In his first term, The Don was constrained by others when airing his law breaking and unconstitutional wet dreams. A perfect example of this was when Secretary of Defense Mark Esper convinced him it wasn’t a good idea to shoot demonstrators during the protests over George Floyd’s murder. I imagine the conversation like this:
The Don: Mark, these people are getting on my nerves. Yeah, maybe that police officer was a bit out of line, but that Floyd guy, he looked like one dangerous hombre. Those people are dangerous. You know I could shoot someone on 5th Avenue and no one would care. I have that kind of thing, you know, what do they call it? Um, invincibility, yeah, invincibility. And protesting about it? Black Lives Matter? Enough of this D.E.I. shit. Why can’t we just shoot a few in the legs? We don’t need to kill’em. That will make them scatter, never to return.
Esper: With all due respect Mr. President, protests are part of our democracy and fundamental to our constitution. And you just can’t shoot people because you don’t like what they are saying or doing? You do know that, Mr. President?
The Don: Of course I know that, but sometimes the solution to a problem is to break rules. A few shots and we will scare the commies to death and they will afraid to protest again.. They are anti-American, trying to destroy the real America.
Esper: It’s a bad idea Mr. President.
The Don: That’s not what I wanted to hear Esper, but for now I’ll back off.
As a result of conversations like these, many of The Don’s most dangerous impulses were thwarted- counter balancing forces prevailed.
All was tossed to the wind when he lost the 2020 election, (which he still claims he won!). Losing is not an option, and the rage he experienced as a result, catapulted him over the top to where guardrails lost their potency and the gloves were off. Unshackled, The Don fomented an insurrection on January 6th. At that moment, he watched thousands of devotees storm the Capitol at his behest and basked in his glory for three hours while inciting the crowd to hang his vice president (every time I write this sentence, I think “and we elected him again? What does this say about our country?”).
The impeachment fortified his defiance; if an election could be stolen from him then laws and the constitution be damned. His propensity to wallow in grievance, coupled with his belief that the election was rigged, led him to promise himself that were he to become president again, there would be no one who would interfere with his impulses; nothing would stop him from doing whatever he wanted.
What a mistake he made the first time letting others divert him and talk him out of things. When the Supreme Court ruled in his favor, regarding complete immunity, any doubts about his absolute power were reinforced. If the Supreme Court tells you that you are free to do anything, including use Navy Seals to go after your enemy, then what could stop him? Call me crazy, but the court’s immunity decision could have allowed The Don to order Pence’s hanging on the premise that Pence was a traitor by defying his orders- that Pence was an existential threat to our democracy. That’s how unhinged and warped it gets.
And boy has he been living the dream. Now he has loyalists and facilitators galore. In Project 2025, which promulgates the theory of unitary power of the president, he has been provided a playbook to deconstruct our democracy. This feeds into his megalomaniacal belief that he is the arbiter of all things. Norms are suckers. Laws, meh? Constitution, meh? Congress, meh? Courts, meh?
I’ve said this before, but I’ll say it again: The Don has no interest in governing. He has no interest in the people of this country, including his own supporters. He doesn’t care if his actions kill tens of thousands around the world by withdrawing essential aid. He doesn’t care that the government shutdown will create food insecurity for 40 million people who rely on food stamps, aka S.N.A.P. His actions are and will always be about what’s in it for him and the money he can make. He enjoys hurting those who oppose him and takes great pleasure in his power to break whatever he wants, just because he can. He is an immoral malignant narcissist with no capacity for empathy. He is addicted to power, has an insatiable need for attention and admiration, is ruled by greed and fueled by grievance and the desire for revenge.
Tearing down the East Wing of the White House is titillating. The fact that the ballroom is nearly twice the size of the West Wing is the point. Take that you fools, who demeaned him as someone with small hands! Who has the big dick now? That it will be named the Trump ballroom demonstrates that he can desecrate and destroy anything he wants, and rebuild it in his own image. One can only imagine what the tickets will cost to participate in one of his events. Perhaps he will turn it into the largest wrestling venue ever seen. Perhaps all who enter will have to learn to dance to The Village People’s YMCA.
The pleasure he and Stephen Miller get from watching masked men profile and round up Latina immigrants is exhilarating. He loves the promotional videos they make, particularly the one where agents are repelling down a building in Chicago and entering someone’s apartment. Man that’s some good shit.
Speaking of shit, that video of him dumping shit on the protestors was a real blast. I guess we should be relieved that he didn’t shoot anyone. Stay tuned for that.
Blowing up boats in the Caribbean? What a scream. For The Don, it’s like playing a video game. Just manipulate the joystick and poof, there goes another boat. He suggests that Venezuela is at war with us because they are smuggling drugs into our country. Drugs have been smuggled into our country for a long time, but we apprehend the perpetrators and let the law do its work. Not now. Now we just blow them up. In international law, The Don’s actions are what in the civilized world we call: murder. And there is no Mark Esper or Mark Milley to restrain him. Not a peep from anyone in the administration, nor Republicans in congress, who as far as I am concerned are complicit in murder.
Here’s The Don:
“I don’t think we’re going to necessarily ask for a declaration of war. I think we are just going to kill people that are bringing drugs into our country, OK? We are going to kill them, you know? They are going to be, like, dead.”
It should be said here that we have seen no evidence that these boats are bringing drugs into the United States. We have no evidence that the people on these boats are guilty of anything other than being in the wrong place at the wrong time. There is no legal basis for these actions. The absurdity of it all is that Venezuela smuggles cocaine into our country, not Fentanyl, which is what is killing tens of thousands of Americans. He has outwardly spoken about covert C.I.A. operations in Venezuela and threatened to send in troops in order to topple Venezuelan president, Nicolas Maduro.
Here we are, only 8 months from the celebration of the 250th anniversary of the founding of this nation in the thrall of an autocrat who represents everything we fought against. Who knows where we will be by then. How ironic (and terrifying) it will be when we celebrate our origins, our freedom from a despotic King, that we may be ruled by one.
The Grand Offal Party 