Hard to believe, but on June 16th, it will be ten years since Donald J. Trump rolled down that golden escalator in Trump Tower to announce his candidacy for US president, setting in motion a disruption in our political life as a nation the likes of which we’ve never seen before (to use one of Trump’s favorite catch phrases). As always, the moment encapsulates the future, crystalizing latent potential into manifestation.
Donald J. Trump’s second administration, taking power at noon on 20 January 2025 (by constitutional fiat, whenever the oath itself is taken), is likely to be a replay of the first term, only more so. In 2017 when he first assumed office, Trump was a newbie novice to the Washington scene; he appointed persons with experience and relative competence to help him run the government, individuals who had a respect for its institutions and norms, who served as guardrails on Trump’s wilder, wackier impulses.
Do you smell what I smell? That whiff of decay? That odor of rot? Is that America? Or just Puerto Rico? Or maybe, just maybe, it’s not a garbage smell at all – maybe it’s the cloyingly sweet smell of Democratic victory.
Donald Trump is making his closing argument to his countrymen in the final days of the campaign, promoting why he should be president again, and the best he can come up with is a plea for better waste management? That’s the level we’ve sunk to, with the former squatter at the White House defining the nation he wants to lead as “a garbage can for the rest of the world” at his rally in Austin, Texas on October 25th. Two days later, at a rally in New York’s Madison Square Garden that evoked memories of a Nazi rally held there in 1939, Trump’s opening act, a “comedian” named Tony Hinchcliffe, joked about a “floating island of garbage,” called “Puerto Rico,” in a performance that was vetted by the campaign beforehand, and hasn’t been disavowed by Trump since.
“As a man soweth, so shall he reap.” – Galatians 6:7
Former US president Donald Trump, foremost promoter of political violence in America, was injured in an unsuccessful assassination attempt during a campaign rally in Butler, PA on Saturday, 13 July 2024. Nicked in the ear and bloodied by a shooter some 150 yards away, Secret Service agents quickly swarmed on the 2024 GOP presidential nominee, covering him bodily until word came that the shooter was down. At that point Trump was taken to an armed vehicle and whisked from the scene. Several attendees were injured, and one man died, as well as the shooter.
At last! Some level of accountability for the biggest criminal scofflaw ever to infest the Oval Office. Fond of setting records, on 30 May 2024 Donald J. Trump entered the history books yet again, as the only former US President, and presumptive GOP nominee, to be convicted of a felony. And not just one – the jury returned a unanimous guilty verdict on each of the 34 criminal counts against him.
Has anyone else noticed that Donald Trump’s skin tone has become, if possible, even more orange than typical? And his pronouncements stranger and stranger? Like confusing fellow GOP nomination contender Nikki Haley with former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi in the January 6th insurrection, opining that Joe Biden will get us into World War II, and repeatedly asserting that he beat Barack Obama in 2016?
