Careless people

Will we soon be asking of Trump's staff: What did they know, and when did they know it?

Have you noticed most of Trump’s accusations are really about himself?

There are countless examples from the first year of his second term, but none more obvious — and more chilling — than his obsession with Joe Biden’s cognitive decline.

“He projects like mad,” former treasury secretary Robert Reich said Thursday, “so his accusations are always windows onto what he’s worrying that others will discover about himself.”

It’s painfully obvious that the person who is supposed to be the leader of the free world can’t complete a thought.

He’s been obsessed with owning Greenland but doesn’t seem to know the difference between Greenland and Iceland (perhaps because Greenland is largely ice and Iceland is somewhat green).

“They’re not there for us on Iceland …” he said at Davos, speaking about Greenland this week. “Our stock market took the first dip yesterday because of Iceland. So Iceland has already cost us a lot of money.”

A map posted on the president’s Truth Social account demonstrating Trump’s vision of US ownership of Canada and Greenland.

Lord Patten, a former senior figure in Britain’s Conservative Party, told New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof: “You’re listening to those rambling mendacities of the demented leader of the free world.”

The U.S. news media went ballistic in 2024 after Biden stumbled at a presidential debate, though the country was thriving and continued running just fine through Biden’s term.

So where’s the outrage now? Where’s the concern about the implications that the world’s most powerful narcissist is losing his mind? When Trump claims he’s halted eight wars, where are the reporters asking him to name those wars?

Where is Jake Tapper’s book on Trump’s cognitive decline? The CNN anchor pilloried Biden in his 2025 book, Original Sin: President Biden’s Decline, Its Cover-up, and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again. Is he afraid of going after Trump?

And where are the Democratic leaders, especially those who led the country or sought to do so? Why aren’t we hearing from Kamala Harris? From Barack Obama?

Some in Congress express outrage, but Democrats need to unite and act like a true opposition party. They need dynamic, charismatic leaders.

A conspiracy to shield the president?

Trump went after Biden last June saying Biden was so incapacitated during his presidency that others had been making decisions for him.

The American public, Trump said, had been “purposefully shielded from discovering who wielded the executive power.” He called it a “conspiracy” and said it “marks one of the most dangerous and concerning scandals in American history.”

First question: Who is calling the shots in this administration?

Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who’ll do anything for power and parrots Trump’s lines like a ventriloquist’s dummy?

Stephen Miller, a descendant of Holocaust survivors who would have been right at home as one of Hitler’s henchmen?

JD Vance who said Renee Good deserved to die (“a tragedy of her own making”)? Vance is as sinister and heartless as Trump but better able to conceal his fascist inclinations.

Pete Hegseth who delights in blasting boats out of the water without proof they’re smuggling drugs?

Kristi Noem who crowed about shooting her dog to death and gets face time with Trump because he thinks she’s hot? Noem is siccing ICE on innocent immigrants, tearing apart families, many of whom are legal residents of the U.S.

An AI image posted by Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth on X, celebrating the killing of people he claims are drug-runners.

Second question: Will these sycophants be held accountable for the “conspiracy” (Trump’s word) of shielding the president’s ineptitude and covering up who is making decisions and wielding power?

25th Amendment not the answer

We’re living through a nightmare, and we’re only a quarter of the way through it. Expelling Trump would give us Vance who could be even worse, and who is smooth enough to possibly win in 2028, especially as an incumbent.

The president has wrecked so much, from the essential life-saving work or USAID to the Environmental Protection Agency, from the State Department to the CDC.

He’s on the verge of shattering the NATO alliance that has protected North America and Europe for more than 75 years. His comments have led Canada to plan a response to a potential U.S. military invasion.

There’s long been speculation that Trump is aligned with Vladimir Putin, and his behavior certainly supports that hypothesis.

“What Putin covets far more than Greenland is the destruction of NATO, which Trump may now deliver,” Kristof wrote in his Jan. 21 column.

Distract and divert

The nonsense about Greenland shifts attention away from “Russia’s barbaric bombing of Ukraine and the need to support Ukrainians,” Kristof wrote. “Indeed, if Trump were systematically trying to shore up the Kremlin and undermine the United States’ position in the world, he could hardly do better than he has over the last year.”

Who knows if Trump has a deal with Putin? What we do know is he’s fond of dictators, strongmen who have the power to get their way.

F. Scott Fitzgerald saw the writing on the wall a century ago in his novel about the ultra-rich. He wouldn’t have been surprised by Trump’s destruction of the White House’s East Wing.

The wreckage Trump will leave behind will take decades to clean up; much of it can never be repaired.

“They were careless people, Tom and Daisy,” Fitzgerald writes in The Great Gatsby, published in 1925.

“They smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness, or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made.”