who tries to tell that they know what the short-term impact is going to be is just lying. Either that or they’re selling deep stupid,” he concluded. The Daily Show’s Michael Kosta says, “We’re basically punishing OTHER countries for selling us stuff that WE want.”

On The Late Show, host Stephen Colbert asked, “Is everyone feeling liberated?” Because…yeah. Today was the first day of trading on Wall Street since Trump slathered our country in honey and staked it down next to a fire ant hill. So, worst day for our economy since COVID. Just a little reminder: this time, he’s the disease. One bit of good news coming out of all this: it’s all pretty solid proof that there is no deep state, because if there was, they would have stopped this. But if they do exist, I just want to say to the cabal of financial and governmental elites who pull all the strings behind the scenes, maybe put a pause on your ‘5G chip JFK Jr adrenochrome chemtrail orgy’ and jump in here, ’cause we’re dying.”

Conservative podcaster Ben Shapiro pulled a 180 on Trump after calling his tariffs “probably unconstitutional” and “pretty crazy” as he broke ranks with the MAGA boss after supporting, fundraising, and voting for the president. He told his seven million YouTube subscribers of his ‘Ben Shapiro Show,’ that “the president’s vision of international trade is mistaken” and that Trump’s belief that the country is getting swindled by trade deficits is completely false. “We are punishing countries that have a low tariff rate with us.” Shapiro says the president’s math is “all wrong,” that his numbers come from the trade deficit which has “nothing to do” with tariff rates. He noted that Madagascar’s tariff percentage was ridiculously high, but “so what?” if there’s a trade deficit. “The idea that we have to chisel out of the people of Madagascar extra dollars from American products or we are getting screwed by the great and powerful nation of Madagascar makes zero sense,” he asserts. Railing against Trump’s basis for MAGA, he said the tariffs are based on “false notions about the American economy” that the nation is failing economically — “this is a myth propagated by both parties.” Shapiro has no desire to support the MAGA-strong wish to return to the 1980s. “America does not suck and has not sucked for several decades, economically,” disagreeing with the notion that the country has been “hollowed out” by de-industrialization and is no longer manufacturing. Scoffing at having a Ford factory job a la 1955, in a non-air conditioned workplace while riveting metal all day is not an ideal job. No thanks! He claims the upper middle class has grown and wages are up, contrary to Trump’s argument that international trade is destroying that strata of workers. “I can name you a period of American history where there was a fairly large surplus in America’s balance of trade: the entire Great Depression,” he offers.

A viral tweet from @frogs4girls asks readers what the coming economic downturn should be called: “So what are we calling this one? Just ‘Great Depression 2’? ‘Greater Depression’? Any suggestions? Anybody?” Respondents contributed: ‘The Yuge Depression,’ ‘The Greatest Depression,’ ‘The Bigly Depression,’ ‘The Great Deux-Pression,’ ‘The Most Beautiful Depression You’ve Ever Seen Believe Me,’ ‘2 Depressed 2 Be Blessed,’ ‘Great DEIpression,’ and the ‘Great Depression 2: Electric Boogaloo.’ Another contributor suggested we call the period ‘Groceries,’ a word Trump seems to have a fascination with, calling it a beautiful, descriptive word, an “old-fashioned” term that he used a lot in his campaign last year. Social media critics mocked his word salad over the word: “Groceries, that unspoken word lost in the sands of time,” or “This is your king, MAGA. This is your Daddy.” Another posted: “Here’s an old-fashioned term that we don’t use enough. It’s schmuck!” JD Vance will be pretending in 2028 that he never met this guy.

President Trump’s all-caps response to the negativity brought on by his tariff escapade, precipitated the stock market’s reaction, prompting Senator Chuck Schumer to call it the “dumbest” recession ever. Usually loyal Republicans who criticized the Trump plan caused the president to attempt to ease everyone’s minds in a most bizarre way: his message of ‘hope’ was a cryptic five-word, all-caps post on Truth Social: “ONLY THE WEAK WILL FAIL!” Sam Barlow on BlueSky posted that those words are his favorite of Jesus‘ teachings from the book of Matthew. A post on X responded that is an apt response from one who has taken six businesses into bankruptcy — including a casino of all things! One X poster wrote: “Seems like what Trump really means is, ‘ONLY THE POOR WILL FAIL!’ because average Americans are perpetually impacted more than anyone on Earth. So, if you’re struggling, when Trump’s tariffs make life worse, it’s your fault.”

Last week the Trump administration reminded us of the Frank Zappa quote: “Government is the Entertainment division of the military-industrial complex,” — not so entertaining as the reality was an ominous leak of “imminent war plans,” as described by journalist Jeffrey Goldberg of The Atlantic who was an inadvertent recipient of the shocking security breach, being added by Michael Walz, who implied “conspiracy“ during one interview. Included in a group chat on Signal comprised of US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Vice President JD Vance and seventeen other top officials who discussed upcoming strikes against Yemen’s Houthi rebels, Goldberg disclosed that he had hours of advance notice of the action, not sure that it was authentic initially, only to see the Trump announcement about a “very effective” operation later on March 15. When questioned about the leak by the press, Trump claimed not to “know anything about it. I’m not a big fan of The Atlantic. To me, it’s a magazine that’s going out of business.” though National Security Council spokesman Hughes was already on the case reviewing how an inadvertent number was added to the Signal chain. If Goldberg had publicized the details in advance, it could have been deadly to our armed forces in the region, but he chose not to do so until the administration started defending its slip-up, and the Fox News talking heads began making excuses for their old colleague, Hegseth, with charges of “fake news,” a “hoax,” and other improbable spins about conspiracies. Democratic lawmakers were outraged by the security breach, with Senator Coons posting on X that “every single one of the government officials on this text chain have now committed a crime.”  Republican Mike Lawler, a New York representative, said: “Classified information should not be transmitted on unsecured channels — and certainly not to those without security clearances, including reporters. Period. Safeguards should be put in place to ensure this never happens again.”

In the chat, Trump’s cabinet complained about “bailing out Europe” by attempting to keep international shipping lanes safe from Houthi missiles for passage through the Red Sea, with JD Vance expressing his doubts that his boss is aware of the inconsistency in regard to his messaging to Europe that they have to go their own way, essentially “loathing of European free-loading.” Vance wrote that only 3% of US shipping runs through the Suez Canal, with 40% of European trade doing so, with Hegseth’s complete agreement. Interesting that he fled shortly to Greenland with his wife — things a bit too heated in the Oval Office? Jeffrey Goldberg’s surprise at being included in the chat message led him to believe that he could be “part of a disinformation campaign,” since he had met National Security Advisor Mike Walz only briefly in the past, and with the “administration’s contentious relationship with journalists,” and him personally, it was clear that this was out of whack. “I also could not believe that the National Security Advisor to the President would be so reckless as to include the editor-in-chief of The Atlantic in such discussions with senior US officials, up to and including the vice president,” said Goldberg. These revelations are surely going to trigger major questions about security within the Trump cabinet and the handling of highly sensitive government information, echoing the scandal brought upon Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign when she was accused of using insecure servers for emails, a major factor in dooming her run for office.

Another shocker is that his team allowed the president to take to the podium before the assembled press, without briefing him on the security breach, raising questions about the care and qualifications of his inner circle, dumbfounding former Defense Secretary Leon Panetta about the entire episode. Panetta said there was “no question” that the chat was legitimate, referring to the incident as a “serious blunder,” and that a proper conversation should have been held in-person in the White House. “It has to be investigated, and somebody, frankly, needs to get fired. Somebody put that name on a list, and whoever that was deserves to be fired,” he told CNN. Regarding the leak, X users displayed a wide range of emotions and opinions, from disbelief to anger, with search terms encompassing ‘War Plans’ to ‘Hegseth.’ ABC’s late-nighter, Jimmy Kimmel commented on the ineptitude, saying, “Our national security is being guarded by a bunch of dudes he wouldn’t trust to throw your cousin a surprise party. The administration accidentally texted me its war plans. No one on the chain thought to ask, who is JG, what are these initials for? They could have been  leaking secrets to Jeff Goldblum for all they know. And not only did this happen, after it happened, no one thought to tell Trump.”

Typically, Fox News host Jesse Watters was indifferent to the accidental disclosure, likening it to an incident where a family member is inadvertently added to a group chat about “raunchy” bachelor party plans. “Well, that kind of happened today with the Trump administration. He (Goldberg) heard some things today he probably shouldn’t have. Could’ve been a wee bit of a security breach.” Goldberg disputes this, saying he removed himself from the group after realizing it was authentic and contained sensitive national security information, hitting back at the White House’s insistence that “no war plans were discussed” and “no classified material was sent to the thread.” Watters attempted to discredit Goldberg, calling him “not a good reporter” and “one of the biggest hoax artists around.” After Goldberg provided screenshots of the Signal group chat in a report to back up his story, Watters contended, “I’m sure it won’t happen again.” Fox’s Jessica Tarlov was absolutely taken aback by Watter’s nonchalance, standing her ground in calling the debacle a sign of “incompetence and recklessness on a scale unimaginable,” compounding Trump’s drop in ratings on his handling of the economy, inflation, and cost of living. “So they’re not doing this on a SCIF (a sensitive compartmented information facility), they’re doing it on an app that you and I, we all have on our phones, and it’s obviously incredibly reckless. National security risks — I don’t ever wanna hear ‘but her emails’ again,'” she added, referring to Hillary’s email server brouhaha. She called this incident a perfect example of what James Carville was asking of Democrats, to “run out the clock” and see what happens in Trump’s second term, where “folks have jobs that didn’t deserve them.”

Watters wasn’t done with Tarlov, trying to call it an accident, unlike “purposeful leaks from the Democrats” in the past. He began, “Yeah, they accidentally leaked something to the media instead of to the Democrats — ,” which brought Tarlov’s interruption to tell him, “They didn’t leak it; they invited him in.” “At least they didn’t home-brew a server and acid-wash it — ‘but her emails!’ I just did it,” Watters jabbed back. Hillary Clinton for her part, posted on X in response to the whole fiasco, “You have got to be kidding me,” alongside a side-eyed emoji. Secretary of Defense Hegseth, initially denying anything at all was amiss, jumped into the attack on Goldberg after he made his revelations, calling him a discredited journalist who makes a profession of peddling hoaxes, naming ‘Russia, Russia, Russia,’ or ‘fine people on both sides’ hoax, and the ‘sucker and losers’ hoax as examples of his “peddling garbage.” Donald Trump kept up his criticism by posting on Truth Social a link to the conservative satirical website, The Babylon Bee, and its article “4D Chess: Genius Trump Leaks War Plans to ‘The Atlantic’ Where No One Will Ever See Them.” Elon Musk stepped in to help by posting the link to the article, also writing, “Best place to hide a dead body is page 2 of The Atlantic magazine, because no one ever goes there.”

Pete Hegseth’s post claiming that “nobody was texting war plans, and that’s all I have to say about that,” brought a pushback from Fox’s Brit Hume who said, “Oh, for God’s sake, the administration has already confirmed the authenticity of the message.” Fox News anchor, John Roberts, praised Goldberg following his devastating exposé, saying, “I would think that there are worse people that you could text your secret plans to, but it appears Goldberg has acted responsibly here in writing this article.” Posts on X, call the operation “sloppy — the only thing worse would have been if they had used Facebook to communicate. We are the laughing stock of the world. Allies sharing intelligence is no more,” and “God, dude, this place is worse than China. They are not allowed to take responsibility for anything. Nothing they do is bad, ever. The media has to adore them, or it’s fake or illegal. This party belongs in prison before it’s too late.” The administration’s whitewashing started from the President on down to White House Press Secretary Leavitt, who said Trump “continues to have the utmost confidence in his national security team, including National Security Advisor Mike Walz,” followed by Speaker Mike Johnson rejecting the possibility that Walz or Hegseth might face disciplinary action. Both Leavitt and Johnson praised those involved saying, “top- level officials were doing their job, doing it well and executing on a plan with precision.” However, Politico is reporting that internal discussions among White House officials are considering ejecting Walz, supposedly with Trump to make a decision within a few days. Still holding your breath?

Satirist Andy Borowitz offered his take on the Signal breach in The Borowitz Report: “Defending his decision to use an insecure messaging app to discuss classified war plans, National Security Advisor Mike Walz said on Wednesday that he chose Signal because it offered more emojis. ‘Those sleaze bags at The Atlantic are acting like using Signal is some kind of scandal,’ Walz said. ‘You want to know a real scandal? The government spent billions of dollars on a secure communications system that has zero emojis.’ Walz said that he refused to use the government’s system when it became clear to him that it lacked even rudimentary emojis like fist, fire, and smiley face. ‘I stand by my decision to use Signal,’ he said. ‘When you’re planning to bomb another country, an emoji is worth a thousand OMGs or LOLs.'”

Back during the nomination process for Trump’s cabinet members, red flags were raised about Hegseth’s ability to handle the job he was offered, with many stories about his alleged abusive behavior, public drunkenness, financial mishandling, and bigotry — all ignored as the Senate Republicans approved him with flying colors. “Soooo, we thinking old Pete was drunk on the job or what?” Texas Democratic Representative Jasmine Crockett asked. “It would be funny, if it wasn’t so scary! Maybe we need some DEI (Definitely Earned It) hires to get this together because incompetence is OVERWHELMINGLY problematic.” Spotted: A demonstrator’s sign with a photo of Pete Hegseth sipping whiskey from a bottle, captioned “WHISKEY LEAKS…LIKE WATERGATE BUT WITH MORONS.” Journalist Aaron Rupar writes that history repeats itself, but at increasingly high levels of stupidity: “It’s like Watergate, only in this version Nixon directly mails the tapes to Woodward and Bernstein.” And The Onion headline: ‘Teen Warned Not To Accept Group Chat Invites From National Security Advisors She Doesn’t Know.’ Interestingly enough, real estate mogul Steve Witkoff, who was included in the Signal chat group was physically in a Moscow meeting with Vladimir Putin — US military strategy leaking in real time to someone in Russia. Just imagine that — a face-to-face so Putin doesn’t have to bother with reading a text, unless Witkoff handed the Russian leader his cellphone on which the Signal thread was stored.

A US Department of Defense official explained to CNN’s Natasha Bertrand that “information providing indication or advance warning that the US or its allies are preparing an attack” — which Hegseth shared — is classified Top Secret. “It is safe to say that anybody in uniform would be court martialed for this. We don’t provide that level of information on unclassified systems, in order to protect the lives and safety of the service members carrying out these strikes. If we did, it would be wholly irresponsible. My most junior analysts know not to do this,” he continued. Representative Maxwell Frost of Florida is sending letters to all the identifiable officials in the ‘Hegseth Disaster Signal Chat’ demanding they retain all messages for any pending litigation and Congressional investigations, saying, “Any deletion of the chat is a willful destruction of evidence.” House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries called Hegseth “the most unqualified Secretary of Defense in American history” and demanded his immediate dismissal. Jeffries wrote, “The so-called Secretary of Defense recklessly and casually disclosed highly sensitive war plans — including the timing of a pending attack, possible strike targets, and the weapons to be used — during an unclassified national security group chat that inexplicably included a reporter. His behavior shocks the conscience, risked American lives, and likely violated the law.” Jen Rubin wrote on The Contrarian, “Proud of your votes for Hegseth? This is on you as much as Hegseth. You knew he was not remotely qualified,” as she called out Senators Ernst and Tillis. Fun fact: Former US Air National Guardsman Jack Douglas Teixeira was sentenced to 15 years in prison four months ago for doing the same thing Pete Hegseth and his band of idiots did when they leaked war plans to a reporter.

So, discipline, dismissal or firing? Jimmy Kimmel says the excuses don’t stop, with Trump dragging out one of his old favorites — “witchhunt.” “First, he blamed the reporter, and when that didn’t work, he blamed the Signal app, saying, ‘it could be a defective platform, and we’re gonna have to find that out.’ Right, maybe one of the wires came loose and the gasket got cracked,” Kimmel quipped, adding, “Blaming Signal for this is like blaming Tinder for when you get caught cheating on your wife.” He wasn’t through as he tore into the talking heads at Fox and Newsmax as they continued with downplaying the scandal, calling it “the perfect storm of incompetence, inexperience, dishonesty, and hypocrisy from the same people who spent the last 12 years screaming about Hillary’s emails and Hunter’s laptop, while calling Signalgate a ‘non-story.'” Why cover it if it’s a non-story? Taking a final swing by mentioning Trump’s DEI initiatives, Kimmel said, “Thank God they got rid of DEI. Now you can rest assured that the idiots in charge are not chosen for their race or gender. They were chosen purely based on being idiots. I believe that Pete Hegseth wasn’t drunk. I believe he was perfectly sober when he made this idiotic mistake.” His belief that President Trump might not be very happy with his national security and defense picks may lead him to calling them Eric and Don Jr.

Satirist Andy Borowitz provides another followup view of Hegseth: “Millions of Americans have been rattled this week by the bombshell that a former Fox News host might be a liar, reports on Thursday indicate. According to industry insiders, the revelation that a former employee might have knowingly disseminated falsehoods threatens to tarnish the image of the nation’s most trusted news organization. Harland Dorrinson, a crisis management specialist, said Fox News needs to ‘change the narrative’ by reminding Americans of its peerless and longstanding reputation for honesty. ‘Fox needs to remind people that they are the network of Bill O’Reilly, Glenn Beck, and Tucker Carlson,’ he said. ‘One bad apple doesn’t spoil the whole bunch.'”

Steve Schmidt on his The Warning blog focuses on a story by Peter Nicholas, Carol E Lee and Megan Shannon concerning the reappearance of former president Joe Biden, offering to people close to him to raise funds, campaign and do anything else necessary for Democrats to recover lost ground from the rollbacks of Democratic Party-designed programs by President Trump. In a meeting with new Democratic National Committee chairman, Ken Martin, Biden offered his help to raise the popularity of the party from the 27% favorability of voters to which it has fallen of late, a ranking that is likely to keep falling in its struggle to regain its viability. A report says Donald Trump responded to a possible Biden re-entry into politics by declaring, “I hope so.” Schmidt says Trump is happy. DNC Vice Chair Jan Kleeb responded with, “The Kool Aid tastes delicious. If you were to call any state party chair and ask if they wanted Joe to be a keynote speaker for their annual dinner, the answer would be ‘Yes.’ He is beloved by the party and beloved by voters.” It is said the Bidens are sequestered with their team of gaslighters, all plotting how to make money on the books that are coming as they consult with former administration officials, and a snarky question arises: Biden is signed with CAA in Hollywood, so it is fair to ask who will play him in the dramatic pardon scene at the end of his tenure? Schmidt says Biden’s selfishness is his legacy, and wife Jill’s lust for power, combined with the insatiability of his advisers for more of it, has led America into an abyss — which leads into another tragic legacy: Trump. This is a legacy of catastrophe, and the reality is that Joe Biden will serve the sentence that he imposed on all of us in solitary. Schmidt concludes that the lies and delusions should be put down at last, with a realization that more Biden and Schumer is not the right path — the party is already in the ditch.

Schmidt slams Senator Schumer by mocking his ‘strategy‘: By not going after every single issue, picking only the most important fights, then lying down on the train tracks. He describes Schumer as “the career politician from Brooklyn, a cloistered man from a cloistered club, presiding over our national suicide — sublime, indifferent and capitulant. The view is good from the tracks for Chuck Schumer and his team of fools, who can watch the Trump locomotive run over them again and again and again.” Illinois governor JB Pritzker rejected Schumer’s appeasement, saying, “Trump is not somebody that you can appease. We’ve got to stand up and fight. And by the way, at the state level, I think many of us are. But I think that we’ve got to make sure that in the Senate and the House, that the people who have a platform are standing up.” Schmidt charges the Democratic Senate members with failing the country in an urgent moment, being ill-led, and corrupted by the touches of a thousand lobbyists, who know the lure of self-interest as a primary enticement which is more important than fighting for constituents. “The Senate Democrats are a team that can’t fight because at their head they have a man who can’t stand up. Chuck Schumer is a lay-flat type of man. This moment calls for stand up people with guts, integrity and a plan. JB Pritzker should appreciate two things: Chuck Schumer isn’t changing, and neither is Donald Trump. Let me close by saying something as clearly and directly as I can. Is there anything more grotesque than what Donald Trump is doing? Is there anything more grotesque than Elon Musk stomping about the US government like it is SpaceX? What about the purges, the lawlessness? The answer is yes, there is. It is the surrender to it all. It is the laying down on the tracks when the train is coming. Why can’t Chuck see it? Why can’t Chuck hear it? He is a most preposterous figure. He is a hollow man from a fallen age — the archetype of the 21st century politician so perfectly suited for our fallen moment. The age of silliness has ended, and along with it, any pretenses that menace isn’t real and malice hasn’t seized power in America. It has. The question now is, can we get it back?”

The bugaboo for ‘Real Time’ host Bill Maher is ‘deregulation,’ a repudiation of which he believes is dragging the Democratic Party downwards, suggesting the party is facing the same fate as the Whig Party which collapsed in the 1850s, and a notion they should embrace. He cited the American Redistricting Project’s outlook that Democrats will lose congressional seats in California, New York, Illinois, Minnesota, Rhode Island and Oregon by 2030, with Republicans gaining seats in Texas, Florida, Idaho and Utah. “I mean, it looks like ‘game over.’ And the reason why people are voting with their feet is a lot what your book is about: taxes and regulation,” he told New York Times columnist and ‘Abundance‘ co-author Ezra Klein. “I’ve been screaming about it forever. We’re taxed (in California) more than any other state. People are leaving these kind of states for places where they don’t feel the heavy breath of government on them. It’s not that hard for Democrats to understand this, but they don’t. They seem to be incapable of doing anything about it,” he continued. Klein’s response cited polls revealing the reason people are ditching Blue States is ‘cost of living,’ stressing that if 2030 projections hold, the Red States will ultimately allow Republicans to win presidential elections without the Blue wall states of Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin. “They are driving people out, working-class families, out of the states they govern because the cost of living is too high,” Klein says, linking it to regulations and taxes, adding, “But the big problem is they just don’t have enough energy, not a government capable of delivering, and they’ve been treating that as not a real problem.” He went on to praise Texas and cities like Houston and Austin which are booming because of their friendly environment for home and energy development, while noting the irony of the Texas GOP’s opposition to clean energy, yet able to thrive because of deregulation. “We need an Elon Musk who would do to California what he’s doing to the government — in a sane way. I mean, if you have 400,000 regulations and you cannot build a high-speed rail that started in 2008, you need somebody to come in here. Who is this person on the left?” Responding to his question, panelist and Substack writer, Andrew Sullivan said, “The left doesn’t want to deregulate. They just don’t have that instinct to deregulate. They’re gonna have to get over it, or they’re gonna be the Whigs.”

With the Democrats approval rating at 27%, Donald Trump’s star rose to a 44% rating, his highest-ever, prompting him to crow about it on Truth Social — still underwater, however, with 51% of those polled in disapproval. Americans who believe the country is on the right track also hit the 44% mark, with 54% saying we’re on the wrong track, but the Trump border security and immigration issues got a 55% approval. The economy polling has another topsy-turvy result with 54% disapproving of Trump policies, and a 44% approval rating in the NBC poll. Intra-party rifts and frustration consumed the Democrats in Congress as lawmakers approached a possible government shutdown a couple of weeks ago, as Senate Democrats had to decide between a House approved, GOP plan to keep the government afloat — a choice between backing Trump legislation giving him more power, or a shutdown forcing hundreds of thousands of workers to be idled. In the end, ten Senate Democrats sided with the MAGA side of the aisle avoiding a shutdown. Senator Sheldon Whitehouse is asking for less animosity, calling for Dems to end the “intramural quarreling” in this “fight for democracy,” as “we fight in the dugout, being absent on the field and the other team scoring runs.” Senator Chris Murphy, a ‘no’ voter, said he gets it why some of his colleagues voted to avoid a shutdown, but this risk aversion led to the party sinking to a historic low in polling. “I understand that had we gone into a shutdown, even for a handful of days, it would have been difficult, but it would have sent a message that the Democratic Party is not going to be bullied by Donald Trump.” In a CNN poll, 57% of Democrats and Democratic-aligned independents feel that party leaders should focus on stopping the GOP agenda, with 42% wanting cooperation with Republicans.

Last week, President Trump signed an executive order directing Education Secretary Linda McMahon to “take all necessary steps to facilitate the closure of the Department of Education and return education authority to the States, while continuing to ensure the effective and uninterrupted delivery of services, programs, and benefits on which Americans rely,” though completely shuttering the 45 year-old agency will require an act of Congress. The workforce had already been cut in half, and dozens of grants and contracts canceled, all of which have drawn legal challenges. Former wrestling executive McMahon’s actions will effectively destroy a $100 billion-a-year department created by President Carter, as surely as Trump’s gutting of funding for the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation and effective closure of USAID. Not to be overlooked are his and RFK Jr’s attacks on vaccine science, Trump’s attacks on freedom of speech of university students and professors, and state attacks on teaching truth in our schools about America’s history of slavery and Native American genocide. Then we have attacks on libraries with an executive order mandating cuts in funding, which will jeopardize literacy development and reading programs, reliable internet for those without it at home, and homework help and other resources for students and educators. The same executive order cut funding for museums, and on the arts, as Trump appointed himself as chair of the Kennedy Center in DC. Robert Reich sees all this as an attack on the American mind, as “tyrants throughout history have understood that their major enemy is an educated citizenry. Slaveholders prohibited slaves from learning to read. Nazi’s burned books. Ignorance is the handmaiden of tyranny.” Reich sees Trump as “the frontman in this attack which is really coming from the anti-democracy movement: From JD Vance; and from Vance’s major financial backer, venture capitalist Peter Thiel, who staked Vance’s senatorial campaign and helped convince Trump to select Vance as VP; and from Thiel’s early business partner, Elon Musk.”

Thiel is a self-styled libertarian who once wrote: “I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible.” Reich responded with, “Hello? Freedom is incompatible with democracy only if you view democracy as a potential constraint on your wealth and power. Curtis Yarvin comes as close as anyone to being their intellectual godfather. He has written that political power in the US is held by a liberal amalgam of universities and the mainstream media whose commitment equality and justice is eroding America’s social order. In Yarvin’s view, democratic governments are inefficient and wasteful. They should be replaced with sovereign joint-stock corporations whose major ‘shareholders’ select an executive with total power, who serves at their pleasure. Yarvin refers to the city-state of Singapore as an example of a successful authoritarian regime. Be warned,” advises Reich. Former Obama adviser, Steven Rattner, wrote on X, “The Department of Education provides crucial funding for low-income public schools — eliminating it would result in the loss of 6% of teachers’ jobs nationwide.” He presented a chart based on data from the Center of American Progress on states’ K-12 education funding under Title I, the Ed Department’s main federal program to help low-income students, showing Louisiana, Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Nevada, and Arizona — Trump states — as most reliant on that funding, and the most likely to lose hundreds of teachers, with many other Red States close behind. Rattner says this will likely lead to a devastating domino effect of educational instability in states that need it most.

Conservatives argue that other education department functions, such as administering loans, should be handled instead by the US Department of Treasury, and that civil rights infractions are the Department of Justice’s domain. Trump’s allies also want to expand school choice, which would allow students and families to use public money to select private or religious alternatives to public schools. But who can forget Trump’s primary victory speech in Nevada, when he said, “We won with the young. We won with the old. We won with the highly educated. We won with poorly educated. I love the poorly educated.” This post on Quora captures that moment: “A person who misspells three-letter words, talks in code, cannot finish a single thought in a sentence, acts like a toddler, and only thinks of himself with a strong desire to be worshipped and loved by his followers, will almost literally roll over and have his belly scratched for money by actual billionaires and corporate goons. Although graduating from Penn State, claiming he went to Wharton School of Business, his professors said he was the dumbest person they ever taught — and who could prove otherwise since he forbids his school records to be divulged. Military school instructors called him the dumbest person on the planet. I peg his IQ at about a 75, slightly above my dog’s IQ, which is borderline Special Needs. The scary part is how many MAGA supporters think he is a very smart man — revealing volumes about their own IQs.”

“Trump, his chief of ghouls Stephen Miller, and his czar of white ethnonationalism, Tom Homan, have been making the rounds of calling out ‘rogue’ federal judges who dare to try to apply the law to Trump and his administration,” wrote Elie Mystal in The Nation. The chief executive has called out for the impeachment of US District Judge James E Boasberg, who ordered Trump to halt the deportations of Venezuelans to El Salvador — which Trump ignored. “That SEEMED to trigger Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts, prompting him to pull out the weapon most preferred by institutionalists to fight the fascist takeover of the government: the sternly worded letter,” reports Mystal. Roberts issued a statement which read, in full: “For more than two centuries, it has been established that impeachment is not an appropriate response to disagreement concerning a judicial decision. The normal appellate review process exists for that purpose.” Mystal says people who don’t know any better are calling this a rare “rebuke” of the sitting president from the Chief Justice. “I urge people to not fall for the ‘Okiedoke,’ and to understand Robert’s statement for what it is: meaningless drivel from a man trying to protect his own stature instead of trying to protect the country from a tyrant.” Robert’s letter telling Trump that impeachment is not an ‘appropriate response’ to a judicial disagreement is like me telling Trump that he can’t jump off his roof and fly. It’s not a ‘rebuke’ to tell somebody they shouldn’t do what they physically can’t do anyway. Impeachment of federal judges follows the same rules as the impeachment of a president, a process familiar to Trump, where the House brings impeachment charges, and the Senate presides over a trial which requires a two-thirds vote for conviction. Mystal gets a dig in, when he says, “Trump controls the House, but he doesn’t control two-thirds of the Senate. Judge Boasberg is not Palestinian, so I don’t think Chuck Schumer will give Trump the extra votes he needs.”

“Justice Roberts knows all that. His statement is meaningless because it tells Trump not to do something he already can’t do. Roberts is sprinting to the head of the parade already in motion, just to look like he’s leading it,” says Mystal. Looking at what Roberts didn’t say, Mystal points out that Trump is in direct violation of Boasberg’s order, but Roberts avoided that, and instead of an admonishment, Roberts only invoked the ‘normal appellate review process,’ NOT saying Trump should litigate disagreements with the judge, but saying Trump should feel free to ignore lower-court orders until the Supreme Court has a chance to weigh in — essentially telling Trump what he wants to hear. Roberts is trying to maintain the appearance of power in the face of a president who has shown no inclination to respect it, with the Chief Justice desperately trying sound as if he’s in control, to avoid a judicial confrontation with Trump. Mystal calls it a delicate game, looking back in history to Chief Justice John Marshall’s attempt to maintain an appearance of judicial supremacy against President Thomas Jefferson — the Marbury v. Madison case in 1803. The case dealt with the seating of commissioners appointed by President Adams, seats Jefferson didn’t wish to fill, so a lawsuit was initiated by William Marbury. Marshall knew Jefferson was never going to fill those positions, and all the court orders in the world wouldn’t have mattered a whit to Jefferson, so Marshall deferred to the president, saying it was wrong not to seat the commissioners, but it didn’t matter anyway because the entire congressional law itself was unconstitutional. Mystal concludes, “He was bending the knee.” Turn down the echo machine!

A phone call between President Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin to discuss ending the war in Ukraine has comedian Jimmy Fallon casting a jaundiced eye, saying, “Both sides said the call went well, which makes sense because they’re both on the same side. Russia actually described the call as historic and epic, and nothing makes me feel safe like a happy Russia.” Despite the hype, the New York Times reported that the call accomplished nearly nothing, with Fallon joking, “The White House said Putin agreed to a partial ceasefire — at least they think he did. It was tough to hear on the phone with Elon’s kids playing tag in the background.”

Speaking of happy — the US has dropped to its lowest-ever ranking on the World Happiness Report conducted by Wellbeing Research Centre at the University of Oxford in partnership with Gallup and the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network. Falling down one spot from last year, to 24th, and from the nation’s highest ranking of 11th place in 2012, rankings are determined from answers people give when asked to rate their own lives. Finland has held the top spot for eight years, followed by Denmark, Iceland, Sweden, and the Netherlands in the top five; Costa Rica and Mexico entered the top ten for the first time, ranking sixth and tenth place, respectively. Brent Hartinger and Michael Jensen-Brent in the Washington Post say that people don’t want to go to parties anymore — along with other signs the world is coming to an end. They say Americans‘ current obsession with social media and “therapy culture” isn’t going to end well, as people who do show up at social gatherings are sitting to one side staring at their phones assuring that things rarely take off. The Wall Street Journal adds that it’s now socially acceptable — even something brag about — to cancel your plans with other people at the last second. Both publications blame these new social mores on America’s political polarization — who wants to socialize with people on ‘the other side’ anyway? They say it’s the lingering after-effects of COVID — but please, that’s not it at all; why are both newspapers pretending not to see what’s really going on? Smartphones and social media! Why bother interacting with actual human beings when you can have all your social needs met by living online? Teachers will tell us that kids are literally addicted to their phones, accustomed to the dopamine hits from social media that bring on actual symptoms of withdrawal when separated from their phones. The greater problem is that social media isn’t really real; it’s the illusion of intimacy. It gives people what we want, to keep us forever engaged and looking at ads — but not what we need. It’s also important to sometimes be bored. And remember, as great as cat videos are, actual cats are always better.

Stephen Colbert who recently mocked Democrats and their hand-held protest signs displayed at Trump’s State-of-the-Trump speech at the joint session of Congress, has gained a bit traction with his own paddle-sign that read “Try Doing Something.” Protests against the administration’s policies are becoming more common, larger in number and in participants, with representatives holding town halls in their districts being forced to flee because of voter anger — advisers are saying, “just skip this tradition!” One person who has been persistent in punching at Trump with Tweets for years, but magnifying her activity since last October, is Natasha Rothwell, who starred as Belinda in the TV series, ‘The White Lotus.’ Every single day she posts a message reminding the president in some form saying, “Donald Trump, you are trash!” Natasha may include retweets, quotes, likes, and different views, one variant reading, “You have no value or use and you spend your days lying around doing nothing…cuz u trash.” Not content to pick on just Donny, her header on X has ‘TRASH‘ above headshots of the six conservative Supreme Court Justices, with arrows pointing appropriately to insure that they feel the burn.

Feeling the burn from last week’s vote on the continuing resolution to fund the government until September, is Senator Chuck Schumer who succumbed to the demands of blackmail as John Stoehr of Editorial Board posted on the blog. Schumer took to the floor and said that he would vote with MAGA to pass the resolution, with Stoehr asking, “What is Schumer getting in return?” He isn’t implying that corruption is an issue, only that this is politics and the Senator must be trading for something, right? The resolution allows Trump and Musk to continue dismantling the government, with Everett B Kelly of the American Federation of Government Employees saying, “A widespread government shutdown has been underway since January 20 and will continue to spread whether Senators vote ‘yes’ or ‘no’ on HR 1968.” Kelly, leader of the country’s largest public employee union, says HR 1968 sets in stone the administration’s crime spree, decimating agencies without due process, cutting off funding that has already been appropriated and signed into law, and with it the administration “will dramatically expand its termination of federal workers and double down on its campaign to make federal agencies fail, because there will be nothing left” to stop them. He believes it robs the constitutional authority of Congress, with the White House having said that even if the bill passes, it will ‘impound‘ that money — which is to say, ‘steal it’ — if it pays for things that Trump does not like. What it boils down to for Democrats who voted for it, is that Trump will become a criminal president, or if they voted against it, Trump will become a criminal president. Heads…I win, tails…you lose. Not a choice, blackmail, as Stoehr said.

Senator Schumer explained to Chris Hayes in an interview, that he made his choice to vote for the resolution, because the alternative was much worse by allowing a government shutdown. Trump would have favored a shutdown, allowing him to redefine what counts as ‘essential services,’ then cutting the government even closer to the bone. Stoehr saw Schumer’s premise, yet he didn’t explain why the House MAGAs voted to keep the money flowing if co-presidents Musk and Trump preferred a shutdown — and why did Schumer deceive us earlier into thinking he might lead a resistance demanding a one-month extension? Stoehr asks agains, “What are Democrats getting in return?” He answers his own question — “nothing.” Chris Hayes posted that “the institutional Democratic Party is guided by an almost pathological level of conflict-avoidance in almost every direction. ‘What can we do to make the least number of people mad?’ is just a bankrupt way to operate.” Stoehr concludes the Dems pathology is deeper than ‘conflict-avoidance’ — only the fear of being held accountable by someone somewhere “who requires the Democrats to take responsibility for the bad choices made by Republicans. Its’ a deep-seated sense of obligation that the Democrats are the only adults in the room, and if they don’t act like adults, things will get much worse than they are. Schumer believes in his bones that the Democrats must save the Republicans from themselves, and thus save the country from the Republicans, as reflected in his comments about a possible shutdown.”

Schumer is quoted as saying, “There’s no exit ramp. Anyone who wants the shutdown, I have asked: ‘Well, how do we get out of it?’ Guess who it’s up to — Trump, Musk, DOGE, all bad choices. I respect people who don’t want to vote for the CR. It’s awful. But with the alternative being a government shutdown, that’s even worse.” To this, Stoehr replies, “Well, yes! It is up to Trump! And if he does to the government after a shutdown what he’s already doing to it before a shutdown, then whatever happens is on him and him alone. Lots of good people are going to suffer, because the administration is evil. But the Senate Democrats cannot save them, nor should they try, because they cannot hold accountable the man responsible for their suffering if they themselves are complicit in it.” Stoehr feels that institutional Democrat Schumer is taking cues from the mainstream media, not “plucky indie newsletters,” and also the party’s donors who are concentrated in the northeast. “They want the Dems to bargain with the Republicans, not necessarily fight them, as serious combat would probably jeopardize their interests,” he discerns. “In times of crisis the mainstream media understands subconsciously that the Republicans are hopeless but that Democrats are not. They assume that Democrats will be the adults in the room, and because institutional Democrats interpret this assumption as something mainstream voters want, they deliver. Even if it means getting nothing in return.”

Representative Nancy Pelosi, in a statement regarding handling of the funding vote, took a shot at an unnamed Schumer, saying, “Democratic senators should listen to the women. Appropriations leaders Rosa DeLauro and Patty Murray have eloquently presented the case that we must have a better choice: a four-week funding extension to keep government open and negotiate a bipartisan agreement. America has experienced a Trump shutdown before — but this damaging legislation only makes matters worse. Democrats must not buy into this false choice. We must fight back for a better way. Listen to the women, For the People.” She goes on to praise House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries for his leadership in rejecting a false choice, and her colleagues in the House Democratic Caucus for their “overwhelming vote against this bill.” Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said, “There is a deep sense of outrage and betrayal. And not just about progressive Democrats — this is across the board — the entire party. I cannot underscore enough how incorrect that is. There are members of Congress who have won Trump-held districts in some of the most difficult territory in the United States, who walked the plank and took immeasurable risks in order to defend the American people, in order to defend Social Security, Medicaid and Medicare.” Representative Greg Casar, head of the Congressional Progressive Caucus chimed in, saying, “The GOP bill is specifically designed to allow Trump and Musk to continue plundering the taxpayers to enrich themselves.”

In the end, Senators and Representatives voted to “sell our country out to Donald Trump and Elon Musk for mass firings, cuts to vital services, and tax breaks for the rich,” according to the Common Cause website. Elected leaders are sticking to the same passive, by-the-book strategies that empowered people like Trump and Musk in the first place, while abandoning our public services and our values at the altar of political convenience. Stirring up a hornet’s nest of dissatisfied constituents, Senator Schumer was met with a barrage of demands for his resignation, calls which have only escalated. Food & Water Watch executive director Wenonah Hauter said, “Schumer has lost the confidence of a critical mass of well-meaning people around the country. He must step down from his leadership role in the Senate now, so a sufficiently determined resistance to the disastrous Trump-Musk agenda can be allowed to rise up and act before it’s too late.” Human rights lawyer Qasim Rashid said in a blog post, that Schumer must resign, and adding with perspicuity, “Let’s be clear: MAGAs control the House, the Senate, and the White House. The Democratic Party is not in its strongest position, and every single day Trump and Musk are working to gut democracy, attack working families, and consolidate power. And yet, when given the opportunity to use the one piece of leverage Democrats have — forcing Republicans to own the government shutdown — Schumer is folding like a cardboard box in a rainstorm. This isn’t just betrayal. It’s utter incompetence. We don’t need more politicians holding tiny signs and coordinating outfits while Trump consolidates power and enables fascism. We need leadership with the courage to fight injustice and hold the line when it matters.”

Aru Shiney-Ajay, executive director of Sunrise Movement, a youth-led, climate-focused organization, declared that, “Today was a spectacular display of cowardice from Senator Schumer. This morning, Schumer had arrested, 11 young protestors in his office rather than look them in the eye. This afternoon, he gave Elon Musk the keys to the government. Trump’s and Musk are hurtling our country toward disaster. They are gutting the educational system, enabling oil billionaires to burn the planet, and destroying vital government programs that millions rely on. Meanwhile, Chuck Schumer sits on the sidelines. The budget is one of the only pieces of leverage Democrats have, and Schumer just gave it away. That’s incredibly reckless. Chuck Schumer needs to step aside. Our democracy and our climate and our families can’t afford even another month of this b.s.” Democratic strategist, Waleed Shahid, commented, “This wasn’t about whether Democrats were willing to impose a cost on their opponents for governing through blackmail. Instead, Schumer made the kind of move that tells Republicans they can keep pushing.” Justice Democrats, a progressive group that helped Ocasio-Cortez upset a top House Democrat in a 2018 primary, said, “Corporate Democratic leadership is all talk and no fight. Gutless, spineless, and utterly unqualified to lead.” Schumer stepping down from his leadership isn’t enough for many, with many critics encouraging Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez or Dan Goldman to challenge the Senator in the 2028 primary.

Domestic beer brewers should take a page from Canada’s oldest brewery, which has announced a ‘Presidential Pack’ of Moosehead beer — 1,461 cans of its Canadian lager, intended to last the course of President Trump’s entire second term, one beer for every day of that term. The pack retails for $3,490 CAD and is sold in Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and Ontario provinces. Leaning into the ongoing trade war with the USA, Karen Grigg, director of marketing said in a press release, “If the start of 2025 has taught us anything, it’s that it will take determination to weather four years of political uncertainty — and what better way to make it through each day than with a truly Canadian beer.” Trevor Grant, VP of Sales and Marketing said the idea was talked about for a few weeks as the challenges with tariffs and the Trump administration dragged on, and, “Obviously, it’s a bit of a difficult situation, so we’re trying to maybe have a little bit of fun with it, as Canadian shoppers look for locally made products now more than ever.” Many of the big US companies that sell in Canada, like Anheuser-Busch, manufacture American brands within Canada, such as Bud Light, and thus aren’t affected by tariffs — or good taste.

Trump’s Health Secretary, Robert F Kennedy Jr, has remained relatively low-key as the measles outbreak worsens, with cases popping up in even more states across the country. Several weeks ago, Kennedy couldn’t get excited about the first death in Texas, saying, “It is not unusual, we have measles outbreaks every year,” ignoring the fact that outbreaks are considered rare, with measles considered eliminated in the US in 2020. Kennedy has been slammed for writing previously that measles are not deadly and that outbreaks had been “fabricated” to push people toward “unnecessary and risky” vaccines. His prominence in the anti-vax community has been credited with leading to an increase in the number of parents who won’t follow the science, now refusing to vaccinate their children. What our children have now learned from Kennedy and President Trump is that, ‘science is stupid.’ Fran Lebowitz, in her short essay entitled ‘Science,’ writes, “Legend has it that the atom was split when a bunch of scientists working late decided to order in a pizza. Indeed a terrifying story and one made all the more chilling when one learns that a number of their colleagues smarting from the snub of being excluded from this impromptu meal spitefully repaired to an all-night diner and invented polyester.” Be aware that Trump and Kennedy may designate measles as ‘Freedom Freckles.’

In defense of his bosom buddy and co-president, Elon, Donald Trump came to the Tesla mogul’s aid after an announced boycott against the firm’s vehicles, in addition to protester’s vandalizing dealership showrooms or individually owned cars and trucks, not to mention plunging stock prices. The orange co-president posted, “To Republicans, Conservatives, and all great Americans, Elon Musk is ‘putting it on the line’ in order to help our Nation, and he is doing a FANTASTIC JOB! But the Radical Left Lunatics, as they often do, are to illegally and collusively boycott Tesla, one of the world’s great automakers, and Elon’s ‘baby,’ in order to attack and do harm to Elon, and everything he stands for. I’m going to buy a brand new Tesla tomorrow morning as a show of confidence and support for Elon Musk, a truly great American. Why should he be punished for putting his tremendous skills to work in order to help MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN???” Musk responded with, “Thank you, President @realDonaldTrump!” So be careful out there — those of us who decide against buying a Tesla because we dislike Musk are doing so illegally, and perhaps Donny should know, being a convicted felon himself as many pointed out. Let’s not forget that Trump once called for a boycott of Goodyear tires because of their dress code prohibiting political attire, i.e., MAGA baseball caps. Trump’s promotion of a specific brand and whining about ‘illegal‘ is silly and inappropriate for a president’s concern. Of course, while this is going on, the two co-perpetrators are ruining American’s lives, by tanking the economy, threatening long-time allies around the world, and compelling them to boycott all American products. No worries, though — Trump, a once fierce critic of electric vehicles (drill, drill, drill!) is buying a Tesla from the world’s wealthiest man. Oh! And, so is Sean Hannity! Lunatics all — to include those who voted for this.

Tesla sales boycotts are only part of the picture, as some Tesla owners are selling, or considering selling, their vehicles as the backlash against Musk and DOGE grows, even though they may take a serious financial hit as prices plummet according to dealership website CarGurus. Singer Cheryl Crow announced she is selling her Tesla, then donating the proceeds to NPR as a protest against Elon. Investor Joanne Wilson told Business Insider she was ditching her Model S, floating the idea of letting members of the public smash it with hammers. Real estate developer, Scott Oran decided to sell his Tesla out of “embarrassment,” and a concern over vandalism, and to beat the rush of other sellers to the marketplace with the brand which is most common for EVs. Oran feels that Musk has irrevocably damaged the Tesla brand, with the maker’s stock drop on a recent Monday of 15% — a $29 billion reduction to Musk’s worth in just one day. Not to fret over Musk’s loss — after Trump’s announced Tesla acquisition, reports emerged that Elon was considering a $100 million donation to a super PAC associated with, and controlled by, the president.

That donation probably went a long way into converting the White House south lawn into a Tesla showroom for Trump’s big auto purchase, with five vehicles displayed for his perusal before his decision to spring for a deep red Tesla Model S, valued at almost $80,000, for use by his staff since he doesn’t drive any more. It’s unclear whether or not Pennsylvania Avenue was lined with plastic tube men, or air dancers, to attract the locals to the big sale. Trump praised Tesla’s quality and Musk’s dedication during the White House auto sale, and a photographer got a shot of the script and Tesla price list given the president by Musk to make a sales pitch to the masses. It must have been a convincing sales pitch, because Trump also committed to gifting a Tesla Cybertruck to his granddaughter, Kai — what’s another $80 grand? According to the price list, “Teslas can be purchased as low as $299/month or $35K.” And who knows? Trump may qualify for tax incentives under the Inflation Reduction Act for purchasers of electric vehicles. That’s dependent upon whether or not the Internal Revenue Service is still operating by next year’s tax filing — no comment from Musk, as he told Fox Business’s Larry Kudlow that he’s been running his businesses “with great difficulty” since spending his time with DOGE. Time for that chainsaw to be shelved, Elon? If Trump is drawing his $400K standard presidential salary, he won’t qualify for the tax incentive, but if he’s only drawing his one-dollar annual salary as in his first assault on the presidency — he’s not saying…what do you think? — he might qualify for the EV credit.

So far, Trump has not commented on his 2023 post that electric car supporters should “ROT IN HELL.” The Atlantic’s Charlie Warzel wrote that the car promo was, “a stilted, corrupt attempt to juice a friend’s stock, and certainly below the office of the presidency,” and we might add, so is most of the other junky crapola Trump and his grifting Crime Family push constantly. If any other government official in the executive branch had done a similar promotion, they would have been in clear violation of the regulation prohibiting such endorsements; but Trump and his hillbilly VP are exempt, where norms are usually respected as the primary lever for holding the line. The Don has repeatedly demonstrated his appetite for overturning norms and pushing ethical bounds, so his Tesla push is not out of the ordinary for him, and in reality, it delights him that he has such impunity, says Lora Kelly in her The Atlantic Daily commentary.

On his show, Jimmy Kimmel expressed dismay at the changing reputation of Tesla recently, recounting how owners are attempting “to disguise their vehicles to avoid confrontations and vandalism.” He showed clips of Teslas minus the logos, which now sport Mazda, Audi, or Subaru identification. “People are even trying to disguise their Cybertrucks. That’s like trying to pass off Chewbacca for a chihuahua. It doesn’t seem right,” he said. “Maybe this is all a ruse. Elon somehow tricked MAGA into driving electric cars. Maybe he really is a genius,” he speculated. The Late Show’s Stephen Colbert shared that recently someone stole the wheels off of every single Tesla in a Texas parking lot. “Whoever did it, I do not condone this. But I do appreciate your tireless efforts,” he said as he accepted a fake Nobel Prize for Puns. “Thank you so much!” He continued, “I want to be clear. I do not condone violence or vandalism of any kind. That is a deeply held belief of mine that comes from the bottom of my CBS legal department.” He pointed to a trend where Cybertrucks are being covered in garbage, theorizing, “To be fair, that might not be vandalism. That might just be a simple mistake because they do look a lot like a dumpster.”

PLAYING POSSUM, FULL OF IT, RUBY, COOKOUT POTATO SALAD

James Carville seems to have adopted the Napoleon Bonaparte quote: “Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake.” The influential Democratic Party strategist who came to prominence in the Bill Clinton years recently predicted that the Trump White House will “collapse” in less than a month as his approval ratings continue to decline with his multitude of unpopular executive orders, and slashing of governmental agencies by firing thousands — risking an economic nosedive. His advice to his party is to simply sit back and watch it all come down: “Democrats need to play possum. This whole thing is collapsing,” he predicted in an interview with Dan Abrams of Mediaite. “We’re in the midst of a collapse. This is the lowest approval — not even close — that any president has ever had at a comparable time. It’s going to be easy pickings here in six weeks. Just lay back.” Later, he told Sean Hannity on Fox News that he sees Democrats up by 13 points in the congressional generic, with Trump at the lowest approval of any president, so early in the game, in American history. He challenged Hannity by his query, “So, your viewers are getting one view. And I’m reading another view. One of us is right and one of us is wrong. It’s that simple. Have they got fact checkers at Fox?” Trump came to his defense on Truth Social with the claim that he has “the best polling numbers” in his history. “The Democrats, run by broken down losers like James Carville, who’s weak of mind and body, are going crazy, and just don’t know what to do. They have lost their confidence and spirit — they have lost their minds!” he fired back. Carville maintains that the House Democrats know exactly what they are doing because they see what is going to happen, in spite of the concern in the party that its defenses are lacking. Trump’s first moves in office instigated from constituents, 1,600 phone calls a minute to the Senate, complaining that more needed to be done. Representative Jim McGovern of Massachusetts told Axios that the record number of calls were from “people disgusted with what’s going on, and they want us to fight back.”

Carville suggested to Democratic politicians that they should not get in the way of protesters around the country who are speaking out against co-presidents Trump and Musk, or as rural America says, “‘Don’t just stand there. Do nothing.’ Let this germinate. In the immortal words of Dalton in ‘Road House,’ ‘be nice until it’s time not to be nice.’ And that time is coming shortly.” Carville disagrees with moderates who say people are overreacting to Trump, warning, “No one is overreacting. We’re living in real time in a catastrophe.” One prominent date he sees is the November 5 election in Virginia, where Republican Governor Glenn Youngkin, a leading Trump supporter, will be dealing with a large and angry electorate made up of thousands of fired federal employees. Carvile asks, “Do you think they’re gonna vote? I think they’re gonna vote. I think I know which way they’re gonna vote, and they’re gonna vote heavily.”

Robert Reich says people are asking him, “Where’s the Democratic Party?” He says that at a time when America needs a strong, bold, courageous opposition, the party’s silence is deafening, but goes on to say, “But with due respect to my old friend James Carville who is telling Democrats to ‘roll over and play dead,’ he’s full of it. Trump is killing our country, reducing the US government to rubble, and destroying our relationships with our allies. Putin may love it, but it’s a catastrophe four us and much of the rest of the world. Democrats have been rolling over and playing dead too long. That’s one reason the nation is in the trouble we’re in. My simple advice to congressional Democrats: Wake the hell up!” He goes on to say that if the party had only “had the guts years ago to condemn big money in politics, fight corporate welfare, and unrig a market that’s been rigged in favor of big corporations and the rich, Trump’s absurd bogeymen (the deep state, immigrants, socialists, trans people, diversity-equity-inclusion) wouldn’t have stood a chance.” His comments preceded the joint congressional session State-of-Trump speech, where he correctly predicted the “Republican lawmakers who have turned over their brains and intestines” would applaud his stream of lies. His wish that the Democrats would boycott the whole event en masse did not come to pass and his suggestion that they would perhaps just sit on their hands and applaud a few insipid Trump utterances was close to what we saw. There were many empty seats, with some making an exit at various times during the ninety-nine minute ordeal. Representative Al Green had to be escorted from the gathering when he heckled Trump as he pointed his cane toward the president for spewing lies, and many of those remaining had brought signs which they held up in response to his insults and rambling lies.

The small, hand-held signs only brought derision and chuckles from the Republican faction, and a political cartoon printed in some newspapers emphasized the futility of the protest in showing a chainsaw wielding Elon Musk laying waste to government buildings as the Democratic donkey mascot sat nearby in a chair holding up a sign that read, “Tsk, tsk.” Andy Borowitz satirized the event with his own account: “Donald J Trump watched Elon Musk’s historic address to Congress Tuesday night from the last row of the House chamber. Striking a menacing tone, Musk threatened to mount lavishly funded primary campaigns against congressional Republicans unless they gave him a standing ovation after every line of his speech. Trump’s view of the speech was partially obstructed by Robert F Kennedy, Jr, who sat in the second-to-last row and brought a dismembered whale’s head as his plus-one guest.” With a bit more accuracy, Borowitz said, “In what is being called a historic performance, on Tuesday night Donald J Trump set a new world record for delivering the longest speech that did not include a single fact. Congressional Republicans were awestruck by their leader’s ability, at the age of 78, to give such a sustained fact-free oration. House Speaker Mike Johnson said, ‘He’s still got it.’ Republicans contrasted Trump’s address favorably with the Democratic response of Senator Elissa Slotkin, who spoke only briefly but whose remarks were riddled with facts.” It must be noted that Elon was actually present, all spruced up in a fitted suit and tie, after ditching the blazer/t-shirt/baseball cap/dark sunglasses attire which is his Oval Office outfit — much the same as Zelensky’s. Stephen Colbert offered his thoughts on the Oval Office’s strict dress code of decorum, saying, “You must either look like a businessman or a guy trying to hand you a flyer outside of a strip club.”

In his speech, Trump again spoke about trying to regain ownership of the Panama Canal, sure to cause diplomatic shockwaves, as he singled out Secretary of State Marco Rubio as the one “to blame if anything goes wrong,” — resulting in a wide-eyed and shocked reaction from Rubio, and a classic forever meme for denizens of social media sites. Poor ‘Little Marco’ was probably still in a state of shock from being present at the Trump-Vance-Zelensky brawl in the Oval Office a few days before. Rubio — who according to Saturday Night Live, will now be known as ‘Marc Ruby’ since Trump signed his English-only language executive order — posted on X that the president’s speech was “inspiring” and “momentous,” with Trump’s “clear mandate from the American people to renew the American Dream.” Ruby won his Senate confirmation 99 to 0, and many hoped that his maturity and government experience would serve him well in holding some sway over Bully Trump, but that is obviously not to be. Ominously, the American asset management company, BlackRock has volunteered to buy two ports at either end of the Panama Canal from their current Hong Kong-based ownership in order to lessen Chinese influence over the crucial international waterway. BlackRock and other investors will spend $22.8 billion to buy the ports of Balboa and Cristobal — a deal which is now only an ‘agreement in principal.’

Response by Senator Bernie Sanders to the joint session speech charges Trump with creating a parallel universe with “a set of ideas that either have no basis in reality, or are nowhere near the most important concerns of the American people” — a pivotal moment in our country’s history. He says Trump’s tactic is the BIG LIE, many of which were heard during the Tuesday night blathering, and these grossly false lies are repeated over and over again, with complicity of right-wing social media sites blasting them out until people accept it as truth. Sanders points to the purpose of these lies, not only to push a right-wing agenda, but to deflect attention away from those important issues facing the country — issues Trump and his billionaire friends don’t wish to address, otherwise there is no financial benefit to them. He emphasized the issues Trump ignored in his record-setting speech: About how will working people support families in these tough times, made tougher by the administration; the reality of the 60% of Americans living paycheck to paycheck; the broken, dysfunctional, expensive health care system, and the non-affordabilty of prescription drugs; the major housing crisis and homelessness;  the massive income and wealth inequality with three 3 Americans owning more wealth than the bottom half of our society; the corrupt campaign finance system that allows billionaires to buy elections; the life expectancy of the poor compared to the wealthy; and the planetary crisis of climate change. Trump urged Congress to pass his “big beautiful budget,” leaving out ugliness of the $880 billion that would come from Medicaid, leaving 36 million Americans in peril. But what the hey — spaceship ownership is such an important factor nowadays, as well! An occasional fireworks display over the Caribbean is a sight to behold!

On his nightly show, Stephen Colbert mocked Trump’s remarks, but he was most critical of the Democrats, saying, “But don’t you worry. The Democrats came ready to fight back with their little paddles. That is how you save democracy. By quietly dissenting…or bidding on an antique tea set, it was hard to tell what was going on. In fact, I made my own sign.” Impassively, he held up a sign reading: “Try doing something.” Before Trump’s address, Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries had demanded that Democrats sit meekly and do nothing during the MAGASpeech, a demand that was not respected by several individuals. Consequently, a dozen or so disruptors were called into a ‘come to Jesus meeting’ on Thursday following the address, to be helped to “understand why their strategy is a bad idea,” which brought forth the comment that “if Jeffries has any good ideas, we’d love to hear them,” accompanied by the snarky, “But he’s been busy on a tour to sell his children’s book, “The ABCs of Democracy.” It seems incredibly misguided to scold Congressional Democrats for taking a stand against an autocrat who the party has characterized as a fascist authoritarian — a puny stand though it may be. Elie Mystal wrote in The Nation: “I asked Democrats to boycott Trump’s speech to Congress. They did not. Instead, they brought little placards emblazoned with political messages, as if they were in a silent auction for fascism. We live in hell.” Senator John Fetterman on X, characterized the protests as a “sad cavalcade of self-owns and unhinged petulance. It only makes Trump look more presidential and restrained.”

Elie Mystal, besides being disgusted with Democrats for showing up at the joint session, was further enraged that Representative Al Green was censured by Congress for disrupting Trump’s speech “to a joint session of sycophants and co-conspirators”; and, though many Democrats protested and voted against the procedure punishing Green, Mystal posted a list of the ten Democrats who voted with the MAGAts who he hopes will never be able to raise a dollar from other Democrats, ever again: Ami Bera (D-CA), Ed Case (D-HI), Jim Costa (D-CA), Laura Gillen (D-NY), Marie Gluesenkamp Perez (D-WA), Jim Himes (D-CT), Chrissy Houlahan (D-PA), Marcy Kaptur (D-OH), Jared Moskowitz (D-FL), and Tom Suozzi (D-NY). He also decried Elissa Slotkin’s “tepid Democratic response to Trump’s multi-hour Netflix series address to Congress, during which she managed to praise notable Democratic hero, Ronald Reagan.” Mystal recounts her follow-up interview with Tim Alberta of The Atlantic, “where she outlined her priorities. Her answers were the usual thin gruel that passes for Democratic Party talking points, but one line really stood out to me. She said, ‘It doesn’t win elections to speak to just the base of the party…if it did, Kamala Harris would be president.’ First of all, I’m really gonna need Becky with the 80% White Congressional district to keep Kamala Harris’s name out of her mouth. It’s easy to slag off the Democratic ‘base,’ which has been Black people for Slotkin’s entire life, when nobody is inviting you or your potato salad to the cookout anyway. It’s a little harder when you are running to represent all of America, not just the White folks who think they should own the place.”

Co-president Elon Musk is watching his Tesla vehicle empire skid downward, almost as fast as his pyrotechnics rocket company, though not quite as flashy. Sales are dropping dramatically worldwide, and dealerships are experiencing violent actions from an angry anti-Musk crowd, not to mention individual car and truck owners having their vehicles damaged and getting new paint treatments, or protest stickers applied surreptitiously. A post on Quora shares a definition of the portmanteau word, ‘DePlorean,’ combining ‘deplorable’ and ‘DeLorean,’ which has been applied to Tesla’s Cybertruck. The early 80s DeLorean sports car had a brushed aluminum exterior similar to the C-Truck, and carried similar social connotations of audacity, impracticality, and irritating behavior. While the DeLorean, which originally sold for $12,000 is now a prized collector’s item, the Cybertruck at $100,240 is an overpriced, poorly constructed symbol of excess, greed and stupidity, and much uglier when seen up close than online photos reveal. A UK-based group, ‘Everyone Hates Elon,’ recently unveiled an advertisement for a ‘Swasticar,’ which shows Musk standing in one of his cars while giving the Nazi salute, with printed copy proclaiming the vehicle “goes from zero to 1939 in three seconds.” The bus stop posted image has gone viral, and the group encourages supporters to spread it far and wide, saying, “Not happy with fueling the far-right in the USA, Elon Musk is now doing the same in Europe. We can’t let the richest man in the world poison our politics.” A GoFundMe page has been set up to raise cash to plaster the ‘Swasticar’ ad in more public places, as well as for production of small stickers reading “Don’t buy a Swasticar,” giving emphasis to their motto: “Pissing off Elon Musk, one small action at a time.”

In the UK, Musk has supported the far-right, anti-immigrant Reform Party, and attacked the Labour government by spreading “lies and misinformation” about the criminality of immigrants according to Prime Minister Keir Starmer. A few weeks back, Musk expressed support for Germany’s Alternative for Germany party, which gained support in their losing election campaign, even though it has been classified as a suspected extremist group by Germany’s intelligence service. Two left-wing activist groups — UK’s Led by Donkeys, and Germany’s Center for Political Beauty, claimed responsibility after they beamed an image of Elon Musk making the Nazi salute onto Tesla’s factory in Berlin, accompanied by the words “Heil Tesla.” A jeering crowd who erupted at the mention of Musk’s name on the ‘Late Show‘ caused Stephen Colbert to comment, “That is the sound of Tesla sales plummeting.” He also joked, “Millions of young people can’t stand him — and those are just his kids.” Colin Jost on ‘Saturday Night Live’s Weekend Update‘ reported that “experts are saying that Trump’s tariffs will raise the cost of a new car by as much as $12,000, or you can get a free Tesla, since people are throwing them away.” Update co-host, Michael Che reported that European leaders have been coaching Volodymyr Zelensky on dealing with Trump —“kind of like how you need extra training to be a special ed teacher.” Che referred to a Trump claim that “no president has changed government more in 43 days,” to which Che replied, “Yeah, and nobody changed airport security more than bin Laden.” Addressing Trump’s constant back-tracking on his tariffs, amid concerns among consumers and investors, Che joked, “It’s a cunning political tactic experts call ‘bipolar disorder.”

AN AMBUSH, KICKING THE DOG, KICKING THE CAN, NO-NO-NOBEL

The world is still reeling from the embarrassing Oval Office clash between Presidents Trump and Zelensky, and Vice-Intruder Vance last week. A much-anticipated agreement with the USA to move toward a settlement between Ukraine and Russia to resolve Putin’s ongoing three-year attempt to rejoin Zelensky’s country into the Russian fold was simply a shameful ambush by the White House. As Sabrina Haake writes in her column, “The flip side to shame is revulsion. Watching Trump and Vance kick Zelensky for the cameras was like watching a neighbor starve his dog, then kick it for looking at his food bowl.” Haake says watching Trump’s and Vance’s attempts to pressure the Ukraine president into surrendering to Putin made her sick with shame, since they wanted him “to agree to a ceasefire with no security guarantees and to ‘trust’ Putin to honor his word.” The 2014 invasion of Crimea and the 2022 invasion of Ukraine, coupled with Putin’s murdered critics (watch out for that open window!) and disappeared rivals emphasizes to Zelensky that Putin is unrelenting in his quest. Our two ‘leaders’ accused Zelensky of “being disrespectful” and “trying to re-litigate” the morals of the war for the press and the cameras — all arranged by Trump for his anticipated glory and that now-trampled Nobel Peace Prize.

Norwegian parliamentarian Christian Tybring-Gjedde is quoted as saying that Trump’s dictatorial bullying doesn’t qualify as a diplomatic outreach that warrants a third nomination to follow the two that we saw in his first term. “He is dictating terms that the Europeans are very scared of and are really worried about what’s going to come of this. Right now, I don’t think there’s a prospect of a Nobel Peace Prize. But you never know,” said Tybring-Gjedde. The dark and foreboding browbeating heaped upon Zelensky for not saying ‘thank-you’ enough times for US firepower used against Putin’s invasion, has spoiled Trump’s pledge to “end the war on day one.” It’s obvious that Trump’s whining over the lack of the Nobel on his résumé remains a sore point, as he responded to a reporter’s question during a press conference recently: “They will never give me a Nobel Peace Prize. It’s too bad. I deserve it, but they will never give it to me.” National security advisor Mike Waltz, and Representative Elise Stefanik, both told conservatives that Trump is a “president of peace” who deserves the award. Yet, fears have now risen that the president will use his dominance to end the war on Russian terms, with his rhetoric having grown more hostile to Ukraine over the past few weeks — calling Zelensky a “dictator” and accusing Ukraine of being the aggressor.

Sitting next to Trump, with arms folded, Zelensky was scolded like a disobedient schoolboy, bombarded by Vance’s accusation, “Have you said ‘thank-you’ once in the entire meeting?” Following the cancelled meeting, after Zelensky was unceremoniously escorted to his limo, and without having to delve into suppressed files, CNN posted thirty-three occasions in which Zelensky expressed his gratitude, one before a joint session of the US Congress in 2022 — a more comprehensive search would certainly have doubled, tripled that number. Attempting to one-up Vance, a testy Trump then said, “You’re either going to make a deal or we’re out. And if we’re out, you’ll fight it out. I don’t think that’s going to be pretty, but you’ll fight it out. But you don’t have the cards.” Mafioso Trump seemed to forget that he was in the Oval Office as he went into presidential campaign mode, talking about the “phony witch hunt” he endured regarding Russia’s 2016 election meddling. “Let me tell you, Putin went through a hell of a lot with me,” Trump whined. MSNBC’s Nicole Wallace responded to this diatribe with a twisted-face “Awww….” as if to say, “Isn’t that sweet?” After the Ukraine president had left the building, Trump announced he was not welcome back, until he is “ready for peace.” Or until Trump is seriously ready to compete for that Nobel. Should he forge an agreement favorable to Russia and leave Europe vulnerable to an aggressive Putin, Trump doesn’t ‘have the cards’ in his quest, since the Nobel selection committee is appointed by the Norwegian parliament, leaders of a country nestled next to an expansionist Russia. Trump is still obsessed over Barack Obama’s Nobel Prize which he was awarded nine months into his presidency, and in 2018 expressed dismay that plant scientist Norman Borlaug won for helping to combat global famine: “Can you believe it? He won the Nobel Peace Prize!” Yeah! So take that, USAID!

The Oval Office conflagration with the demand that Zelensky bend the knee and kiss the ring was off to a bad start even before the televised blowup, after Zelensky was presented with a minerals-for-security agreement by the White House — with no security deal guaranteeing protection from Russian aggression. Ukraine’s president, prior to his trip to DC, had repeatedly specified that security assurances would need to be included, and with his rejection during final discussions, the anger of Trump and Vance spewed out in the subsequent pathetic meeting with the media. Columnist Phil Boas of The Arizona Republic likened the spectacle to “a food fight with petty insults, imbecilic logic, the barking immaturity that is the vernacular of loudmouths and incels, and cosplaying freaks who occupy so much of the social web. Gone were diplomacy and decorum as the world watched with mouths agape, trying to process the consequences. And how long can the Trump administration walk this tightrope, this knife’s blade to restore what it calls American greatness? When you blow past old rules of conduct, through longstanding guardrails, you may think you’re making progress, but you are surely wreaking your own destruction. If you don’t respect boundaries, your political foes won’t either. They’ll come at you, and with fury.” Boas calls Trump an agent of destruction, who currently finds it rough-sledding in his attempt to follow through on campaign promises; Americans sought change in the November election, but the roller coaster is out of control and if the president and his mob don’t slow it, the American people will — and sooner than the next election.

Bill Maher on HBO’s ‘Real Time’ was visibly outraged about the treatment of Zelensky by the Trump White House, dejectedly joking, “Great day to be an American. My first thought is that he’s browbeating a guy who speaks English as a second language. So we’re all agreed this is deplorable. I’ve tried not to use the word deplorable as much as I can, but when it’s deplorable, it’s deplorable.” World leaders, politicos and average Americans on social media posts agreed that the Zelensky takedown was lacking in the decorum expected of a sensible and reliable USA. Maher’s guest, Fareed Zakaria, called it “tragic” to see an American president “bully, berate” and “demean” a nation’s leader “who depends on the US for its survival” — before giving a cheeky suggestion to Zelensky. Zakaria joked, “The way to have gone in there, is first, you begin by saying, ‘President Trump, you are a genius. You have completely transformed the landscape. I have with me the highest order of merit — Ukraine has never created a civilian honor this big — for you.’ You have a big medal, put it on him, then say to him, ‘I look forward to working with you.'” John Stoehr, of The Editorial Board, an online newspaper, writes, “I think it’s emblematic of the fact that Donald Trump surrounds himself with grown men who are willing to act like little boys if that’s what it takes to make Big Daddy happy.”

The Trump/Vance performance took place just in time for NBC’s ‘Saturday Night Live’ to take full advantage for a cold open to the show last week. James Austin Johnson as Trump opened the sketch with, “I’d like to welcome President Zelensky to this incredible trap.” Referring to Zelensky’s casual attire, which Trump called attention to as soon as Ukraine’s president stepped out of the limousine, Johnson’s Trump complimented Mikey Day as Zelensky: “I’d like to thank President Zelensky for dressing like casual Star Trek. We love Star Trek because there’s no DEI. The white guy was the leader and he bossed around Spock who was, I believe, Guatemalan.” Mikey Day portraying Zelensky, was unable to speak any lines within the shouting match, being interrupted by Bowen Yang’s JD Vance as soon as he opened his mouth to enter the ‘conversation.’ “I have to jump in here because that’s how we planned this. You didn’t say ‘thank-you.’ You didn’t say anything about us being handsome,” and interrupting Day’s Zelensky again, says, “You have been talking this entire time. I’m sorry, does the sign outside say ‘Ukraine House’? No, it says ‘America House.'” The SNL couch potato portraying a wide-eyed Secretary of State, ‘Little’ Marco Rubio, only sunk deeper into the cushions, muttering, “No Inglés!”  Johnson’s Trump threw out the “I have the cards” line from the embarrassing Oval Office display: “You say you want to end this war, but frankly you don’t have the cards. I have the cards. I have ‘Skip’. I have ‘Draw Four’. I have ‘Get Out of Jail Free’ — the Supreme Court gave me that one.” Comedian Mike Myers crashed the meeting as Elon Musk, chain saw, black t-shirt and mannerisms that were accurate in depicting the real DOGE terrorist. Myers/Musk asks Johnson/Trump, “Uh, Donald, what are you doing in my office? You know I’m president now. I’m kidding! I’m kidding. Maybe not!” He joked about the scores of firings accomplished through DOGE actions: “They’re saying I’m firing people with no cause. But I do have cause. It’s ’cause I feel like it.” Reality bites!

Satirist Andy Borowitz reports that Zelensky is bowing to Trump’s demand to call for an immediate election with the condition that it be held in the USA and he be allowed to run for president. “For almost 250 years, the USA has been a beacon of democracy and freedom,” he said. “It should have a president who respects those ideas, and I will gladly relocate from Ukraine to do the job.” He was optimistic about his chances of defeating Trump, adding, “I have heard his approval rating is 4 percent, and most of that comes from Elon Musk’s children.”

Elon Musk’s DOGE army of college dropout hackers, termed the Nerd Reich by federal workers, are using threats and intimidation to gain access to governmental departments and the sensitive data trove in order to gut essential government services, eliminate regulators, a dismantling meant to reshape the federal workforce to serve Trump’s interests and those of his wealthy contributors. One official laments, “I can’t believe this is how they’re blowing up the Constitution — this little nerd army — God help us.” ‘Tonight Show‘ host Jimmy Fallon mocked Musk’s directive to have US federal workers list and submit five things they’ve done in the past week to justify holding their jobs or face termination — for which Musk has no official authority. Workers were dismayed and angry, mostly for getting a work email on a Saturday, joked Fallon, but he had a response for those who dared: “1) I received this email, 2) I opened this email, 3) I read this email, 4) I laughed at this email, 5) I deleted this email. There’s five,” said Fallon, “It’s hard to take seriously when rules from ‘Cinderella’ are being stolen,” as he referred to the 11:59 PM deadline for a response. Social media also gathered a few contributors: 1) Woke up, 2) Got out of bed, 3) Dragged a comb across my head, 4) Found my way downstairs and drank a cup, 5) Looking up, I noticed I was late. Another had a suggestion that would suffice for several weeks of reporting: 1) Put your right arm in, 2) Take your right arm out, 3) Put your right arm in and you shake it all about, 4) Do the Hokey Pokey and you turn yourself around, 5) That’s what it’s all about. Trump is known for attempting to insult Obama by insisting he was born in Africa simply to diminish his standing in the eyes of his base-in-waiting — now he has Elon, who was actually born in Africa, ruining the country for him.

The White House said that Cabinet secretaries could have the final word on whether employees must respond with their week’s accomplishments, as stated by press secretary Karoline Leavitt. Leavitt said, “The president defers to his Cabinet secretaries who he’s obviously entrusted to pursue the guidance relative to their specific workforce. And for some of the agencies that you’ve seen that have said ‘please don’t send these emails,’ it’s in their best interest for that specific agency, and the president supports that.” She added that over one million responses had been received, “to insure that federal workers are not ripping off American taxpayers, that they are showing up to the office and that they are doing their jobs.” The Office of Personnel Management (OPM) informed Cabinet heads that response to Musk’s edict is voluntary and failure to do so will not be considered a resignation — that threat not appearing in the email, but given voice by President Musk. New FBI Director Kash Patel said, “When and if further information is required, we will coordinate the responses. For now, pause any responses.” Predictable mass chaos reigned as Johnny-Come-Lately Trump arrived on the scene to praise Musk’s email — in order to gather details on employee accomplishments, and to find if employees even exist who are issued paychecks! This led to the OPM issuing yet another statement, quietly stripping the ‘voluntary action’ sentence, with Musk sending a second email demand. Needless to say, it remains a chaotic and unclear situation across all departments with the State Department still advising employees not to respond. Philosopher and essayist George Santayana is quoted as saying, “Perhaps the universe is nothing but an equilibrium of idiocies.” But we could narrow it down to a confederacy of dunces, huh?

Twenty-one staff members of the US DOGE Service (formerly the US Digital Service) submitted a letter of resignation, citing the destruction of the federal government, which follows on the heels of department employees who were laid off earlier. The letter addressed to White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles and posted publicly, reads, “We will not use our skills as technologists to compromise core government systems, jeopardize Americans’ sensitive data, or dismantle critical public services. We will not lend our expertise to carry out or legitimize DOGE’s actions. As civil servants, we remained committed throughout the Presidential Transition to delivering better government services through technology and stood ready to partner with incoming officials. Each of us left senior private sector technology positions to pursue nonpartisan public service. We swore to serve the Constitution across presidential administrations. However, it has become clear that we can no longer honor those commitments at the United State DOGE Service.”

Press Secretary Leavitt revealed last week that a dramatic change is being initiated in the press access for journalists covering President Trump, with the White House press team overseeing the press pool instead of the White House Correspondent’s Association. “Legacy outlets who have participated in the pool for decades will still be allowed to join,” she announced, but the change will bring in ‘new voices.’ “We will continue the rotation of the five major television networks to ensure (‘endure’ might be more apt) the president’s remarks are heard far and wide around this world. We will add additional streaming services which reach different audiences than traditional cable and broadcast,” she clarified. The WHCA’s president, Eugene Daniels responded to this abrupt change, saying, “This move tears at the independence of a free press in the United States. It suggests the government will select the journalists who cover the president. In a free country, leaders must not be able to choose their own press corps.” Daniels revealed that Leavitt and her team didn’t include him and the WHCA in any discussions for the change, claiming that the organization is already expanding into a wide range of outlets as part of the overall pool. Trump, in his pettiness, is still barring the Associated Press over their refusal to acknowledge his executive order by changing their stylebook to read ‘the Gulf of America’ instead of ‘the Gulf of Mexico.’ Weird that Trump shared an AP article on social media in criticizing Zelensky for saying the end to the Russian/Ukraine war is “far away.” Fox News and Newsmax have urged Trump to lift his ban, and a federal judge has declined to order the White House to do so. The WHCA’s annual gala dinner in DC is on schedule, and Trump is surely to skip the event, with the expected stinging barbs being thrown in his direction.

‘Tonight Show’ host Jimmy Fallon mocked the administration’s expropriation of the press pool by saying, “Yep, Trump will now only take questions from Fox News, Foxier News and Foxiest News.” Leavitt explains, “So by deciding which outlets make up the limited press pool on a day-to-day basis, the White House will be restoring power back to the American people who President Trump was elected to serve,” — justifying the reason to allow independent journalists on TikTok to apply for press credentials?

Attorney General Pam Bondi made a big deal of her announcement that the Epstein files would be released, which contain lists of clients and flight logs of passengers flown on his private plane to his private island. After release of the documents, word quickly got around that it was information previously made public — no bombshells! To counter the uproar, Bondi pointed a finger at the FBI, who she blamed for withholding “thousands of pages of documents.” Conspiracy theorists were accusing the Deep State agents for lack of transparency, providing Jimmy Kimmel with fodder for his show’s monologue. “That’s right, the deep state agents are trying to hide it. Well, first the deep state agents need to go through the documents to make sure they dot every ‘i’ and cross out every ‘DJ-T,’ and then they can release the documents,” he offered. Continuing, he said, “You know, the fact that these Looney Tunes keep conveniently forgetting that Donald Trump and Jeffrey Epstein were good friends is unbelievable.” Reading from a 2002 issue of New York magazine’s profile of Epstein, he said to the audience, “This is a quote from Donald Trump: ‘I’ve known Jeff for 15 years, terrific guy. He’s a lot of fun to be with. It’s even said that he likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side. No doubt about it — Jeffrey enjoys his social life.'” “And they’re running around with binders,” Kimmel chuckled, as he cited a New York Times report: ‘Donald Trump and Jeffrey Epstein had a party at Mar-a-Lago, calling it a ‘calendar girl’ competition.'” Kimmel concluded, “It was only two men and 28 disappointed calendar girls — I hope that’s in the binder when it comes out.” We can rest assured that Kash Patel will get to the bottom of this deep state mixup!

A BRIONI TUTU, GOLDEN AGED EGGS, 400 YEARS, ANOTHER DIRTY WORD

It appears that Donald and Elon, along with the Project 2025 mob, have resurrected ‘The New Pledge’ which ran in Matt Groening’s Life in Hell comic strip back on December 16, 1994. The pledge reads: “I pledge allegiance to and wrap myself in the flag of the United States Against Anything Un-American, and to the Republicans for which it stands, two nations, under Jesus, rich against poor with curtailed liberty and justice for all, except for Blacks, homosexuals, women who want abortions, Communists, welfare queens, tree huggers, feminazis, illegal immigrants, children of illegal immigrants, and you if you don’t watch your step.” Our current government makeup didn’t miss a beat in the intervening thirty years, and we can bet with assurance that they have a New Constitution waiting in the wings.

Gregory E. Sterling, dean of the Yale Divinity School, in an article on the MSNBC website says that the US Agency for International Development being cast into the “wood chipper” by Musk is a sign that a core Christian value of caring for others “is under threat.” Distressing to Sterling is the alarming and tacit support of many, including Trump’s evangelical horde, who proclaim the Gospels as their guide, and by doing so “have sold their souls in a Faustian deal for political power.” Cited is an NBC News exit poll in the presidential election with the upshot that 63% of voters in the “Protestant or other Christians” demographic supported the new administration — and if restricted to Whites, the number climbs to 72%. In the Catholic fold, 59% supported Trump, with 63% of White Catholics voting for the convicted felon. But — yikes! — 82% of White evangelicals went for King Donald. The Dean is concerned that many will associate Christianity with the worrisome programs of the MAGA administration, and that the “younger generation will either come to dismiss Christianity as amoral or identify with it for its relationship to political power rather than its moral and spiritual principles” — neither of which he finds acceptable.

A colleague of Sterling’s, Phil Gorski, author of ‘The Flag and the Cross,’ an exploration of the rise of Christian nationalism, seconds the concern about Christianity becoming a “dirty word,” and, an acquaintance who is senior pastor of a large Manhattan church now describes himself as a “follower of Jesus Christ,” abandoning his descriptor as ‘Christian.’ Sterling closes his piece by saying that the “closure of USAID and the pulling of funds from other agencies and groups that care for the ‘hungry…thirsty…stranger…naked…ill…imprisoned’ is anti-Christian at its core. It reflects a rejection of a basic value that Jews and Christians hold sacred. Christians may disagree about a number of important issues, but the imperative to care for the downtrodden is not one of them.” A recent caller from Georgia on C-SPAN with right-wing pundit Armstrong Williams recalled his family’s vacations in the Great Smoky Mountains, when they would feed bears at the side of the road — until it was declared illegal. He claims that once this largesse was terminated the bears starved to death because they didn’t know how to fend for themselves, referring to the old proverb about teaching a man how to fish. Host Williams called his story well taken, saying, “The best Department of Health, Education and Welfare I had growing up was my mother and my father.” Right! Empathy is for losers! Ignore those roadside cadgers!

During Trump’s 2016 campaign he sought the backing of the religious right, granting them unprecedented access to empower their agenda during his first term; therefore, they poured millions in contributions toward his 2024 campaign to reseat themselves in the White House to continue their oppressive agenda to strip away rights and freedoms, and to make it safe to “once again” to say, “Merry CHRISTmas!” The level of influence held by the religious right turned the Executive branch into a virtual policy-making arm of their movement in Trump’s first term, and with their continuing domination we see the appointment of lifetime federal judges from religious-right legal groups who will further dismantle church-state separation and undermine our freedoms. With Trump’s favoritism toward these groups, their appetites for even more power and control has brought an uptick in overt and aggressive Christian nationalism, a threat not only to freedom and core democratic values, but non-acceptance of religious pluralism. This movement is also more likely to support authoritarianism and political violence, while nurturing racial resentment and hostility toward immigrants in their so-called “biblical worldview.” Their belief that Trump has been anointed by God to lead the country once again was recently mirrored by Speaker of the House Mike Johnson — genuflect, genuflect, genuflect!

Raymond De Vries who calls himself “a sad observer of political decline” posts on Quora in response to a questioner who asked, “How can you call yourself Christian and not support our most Christian president yet, Donald J. Trump?” His answer: “You seem to think a Christian is someone who says the homeless ‘will be arrested, but they will be given the option to accept treatment and services if they’re willing to be rehabilitated.’ And, it’s just fine for Christians to praise war-waging invaders as ‘genius’ and ‘savvy’ and refer to the displaced and dead in the invaded country as ‘independent.’ Or skipping community services to play golf, and call military service members who gave their lives for their country, ‘suckers’ and ‘losers.’ And since when is it Christian for someone claiming to be a multi-billionaire to beg for the charity of wool-pulled-over-their-eyes sheeple who donate millions of dollars (or buy overpriced Bibles and other tchotchkes) to cover his legal defense costs against charges of rape, financial fraud and insurrection? And asking, ‘Why do I have to repent, to ask forgiveness if I’m not making mistakes?’ But methinks anyone who thinks Donald Trump is a Christian has been possessed by the devil….”

But we know that Trump likes the title, employing the tactics of a mob boss, as demonstrated in many of his proclamations and threats, one of the latest being against Ukraine president Zelensky after he criticized The Don for siding with Russia in the ongoing war. Ukraine has been particularly critical of the supposed ‘peace talks’ between only Russia and the US — no Ukrainians allowed, please. Trump calls Zelensky a “modestly successful comedian” who conned the US out of $350 billion to fight a “war that couldn’t be won, that never had to start, but a war that he, without the US and TRUMP, will never be able to settle.” He also whined that the US spent $200 billion more than European nations contributed as a guaranteed loan, while the US will get nothing back. In a peacetime scenario, Zelensky would have termed-out of office, and despite Trump’s calls for wartime elections due to a “4% approval rating,” the Ukrainians show support at around 60% with no calls for an election, though Zelensky has offered to step down “in the interest of peace if necessary.” Trump called the Ukrainian president a dictator who is responsible for starting the war — words straight from the Putin playbook. British satirical magazine, Private Eye, ran its latest cover with a poke at the Trump/Zelensky standoff. A photo of Trump and Zelensky walking side by side has word balloons added with Trump asking, “Guess what the deal is?” Zelensky replies, “I give in.” “Correct,” Trump agrees. Even the Rupert Murdoch Wall Street Journal’s editorial board called Trump’s criticism of Zelensky an “assault,” warning that his “seeming desperation for a peace deal could come at the expense of his own presidency.” The board wrote: “The only dictator in the war is Mr. Putin, who poisons exiled Russians on foreign soil and banishes opponents to Arctic prison camps.” And a punch to Trump’s gut: “Call us when he holds a free election.” Further, Trump’s attempt to turn the Ukrainians against Zelensky is likely to have the opposite effect, and they agreed with Zelenksy’s “retort to Trump which suggests he’s living in a ‘disinformation bubble.'” WSJ board sums it up with: “Ultimately, any deal that results in Ukraine’s surrender will be a blow to American power — the opposite of Mr. Trump’s promise to restore a golden age of US prestige and world calm.”

A couple of weeks back The Don was facing criticism and mockery on social platforms for calling the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts a “woke” venue, though he admitted he has never attended any events — only that he “got reports” and that “people said the shows were terrible, a disgrace.” Consequently, he announced some new board appointees after “reports” of drag performances, and expressing his desire to become board chair “to make sure it runs properly. We don’t need ‘woke’ at the center.” Social media sprung into action, calling his comments “MAGA movement in a nutshell.” GenXGuy posted, “He heard it from many people the shows were terrible…big strong men…with tears in their eyes…’sir, these shows are terrible. Only you can save the Kennedy Center.'” True to form, satirist Andy Borowitz of The Borowitz Report posted: “Donald J. Trump tightened his grip on the American arts scene on Monday by naming himself principal ballerina of the Kennedy Center Ballet. Announcing a purge of the company’s ballerinas, Trump declared on Truth Social, ‘I will soon be announcing a new roster of ballerinas, with an amazing ballerina, DONALD J. TRUMP.’ He said he was ‘disgusted’ to discover that all of the company’s current ballerinas were women, a state of affairs that he blamed on DEI. Trump’s takeover of the Kennedy Center has surprised millions of Americans, who previously thought that the worst thing that could happen to the Kennedy brand was JFK’s nephew strapping a dismembered whale’s head to his minivan.”

Of Trump’s intrusion into the arts, The Daily Beast website said, “Revenge, as the saying goes, is a dish best served cold and in Washington time always a moveable feast…When Donald Trump seized control of the performing arts venue, unseating David Rubinstein as chairman, it quickly became clear among the Democrat board members (and some Republicans) there was little they could do to prevent it. And so they will do what the true establishment does; they will bide their time…DC’s permanent elite believe Trump’s sudden, random interest in the center had little to do with content, and more to do with his own, more obvious, payback. The insiders didn’t accept him last time around and they won’t this, and it prickles under his skin like a rash that won’t go away. His own redress is to try to take away their toys. ‘He has kicked over a beehive,’ said one knowing person, ‘but he won’t know until it stings him in the ass.’ They will forgive the intrusion for now…but they won’t forget…even if the Kennedy Center morphs into the Trump Center overnight. ‘This isn’t the Deep State,’ said one insider. ‘This is Deep Society.’ However, if Trump thinks his coup is bloodless, at least for now, then he’d better look closer to home. Melania had apparently told friends she wanted to become more involved in the Kennedy Center and was already on the board as an honorary trustee along with other former first ladies Jill Biden, Michelle Obama, Laura Bush, and Hillary Clinton. Now her husband has stolen her thunder once again. She’d probably get a warmer welcome at the Women’s National Democratic Club.” Strike up the US Marine Corps band! Or how about Trump’s J6 Prison Choir? Never grow tired of those guys, do we?

Steve Schmidt couldn’t refrain from heralding the new Chairman Trump: “Donald Trump, chairman of the Kennedy Center, is a man with no taste and less integrity, who buried his first wife on a New Jersey golf course. Easily distracted and perpetually bored, Donald Trump has given away the powers of his presidency to Elon Musk, while using the prerogatives of his high office to launch meme coins and install himself as chairman of the Kennedy Center. Donald Trump may soon demand that his slow shuffle and jerky spasms to the songs of ‘The Village People’ tunes be called ballet. When this happens 49% of the country will wear leotards on their heads, and cheer for the most beautiful ballerina in the land — the one dressed like a schlub in an oversized Brioni suit, with a too-long tie made in China. It is in this moment that Trump will do for the arts what Tulsi Gabbard is going to do to the intelligence agencies, RFK is going to do to the public health agencies, Kash Patel is going to do to the FBI, and Pete Hegseth is going to do to the military.”

We all remember how Elon Musk flew to Germany to campaign for the ultra-right wing AfD party in the lead up to their national elections, and how he then flew back to DC to stand beside the Resolute desk and lord it over a seated Trump, with Elon’s son, X, wiping his boogers on the desk and telling Trump his time in the chair was about to end? Well, it happened again — this time in an interview with Fox News’ Sean Hannity. According to Leigh Kimmins on The Daily Beast, Trump looked like he was hung out to dry by Musk and Hannity, as they ignored the president, or interrupted him in this high-profile sit-down take-down. Hannity’s softball questions in the Roosevelt Room in the White House briefly became a love-in, but further in it became apparent that the president was being shunted aside, with Musk portraying himself as a hero to save America in his indiscriminate machete-wielding attack on government departments. Trump attempted to chime in about Europe “taking advantage of us,” but bosom-buddy Musk shot him a look in order to keep up his own diatribe. Trump again tried to compliment Musk on his achievements, but was interrupted by Hannity who looked at Musk to ask if he was “trying to be president, as the media suggests.” Another Trump attempt to join in was interrupted by Hannity who wanted to talk to Musk about sending ships to Mars. Their chat rambled on, with Trump blasting left-leaning outlets, and feeding tired, classic lines to his voter base…gotta keep ’em happy, you know! After viewing the interview, Tom Nichols of The Atlantic wrote: “Like many Americans lately, I am seized with curiosity about who is actually running the government of the United States. But I am still not sure who’s in charge.” The official answer from the White House says Trump’s in charge, and that Musk isn’t even in charge of DOGE, or involved in the agency at all — only a “senior adviser to the president with no actual or formal authority to make government decisions himself.” Time to disarm Musk of his machete? Let’s ask Hannity!

Text for a much-needed bumper sticker: MUSK — THE MAN WHO SAVED CANCER! A bill that was up for a 2024 renewal of funding for the Gabriella Miller Kids First Pediatric Research Program was trimmed of this $190 million amount last year because Elon didn’t like the bipartisan effort under President Obama that established the program. The original bill, as presented by Republicans, included the renewal but Musk and former Republican Leader Eric Cantor drove forces that led to its being cut. Musk showed his cruelty by posting on X, photos of the two versions side by side, captioned “Yesterday’s bill vs today’s bill,” accompanied by a laughing emoji. Ultimately, the House rejected the new bill 174-235, with nearly 30 Republicans joining Democrats in voting against it. House Republican Leader Steve Scalise said the same bill will not be brought forward for a vote. Not discouraged by this failure, Musk and his DOGEs have hobbled a federal government facility that does critical research into Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s. According to Greg Sargent of The New Republic, the “Trump-Musk cuts” have resulted in the firing of numerous top researchers at the National Institute of Health, “a prediction of big setbacks to fighting dementias.” “The Trump-Musk rationales for deep cuts to spending on medical research are an insultingly ridiculous farce,” Sargent alleges. “Republicans once lavished praise on this research. Trump and Musk are hobbling it. What will those Republicans say now?” Any suggestions, Hannity? How about we start a GoFundMe to buy Musk a seat on his first rocket to Mars — the first Earthling to set foot on the Red Planet — irresistible!

Stephen Miller, Trump’s White House Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy, got some acerbic replies to his post on X directed at his one million followers, when he asked, “Are you enjoying America’s new Golden Age?” The critics seem to think Trump’s term number two is, so far, a case of all glitter and no real gold. Hunter Petro suggests, “Call it the ‘Golden Age’ because it takes a bag of gold bars to afford a dozen eggs,” and Ron Smith offers, “NO, President Musk is a terrible president.” Gojo18 posts a question, “Are we living in the same country?” Eleazar’s Virgins claims, “Yeah, now that USAID has been shuttered, pronouns banned, racists applauded, and water has been poured out of California’s reservoirs, my life is so much better.” Nicadispatch feels as many of us do by requesting, “Let me know when it starts.” Miller, whose title conceals the massive influence he actually commands with Trump and throughout the administration, is helping to drive a maximalist immigration enforcement agenda from which he obviously derives immense sadistic satisfaction. He spearheaded efforts to enact sweeping changes in presidential authority for the dismantling of the federal bureaucracy and to reduce or eliminate entire departments. Miller has worked on his plan for years — prior to his first gig with Trump’s first term — and has now had four years between terms to perfect his plan. He unapologetically pushes traditional boundaries to test the waters, and he avoids the limelight to avoid outshining the boss. In the effort to overwhelm the administration’s opponents, Miller worked to have in place for signatures, on Day One, the dozens of executive orders of which Trump made a spectacle as he signed. “Hello to the Golden Age of America and welcome back Donald J. Trump,” Miller said as he addressed the crowd at Capitol One Arena in DC on inauguration day. “It’s been four long years. It’s felt like 400 years.”  On the other hand, it’s been four long weeks and it seems like 400!