Trump 2.0 falls apart before our eyes

On Wednesday, Donald Trump went nuts when a reporter asked him about a Wall Street acronym mentioning him and his tariff policy: “TACO” or “Trump always chickens out."

The president had threatened to raise tariffs on European goods last Friday, but later backed off. “It’s called negotiations,” Trump hissed at a reporter who asked him about it Wednesday. “Don’t ever say what you said. That’s a nasty question.” Those who witnessed Trump’s meltdown were not overly impressed. His past behavior is filled with worse tantrums in front of reporters.

“I really think he lost it a long time ago,” a pool reporter said.

Apparently, it only took Elon Musk, who officially left the Trump administration on Wednesday, 128 days with the president to come to that same conclusion. A true genius.

Late Wednesday night, Trump was handed his biggest loss when the U.S. Court of International Trade ruled his unilateral tariffs on nearly all U.S. trading partners illegal. Call it Liberation Day.

The day before, Trump stayed home, didn’t see the press and the sum total of his contribution to society was 10 rage tweets on Truth Social, threatening California, Canada, and Vladimir Putin, while praising himself and blaming Joe Biden for everything wrong on the planet.

Critics say it was the highlight of Trump’s second administration.

The second verse may be the same as the first, but in Donald Trump’s case, it’s a lot louder and far more dangerous the second time around.

Few stand against the man for whom an overwhelming majority of people in this country cannot stand. Not only would he be the last person invited to a neighborhood barbecue, but inevitably, the police would have to remove him from the property, along with his traveling crew of sycophants who hang on his every word in order to feed their empty souls.

This soulless group of feckless individuals consists of racists, misogynists, bed wetters, train spotters, and a guy who once painted his bald head to make it look like he had hair. The backstories of those on staff and in Trump’s Cabinet would make “The Exorcist” seem like “The Sound of Music.” They’ve never climbed any mountain, but have been damaged on every turn, and have turned the raw feelings of inadequacy, loathing and self-doubt into something powerful — yet dark. If they hadn’t gone all “Sith Lord” on us, many would find their message inspiring. Many still do.

Many also do not, and that doesn’t bother Don. The anger of his enemies is the fuel that feeds him and he’s been fairly effective at taking advantage of his dissenters in every possible way. The reality is there’s no morality involved. Just victory. Divide and conquer. Enter the fractured and tattered remains of the Democratic Party. This is a political party that has posted a 1-2 win-loss record against Trump. Through its own efforts, millions of Americans were driven into Trump’s arms because they thought him to be a more reasonable alternative. That says a hell of a lot about the state of the Democratic Party, but even more about the “average” American voter. In what reality is Trump the “reasonable” alternative? Oh right. No morality involved. I already said that.

Both political parties are wretched in the extreme. The Republicans still have no heart. The Democrats still have no head and they continue to beat their heads against the nearest fencepost, thinking that somehow things will change. God bless them. They mean well, even if they will cancel you for your inability to recognize the righteousness of their cause.

That’s still better than being subjugated to poverty and slavery for an eternity by a party whose members openly cheer the dismantling of education, social services and health care. But barely.

Trump’s ability to warp reality works to some extent because of this corrosive political environment. His status is nearly mythical with those who purchased his gold athletic shoes, golf balls and four different colors of their favorite “MAGA” hat — in red, white, gold and black. Sorry. No blue.

This is more troubling as Trump’s mental decline becomes more obvious. While he may enjoy being on the lips of millions, if not billions of people on the planet, it is not because he is an inspiration. I hope Jake Tapper is not destined to write another book and do another mea culpa tour to explain how we all missed Trump’s dementia this time around while we focused on his first book about Joe Biden.

If Joe Biden slipped into senility, Donald Trump has fallen precipitously into it. He is the equivalent of the Alzheimer’s patient screaming, “You kids get off my lawn,” when he’s actually standing in line to get his flu shot at the retirement center against the advice of his own worm-ridden doctor.

Trump has said, “just say it and they’ll believe it” so much that he now believes it — as do millions of voters who’ve ingested way too many microplastics. Those voters are the equivalent of Robin Williams imitating a six-year-old sticking their tongue out and hissing, “I know you are but what am I?” You can substitute Pee Wee Herman for Williams and still hear the same thing.

Donald Trump is an angry old man at war with everything in his life, including the reality he can’t accept and his greatest fans will never admit: Donald Trump is the ultimate loser. He is a shriveled husk devoid of empathy. He’s Johnny Ringo — a man that “has got a great big hole, right in the middle of him. He can never kill enough, or steal enough, or inflict enough pain to ever fill it.” Ringo wanted revenge for being born and would kill for it. Trump wants the same revenge, but he wants to twist reality enough to make us all suffer for him.

That speaks to one of the greatest needs we have in this country: To counteract Donald Trump, we need a viable, independent media that cannot be leveraged by government contracts and other entanglements. It should be well-staffed with experienced, seasoned reporters from every facet of life. Yeah, I know, it’s mostly a pipe dream, but there are those who are trying to keep that dream alive.

I’d naively like to consider that I have, in some minor way, contributed to the cause of free speech and constitutional rights, but I love what CBS reporter Scott Pelley spoke about before a group of Wake Forest graduates recently. “Power can rewrite history with grotesque false narratives. It can make criminals heroes and heroes criminals,” and more importantly, “Power can change the definition of the words we use to describe reality.”

Former Tea Party congressman Joe Walsh, a frequent critic of the president, said the embarrassing incident just last week when Trump made the President of South Africa sit through a presentation condemning his government by using manipulated photographs of murdered “white farmers” was yet another new low point. “Trump’s greatest legacy is the destruction of truth,” Walsh said.

The eunuchs in Congress haven’t stopped him from this destruction. The House is too busy passing the “One Big Beautiful Bill,” knowing it will explode the national debt and take away services for millions of their voters, but hoping and praying the Senate will save them from themselves by defeating or diluting it.

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If Trump doesn’t get what he wants, the House Republicans will blame the Democrats and the RINOS in the Senate, while Trump will find a way to pin it all on Joe Biden. If he, or his crew (including his interchangeable moronic sons), get to mention Hunter Biden’s laptop while denigrating Dr. Jill Biden’s inability to diagnose cancer, although she holds a doctorate in English instead of medicine, the president will consider it a trifecta win. He will retire to the residence to consume a bag of McDonalds hamburgers, fries, chased it down with a Coca-Cola and finish it off with pink Starbursts and Tootsie Rolls — at least if Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt was accurate when she told a group of children who recently gathered in the Brady Briefing Room that those were Trump’s favorite sweets.

The federal judiciary, NPR, some attorneys and Harvard University are at this moment the lynchpins of resistance to this madness. Pelley has the megaphone. We should listen. Harvard has at least two lawsuits pending against the Trump administration after it effectively tried to gut American post-secondary education by holding back billions of dollars in funding and banning foreign exchange students, thus making an example out of one of the most prestigious universities in the world. That’s the easiest way to get the rest to bow — take out the leader.

We all may have our differences with Harvard that go beyond “I didn’t make the rowing team,” but Harvard and other major universities are international havens that help to provide education and the experience of living in America to millions who might otherwise never see this country in a sympathetic light. Education and living in the United States are hand-in-hand experiences that bring the best and the brightest to our country. In return, our country reaps benefits that escape Trump because those experiences cannot be expressed in dollars.

NPR is fighting hard to keep its funding to report on these and other issues as Trump tries to destroy any voice he cannot control. Ted Boutrous, who represented both former CNN anchor Jim Acosta and myself when we had our press passes suspended by the first Trump regime, filed suit against the current administration this week on behalf of NPR after Trump signed an executive order effectively ending its funding. “The Executive Order is blatantly unconstitutional. It contravenes the will of Congress and violates the constitutional rights of NPR and its member stations,” Boutrous said. “The Public Broadcasting Act and the First Amendment both protect the editorial independence of NPR and local public radio stations that receive federal funding from precisely this kind of governmental interference. And, by seeking to halt federal funding to NPR, the Executive Order harms not only NPR and its member stations, but also the tens of millions of Americans across the country who rely on them for news and cultural programming, and vital emergency information.”

Trump doesn’t care and Boutrous described the president’s activity bluntly: “It is not always obvious when the government has acted with a retaliatory purpose in violation of the First Amendment. ‘But this wolf comes as a wolf.’”

While some attorneys and large, seemingly prestigious law firms (well, until they caved) have bowed to Trump, some like National Security and FOIA attorney Mark Zaid have decided to fight Trump’s increasingly delusional take on the powers of the Executive Branch.

Zaid has represented Republicans and Democrats over the years. He’s fiercely independent, but because he represented a whistleblower key to President Trump’s first impeachment, Trump stripped Zaid’s security clearance. That prompted a suit.

“No American should lose their livelihood, or be blocked as a lawyer from representing clients, because a president carries a grudge toward them or who they represent,” Zaid said in a statement. “This isn’t just about me. It’s about using security clearances as political weapons.”

The point is that Trump makes it personal to try and keep you from the reality that what he’s doing has repercussions far beyond the current case.

Donald Trump’s ultimate goal: A reality in which he controls every corner of our lives; dictating what we read, who we spend time with, how we worship, what entertainment we can watch, our ability to speak our mind, dissent and challenge his government.

God knows we cannot let his reality become ours. I, for one, am not a chicken taco fan.