QUACKERY!

A lame duck can still quack. But our President can’t, uh, duck dozing in the Oval! Only when he nods off can it be said that We The People are safe — for the moment. Once he’s awake , it’s deport and extort.

The construction of a huge glittery ballroom, think indoor football field, adjacent to the White House, is just another example of his outlandish egocentricity, tastelessness and abject neediness. A list of donors finally made public is no surprise. It’s the usual cabal of wing-nuts who either have business before the federal government, or who would like to, or who cavil to remain in Trump’s favor.

Is the nap simply a reaction to the tedium of a Cabinet meeting, an all-hands-on-deck exercise in overt, lickspittle praise of the Don? He needs both the adulation and the nap or has grown weary of possible war crimes on the high seas, deporting families and minors without their families, while suing everybody who offends him, ripping off the presidency — and tagging “affordability” “a Democrat (sic) scam”.

As he naps, perhaps he dreams of the gains of office, both licit and otherwise — estimated at north of $3.4 billion in David D. Kirkpatrick’s long New Yorker piece in the August 11, 2025 issue. Trump is so completely corrupt and totally shameless that you have to embrace the audacity! He, his sons and a hustle of appointed cronies, take a piece of the action wherever and whenever possible; many of the high-ranking people Trump has appointed are personally benefitting from their federal service; thank God, Trump and Musk — who sucks on the federal spigot — are all kissy-face again. Oh my.

The tit for tat selling of pardons, from which Trump personally benefits, is medievally rooted in “simony”, the act of buying and selling of the ecclesiastical offices and pardons -- yes pardons -- that enriched many Popes. He has been an apt Papal pupil except maybe for the celibacy thing that came along a few millennia later.

When he awakes, rubs his eyes and ends the Cabinet session, he has to confront Democrats intent on taking back the Congress next November. Ok, never bet against the Dems f-ing up. Still, there are fissures — growing in width and depth —  in the GOP hair-pulling over the release of the Epstein files. Conservative Republican stalwart Marjorie Taylor Greene of GA, has broken with Trump over it. She’s still nuts; hope she stays in the public eye and that her adult children don’t lose their Medicaid.

Trump Republicans in both Houses are feeling the wrath of their constituents: inflation is up and the Trump voters along with the rest of us, know it. Jobless claims are slowly growing; Trump’s xenophobia and racism have resulted in the near collapse of the immigrant labor force on which farms and factories depend. People are working two and three jobs just to get by. IDS, inflation-denial syndrome — is apparently lodged in Trump’s brain — except you know he’s lying because his lips are moving. His cockamamie b.s. about there-is-no-inflation confirms how out of touch he is, awake or asleep. His approval rating continues to sink.

Trump does not appear well to the eye; he is a multi-billionaire in a floppy suit that looks like it's off the rack somewhere store alterations weren’t available. The tie hangs below his pupik; he is obese, edematous and bent, as he slowly negotiates the stairs of Air Force One, clearly fearful of Bidening on the tarmac. His red, white and blue look is emulated by the pale, male and stale clutch around him in the Oval Office. It’s like a convention of seed-sellers in the mid-1950s.

Wake up Mr. President!