No One Hates America More Than Donald Trump

In some ways, President Donald Trump has finally achieved his goal of returning to the New York City of the 1980s when a freewheeling Trump did whatever he wanted, was invited on the big talk shows, was a regular at the great restaurants. But not that part. No, what he has done in Washington, D.C. is recreate the Manhattan of his younger years, when the city was still a wreck, still in its post-1970s hangover, with decaying buildings and toxic air and filth coating the place, where the wealthy might do something like rebuild a ice skating rink rather than help the unhoused and the poverty-stricken and where the same wealthy ignored regulations and unions to build whatever monuments to their egos they desired. It's not just the "greed is good"/Wolf of Wall Street days or a president constantly talking about the threat of "communism" that I'm talking about. It's not just the ethos of the time. It's the actual physical, lived existence of people during that era in the years after Reagan set the rich free from a tax burden that forced them to participate in society, all of these pompous, self-mythologizing hedonists who could now say they loved the country that made them rich while doing everything to demonstrate how much they hate it and everyone here who is not them.

For, truly, if you look at what Trump has conjured in DC, especially in the area of the Capitol, the joint reeks of the urban decay that he would ride and walk past every day in NYC in the 80s. The White House is a construction pit and will be for the foreseeable future. The front lawn is torn up from his stupid UFC thunderdome fight. The Reflecting Pool is still green with algae. Trump has slashed the budget on things that benefit the people, like medical research and food safety and health care and more, to pay for new gilding on statues and monuments and events to celebrate himself. The big "state fair" is a scene of desperately small attendance, un-air conditioned promotional booths, overpriced food, a single ride (a ferris wheel with enclosed seats enclosed in glass pods, perfect for slowly cooking), and a decaying small version of the monument Trump plans to build. I've been to parking lot fairs with more pizzazz and fun. He's attempting to build his golden arch and take over a public park and gold course to build a private one, including possibly plowing down a row of DC's beloved cherry trees, while ignoring any laws or regulations that he is required to follow, much like he wrecked the East Wing of the White House before anyone knew what was happening, much like how he approached his building career in the 1980s.

And that right there is a perfect encapsulation of the contempt with which this president holds the country, its constitution, its institutions, its people, and its traditions. Sure, there are times when unjust laws demand civil disobedience so that those without legislative power can exert people and protest power to spur change. But if you're the president of the United States, you can work to change laws you disagree with, not merely disregard them. You just cast them aside if you think that you are above them, and if you think that, you think you're a king. And if you think you're a king, you hate the United States, a country designed specifically to create a place where kings cannot rule. 

Yet time and again, Trump's actions are those of a wannabe king. While other presidents have tried to exert power, Trump has simply skipped over trying and done it, whether it's something other presidents have done (and not been held to account for) in starting a war without the consent of Congress or something completely unprecedented, like casting aside any worry about corruption and doing everything possible to make himself and his odious family wealthier, to an extent unheard of in the modern age, and, for now, anyone who might hold him accountable is just refusing to. A corollary to this post would be "No One Hates the Constitution More Than the Conservatives on the Supreme Court" or "No One Hates America More Than Mike Johnson."

We have had presidents and politicians who have demonized groups of people in the United States, but I can't think of one who so openly despised not just that people oppose him but that they are allowed to express that opposition. This outright refusal to agree to the American compact on acceptance of dissent was on full display during his speech on Friday at Mount Rushmore. What was supposed to be a celebration of the 250th anniversary of our founding turned into another dark recitation of fake threats and doom. Trump said, despite paying lip service to the First Amendment, "In America, we do not need anyone's permission to say what we think and to live as we please," and then, less than ten minutes after, during a rant about a supposed rise in "communism" in the country (which is a bastardization of "Democratic Socialist"), he said, "You can be loyal to Karl Marx or you can be loyal to America. You can be a communist or you can be a patriot. You cannot be both. As for those who peddle Marx's lies about our heritage, who tell our children that we live on stolen land or that our heroes were oppressors. They're doing something much worse than slandering our past, they are slandering and attacking our future. Not gonna let that happen. They're trying to tear down the great American character to destroy the people who declared independence, who crossed to Delaware, who settled the west and conquered the skies."

Putting aside that history is complex and that, yes, we do live on stolen land, and that, yes, many of the Founders were oppressors (as in "owned slaves"), in the United States, you are allowed to believe in Marx just like you're allowed to believe in Adam Smith or, even, Donald Trump. You can, in fact, be a communist (of which there are very few) and a patriot. Indeed, the way these supposed "communists" are gaining power is through the very legal system of our elections. They got elected by voters. What's un-American, what's not "patriotic" is to declare that what you're going to do with Americans who are using their free speech to profess Marxist beliefs is "send them into exile. We will send them quickly away and we will continue to build our country bigger and better and stronger than ever before." What does that even mean? Is he going to round us all up and send us to African countries with Ebola? And that was before he started talking about how Republicans should be the only party elected for 100 years. 

There is no United States for Trump. There is only him, and his every action as president demonstrates that. His arrogance and his insistence that we only talk about the accomplishments of the country and not our flaws is spitting in the face of our history and the struggles of all kinds of people here. His self-aggrandizement is an embarrassment, with his mad cries that he's not loved enough. His hatred of immigrants, women, protesters, the media that doesn't fawn over him, Democrats, non-white people, Muslims, all of it is deeply at odds with the concept of the United States. His insistence that there is only one way to love this flawed experiment of a nation and that is to love him and every horrible thing he does is anti-American. You only believe that if you hate this country, hate its founding, hate its history. He hates that he still faces legal peril when he leaves office no matter how much he tries to make it go away. He hates that the country might hold him to account. 

America's very existence is anathema to what he thinks about himself and the world, and thus it must be destroyed and remade in his image, even as he lies that he is the last defender of some order that died a long time ago, not even the 1980s. More like the 1880s. No one hate this country more than Donald Trump. There is no difference between him and people like Osama bin Laden, except bin Laden actually had a belief system. 

If you watch him speak tonight at the Fourth of July gathering he's centered around himself, know that he is slurring and slurping with disdain for nearly every single one of us, putting out visions of nightmare futures and lying about the present. He'll talk about our founders with the blithering ignorance of someone who despises being told he doesn't know everything. He hates this country, he hates you, he hates me, and he'll do everything he can to let us know how much. And then he'll do his little dance that tells us all to kiss his ass while he continues to drag us all down.

The best way to celebrate our Independence Day is to hate him back. Trust me: John Adams and Ben Franklin would be right there with you.

(Note: Look, I'm not saying our leaders have been perfect up until Trump. Far from it. We have had presidents who criminalized dissent and protest. We've had presidents who have ignored the law. We have had presidents who have enriched themselves. But we've rarely had someone who does all of it, all the terrible things.)

Democrats, Shut the Fuck Up and Vote for the Democratic Nominee

When three Democratic candidates supported by New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, a Democrat, won their Democratic primaries last week, the reaction of the center and right of the Democratic Party was, at least in the telling of political media, a deranged fucking freak-out. Driven, as such things are, by nutzoid conservative media declaring, in essence, that the savage Hottentots have overrun the civilized colonists and are eating the women and raping the dogs, supposed moderate after supposed moderate lined up to say that Democratic voters are idiots for supporting someone who believes the same things they do on issues like taxes, health care, and, yes, the alleged third rail, Israel, and that the party faces ruin for going so radically left. 

It behooves us to pause for a moment to consider that barely any actual radical leftists exist in the United States. Radical leftists would be calling for the execution of oil executives and the bombing of fossil fuel producing sites. They would go full communist and demand the seizure and redistribution of wealth, as well as state or worker takeover of industries, depending on which flavor of commie they are. It would be an army of Luigi Mangiones or people who believe similar things about the failure of capitalism to address the needs of humanity. That's extremism. 

You know what's not extremist? New York's Brad Lander's platform. Lander defeated incumbent Congressman Dan Goldman, with Goldman's support for Israel being a major factor in his loss. Lander wants to pass a bill ending support for Israel as long as the country is violating international law, which, sorry, sure doesn't seem out-there unless you don't give a shit about such things. On other issues, Lander proposes sane, left-of-center policies that enjoy majority support in the country, like implementing Medicare for All, raising taxes on the wealthy and corporations, and abolishing ICE. 

If you look at the supposedly most radical of the trio of Mamdani-backed candidates, Darializa Avila Chevalier, who defeated incumbent Rep. Adriano Espaillat, you get...someone who pretty much backs the same everyday liberal policies that Lander (and Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren and AOC and many others) backs. Wanna know some of her crazy ideas? "Raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour" and "Establish free universal childcare and Pre-K" and "Prohibit Congress members from trading stocks." Wacky, no? She has some things that are pie-in-the-sky policies to shoot for, like guaranteed minimum income and "Create a four-day 32-hour work week with no loss in pay." But, again, none of this is outside of left-wing of the Democratic Party conversation. If Chevalier had said, "Nationalize the auto companies" and "take away children and raise them in communes," then maybe it would have been justified for carbuncle of doom James Carville to go on Fox "news," for fuck's sake, and say that Democrats should not "seat her as a member of the Democratic Party." 

As for her old tweets that have considerably more actually far left viewpoints, who the fuck cares? Man, it's Twitter. Everyone shits the bed on Twitter. Everyone says fucked up things to piss people off. And even if they really believe it, it doesn't mean a candidate is gonna run on the wildest things they believe (even if, truth be told, I agree with Chevalier on a bunch of it). She shit on Democrats as much as she shit on the right. Jesus fuck, Trump is executing people without charge, arrest, or trial, and we're wasting time talking about if a candidate still believes her grad school political theory or if she meant it when she said, "Defund the police." Fuck off, John Fetterman. 

You know what's not real, though? The freakout I mentioned at the top. Even in the Politico article I linked to titled, "Centrist Democrats are freaking out about progressives’ winning streak," the actual freak out is less screaming and running through the streets naked except for a stuffed Care Bear stuck on your dick (we've all been there, right?), and more, "Oh, I guess we need to adjust our perspective for the next election."  The article has quotes from "centrists" who say things like, "Yeah, those Democratic socialists sure have been getting well-organized. We should do that more." It's also got quotes from progressives saying that centrism hasn't been working and that's why voters want people who, as I said, believe what they believe. (And the article notes all the establishment Democrats who did win their primaries, which also makes a shit fit over progressive wins seem dumb.)

At the end of the day, Democratic voters (or, you know, all voters) need to do what's right, and that's shut the fuck up and vote for the Democratic nominee. That's all you have. Democratic nominee or more destruction. If you're a "moderate" (which I think just means you support Israel and don't want to tax rich people quite as much), shut the fuck up and vote for the progressive nominee, even if it's a Democratic socialist, because you have no other choice, you simpering genocide-enablers. If you're a Democratic socialist or liberal populist, shut the fuck up and vote for the moderate nominee. And, yeah, that might mean you have to suck it up on Israel because you have no other fucking choice, you fucking smug nihilists.

As for centrist elected Democrats, stop giving fuel to the right-wing fire about supposedly "communist" candidates. Welcome the left and let them drag the party back to what it's supposed to be: a place that seeks to make sure everyone gets a shot and treats people with compassion and care, not Republican-lite, not trying to compromise with crazed fascists or doing Stephen Miller's work for him. And stop being assholes who act all cozy with the same Republicans who cheer on the torture of migrants and the denial of rights to women and LGBTQ+ people. Maybe these alleged wild and woolly leftists can lead the party to its soul again. 

Remember: The Republican Congress Is Also Responsible for the Reflecting Pool Debacle (and Everything Else)

Donald Trump never wants anything "fixed." He wants it remade in his image. It doesn't matter if what he's doing to something helps it or not. What matters is he can slap his shitty name on it and pretend it's his. It's even better when he can take something someone else built or had dedicated to them and take credit after doing nothing or very little or just fucking it up completely. I think a lot about the time in 1996 that Trump just showed up at the ribbon-cutting for a nursery school for kids with HIV. He hadn't given a goddamn nickel, but he bullied his way in and sat in the front row so he could be in all the photos and pretend he was a decent human being when he was just 250 pounds of shit in an ill-fitting suit. (Lower weight because he was thinner in the 90s.) Does nothing, takes credit. 

Of course, that was when Trump was a loser CEO of a constantly bankrupt or near-bankrupt company with no shareholders, no one to be responsible to except the greed of himself, his shitty children, and the few employees he actually gave enough of a shit about to pay off for being accomplices to all his crimes. And no one to hold him to account unless they got through his layers of lawyers and goons and frivolous lawsuits and threats.  

That's not the case with the presidency. The way shit is supposed to work is that the Congress is supposed to step in and say, "No, fuck you, you can't do that and we won't fund it." Congressional committees are supposed to dig into it when the White House just wantonly does crimes. Yeah, it wouldn't matter if they made referrals to the Justice Department for prosecution because the DOJ now exists as Trump's spooge cloth, but that's not the point. When the next funding bill comes up, you specify that you're not spending money on it. Power of the pursestrings, motherfuckers. If Congress does nothing about disastrous shit when it could do something, then it owns the disasters. 

And under current Republican leadership in the House and, for the most part, in the Senate, the position of the Congress has been prone, supine, or recumbent, just fucking laying there to be stepped over, stomped on, ignored, or, if necessary, fucked by Trump and his Executive Branch minions. As Trump is justifiably blamed for debacle after debacle, for fuck-up after fuck-up, we cannot lose sight of the fact that every single Republican (save the occasional Massie or Murkowski vote) needs to be blamed, too. 

Take, for instance, the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool. Sure, it needed updates because that's how shit works when you've gotta take care of a pool. Equipment fails, conditions change, and other things happen where you gotta do repairs to keep it pretty. But Trump had to fuck with it and pretend like he knew anything at all about what he was doing. You know he wanted it painted "American Flag Blue," which is dumb and embarrassing and grotesque like this entire era we're damned to live through. You know he gave the no-bid contract to whatever corrupt cartoon character most recently greased the skids. He broke at least three laws by barreling ahead without required bidding on the project and without required environmental and historic preservation reviews, and, without congressional action to halt it, an outside group has sued. But Trump now argues that suit is moot because the project is "complete" (even though it is far from complete). So crimes be damned, right? 

Congress owns the green algae and the peeling paint because Republicans let Trump get away with it. However, none of the articles I've read about this incredibly symbolic failure mention that the House and Senate abdicated their responsibility and thus are accessories to the crimes here. They are covered in toxic slime and paint sludge as much as Trump is. 

The same goes for every law, big and small, cavalierly broken by Trump and his mobster administration. Republicans in Congress let Trump take over the power of the purse; they said nothing as he ignored laws on bidding for contracts and more for his concentration camps; they let him tear down a third of the White House without even a head shake; they do nothing about the constant execution of people who have been charged with no crimes, let alone convicted; they let all of the human rights abuses, all of the civil rights abuses, all of the war crimes, all of the reaming of the rule of law happen; they let all his plainly illegal executive orders stand without a word; a few barely squeaked out a protest about the Iran war, but that was primarily Democrats voting for it. Congress has a goddamn job, and it's not to be Trump's penis koozie. 

And here's the thing: Mike Johnson or John Thune could have said, "Hey, we're gonna agree to all this shit. But just follow the law." It sucks, but at least a fig leaf is better than standing naked for the world to laugh at your little dong. But they didn't. So it's all on them, too, and campaigns and coverage need to make their inaction as important as Trump's actions. Because, see, he thinks he's making everything in his image, but every single thing he's done also reflects back on them, too. Every failure, every disgrace, every nightmare, every death, every crime is theirs, too. Hang it all on them until it breaks their political necks.

On Immigration, Embrace What They Hate, Democrats

My political theory is simple: most people are fucking idiots. They have the attention span of sugar-filled toddlers given free rein in a wrecked Toys R Us who, after they are done screaming for a while, fall asleep on the pile of moldy dolls they stacked up. They don't care if their rampage hurts them or anyone else as long as they get to rampage, and when they wake up from their naps, they are ready for the next rampage.

The job of politicians is to harness that disruptive energy and focus it on issues that matter. The problem, of course, is who is doing the harnessing and what are their issues. See, one way to read the rise and inevitable fall of Donald Trump is that he injected himself into the US electoral bloodstream and it was a jolt of newness for many voters (yeah, I know, we all knew who he was and what a piece of shit he has always been, but remember: most people are fucking idiots), and idiot voters who had backed Barack Obama's Hope and Change were tired of needing to give a shit about other people and loved being told they could be shitty again. See, the problem is that newness only lasts for so long and you have to evolve and offer something new again. Trump has not done that. He repeats the same shit endlessly, his grievances have never shifted, and his execution of his ideas has been utter garbage.

On the other end of the spectrum on this idea is the fast rise of progressive Democratic candidates in places where they haven't previously made in-roads. You know this is new because some candidates endorsed by traditional, moderate Democrats are losing primaries. Not all, and certainly the establishment hasn't lost all its influence, but there's a real thirst out there for those who are talking about populist ideas in ways that are not trying to appeal to some mythical Republican who wants to walk away from Trump and his MAGA cretin army. 

In other words, voters are craving someone to show them a different way to see the world, perhaps even a better way to see it. That's why the payoff is so slim when Democrats give credence to Republican madness on issues like immigration, LGBTQ rights, education, and, well, pretty much everything. You don't have to hand it to the GOP. You don't have to pretend that they have a point when they pretty fucking clearly do not. 

So there is a plain opening here for Democrats who speak about immigration not through a lens of deportation and criminality but by concentrating on the good of immigrants to the country, the necessity of continued population expansion, and the foundational American aspect of a constant influx of people from around the world. After 10 years of Trump's savagery about and towards immigrants and anyone who supports them, with all the energy that it takes to constantly hate and desire to punish them, it's a fucking relief to hear that you don't have to keep hating, that you can, in fact, accept and even love the vast majority of immigrants who just want to make their lives and thus all of our lives better. There's a huge swath of the population that's begging for that message, unmitigated by nods to "enforcement" of border laws and how many people have been deported, offering a counternarrative to the parade of grotesque crimes committed by migrants, as if no white people commit them, too. 

The same could be said for other issues, like the treatment of transgender kids and adults. That's why it's so disappointing when, say, Texas Senate nominee James "Hot Women Like Compassionate Dudes" Talarico said in an interview that he agrees that children should not get gender reassignment surgery. You know how many kids under 18 get that operation on their genitals? Virtually none, and it's usually for medical necessity. The number receiving top surgery is extraordinarily low, too.  There is no reason to say anything other than "I trust parents and doctors" when asked "Do you support trans mutilization of children?" or whatever President Fucko says. 

But let me focus here on immigration. I'm in the UK right now, and parts of the country are losing their fucking minds over an immigrant from Sudan attacking a white man in Belfast with a knife, on top of an earlier crime from December where a young white man was stabbed to death by a Sikh man, both born in the UK. The killer in that case was sentence to life in prison on June 1. Racist fucknuts, led by the worst pieces of shit like Nigel Farage, Elon Musk, and his hate buddy, Tommy Robinson, have been calling for violence against immigrants and non-whites, and shit got real in Belfast where homes and cars were burned down and people had to flee for their lives. Other outbreaks of bullshit happened in Scotland and elsewhere. They were smaller incidents, but thank fuck the World Cup is starting so that these assholes can focus their savagery away from families and onto the teams of other countries. By the way, there were over 500 violent knife crimes in the last year in NI, but no one had a race riot when Seamus shanked Liam over a broken shillelagh or whatever the fuck they do there. 

And while it's good to hear condemnation coming from Labour politicians and others, it's frankly galling that Prime Minister Keir Starmer and most of the party has spent the better part of two years trying to out-asshole the right on immigration into the UK. The same goes for Democrats in the US who still think bragging about how many people were deported under President Obama is a strategy to convince voters who are totally cool with concentration camps to vote for Dems. In case you don't remember, most Democrats were actually pissed about Obama's mass deportations back in the 2010s.

This isn't that fucking complicated. Democrats don't have to make "border security" the top item in their discussion of immigration policy because no matter what, the GOP is going to say they want open borders. Instead, make the case that immigration is who we are. Make it so that immigrants are celebrated, even if they came here and stayed without going through the absolutely insane immigration system we have. Not to solely focus on Talarico, but on this count, he's got one of the more immigrant-positive sets of policies. 

By offering this alternative to the bullshit the right keeps forcing on Americans, Democrats can say that we all get to chill the fuck out. Goddamn, don't you want to chill out over people who are your neighbors and co-workers and the people who works really friggin' hard? 

What's happening in the UK right now is what the racist dickscabs who work for the Trump administration and run Congress and ejaculate hate all over Twitter/X want to happen in the US. Hell, it's the policy of ICE to do everything short of burn down the homes of undocumented migrants. 

But voters love it when you offer an easier path. Shit, just tell them that the taxes paid by the undocumented will help save Social Security. Greed is always the greatest motivator.

Getting My Mind Around Trump's IRS Deal (Part 2: Lemme Tell You About Real Weaponization)

When the White House announced that a deal had been reached between the Internal Revenue Service and noted rapist of children and adults Donald Trump over Trump's $10 billion lawsuit against the agency for a leak of his tax returns by a now-convicted IRS contractor, the layers of fuckery were thick. The idea of the deal is madness: a $1.8 billion...sorry, a $1.776 billion slush fund with no oversight beyond a Trump-approved committee is going to dole out cash to anyone Trump says was a "victim" of "lawfare" and "weaponization" of...fuck, I don't know, Congress? The justice system?...including, potentially, the deranged cretins who tried to overthrow the government and murder members of Congress and Mike Pence on January 6, 2021. 

I can't get my head around the idea that the president sued his own government and then came up with a deal that, for a moment, got the case dismissed and closed because everyone at the IRS and Justice Department knew that no judge or jury on earth would see this as anything other than a giant asshole being as assholish as humanly possible. 

But let's take a second and talk about this whole idea of "lawfare" and "weaponization." After all, it is an "Anti-Weaponization Fund" that's supposed to come out of the deal. And Trump and Republican spoogebags run around saying "weaponization" as another of their shorthand words and phrases that are meaningless unless you're up to your tits in MAGA bullshit, like "transgender for everyone." To them, the arrest and prosecution of people like the J6ers or cold sore aficionado Steve Bannon or anyone else Trump pardoned is something that demands reparations. Said a Justice Department official, "It is no secret that many were victims of the weaponization of the past administration...This type of lawfare should never occur again, under any administration."

Except you can bet that Leticia James or Kilmar Abrego Garcia or E. Jean Carroll or anyone being held without charge or trial in an ICE concentration camp won't get any claims approved by the Trump-humpers on this committee that will pretend to control the fund.

You wanna know what real "lawfare and weaponization" looks like? Oh, sweet children of America, let me take you back to the 1990s for another lesson in how Republicans have been motherfuckers busily fucking mothers for decades. See, when Bill Clinton was elected president, defeating an incumbent Republican and bringing the Reagan/Bush era of destroying the government to an end (I know Reagan's dickishness seems quaint compared to Trump's, but every conflagration starts with a flame), Republicans lost their goddamn minds and decided to make it their mission to destroy Bill and Hillary Clinton. And one way they did that was by congressional investigations and by berating Clinton into getting a special counsel appointed. 

Without going into all the details, which you can read about ad nauseam, the burgeoning right-wing media, driven at the time by talk radio, and the Republican takeover of Congress in the 1994 midterms led to a period where every time Bill or Hillary Clinton or anyone in their orbit farted too loudly, some goddamned congressional committee would have hearings or odious taint sniffer Ken Starr would expand his investigation. They would subpoena every staffer or appointee even tangentially involved in Filegate, Travelgate, Whitewater, and anything else, and they would question them under oath. That meant these low-paid employees would need to hire lawyers so they didn't accidentally fuck themselves over, and it caused deep financial hardship and, in some cases, bankruptcy. 

And here's the thing: Republicans fucking well knew that's what they were doing. They fucking well knew they were destroying careers and families and lives over utter bullshit. No one was convicted of any crimes in connection to any of these "scandals" except for a couple of the Clintons' business partners in the failed real estate deal in Arkansas that was (no, really, kids, look it up) the reason the Whitewater investigation happened. You understand that? Republicans deliberately ruined people because they wanted to hurt the Clintons and it was all for nothing. 

That's some fucking lawfare. That's motherfucking weaponization. That's who Republicans are and always have been. And Trump is doing the exact same thing by siccing the Justice Department on anyone who ever crossed him or anyone who might try to stop him from fucking the nation or the world up even worse. 

Compare those Clinton staffers to the J6ers, who were tried and convicted of serious shit. No one who worked in the White House travel office in the 1990s beat a cop with a flagpole. Hell, let's update that and say that no one sitting at Delaney Hall in Newark on a hunger strike against maggoty food and abuse ever did that either. None of them cheered on an insurrection or allowed foreign infiltration of the highest levels of our government (looking at you, Michael Flynn). The idea that anyone who Trump might bless with millions of dollars deserves anything is repulsive, repugnant, reprehensible, and Republican. They are the weapons in weaponization.

Of course, there's also a pretty good chance that Trump just says he's the biggest victim and awards himself most or all the money because he's a greedy, aggrieved cuntmite. It is, as many have noted, the most corrupt thing any president has ever done, on top of the previously discussed elimination of any current audits of himself or anyone or anything close to him. And smarmy fuckworm and acting Attorney General Todd Blanche has aided and abetted this criminality and deserves every punishment that should come his way in some hoped-for future.

Fortunately, even some Senate Republicans are queasy about the fund and want to find a way to stop it. And the federal judge who closed the case, responding to documents filed by 35 former judges in a giant "What the fucking fuck is this shit?" effort, has put a stay on any movement to make the slush fund real and is reopening the case she had closed because, indeed, "What the fucking fuck is this shit?"

It's something everyone in the country should be asking all the time.

Getting My Head Around Trump's IRS Settlement (Part 1)

If you spend a decent chunk of your precious life closely following and chronicling the often egregious fuckery of American politicians, you get used to a certain level of madness and stomach-turning betrayals of Everything We Stand For. You stare dead-eyed monsters in the face and call them out for being vicious, vile vacuums of humanity. You dare to load your mind with the myriad ways that decent and indecent people end up fucking everyone over. Shit that would surprise others is just another day for you. "Oh, we were lied into another war? Sounds like us."

Lemme put it this way: you might have heard about ballmaxxing and been shocked by it, as in "Holy fuck, you mean there's a thing where men inject fluid into their nutsack to make it look huge?" Yeah, that's weird. And it was weird back in 2009 when I wrote about the practice then called "scrotal infusion" and said that it's an apt metaphor for the Bush administration. I'm not gonna explain. Click and read, motherfuckers, click and read. So, really, my response to the current ballmaxxing discourse is a muted sigh.

Now, if you told me that there's something called "bombballing" where men decide to surgically fill their scrotums with small explosives and try to fuck intensely so one of them blows up because they'll cum so hard it makes them shit themselves, then I'd likely have more of a "Whoa. Ouch. What the fucking fuck?" reaction.  

What I'm trying to say here is that so much of what is done by President Donald Trump, who answers the question "What if an overgrown Oompa-Loompa, but on bath salts?", enrages me, but it's not breaking my brain because mostly I think, "Of course. It's Donald fucking Trump. What did you expect? Grace and dignity?" But this motherfucking IRS "settlement" (in that it's not a "settlement" because no court anywhere would ever sign off on this corrupt garbage) is bombballing to me. 

Start with the unfathomably indecent addendum, where Trump, his family, their companies, and anyone or anything tangentially related to those ("without limitation") are given a free ticket on any federal tax crimes they've done because the United States is "FOREVER BARRED and PRECLUDED from prosecuting or pursuing, any and all claims, counterclaims, causes of action, appeals, or requests for any relief, including injunctive relief, monetary relief, damages, examinations or similar or related reviews, appeals, debt relief, costs, attorney's fees, expenses, and/or interest, whether presently known or unknown, that - as of the Effective Date of the Settlement Agreement - have been or could have been asserted by Defendants [the IRS]."

Look at that shit, force fucked into existence by Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, who is so devoid of a soul that the Devil didn't even bother to buy it. What blows my mind here is the idea that any crimes already committed by Trump, by Eric, by fucking Jared, by Barron's friends cannot be investigated, audited, or prosecuted by the IRS forever. That's telling the law to go fuck itself sideways with a chainsaw. That's taking the Constitution, wiping your ass with it, and using it to set a pile of American flags on fire so you can cook some bald eagles. It's the kind of deal that supervillains dream of and then laugh about because it's utterly impossible for it to be real. But that's how fucked our government is right now. That's the deal that it made with itself for no reason other than Donald fucking Trump wanted it.

It's the ultimate expression of the Trump grievance machine, where everyone is out to get him and his shitty family, where he's merely an innocent victim of "lawfare" and "weaponization" of the law, terms that are completely devoid of meaning when Trump himself sued CBS for editing an interview in a way he didn't like and sues everyone all the time for the merest slight. He's a sue-happy bitch, and some judge should slap the shit out of him and his attorneys for filing frivolous lawsuits. 

Gonna stop here for today. I'll do more this week on the monetary side of things, which is really about who has free speech in this devolved nation. But this is beyond any scandal we've ever seen. And any elected official who is okay with it needs to be whipped into the political hinterlands. 

(Note: An earlier version of this said that it included future crimes, which someone with actual legal expertise told me was wrong. I'm still stuck on the idea that anything that may "arise out of...Lawfare and/or Weaponization" is included, and that's where I thought it absolved the bastards of all tax shenanigans from here to eternity. And, frankly, if this idiotic addendum stands and some criming should happen, I'm betting Blanche or another dickbag lawyer might try to weasel out of it using this. But I could be totally wrong, so, yeah, I corrected.)

A Poem for Memorial Day

"Asking for a Friend" by Abby E. Murray

Is there a way to tell

the commander’s wife

you’re a pacifist

and it’s possible

to trust your spouse

but mourn his work

because the death

he’s delivered

through the cracks

of thatched rooftops

is more than a fracture

beneath his skin

and the flag is a reminder

and gravel is a reminder

and pins and ribbons

and coins and the smell

of diesel and buildings

without doors are a reminder

and you won’t secure

the gold battalion crest

over your left breast

no matter how many

times she tells you

it’s like a sweetheart pin

and the last thing

you want when

your father is found

dead in his duplex

is an email asking when

she can drop off

some meatballs in sauce

and you can’t stop

swaddling your brain

in yesterday’s Times

to see what city has fallen

as if they topple

rather than burn

and you refuse to stop

reading and doubting

until no one makes sense

and every deployment

is a Talking Heads song

and every morning

is an invitation to dance

in a pill bottle

and you’re not interested

in keeping busy

and you don’t want

more group texts

and you don’t want

your daughter learning

to shoot a rifle

with the other kids

who aim at a silhouette

of someone’s son

tied to a haystack

and you don’t want

to host a dress swap

before the gala

and you don’t want

a souvenir photo

with the bald eagle

and every time

the commander says

let’s thank our ladies

you want to toss the table

champagne flutes and all

and watch all the favors

you’ve done to prompt

his gratitude go flying

because you’ve tried to say

war is necessary

but the words are like

spiders in the shower

they have every right

to be there and yet

you are crawling up

the side of yourself

trying to get clean

without howling

and you don’t want

to call them our boys

and you don’t want

to be called household 6 

or a rock or a pillar

and the only commanders

you trust are the ones

who seem pained

by the movement

of their own bones

given to them

by their mothers

freely and without

any mental reservation

and it’s against your beliefs

to say things are fine

when the satellites

click and blink above us

unwilling to share

which target needs water

and which needs bread

and if anyone knows

a way to say this

without provoking

the commander’s wife

to roll a wide stone

over your spouse

and his career

let’s meet soon

I’ll buy you a beer

(Murray is the editor of Collateral, a journal that publishes works about "the impact of violent conflict and military service beyond the combat zone.")

In Foreign Policy, Trump Learns That White Doesn't Make Right

Racists try really fucking hard to mask their ignorance and fear with all kinds of bullshit ways of saying racist things and enacting racist policies (when in a position to do that). Because when all you've got is "white makes right," you've gotta fill it out with all kinds of utterly dull comments about the superiority of the Greeks or Romans or other Europeans (not you, Albanians, and they're a little dicey on Spaniards. Oh,  and the less said about Jews, the better), and then you just sound pathetic because white people have been as savage and stupid and destructive as any group of humans. Just because you've got Shakespeare doesn't mean you don't have a penchant for slaughtering each other over stupid shit or because you've got insane leaders.

All of this is a roundabout way of saying that Donald Trump is sold to racists as some kind of pinnacle of the innate superiority of whiteness, and it's kind of hilarious that he's so fucking dumb and so fucking blind to his own flaws that he just keeps punching himself under his gut in his tiny ballsack every single time he attempts to assert his illusionary white superiority over non-white leadership in other countries. 

The thing about Trump and all the idiots, greedy pricks, and hangers-on who enable him is that they think that their whiteness is a superpower when, really, it's their tragic flaw. 

What we've seen in the last several months is a display about the inevitable doom of whiteness in the modern world. Defense Secretary and someone with resting "I'm gonna roofie a chick" face Pete Hegseth fired experienced leadership in the military and also fired any white man who thought that non-white men and women in general shouldn't be fired or denied promotions just because they're not white men. Fuck you for being an ally, General.

These stupid shits didn't realize that diversity, equity, and inclusion isn't about elevating people who don't deserve it. It's about making sure that you don't avoid hiring qualified people because of your own unconscious biases or conscious bigotry. DEI is just a shorthand way of saying, "Hey, you white douche, don't be a fucking asshole." But, of course, Hegseth is only a fucking asshole. It's the only aspect of his personality that still exists. 

Of course, Hegseth's fuckery (and inexperience) affected the war with Iran. Add to that the State Department getting DOGEd in the ass by Elon Musk and his brigade of pasty incels, who culled the joint of diplomats with expertise in Near and Middle East affairs. Yeah, who needed those pinheads?

What Trump and Hegseth thought was that Iran would just crumble under a US/Israel bombardment and be done within days. They really had the colonial mindset about the East (Near, Middle, Far) that has fucked over the white West repeatedly, from Vietnam to Afghanistan (for the USSR and, to an extent, the US) to Iraq and a thousand other examples. It's the shit that Edward Said wrote about, the white rapists' view of the East as, essentially, an easily fuckable woman. And no matter how many times the East cuts the nuts off a rapist, the next rapist goes back thinking they're totally gonna overpower a country this time. That's easier to attempt when you've gotten rid of everyone around you who says, "This is a terrible fucking idea and you're gonna end up with your sack removed."

So, yeah, Trump might, as he's threatened again, commit genocide in Iran, but that just shows how weak he is and what absolute nonsense this belief in the superiority of whiteness is. Jesus, they thought they could send Jared "Bitch Eyes" Kushner to negotiate peace and that Iran would bow down. What these dumb motherfuckers have learned is that other countries have actually competent leaders who have an understanding of what makes their enemies weak. In the case of Iran, you have religious zealots who will mass slaughter their own people and who gave in once on its nuclear ambitions with the JCPOA, only to see our troglodyte president rip up the deal. You'd have to be an irrational idiot to believe anything Trump says has any permanence, and the Iranian leadership may be irrational, but they're not idiots. The war is a rank failure, and Trump has dicked over the entire globe, except for Russia and, frankly, Iran, and Iran knows it.

That same stench of filled diaper and pit sweat failure hangs over Trump's shambolic bumblefuck in China. He thought he could charm and cajole Chinese President Xi Jinping, and Xi played Trump like an erhu, getting himself and China elevated to an equal superpower in the world economy. Trump spent his time acting like a bumpkin child, embarrassingly overpraising both China and Xi, prostrating himself by hinting that he'd bail on Taiwan and prostituting US corporations like a louche pimp with a syphilitic line-up. Again, Trump was dealing with a leader who, despite being an absolute monster in many ways, lives in the real world, with investment in alternate energy and high functioning infrastructure (at least in the cities). Xi even shit on the US to Trump's stupid face, and Trump just grinned like the moron that he is. 

There's your avatar of white racial superiority, completely steamrolled by non-white leaders. Non-Western nations won't bow down; the racists were completely fucking wrong. And unless you are determined to completely eliminate those countries and people, then your racist ass needs to accept that this is the world we live in. We can be part of it, with immigration and free trade and maybe a bit of humility, or we'll be told to go fuck ourselves out of existence.