All I’ve got to say is
You don’t care anyway.
That’s why I know
One of us has got to go.
I've often said it would be a cold day in hell before Donald Trump walked back into the White House. Monday was a cold day in Washington. Many people think the place is hell. And Donald Trump just walked back into the White House. Snow on Bourbon Street in New Orleans was merely icing on the cake.
Trump’s second administration began in his typical fashion: divisive, destructive, delusional and defeating, with a side order of bombastic baloney followed by anger, petulance, darkness and threats. It was like watching Darth Vader getting inaugurated — all that was missing was "The Imperial March," though Elon Musk tried his best to substitute that with a Nazi-like salute.
Trump fans focused on his idea of merit-based hiring, ending DEI and his promises to protect free speech while declaring there are only two genders. Trump detractors focused on his divisive nature, threats against Panama his political enemies, and everything else, including how the first lady dressed and that oddball Musk, who looks more and more like a cartoon criminal from a 1970s "Scooby Doo" episode.
The facts show that Trump is quite aware of how to deal with American voters in his second time at bat from the Oval Office, and that he obviously doesn’t care what his detractors think. That makes him much more dangerous.
“That’s what makes him loved by millions. He doesn’t give a sh** what anybody thinks and people love him for it,” his former fixer Michael Cohen told me for the podcast "Just Ask the Question."
“What if Donald Trump is somehow successful?" Cohen asked. "Then at that point, the Trumpers are not part of a cult. They are the majority and Donald Trump will have subverted the Constitution. That leaves many Americans cheering for the president to fail. Who wants the president to fail? If he fails, then we all do,” he added. “And if he’s successful, our republic fails. That’s the historic situation we find ourselves in.”
So while his fans praised his new administration and his haters decried his return to the White House, Donald Trump took his first three days to plow forward with a score of executive orders, ranging from the serious to the silly and to the sublime.
He forced federal workers to “go back to work” at the office. He unleashed ICE to go after illegal immigrants; “millions of dangerous criminals,” he said, are ravishing the countryside. At the same time, he pardoned the dangerous criminals who stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, much to the chagrin, fear and anger of police, the victims of their violence and even some of the family members who testified against the seditionists.
After his release from prison, the former head of the Proud Boys, Enrique Tarrio, called into conspiracy theorist Alex Jones’ show and vowed retribution against domestic enemies real and imagined. “I’m happy that the president’s focusing not on retribution ... but I will tell you that I’m not gonna play by those rules,” he said. “The people who did this, they need to feel the heat. They need to be put behind bars, and they need to be prosecuted.”
This is Donald Trump at his most destructive.
It’s obvious Donald Trump supports homegrown convicted criminals, since he is one, and doesn’t want any immigrants muscling in on his turf. This is straight-up gangsterism, but don’t tell Donnie, he might have you whacked — or at least some of his minions might — just to prove their loyalty to the Godfather.
By Wednesday morning the Trump Justice Department, realigned in his image, issued a memo that threatened prosecution of state and local officials who resist his crackdown on immigration in sanctuary cities.
The Don also declared a national emergency and threatened to send troops to the border (again) though he still doesn’t understand the Posse Comitatus Act and doesn’t seem to care. His minions do, however, and have tried to craft the order to send troops to the border to conform with national law.
Riding roughshod through the wilderness of D.C. like a rotund headless horseman in a dark suit, white shirt and red tie; wielding his trusty, husky, musky sword and a peashooter armed with ignorance and fear, the new Trump empire feels like four years after only three days. One of his executive orders “restored” free speech — obviously showing that he doesn’t know or care that it is already enshrined in a Constitution that supersedes his executive orders. Of course, he’s never read it, wants to shred it and can’t be bothered with it. All rights flow through Don.
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There are now only two genders according to Don, the genders (presumably he means sexes) are those at conception, which is deeply confusing to actual scientists, because everyone is female at conception. Male pattern baldness only develops after about six weeks of gestation.
And while Trump dropped his “promises met, promises kept” agenda on a fully suspecting world, even his supporters admit he’s part of the problem. The country is in “a weird state” and while some are hopeful for a fun-loving, cooperative and united future, many supporters think it is beyond Trump's grasp to supply the unity he also promised in his inaugural address.
He declared his new administration “The Golden Age of America,” while minions like Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene declared that the Democrats could control the weather. Even as the snow began to fall in the District, his fans shook their heads.
One woman I met came from San Francisco and said she spent her life savings to bring her children to see Trump because she “worships” him. “I believe almost everything he says, but he can’t unite us because the liberal snowflakes hate us," she told me with a smile. "They just want war."
Trump declared he was enacting a new “power structure” to battle a “radical and corrupt establishment.” He called Inauguration Day a new liberation day and said he’d be a “peacemaker.” That liberation, however, doesn’t refer to LGBTQ individuals, immigrants or anyone who's outside the MAGA tent. I guess it was Liberation Day for Trump lovers only. There’s the unity. In Don we trust. All others pay cash.
We ran into three guys from Georgia who loved Trump as they walked toward his indoor rally at Capital One Arena. “l liked Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton. Clinton was my favorite president before Donald Trump,” one of them told me. He thinks Trump will bring peace to the country, "and will bring us unseen prosperity.” Meanwhile, a preacher from Houston told me Trump is his guy because he “supports Christians and is against the gays.”
After the inaugural address, a couple of middle-aged men from Akron told me, “That was a great speech,” while a Democrat who worked on Kamala Harris' campaign called it “very dark.” Trump, he noted, kept telling us “how bad we are” and was happy to send “millions of criminal aliens” back to their home countries.
Most of the Democrats and even a few Republicans laughed at the Village People hit “YMCA” being played at the inaugural. “He’s the only guy I know that can get elected president and have a dance named after him,” Cohen explained. “It’s not a surprise that a gay Pride slogan is being used by Donald,” a Republican from Iowa told me. “He makes everything so relatable.”
No, this is not satire.
Martin Luther King Jr. told us “We need leaders not in love with money but in love with justice. Not in love with publicity but in love with humanity.” There's no doubt that Trump's supporters truly believe he is the embodiment of that statement, and the greatest example of it in this century. “What a comeback story,” I was told. “For only the second time in history do we have a president coming back for a second chance after being booted from office.”
True that. But more than half the country, as was reported on MSNBC on Inauguration Day, believe we are “no longer the shining beacon on the hill.” Over on Fox News, people were celebrating like Jesus had returned.
Trump is already being sued for trying to end birthright citizenship — which is guaranteed in our Constitution. But Don thinks he has found a loophole. He’s telling us “Drill, baby, drill” and that he “won every swing state by a lot.” (The second part isn’t true, and it remains to be seen how he can implement the first).
But, of course, Donald the “unifier” couldn’t help himself in his inaugural address and every speech since then. He admonished Joe Biden’s administration as “the worst in history” and swore that countries across the globe were releasing gang members from prisons to invade our country. They come from “all over the world. They’re emptying their prisons and mental institutions on us. It stops at one o’clock this afternoon,” he emphatically declared. A few weeks from now, he can say that he was successful and countries were no longer sending us their criminals and mental patients — because they actually never did.
This is Donald Trump at his most destructive. As Cohen said, “If he wants to be successful, then just stop it. Be a unifier. Be the peacemaker. We’re all Americans. Don’t go after other Americans. But with Donald, it’s always about himself.”
In his first few days, Trump also withdrew the U.S. from the Paris climate accords all over again, “saving trillions,” he claimed. He took us out of the World Health Organization, claiming that will save lives and money, and placed a freeze on all federal hiring and federal regulations.
He even compared himself to Al Capone and claimed he was the most investigated person in the history of the country, even as he decried the crime in our streets and the destruction he said exists across the country. On Fox News, a pundit exclaimed, "He brings laughter and joy back to the presidency." Millions are not laughing. Millions more are suffering. And Donald Trump is riding high.
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