The Tide Might Be Turning Against Donald

This has not been a good week for the President.

by Bob Cesca

WASHINGTON, DC – Not since the Civil War has America been this divided and this unstable, teetering on the edge of chaos due to an ungainly tyrant in the White House and his ongoing effort to nuke democracy and to manufacture artificial reality as a means of backstopping his corruption and disguising his worsening incompetence. But at the risk of appearing insane, I believe there’s reason for cautious optimism.

Democrats are Winning the Government Shutdown
Literally every reputable poll shows most American voters blame Donald and the Republicans for the shutdown. The latest Yougov poll shows a plurality of 39 percent say Donald is to blame, while 52 percent disapprove of how he’s handling the standoff. This indicates the Democratic Party’s messaging, with its focus on extending health insurance subsidies, is actually working. Meantime, the Kaiser Family Foundation poll shows that 78 percent of Americans want Congress to extend the subsidies. Even Marjorie Taylor Greene is breaking from her party on this.

Donald’s Attempted Invasion of Oregon was Blocked

We’ve known for a while now that Donald is being manipulated by his staff and cabinet. There’s no better indication of this than his phony-balony gibberish about “war-ravaged” Portland, Oregon.

Clearly, Stephen Miller and the other neo-fascists surrounding Donald are showing him either old footage of Portland, or footage of unrest in other parts of the world and telling him that it’s happening right now. During an anti-antifa (pro-fa? pro-fascist?) roundtable at the White House this week, Donald said, “I don’t know what could be worse than Portland. You don’t even have stores anymore. They don’t even put glass up. They put plywood on their windows.” None of that is true, but he wants his sucker fanboys to believe it is.

Nevertheless, a federal judge blocked Donald’s tyrannical deployment of National Guard to Portland for a second time. Worth noting that Judge Karin J. Immergut was appointed by Donald. The New Republic:

Interestingly, the ruling cited Trump’s own tweet, which described Portland as “war ravaged,” in determining that he does not have unlimited authority to wildly invent facts on the ground wholesale as a pretext to justify any use of the military he wants. “The President’s determination was simply untethered to the facts,” this Trump-appointed judge declared. “This is a nation of Constitutional law, not martial law.”

Bad News for Ghislaine Maxwell – and Donald Trump

This week, the increasingly janky U.S. Supreme Court finally got one right, refusing to hear Maxwell’s appeal, upholding her conviction on sex trafficking. After the decision was reported, CNN’s Kaitlan Collins asked the president: “Why would she be a candidate for clemency?”

DONALD: “I don’t know. I may not have to speak to the DOJ. I’ll look at it. I have a lot of people have asked me for pardons. I call them— Puff Daddy has asked me for a pardon.”

COLLINS: “But she was convicted of child sex trafficking,”

DONALD: “Yeah, I mean, I’m going to have to take a look at it. I have to ask DOJ. I didn’t know they rejected it. I didn’t know she was even asking for it, frankly.”

Wrong, Donald, wrong. The correct answer was: “I don’t pardon convicted sex traffickers.”

Trump always makes things worse for Trump.

The Administration Flipflopped on Funds to New York

The White House and Homeland Security announced last week that it would withhold $187 million in counterterrorism funds to New York City. After bipartisan pushback, the administration reversed its decision and restored the fund, but not after looking completely imbecilic given the fact that New York and, well, do we even need to mention 9/11?

TACO Donald Caved Again

You might recall how Erika McEntarfer, the commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, was fired because her agency reported the truth – bad news about job losses in Donald’s economy – back in August.

A couple weeks later, Donald nominated her replacement: Project 2025 author E.J. Antoni of the Heritage Foundation. Antoni clearly wasn’t vetted because it turns out he posted some pretty awful and misogynistic things on social media. CNN’s KFile reported:

Antoni operated a since-deleted Twitter account that featured sexually degrading attacks on Kamala Harris, derogatory remarks about gay people, conspiracy theories, and crude insults aimed at critics of President Donald Trump.

After the CNN report dropped, that was the end of Antoni’s nomination, thus proving that, yes, Donald will cave when enough pressure is applied. This should be a source of encouragement for those of us who are actively defending democracy. He’s not invincible. He can be pushed, and he’s absolutely capable of backing down.

From the Slipped-Through-the-Cracks Folder

Just before the government shutdown, RFK Jr.’s FDA somehow managed to approve a generic form of the abortion pill mifepristone, despite Kennedy’s mission to roll back access to the medication. I’m not sure how this eked out of the Trump government, but fine. We’ll take the win.

It’s Still Denali National Park

The other day, I was reading a news story that happened to mention “Denali National Park.” I paused when I read those words because I thought Donald announced he was changing the name of the park back to its original “Mount McKinley National Park.” So, I popped over to the official NPS website for the park and, as a National Parks supporter, I was thrilled to see the name Denali still exists.

Unlike the former Rose Garden, or the “Gulf of America”, or the “Department of War”, the archaic original name of the park doesn’t look like it’ll be a thing again. Donald might not get to smear his stink on this one after all.

Hopefully, there will be many more reasons to feel as though we’ve turned a corner. The regime is overreaching and people are taking notice. Don’t forget: “Tyranny requires constant effort. It breaks, it leaks. Authority is brittle. Oppression is the mask of fear. Remember that.”

And, of course, whenever tyranny is losing, democracy is winning.

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