July 2025 Archives

Dear America,

 Did you ever wonder when Donald Trump became a towheaded blonde? In pictures from the rest of his life, and even now from day to day, he has had something between dirty blonde and brown hair, but some time between about 2005 and his first run for office in 2016, his hair seems to have gotten bleached.  Was it natural, and if so, how did it happen?  Or is it just another lie he's telling for the purpose of self promotion, which begs the question, what else is he lying about?  Despite the fact that this possible affectation demonstrates at best an unbecoming vanity, no one seems to lose faith in him though he wears this badge of insincerity like a scarlet letter.  What would his faithful answer if they were asked if they would buy a used car from our president and the only person who could hear the answer was themselves.  I wonder if they would be honest with themselves even then as it seems that they are self-deceived about their reasons for voting for him now.  What has happened to the integrity of our conservative citizens?  How did it happen?

The apparently common-knowledge explanation as to his hair is that he has a hair stylist or two, and he or she dyes and seemingly perms Trump's hair on a regular, if not daily basis.  I suppose that's harmless enough, but willingness to go that far for something as trivial as his appearance suggests to me that there are other more significant, and possibly nefarious motivations behind some of his conduct...greed comes to mind, for example.  His crypto-currency scheme, speaking of examples, troubles me.  It seems a blatant violation of his civic duty for him to be making money behind the presidential seal with an activity that he seeks to promote and regulate from the oval office, setting aside the fact that it "cripto" seems to me to be the ultimate scam.  And there's his pursuit of a rumored nearly $1 billion for renovation of what he characterizes as a gift from the Qatari emir so that he can fly in gaudy, gilded ostentation while president in a jet that he plans to transfer to his "presidential library" when he leaves office.  Looks a lot like an emolument from a foreign leader in violation of the constitution, the corruptness of which he plans to augment at taxpayer expense, and which he also plans to capitalize on after his tenure is over.  And he is in pursuit of other wealth-enhancing enterprises with his sons, like leisure businesses in foreign countries as well while he hypocritically criticized Hunter and Joe Biden for a phone call made while Hunter was in business and Joe was president.  Trump is still involved with his golf courses abroad, combining visitation of them with ostensible official trips being another dubious practice.  The list goes on, but for me the "crowning glory" of them all is his recent broaching of the subject of putting his fat face on Mount Rushmore.

You have to bear in mind that the four faces included in the massive sculpture there are those of honorable men who served their country...our country...with integrity and civil service in mind.  Washington declined to become king of the United States when invited to do so, which I am willing to bet Trump would characterize as a stupid move, just as he did the service of those WWII deceased veterans buried in France.  Teddy Roosevelt was a war veteran with front line service and a force in opposition to monopolistic control of our economy, and hence our nation, which Trump would also impugn if he were asked, as any advantage for business, no matter how corrupt in principle, is probably on Trump's to-do list.  Jefferson wrote and led others in writing some of the most important founding documents in the history of democracy, albeit without consideration for the slaves he owned.  As to Lincoln, he was responding to the imperatives of those founding documents with his leadership into and through our civil war and its consequences, including the 13th and 14th amendments to our constitution, all of which in their totality guaranty the freedoms that Trump is hell-bent on vitiating in one way or another.  All of those men were dedicated to our system of democracy for a lifetime.  That is the credential needed to be on Mount Rushmore.  Trump is dedicated to self-aggrandizement and everything else, including commitment to marital fidelity and public service, is not just secondary, but impedimental to his ultimate purpose and motivation as evinced in his every day actions.  As to putting his face on that edifice I say, Hell No!

Impeachment and imprisonment seem more like the appropriate recompense for the kind of  "service" he has given, and I actually believe those things are in his future; Just deserts, I say, along with a huge slice of humble pie.

Your friend,

Mike

Dear America,

 The most frustrating aspect of Donald Trump's ascendance is that he keeps getting caught doing things that should lead to castigation, but he never loses the support of the constituency that let him serve his first term, though he didn't win that election, and then elected him to his second term, albeit by a slim margin.  The first time he was caught being flagrant Trump was when he was taped on "Access Hollywood" talking about grabbing women by their genitals in the belief that there was nothing they could do about it.  But he won anyway.  Then there was the episode in Saks 5th Avenue when he did just that, but years later got sued for it and a jury of his peers awarded the woman he had abused $85 million.  Notably, he never took the stand in that trial (my lawyer's guess is that his lawyers reminded him that perjury is a high crime or misdemeanor) but he continued to call her a liar, and she sued him again...winning another big judgment from him for the relatively trivial commission of slander.  He still got elected in 2024 after those two cases went against him.  There was the porn-star episode, which cost him tens of thousands in the form of a pay-off so the woman wouldn't go public and then the conviction he suffered for trying to cover up the payment in his business records calling it a campaign contribution.  Apparently he did so because he thought it might cost him votes which it apparently didn't because he won anyway.  But in 2023, he was indicted for it and later convicted of 34 felony counts, again by a jury of his peers.  He served no time and won the 2024 election in spite of his criminal record.  Now there's all this Jeffrey Epstein business, and his "base," which includes, it is worth noting, evangelical Christians, continues to support him.  Not only that, his Party, the Repoltroon Party, continues to genuflect when he enters the room and defers to him when he demands something from those of them who are supposed to serve all of us in congress.

I don't understand the blind fealty from which he benefits, and I wonder if there is anything that his constituency would hold him accountable for.  He boasted during the 2016 campaign that he could stand in the middle of 5th Avenue and shoot someone and he wouldn't lose a single vote, and he was right.  His supporters seem to have a moral blind spot when Trump crosses the line.  But now with this Epstein thing, he apparently isn't so confident about the obeisance from which he has benefited in the past, though he is trying to show a brave face.  When the rumors of Trump's possible utilization of Jeffrey Epstein's "social services," let's say, his attorney general was at the center of it all.  First she said of some purported file with a list that Epstein supposedly kept of his "clients,"  that it was on her desk for review.  Then she said there was no list.  But there were files that could be reviewed and made public, which became known despite her apparent attempts to ignore them.  Her subterfuge failed again, and now there is impetus behind the political demands that they be brought out into the light for public scrutiny.  My guess is that Pam Bondi's tenure as attorney general won't be long term, but Trump continues to wear his brave face while he apparently scrambles to find a distraction from the issue.  Now, he has apparently suborned Tulsi Gabbard, his DNI, or Director of National Intelligence, into bringing public scrutiny back to an issue that died a decade ago; Barrack Obama's purported (according to Gabbard) role in the investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 election, which she suggests never occurred.  But first of all, who cares about that.  Our intelligence agencies found that Russia had done what it could to influence public opinion in Trump's favor, which makes sense.  Apparently Putin saw right away that he could use Trump like a lap dog and thus avoid any complications regarding his own nefarious intentions and actions on the world scene, and Trump proved him right.  Who knows whether Obama directed the intelligence inquiry into the matter, but who cares.  Trump is grasping at straws in order to divert attention from what may be more evidence of his own scandalous improprieties, and I think he may fear that this Epstein thing is a bridge to far for his loyalists, both in congress and in the electorate.  He's obviously scrambling.

Of course he can't run for office again unless he can either get the constitution changed or run a scam campaign as a candidate for vice-president with a presidential candidate like Jimmie Vance who will resign and let Trump become president in lieu of him.  Vance is cheesy enough to do such a thing, but I wouldn't plan on him keeping his promise to do so if I were Donald Trump.  But Trump could still be impeached...again, and I think he has done enough dubious things that a high crime or misdemeanor could be found in it all, or if not, will be committed by Trump soon: that is his wont.  I really do think he is scared and he is reaching for anything to get Epstein out of the public consciousness.  He's even given up on Bondi and recruited another shill to do his dirty work, he's that desperate.  We'll just have to see how it goes...and keep our fingers crossed like Trump is doing.

Your friend,

Mike

Dear America,

 I don't recall the Republicans wringing their hands over Trump's loss in 2020 the way that the Democrats did in 2016 and are now after the 2024 election.  Trump lost in 2020 no matter what the bloviator in chief insists, and even though they failed to retake control of The Senate, the Republicans concentrated their puling on the fraud claims despite the complete lack of evidence to support it.  They simply went forward and when Trump declared he intended to return for 2024, they missed not a step in moving toward what ultimately became their victory: Trump beat Harris, the Republicans retook the Senate and, while their hegemony in The House turned out to be by as slim a margin as would allow them to maintain control, they wound up in complete control of our national government.

Meanwhile, the Democrats are doing their own puling about their loss in 2024 as they did in 2016, but just as was the case in 2016, they are misguided in doing so and thus failing to appropriately survey their party and capitalize on its strengths.  Don't get me wrong; there are reasons for Democratic hand wringing, but they are behind us, not an element of the future.  For example, Joe Biden is probably the central cause of the Democrats' losses in both the executive and the legislative branches.  His procrastination in facing what would have certainly been his humiliating defeat in the presidential election cost the Democrats the opportunity to nominate a formidable candidate to run against Trump.  Because he saw the light just a little more than a hundred days before the election, Harris took the nomination by default, and she was clearly not the best choice for the party.  Of all the dubious claims Trump made during the campaign, there was one that had some merit.  Harris is not that formidable intellectually.  I don't say that out of spite or even sarcasm, but I remember her on a senate committee questioning a Trump operative and asking him about conversations he had had with a group associated in some way with Trump and asking the witness if during his interview with them they had "inferred" anything on a given subject.  What she meant was implied, or even intimated, but not inferred.  The point is that much of what she did to evince formidability as a senator was superficial, not substantial.  That showed in the way in which she clung to her allegiance to Biden when it was at best imprudent, and in her reluctance to be interviewed by the media.  Her weak performance when she finally opted to take the opportunity to demonstrate formidability was more like a death knell than a declaration of adequacy for the challenge that is the presidency.  My purpose is not to be cruel or contemning but rather to point out that Harris' loss wasn't what her party is intimating it to be.  Consider these facts.

Trump has claimed an enormous victory in the 2024 popular election, but he beat Harris by less than Hillary Clinton beat Trump by.  Biden, on the other hand, a somewhat compromise candidate as a function not of superiority but rather of political savvy in his campaign organization and the concession (on which he tried to renege) that he was a "transitional" candidate, beat Trump in what looks in retrospect like the landslide that Trump claims, but never won, over Harris.  And all the while Trump ignores the fact that if he trounced Harris, Clinton trounced him, and we all know how Trump hates to admit when he loses.  But setting the Trump debacle aside, Clinton won everything in 2016 but the electoral college, and the Democrats gained seats in both houses of congress, so while her party was whining about the future of the party, the effect of their effort was to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.  Similarly, in 2024 when the Democrats were hamstrung by a leader afflicted with an unmerited ego, the reason that their presidential opponent won was probably by default rather than the merit of his ideas.

The fact is that the income divide between the top of our economic pyramid, overpaid corporate executives for example, has grown under Republican leadership to the point that those who actually work for a living can't earn an adequate wage because the plutocracy controls everything from the board room to the annual corporate share holders' meeting by dint of law that locks them in when votes are taken.  The most remunerated executive in this country made $6.7 billion last year.  That's obscene, especially when you consider that the people who keep their houses clean can't afford houses of their own.  Democrats should be talking about that.  And the insistence of the Republicans on further fattening the purses of those rich and powerful gluttons by reducing their taxes does not redound to the benefit of anyone other than the greedy who already can't spend all they have but who insist that they get more, including Donald Trump and his meretricious sons.  That's another point the Democrats should be making.  And this business about the disenfranchised middle-class work force who think that the Democrats have done them no service is nothing but self-serving drivel propounded by those who can't come up with a better campaign strategy.  All in all, what the Democrats' ineptitude at this point in time demonstrates is that they insist on keeping their heads up in a very dark place, if you know what I mean, and refuse to go out and make the point: the other party is robbing the people blind and running up the kind of debt for us as a nation that almost crippled Greece a few years ago.  Trump once declared himself the "king of debt" as if going bankrupt and leaving others holding the bag is some kind of virtue.  Why don't you make that point, Democrats?  And there're lots more where those came from.


Your friend,

Mike