Let me read you the MAGA checklist. 👇🏼
We were going to release the Epstein files.
Until Trump showed up in the Epstein files. So we bombed people to distract from them.
We bombed a school in Iran with young kids in it.
We built Alligator Alcatraz — a sewage-backed penitentiary for immigrants in Florida — and laughed about it on camera.
We kidnapped children and didn't know where we were sending them.
We manipulated the markets. Repeatedly.
We accepted a $400 million jet as a bribe and kept it after leaving office.
We excoriated allies who stood with us for over a century.
Threatened to attack a NATO country. Treated Canada like an enemy.
We came after the First, Fourth, Fifth, and Fourteenth Amendment rights of American citizens.
Every price in America went up because of the tariffs.
Then came the tax bill - if you make a million dollars or more — $7,000 benefit.
If you make $50,000 or less — we're taking $500 away from you.
But here's what's finally moving the needle: Gas prices.
It turns out the red line for MAGA is $8 a gallon going into the 250th birthday of America.
Nobody wants to grill hot dogs and explain to their kids why it costs $120 to fill the tank.
The approval ratings are going into the gutter.
And he doesn't care.
That's the part that should terrify everyone.
I used to wonder how it was possible that Trump could have won in 2016, and then again in 2024, given how emotionally toxic and depraved he is.
I don’t wonder anymore. I think he won for that exact reason. Because he carried at least one broken shard to reflect the broken shards in millions of others.
If you’re a racist, you found your guy. If you’re a misogynist, you found your guy. If money is your only religion, you found your guy. If your heart is armored shut, you found your guy. If you mock the disabled, you found your guy. If intelligence makes you insecure, you found your guy. If you’re a sexual predator, you found your guy. If you trade in humiliation and conspiracy and filth, you found your guy.
If you’ve never done a single hour of emotional inventory, you found your guy. If you cheat, stiff contractors, bankrupt your obligations, and call it savvy, you found your guy. If you lie as easily as you breathe, you found your guy. If cruelty feels like strength, you found your guy. If white grievance is your comfort food, you found your guy. If your ego is a black hole no title can fill, you found your guy. If warmongering fuels your ego, you found your guy, If empathy feels like weakness and dominance feels like oxygen, you found your guy.
If he’d only carried one or two of these pathologies, he might have been dismissed as just another loud, damaged man. But he carried a buffet of them. That was the appeal. Millions could locate themselves somewhere in the wreckage. They didn’t have to agree with all of it. They just had to recognize a piece of themselves in it.
It was never really about him. It was about the validation. The absolution. The permission. He didn’t invent the resentment; he amplified it. He didn’t create the cruelty; he normalized it. He gave millions the intoxicating relief of hearing their ugliest impulses echoed back at rally volume.
Trump is a symptom. The deeper illness is collective. If there’s one sentence that defines his power, it’s this: “He says the things I’m thinking.”
And that’s the part that should chill us.
Because what does it say about us that so many were thinking those things? That tens of millions of Americans harbored resentments so deep, so seething, that they were simply waiting for a demagogue to baptize them as virtue? That after decades of supposed progress on race, gender, and equality, so many white men felt so threatened, so displaced, so furious, that cruelty became a political platform?
Maybe we were living in a fool’s paradise, mistaking silence for healing, politeness for progress.
Now the mask is off. Now we know.
And knowing is a far more dangerous place to stand.
– Michael Jochum, Not Just a Drummer: Reflections on Art, Politics, Dogs, and the Human Condition.
decades from now, finding a red 'Make America Great Again' hat in your dead relative's stuff will be like finding an old KKK hood and some Nazi memorabilia
@MeghanMcCain In your white privilege out of touch echo chamber… yes it’s uncool, but on the flip side the world views Trump loving MAGA Republicans as dumb bigots blindly supporting a fascist, rapist president in a cult
#WillSmith bitch slapping #ChrisRock at the #Oscars Damn that made me so uncomfortable. Will Smith was triggered by a tasteless joke about his wife’s hair, but that reaction was uncalled for 😭 Do Better Will
Never laughed so hard in my life
Skydiving simulator = 1, Lo = 0 💀 @stylelvr
(Apple podcasts having issues - find on Spotify!!):
https://t.co/fCw5wWG2l2
Bernie Sanders threw his meme on a sweatshirt. Charged $45 for it. Sold out immediately in all sizes. Then donated 100% of the proceeds to Meals on Wheels Vermont.
Sorry to have to provide the reality check again, but when they poll registered voters in the swing states, Biden & Trump are in a virtual tie. In Minn. it’s 47-47. In Michigan, where Biden had a big lead, Trump has closed the gap to 4pts. Are u ready for a Trump victory? ACT NOW
George Carlin was right in the 70's, right in the 80's, right in the 90's, right in the 00's, and from the grave, he's more right today than ever.
"The reason they call it the American Dream is because you have to be asleep to believe it."
#AmericaWakeUp