Even Republicans are asking what is wrong with Trump
President Donald Trump’s first Cabinet meeting of the year on Thursday looked like a remake of the movie “Freaks,” the 1932 horror film about a group of carnival sideshow performers. High government officials sang his praises, chanted their version of “one of us, one of us” and buried him in needless and irrelevant praise.
Later that afternoon, as Trump signed yet another executive order in the White House, the chanting was repeated. In neither case did the president entertain questions from the press — though we still have many after the recent killings of two American citizens in Minneapolis at the hands of federal officers. During the Cabinet meeting, Trump didn’t even allow Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem the opportunity to speak.
It is apparent we’ve reached the point of no return. Untethered by reality, the Trump circus can no longer surprise any of us. But it is a growing danger to all of us — and the Republicans know it.
When I heard this week that Trump nailed a photo of himself and Vladimir Putin, the Russian leader accused of war crimes, on a wall in the White House, I couldn’t pretend to be surprised — even after several Republicans with private courage and public fealty reached out to me. “That’s sending the wrong message,” they said. “What is wrong with him?”
The delusional, demented president, along with the elected nattering nabobs of narcissism in the MAGA party who inhabit Congress and dominate the Supreme Court, have left us at a point where facts do not exist.
The delusional, demented president, along with the elected nattering nabobs of narcissism in the MAGA party who inhabit Congress and dominate the Supreme Court, have left us at a point where facts do not exist. This is made worse by an independent press that has been decimated and replaced by magpies chirping for attention and any chance to go viral.
As a result, after Alex Pretti was shot and killed by Border Patrol officers in Minneapolis on Jan. 24, our television screens were replete with anchors and color commentators, each holding a variety of inexperience, going over every millisecond of the 37-year-old’s killing as if they were trying to decide the status of a pass on “Monday Night Football.” Is it a catch? Was he out of bounds? Let’s call in a former referee to tell us what he thinks.
The quality of reporting in this country is far from ideal and, as a result, the mindset of many Americans rivals that of the president. We are confused, angry and some of us are losing it.
There is good reason to despair, but also to laugh out loud. Trump, talking to us on the rope line outside the White House in one of his rare “Chopper Talk” moments of his second administration, told us Tuesday, “You know, you can’t have guns. You can’t walk in with guns. Can’t walk into this. You can’t do that.”
Yes, I laughed. He not only sounded like a liberal, but he also sounded like the fictional ultimate-liberal POTUS Andrew Shepherd in “The American President” when the character, played by Michael Douglas, announces, “I’m gonna get the guns.”
Trump doubled down on that sentiment in a rare public speech later that day in Iowa. His deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller echoed those thoughts and called Pretti, an ICU nurse at a Minneapolis Veterans Affairs hospital, a “domestic terrorist.” Noem claimed he wanted to “massacre” ICE officers before facing bipartisan criticism for her own misleading and incendiary information on the shooting. “Everything I’ve done, I’ve done at the direction of the president and Stephen,” Noem said in published reports.
Sounds like she’ll soon be testifying in court. It’s also, according to some White House sources, why she wasn’t allowed to shout “one of us, one of us,” during the Cabinet meeting.
Meanwhile, in response to the president’s declaration against guns, the National Rifle Association declared in a statement that “all law-abiding citizens have a right to keep and bear arms anywhere they have a legal right to be.” In fact, history shows that the Second Amendment was adopted to allow citizens to defend themselves against an abusive federal government — the very scenario that has been playing out in Minneapolis.
“I can’t believe I’m siding with the NRA,” more than one liberal Democrat has told me. And in the strange bedfellows political department, Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., called the Pretti shooting “very troubling” and said an investigation of the Department of Homeland Security is necessary. Two of his staffers also said that Trump’s statement “is not consistent with someone who supports the Second Amendment.”
By midweek, with the NRA against him, the president backed off his remarks and decided it was time to “turn the temperature down” in Minnesota. That came more than a week after Vice President JD Vance, standing in for Trump in the White House Brady Briefing Room, said the administration was going to put the screws to Minnesota and turn up the pressure after Renee Good was shot and killed on Jan. 7.
The administration also responded to the disaster in Minnesota by reassigning Customs and Border Patrol “commander at large” Greg Bovino and apparently urging him to retire quickly. Bovino, widely criticized for his choice in coats and haircuts, could be just the first of many to fall because of the disaster in Minneapolis. “Bovino is very good,” Trump said, “but he’s a pretty out there kind of guy. And in some cases, that’s good. Maybe it wasn’t good here.”
The president also said he had a productive conversation with Minnesota’s Democratic Gov. Tim Walz about de-escalating, but not eliminating, the ICE presence in Minnesota. On Tuesday, border czar Tom Homan, whom Trump dispatched to replace Bovino, met with Walz and the two “agreed on the need for an ongoing dialogue.”
Noem and Miller are among those whom Washington wags say could also be on the chopping block. If his past treatment of his former fixer Michael Cohen is any indication, Trump would eagerly sacrifice anyone to avoid responsibility for anything he’s done.
Noem and Miller are among those whom Washington wags say could also be on the chopping block. If his past treatment of his former fixer Michael Cohen is any indication, Trump would eagerly sacrifice anyone to avoid responsibility for anything he’s done. Of course, speaking in Iowa, Trump also left himself plenty of room to blame former President Joe Biden and radical Democrats for all problems big and small in the country, calling them “crooked” and “morons.”
Speaking of morons, take a look at a man who attacked Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., at a Minneapolis town hall on Tuesday, spraying her with a liquid-filled syringe that looked like, ahem, apple juice. “Oh, my God, he sprayed something on her,” a witness can be heard saying in video footage of the incident, before adding that it had a foul odor. (It was later confirmed to be apple cider vinegar.)
Afterward, right-wing social media exploded into accusations that Omar, a frequent Trump target who had called for Noem to resign or face impeachment, had faked the attack.
A short time later Trump himself weighed in: “I think she’s a fraud. She probably had herself sprayed!”
“He’s an idiot for saying this,” radio host Dean Obeidallah said on his Sirius/XM radio show. “A lot of people will see it as deflection and accuse him of faking his shooting on the campaign trail.” Some, as Obeidallah pointed out on his show, already have.
The craziness is accelerating as Trump and his regime continue to disintegrate before our eyes. On Jan. 28 the “totally independent FBI,” as he has routinely called it many times during the past year, searched a government building in Fulton County, Georgia, which has been at the center of the president’s baseless claims that the 2020 election was stolen from him. The FBI sought “a number of records” related to the election Trump lost — including all “physical ballots from the 2020 general election” in the county, according to a copy of the warrant viewed by the New York Times.
This occurred more than five years after that election. Anything rather than talking about the Epstein files, right?
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Worse? Several reports place Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard at the scene of the ballot seizures, and according to former Trump administration official Miles Taylor, “This stinks to high hell. If I were on one of the Congressional oversight committees, I’d announce an investigation TODAY into this situation and subpoena the Director of National Intelligence to explain her presence and what directives she was carrying out.”
But we’re not done. This week Secretary of State Marco Rubio told the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations that Venezuela had agreed to submit a monthly “budget” for approval by the Trump administration, which will control an account funded by the country’s oil sales. Trump continues to claim he is the ultimate authority in the country since he authorized 150 aircraft, tomahawk missiles and military personnel to kidnap Venezuela’s former President Nicolás Maduro. The Washington Post reported that Trump’s “deals” in Venezuela include firms tied to bribery charges.
There’s even more: Trump renewed his threats against Iran, demanding that it enter nuclear talks or face potential attack by an “armada” of U.S. warships. During the Cabinet meeting, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth added, “They have all the options to make a deal. They should not pursue nuclear capabilities. We will be prepared to deliver whatever this President expects.”
But none of that compares to the absolute cartoonish insanity of the president sending off an email to supporters on Wednesday encouraging them to take a “Citizens Only Survey.” While Trump has backed down in Minneapolis, he admonished his supporters to respond to a survey unless, “Don’t tell me you’re an illegal alien?” Trump claimed it could not be true; he wanted the recipient to fill out the survey. The message ended with “Are you a proud American Citizen or does ICE need to come and track you down?”
He’s like a Bond villain without the witty repartee.
“That’s just nuts,” a Republican senator told me. “He’s falling apart.”
Maybe. Certainly the NRA’s reaction to the president is cause for concern in Trumpland. And it is worth noting that even Stephen Miller had to shift his course in response to the disaster caused by ICE agents in Minneapolis and Trump’s proclamation against guns. On Wednesday, he admitted that federal agents “may not have been following” protocol before the Pretti shooting — just a day after he claimed Pretti was a domestic terrorist and the shooting was entirely justified because Pretti “tried to murder federal agents.”
That afternoon, the two Border Patrol officers involved in the killing were placed on administrative leave.
Trump was still begging supporters for money on Wednesday night, but because of the day’s activities, he sent a new email in which he backed off from threatening his supporters with being hunted by ICE. “Respectfully, I’m asking, do you still love me?” he asked, and requested his supporters to take another poll.
For those who recognize this madness, remember Mahatma Gandhi’s words: “When I despair, I remember that all through history the way of truth and love has always won. There have been tyrants, and murderers, and for a time they can seem invincible, but in the end they always fall. Think of it—always.”
Of course, in Trump’s universe, Gandhi is referring to Biden and the diabolical Democrats.
In the meantime, the stoics among us will just wait until this too shall pass — like a bad kidney stone.
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