TRUMP’S VERY UNCOMFORTABLE WEEK
It’s Just One Thing After Another
President (pro tem) Trump is not doing well this week. On Saturday, he and his Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth both caught a stick in the eye from the army. Instead of marching in lockstep wearing full dress uniforms for their 250th anniversary parade, they made it a party, casually strolling along in fatigues and waving to friends and family along the way. They drove World War II era tanks, their bands played anti-war and anti-authoritarian songs, and they stretched out the spacing of the participants so far that Trump, Hegseth, and Melania all dozed off. A North Korea television commentator, reporting on the parade, called Melania an expensive whore. Trump was gloriously humiliated by an army that hates Hegseth, and he was not happy about it.
Trump was even more humiliated when so few people showed up for his birthday parade. While the White House press people declared there were 250,000 in attendance, our lying eyes saw a lot of empty seats in the bleachers and plenty of space on the lawn. Some reports stated that, after waiting hours in blistering heat, humidity, and showers, attendees streamed for the exits when the parade dragged on.
On the same day, more than five million people gathered peacefully in more than two thousand communities across the country to protest Trump’s authoritarianism and brutal treatment of hard-working immigrants. No Kings Day saw remarkably few run-ins with troublemakers or police, although one unfortunate bystander was killed in Salt Lake City by a stray bullet fired by a security guard. The success of this protest, and its broad range across Republican dominant states, had to have rattled Trump. It appears to have influenced congressional Republicans too and may have been a turning point for their support of the Trump agenda.
To soothe his ego, Trump then jetted off to the G7 conclave in Alberta, entering Canada illegally as a convicted felon, where he expected to hobnob with and be admired by the most powerful and influential world leaders. But they pretty much ignored him, snickering behind his back, and leaving him out of casual conversations. When he started spouting his litany of lies at a press conference, Canadian Prime Minister Carney cut him off and ended the briefing. Humiliated once again, Trump left a day early to join Israel’s war with Iran, hoping that would bring him the glory and fame he so desperately seeks, and divert public attention from his domestic problems.
The biggest of those domestic problems at the moment happens to be Trump’s Big Beautiful Bill to fund the federal government and codify the Project 2025 agenda. The MAGA gang has loaded the bill with so many amendments for their pet fantasies that it cannot seem to move through the senate and appears to be unlikely to make it through reconciliation. Democrats unanimously oppose it, and it does not have enough Republican votes in either the senate or the house to pass. Watch for a showdown coming soon, with a continuing resolution for a few months following. Meanwhile, Trump’s approval ratings continue to fall. While an aggregate of all polls gives him about 45 percent approval to 54 percent disapproval, the most reliable polls—those by unbiased pollsters sampling more than 1000 registered voters—place his approval at 41 percent.
Most concerning of all, Trump’s obvious signs of dementia, inconsistency, and neurological symptoms cry out for removal from office under the provisions of Article 25 of the Constitution. He cannot string three words into a coherent sentence, has clearly lost any sense of history that he might have had earlier, cannot stick to a decision, and is recklessly unpredictable. Trump is singlehandedly the greatest threat to our national security, our economy, our personal freedoms, and our democracy that this nation has ever faced. How this disaster plays out is unknowable but the current trajectory of our government is clearly unsustainable. If this week is any indication of the future, this will be a long hot summer in more ways than just the weather.
(Illustration swiped from a Facebook post)