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You may have noticed that MAGA has been in the midst of a Chernobyl-style meltdown over the past week.

It comes after Sen. Jon Ossoff (D-Ga.) pointed out the very simple fact that Dear Leader Donald Trump is more interested in enriching himself, covering the White House in tacky gold decor and surrounding himself with blind sycophants than actually doing his job.

“The president sleeps through his meetings. He golfs and trades stocks. He doesn’t want to do the job,” the Georgia Democrat said during a recent campaign rally. “He wants to build his ballroom and travel with Natalie on their apparently defenseless flying palace gifted by the emir of Qatar.”

It was the “travel with Natalie” part of Ossoff’s remarks that sent MAGA into a tantrum that even my three-year-old son would find excessive.

How dare the Senator from Georgia insinuate that there’s anything untoward about the 80-year-old president’s attached-at-the-hip relationship with his 35-year-old aide?

Well, about that.

The Daily Beast obtained a pair of Natalie Harp’s intimate letters to Trump, and they make it clear that Jon Ossoff was underselling — by a mile — the closeness of their relationship.

In one, Harp tells Trump that he is “all that matters” to her and calls him her “Guardian and Protector.”

She tells him that the thought of being “lowered” in his eyes terrifies her because she never wants to bring him “anything but joy.”

In another, Harp admits to envying women whose only job appears to be talking to Trump and looking pretty, before declaring: “I want that job!!”

To put an exclamation point on the gag-worthy nature of these notes, Harp signs one of them: “With all my heart, Natalie.”

If you can stomach it, check out one of the full letters below:

I mentioned this in my previous piece about MAGA’s Jon Ossoff meltdown, but it bears repeating.

Just imagine, for a moment, that in 2014 The Wall Street Journal revealed intimate letters written by a 20-year-old staffer to President Barack Obama.

Now picture this same staffer — the one writing Obama letters about how he is “all that matters” to her — attached to his hip every waking moment of the damn day. In one instance, that aide even climbed into the trunk of an SUV so she could be close to him.

Call me crazy, but the same shameless MAGA apologists who whined about a tan suit would probably be raising one or two questions.

So yes, Republicans know how to generate fake outrage — but they’re not so good at hiding the “fake” part. And now that we’re learning more about Trump’s relationship with Harp, it’s becoming increasingly obvious why Ossoff’s remarks struck such a nerve.

He drew attention to something Republicans would’ve preferred the rest of us not look at too closely, to be sure. But there’s clearly something else behind the meltdown.

In the span of a few seconds, Ossoff managed to get under Trump’s skin, control the media narrative and send the entire MAGA ecosystem into a frenzy that Republicans had no idea how to handle.

Then, when MAGA clutched its pearls and demanded he apologize, Ossoff refused to back down.

That should scare the hell out of them.

Jon Ossoff may or may not run for president in 2028, but Republicans just got a pretty good glimpse of what it might look like if he does.

With all my heart,
Sean

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Republicans are in an all-out panic over the U.S. Senate race in Ohio between Democrat Sherrod Brown and Republican Jon Husted — and they’re blaming it on data centers.

In a newly leaked memo from the National Republican Senatorial Committee, the GOP not only admits that the race is a “dead heat,” but quite literally begs Big Tech companies to save their candidate.

“More than any other thing in this race, data centers are the anchor hanging around Husted’s neck,” the memo reads. “Campaigns or party committees can not fix the toxic brand of an entire segment of the economy.”

“The companies that need these projects built have to fix how Ohioans see them: who benefits, who pays, and why a community should want one,” it continues.

The committee also warns of broader national consequences for Republicans.

“If Husted loses because of data centers, the industry will be blamed, and elected officials or other parties will learn a cautionary lesson,” the memo reads.

Here’s the full panic memo:

In short: The GOP’s commitment to data centers, despite public opposition, is hurting them politically.

Instead of changing course and listening to communities that oppose these projects, Republicans seemingly want Big Tech to launch a massive PR campaign to convince voters that data centers are their friends.

But I’m not sure that a “we’re right, you’re wrong” pro-data centers closing message is the smart idea they think it is.

Husted has already spent much of his campaign chastising voters for being lazy and not working hard enough — all while he’s stood by as Trump slashes health care, wreaks havoc with his tariff policies and drives up prices with his war of choice in Iran.

And that’s without mentioning the fact that Husted took over $116,000 in donations from a Jeffrey Epstein co-conspirator before he voted to block the release of the Epstein files last year.

So a two-month, Big Tech-funded lecture about the benefits of data centers meant to boost Husted might not be the slick strategy the GOP thinks it is. If anything, it’s just the latest example of how Husted is completely owned by the corporate class.

Ultimately, Republicans are starting to see the writing on the wall. Ohio wasn’t even close to a swing state in the last three presidential elections, and now they’re openly begging for outside help to save their Senate seat this time around.

If this is what it looks like right now in the Buckeye State — where Donald Trump won by 11 points in 2024 — then they’re probably in trouble in a lot more places than Ohio.

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Depending on the day, the last decade of American politics has typically ranged from a brutal slog to an outright nightmare.

Once in a while, though, we get something to pump our fist over — a moment of pure political catharsis — that gives us a chance to forget that we’re living in one of the worst timelines imaginable.

At a campaign rally in Atlanta over the weekend, Sen. Jon Ossoff (D-Ga.) gave us just that, and it was nothing short of beautiful.

“While the sailors on the Lincoln fight [Trump’s] war, while he fruitlessly drains our munitions and oil reserves, the president sleeps through his meetings,” Ossoff said. “He golfs and trades stocks. He doesn’t want to do the job. He wants to build his ballroom and travel with Natalie on their apparently defenseless flying palace gifted by the emir of Qatar.”

10/10. Not a single damn note.

Over the course of his Senate reelection bid, Ossoff has sort of perfected the art of these brutal takedowns. He has repeatedly shown Democrats that you can take on MAGA with clarity and a no-punches-pulled approach this moment deserves — and you can do it while still being incredibly popular in a key battleground state.

The speech itself was masterful, as we’ve come to expect from Ossoff. What made it even better was how quickly — and how magnificently — MAGA detonated in the days that followed.

Not only are the White House and its dead-enders in the midst of a Chernobyl-style meltdown, but they’re at such a loss for how to response that they’re demanding — wait for it — an apology from Ossoff for being too mean. They’re even accusing him of being a sexist.

Pause for laughter.

Let’s set aside the hall-of-fame level of hypocrisy it takes for Trump supporters to whine out loud about civility and sexism after supporting a vulgar, amoral womanizer for a decade.

That’s ludicrous enough.

When you cut past the right-wing noise, it’s pretty clear that what Ossoff said is neither inappropriate nor sexist.

He simply stated a fact.

Donald Trump, 80, can’t seem to go anywhere without his 35-year-old emotional support “aide” — Natalie Harp — whose only job is apparently to feed him flattering news and leave cringe love notes around the office so he feels like a big boy.

One of the notes she left for Trump read, “You are all that matters to me.”

Can you, for a second, imagine if Barack Obama was getting notes like that from a female staffer? There would be weeks of outrage on Fox News. Impeachment proceedings would’ve started within minutes.

Maggie Haberman, the New York Times reporter who shed light on those creepy notes in her new book, said that Harp is to Trump what a pacifier is to a crying baby.

“She is sort of his binky, for lack of a better way of putting it — his comfort blanket,” Haberman said in an appearance on MSNOW.

So no, Ossoff’s remarks were completely on point, both politically and factually.

Trump is, indeed, a failed president who is increasingly hiding in his safe space with an aide who shelters him from reality by shoveling him a steady diet of propaganda and sweet nothings about what a great man he is — all while the world crumbles.

Deep down, MAGA isn’t really offended by Ossoff’s comments. Even they must know how hollow their pearl clutching looks to the rest of us.

They have no interest in making our politics more civil, and they certainly don’t care when politicians make sexist comments — even though there wasn’t anything sexist or out of line about Ossoff’s remarks.

What they are is scared.

They’re scared of a Democrat who’s figured out how to get under Trump’s skin and take control of the narrative.

They’re scared of a damn good senator who takes the fight directly to this dangerous political movement, doesn’t flinch when they manufacture outrage and, perhaps most importantly, is doing it all while running laps around Republicans in a state Trump won just two years ago.

2028 is just around the corner, and Jon Ossoff already has MAGA shaking in its boots.

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The battle within the Democratic Party between so-called moderates and progressives is one that’s been raging for as long as I can remember.

Thanks to recent primaries in Michigan and Wisconsin — along with the corporate media’s unquenching thirst for Democratic infighting — it’s front and center again.

In Michigan, progressive Abdul El-Sayed narrowly defeated establishment-backed Haley Stevens for the Democratic Senate nomination. A week later in Wisconsin, more moderate David Crowley upset democratic socialist Francesca Hong in the race for governor.

These are different states with different candidates that yielded different outcomes in very close elections, but the response from both factions of the party needs to be the same: Fight like hell for your candidate in the primary, but when voters make their choice, fight like hell for the Democrat who won.

The stakes are too damn high for any other approach.

Unity Isn’t A One-Way Street

That rule about unity has to apply equally to both wings of the Democratic Party.

Progressives who supported Hong in Wisconsin need to get behind Crowley, and moderates who voted for Stevens in Michigan should fight like hell to elect El-Sayed.

The same goes for every Democratic race across the country where heated primaries have left behind some hard feelings.

Nobody gets to demand party unity when their candidate wins and then suddenly take their ball and go home when their candidate loses. If we’re serious about saving our country, that can’t be how this works.

Progressives who supported Hong don’t have to pretend Crowley was their first choice or abandon the issues that drew them to her campaign. They can keep pushing him on data centers, child care, workers’ rights, housing and every other priority they believe deserves more attention.

What they can’t do is pretend that helping a Trump-backed election denier become governor would move Wisconsin one inch closer to any of their progressive goals.

The same is true for moderates who supported Stevens in Michigan and now say they have reservations about El-Sayed.

Fine. Have your reservations. Disagree with him on some of his policies or his general approach to politics. Keep making the case for a broader Democratic coalition.

But don’t for one minute pretend that Mike Rogers in the United States Senate would be an acceptable consequence of your disappointment, because he wouldn’t be.

All he would do is give Donald Trump another reliable “yes” vote in the Senate to rubber stamp an unpopular agenda and confirm dangerous Supreme Court nominees.

Yes, there are real differences within the Democratic Party, but they’re small potatoes compared to the lasting damage the MAGA movement has done to this country — and will continue to do if we allow it to keep control of Congress.

So let’s not make this more difficult than it has to be. A political party is a coalition, not a fan club.

Unlike the cult that makes up the Trump-controlled GOP, Democrats have a large tent that includes progressives, moderates, democratic socialists, union households, suburban voters, young activists, Black voters, Latino voters and millions of folks who don’t fit neatly into some ideological box.

We aren’t going to agree on everything, and we shouldn’t want to.

The point of a primary is to have substantive arguments and let Democratic voters decide which direction to take the party in November. The point of a general election in this era of American politics is to defeat MAGA.

If we can’t make that transition without tearing ourselves apart every time, we’re going to keep losing to people who unflinchingly fall in line behind Donald Trump.

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The Tragic Consequences Of Sitting On The Sidelines

In 2016, Republicans spent the presidential primary calling Trump a fraud, a con man and a danger to the country. The late Sen. Lindsey Graham even said the GOP deserved to be “destroyed” if it made Trump the party’s standard-bearer.

Then they all lined up behind Trump like good soldiers the moment he became their nominee.

Those same cowards have watched him corrupt the presidency, try to overturn an election, incite a violent attack on the Capitol and become a convicted felon — and they still helped put him back in charge a second time.

No, Democrats and progressives don’t need to imitate that cowardice or surrender their principles. But we shouldn’t forget what Republicans never have: Elections determine who has power, and the people who win will use it pretty ruthlessly.

We learned that lesson the hardest way possible in the 2016 presidential election.

Too many voters decided Hillary Clinton wasn’t progressive enough, inspiring enough or sufficiently different from Trump to deserve their support. Some voted for Jill Stein or other third-party candidates, some stayed home and some spent the final months of the campaign attacking Clinton with more pizzazz than they ever showed for stopping Trump.

I have no interest in relitigating every vote from ten years ago, but the idea that Clinton and Trump were basically interchangeable was always self-indulgent nonsense, and the country has paid for it ever since.

And the irony is that those who’ve suffered the most over the past decade were the very communities progressives claim to care most about.

In Trump’s first term, we got immigrant children ripped from their parents, a Muslim ban, two impeachments, an economic collapse, an insurrection and a president who tried to overturn an election he lost.

Now, we’re getting shameless corruption, ICE killings, reckless wars, no-bid vanity projects, cronies selling access and a government run for wealthy donors, corporate interests and the Trump family itself.

Hanging over it all, of course, is the Trump Supreme Court that the (still-alive?) Mitch McConnell helped him build, which has killed Roe v. Wade, weakened voting rights, empowered corporations and given this president an astonishing degree of immunity from criminal prosecution.

So whatever lesson some angry progressives thought they were teaching establishment Democrats in 2016, MAGA extremists were the only ones who benefited — and the consequences will last for a generation.

That was a catastrophic failure to understand the stakes, and we can’t afford to make the same mistake again.

The 2026 election is our chance to end Trump’s unchecked grip on the federal government, put the brakes on his agenda and finally force this administration to answer for what it’s done.

Put The Primary Behind Us And Show Up

This is why I have very little patience for anyone in either faction of the Democratic Party who threatens to jump ship or stay home when a primary doesn’t go their way.

Moderates don’t get to lecture progressives about electability and then refuse to support a progressive who earned the Democratic nomination. Progressives don’t get to preach about a working-class agenda and then help elect a Republican whose platform is built around serving the wealthy.

Unity can’t be a one-way obligation that applies only to the people on the other side of an internal party fight.

There will be plenty of time to keep arguing about the future of the Democratic Party. It’s sort of our favorite hobby. And we should argue about it.

The party needs more fight, a stronger economic message and a much clearer commitment to working people. It also needs candidates willing to challenge corporate power and leaders who understand that defending democracy requires more than warning people that Republicans are worse.

Bu that work becomes an impossible task with MAGA in power.

Progressives can’t pass universal health care, protect workers or confront climate change with MAGA running Congress. Moderates can’t protect democratic institutions, preserve alliances or restore basic competence while Trump and his loyalists are tearing the government apart.

Every piece of this coalition needs the votes of the other parts in order to get this agenda off the ground

So, yes, fight in the primary. Spend months making the case that your candidate is better, your ideas are stronger and your side represents the future of the party. Get angry, organize and try to win.

Then accept the result.

If the progressive wins, moderates need to show up. If the moderate wins, progressives need to show up. Not because every Democrat is perfect, but because MAGA is a unique, ongoing threat to this American experiment.

It must be defeated up and down the ballot, and staying home only helps it keep power.

So let’s all resume the family argument the morning after the election. First, we have to make sure Donald Trump and his Republican enablers lose it.

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Donald Trump spent years playing a master businessman on primetime television, firing people from a fake boardroom and convincing millions of Americans that he possessed some unique gift for economic success.

The pitch has always been the same: Trump understands business. Trump understands jobs. Trump understands the economy in ways the politicians and experts simply don’t.

Well, the economic wizard just lost 23,000 jobs in July. And Labor Department revisions showed 103,000 fewer jobs in May and June than previously reported.

If you’re keeping score at home, it isn’t even close.

There wasn’t a single full month of Joe Biden’s presidency in which the U.S. economy lost jobs. Not a one.

At the end of every full month when so-called ‘Sleepy Joe’ lived at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, the economy had more jobs than it started with.

Trump, meanwhile, returned to office promising another economic “golden age.” But the only gold we’ve gotten has come in the form of those tacky ornaments Trump has plastered all over the people’s house.

Meanwhile, we’ve now reached yet another month under Donald Trump’s failed leadership where the country is shedding jobs outright — all while costs are soaring and the U.S. remains mired in a war with Iran that’s driving up gas prices.

Politically, there is something almost perfect about it.

For years, Trump mocked Biden as ‘Sleepy Joe,’ portrayed him as an incompetent corpse and insisted that only a brilliant businessman like Donald Trump could properly manage the world’s largest economy.

But it’s become pretty clear that the old guy who quietly did his job was better at this whole job-creating thing than the blowhard who spent years pretending to be an economic genius on reality TV.

Are we great yet?

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There used to be a pretty straightforward rule in American politics: If credible allegations against you became horrifying enough, eventually your own party — Democratic or Republican — decided you were more trouble than you were worth.

It didn’t necessarily mean they believed every accusation or considered you guilty of a crime. It just meant there were still some things political parties weren’t willing to spend their credibility defending.

We’ve all watched as the Republican Party has spent the last decade tearing that standard apart to accommodate Donald Trump. And, as a result, folks like Ohio Congressman Max Miller get to coast through scandals that once would’ve ended careers.

Miller faces deeply troubling allegations from his ex-wife, Emily Moreno, the daughter of Republican Sen. Bernie Moreno.

In court filings, she accuses Miller of physical abuse, including an incident in which she says he threw scalding water at her and continued spraying her after she fell to the floor. She has also accused him of threatening her with a gun and behaving dangerously around their young daughter.

Miller has denied the allegations and says he has no intention of resigning from office or dropping his reelection bid against Democratic challenger and union ironworker Brian Poindexter.

This isn’t even the first time a woman has accused Miller of abuse.

Stephanie Grisham, Trump’s former White House press secretary and Miller’s ex-girlfriend, previously accused him of physically abusing her during their relationship. Miller denied that allegation, sued Grisham for defamation and later dropped the lawsuit after the two reached a confidential settlement.

Following the latest allegations against Miller, the House Ethics Committee opened an investigation examining claims of domestic violence, child endangerment and drug use.

At some point, you’d think shame would kick in and he’d step aside — if not to salvage some fraction of dignity for himself, then at least to protect his family. But in a party led by the world’s most famous womanizer, Miller sees a more appealing option: doubling down.

Why leave when Donald Trump never did?

During an interview with CNN this week, Miller even compared his ordeal to what Trump endured during the 2016 campaign after the release of the Access Hollywood tape.

That comparison says more about today’s Republican Party than Miller probably intended.

Trump survived scandals that would’ve ended the careers of countless politicians before him, but the lesson MAGA Republicans learned wasn’t merely that Trump was unusually resilient. It was that refusing to be shamed for your sleazy and indefensible behavior could itself become a political strategy.

You don’t have to persuade everyone that every accusation is false. Just deny it, discredit the accuser, blame the media, question the investigation and convince your supporters that you’re the one being persecuted.

Most importantly, don’t leave.

Max Miller has clearly been paying attention.

Even Ohio’s MAGA Senator Has Had Enough

Ohio Sen. Bernie Moreno isn’t some Never Trumper or endangered moderate desperately trying to distance himself from MAGA. He’s been one of Trump’s staunchest allies in the U.S. Senate.

But he also happens to be Emily Moreno’s father and Max Miller’s former father-in-law.

After staying silent for far too long, Sen. Moreno finally came forward in recent days saying Miller shouldn’t continue serving in Congress, describing his behavior as “increasingly erratic and dangerous” and saying he fears for the safety of his daughter and granddaughter.

Miller responded by accusing Moreno of political motives and claiming the senator offered his daughter $5 million to leave him, which Moreno denies.

Unfortunately, that’s about where the Republican pushback against Miller ends.

House Speaker Mike Johnson, hardly a profile in courage, is standing by Miller even as the House Ethics Committee moves forward with its investigation. That’s a pathetic posture for the leader of the very chamber now investigating one of its members — but it’s also depressingly familiar.

Johnson has spent his speakership demonstrating that when moral clarity might create a political problem for the GOP, his preferred leadership style is usually to find somewhere else to look.

But Republicans don’t need to wait around for a congressional investigation to tell them what kind of man they’re dealing with. They already know more than enough about Max Miller to make a judgment about his character.

The problem is that judging Miller by his character would require the GOP to resurrect a standard they spent the last decade dismantling for Donald Trump.

And that’s where this story gets much bigger than Max Miller.

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The Standard Republicans Can’t Afford to Set

Suppose Republicans decide the allegations surrounding Miller are serious enough that he should no longer represent their party in Congress. They would then have to explain what, exactly, makes them disqualifying.

Is it the allegations involving abuse of women? Does the number of women making accusations matter? Is it a broader question about character? At what point does a politician’s personal behavior become relevant to whether voters should trust him with enormous power?

Those are perfectly reasonable questions. They’re also questions the Republican Party has spent years desperately avoiding because eventually every one of them leads back to Donald Trump.

Trump has been accused of sexual misconduct by numerous women. A civil jury found him liable for sexually abusing E. Jean Carroll, and another jury later ordered him to pay tens of millions of dollars for defaming her. Americans heard the Access Hollywood recording in which he bragged in vulgar terms about grabbing women without consent.

Republicans knew all of that and ultimately sent him to the White House twice.

So if the party decides now that the way Max Miller allegedly treated women tells us something important about his character and fitness for office, someone is going to have to explain why Donald Trump was granted a decade-long exemption from the same standard.

Republicans created this predicament themselves.

They didn’t suddenly decide one morning that character was irrelevant. They arrived there gradually, carving out whatever exception Trump required at any particular moment until there wasn’t much of a standard left.

Women accused Trump of sexual misconduct, so his supporters attacked the women. The Access Hollywood tape surfaced, so it became “locker room talk.” A jury found Trump liable for sexual abuse, so the verdict and the legal system became the problem. Criminal charges arrived, and prosecutors were corrupt. A jury convicted him, and Republicans simply expanded the conspiracy to include the jury.

Whatever happened, the conclusion remained conveniently unchanged: Donald Trump must never be disqualified.

Max Miller has every reason to notice what Republicans built for Trump and wonder whether he gets to use it too.

That’s what makes Miller’s decision to invoke Trump so revealing. If Trump could survive accusations from numerous women, that infamous “grab them by the p*ssy” tape and a civil jury finding him liable for sexual abuse without becoming unacceptable to Republicans, why should Miller assume allegations against him will suddenly cause the party to rediscover its moral backbone?

It’s an ugly question, but Republicans spent the last decade making sure politicians like Miller could ask it.

Democrats Have Scandals. That’s Not the Point.

There will inevitably be people who respond to all of this by pointing out that Democrats have scandals too.

Of course they do.

Democrats are perfectly capable of behaving terribly, and Democratic politicians are perfectly capable of desperately clinging to power.

But that’s not the argument.

The question is whether a political party is willing to impose standards on its own people even when doing so is inconvenient.

Earlier this year, Democratic Rep. Eric Swalwell faced sexual assault allegations, which he denied. Democratic officials withdrew endorsements and called for him to leave California’s gubernatorial race. He eventually suspended his campaign.

Something similar just happened in Maine after Senate candidate Graham Platner was accused of sexual assault, an allegation he denied. Prominent Democrats withdrew their support, Bernie Sanders urged him to step aside and the state party called for his withdrawal. Platner ended his campaign.

None of that establishes the truth of the allegations against either man, any more than the accusations against Miller should simply be treated as proven. It demonstrates that a political party can decide it’s no longer willing to stake its credibility on defending someone.

Republicans could make that decision about Miller. What makes it so difficult is everything they’d have to admit in the process.

They would essentially be acknowledging that allegations of abuse against women matter when we’re deciding who deserves political power — an acknowledgment they’ve deliberately avoided throughout the Trump era.

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The Moral Mess Trump Left Behind

Trump’s public response to the Miller controversy shows exactly why Republicans have such a hard time drawing this line.

Faced with disturbing allegations against a Republican congressman, Trump didn’t call on Miller to resign. He said he felt badly for Miller and hoped he could “work it out.”

Of course he did.

For years, Republicans have asked Americans to separate Trump’s character from his fitness for office. Whatever he said, whatever he did, whatever a court found, there was always some supposedly more important reason to move along.

The border mattered more. Judges mattered more. Democrats were worse. The next election was too important. There was always another justification available.

That worked for Trump because Republicans needed it to work for Trump.

The problem is that once a political party spends years arguing that personal character is essentially irrelevant to public office, it becomes difficult to limit that principle to one guy.

Other politicians notice the incentives. They see that apologizing can be interpreted as weakness while refusing to budge is celebrated as toughness. They watch investigations get repackaged as persecution and allegations transformed into evidence that the accused politician’s enemies are terrified of him.

They learn that the safest response to scandal may simply be to deny everything and wait for partisan loyalty to do the rest.

Miller appears to understand that perfectly well.

But here’s the thing: Republicans can still decide he’s gone too far. They can look at the allegations, the previous accusation, the Ethics Committee investigation and everything else surrounding him and decide that they don’t want to defend this anymore.

Nothing about their years of cowardice requires them to remain cowards forever.

But if they draw that line, they’ll have some explaining to do.

Because once Republicans acknowledge that character matters, it matters for everyone. Once they acknowledge that allegations about how a politician treats women are relevant, they’ll face questions about why they’ve never applied that standard to the leader of their party.

That’s the corner they’ve backed themselves into by abandoning one standard after another whenever Donald Trump needed an exception.

So Max Miller didn’t create that moral vacuum. He’s simply running for reelection inside it.

And if Republicans finally decide that the allegations against Miller cross a line, they’ll have to confront the question they’ve spent nearly a decade avoiding: Why was that line good enough to stop Max Miller, but never good enough to stop Donald Trump?

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For years, Ohio has been treated as a political afterthought.

Republicans have held Ohio’s governor’s mansion for more than 15 years. They’ve dominated the Ohio Senate for more than four decades and have controlled the Ohio House for all but two of the past 30 years. Today, they hold veto-proof supermajorities in both chambers.

That dominance convinced much of the political world that Ohio had become safely Republican. National Democrats largely looked elsewhere while Republicans built one of the country’s most durable political machines.

But something has changed.

After decades of one-party rule, more and more Ohioans seem to be asking a simple question: What the hell have we actually gotten out of it?

Too many Ohio families are working harder than ever while falling further behind. Housing costs have climbed. Health care remains out of reach for too many people. Wages haven’t kept pace with the cost of living. Farmers have been squeezed by trade policies that left them paying the price.

Meanwhile, the wealthy have only become wealthier — and more politically powerful.

But for the first time in years, Republicans in this state don’t appear to be running like a party that’s comfortably in control.

The Cook Political Report recently shifted the Ohio gubernatorial contest from “Lean Republican” to “Toss Up,” while a Siena College poll found Democrat Amy Acton and Republican Vivek Ramaswamy tied at 47%.

That may explain why the world’s richest man has decided to get involved.

According to campaign finance filings, Elon Musk contributed $5 million to a super PAC backing Ramaswamy. That's not the kind of money you spend if you're convinced the race is in the bag.

In many ways, the showdown between Acton and Ramaswamy has become a referendum on the political playbook that’s dominated Ohio for the better part of 15 years: divide working people with culture-war fights while the wealthy continue calling the shots.

It’s difficult to imagine two candidates who better embody that contrast.

On one side is Ramaswamy, a billionaire entrepreneur whose fortune came from the biotech industry before reinventing himself as one of Donald Trump’s most prominent cheerleaders.

These days, he spends much of his viewing Ohio from the window of a private jet, touching down for campaign photo ops before taking off again.

On the other is Acton, a doctor who grew up in poverty in Youngstown.

Acton moved countless times as a child. Her family lived in a basement. At one point, they even spent a winter living in a tent.

Through education, hard work and public service, she became a physician before dedicating her career to public health, eventually helping a Republican governor lead the Buckeye State’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Ohio has always admired grit, and Acton's story is built on it.

“I overcame all those challenges to become a public health doctor, public servant and problem solver, and I refuse to look the other way while people in my state can’t get ahead,” Acton told Blue Dot Bulletin.

At a moment when Ohio voters are choosing between a billionaire backed by the world’s first trillionaire and a leader who knows what it’s like to grow up wondering where her next meal would come from, this race has become about far more than who occupies the governor’s office.

It’s a test of whether Ohio is ready to turn the page after decades of one-party rule that left working families paying the price — or embrace four more years of the same political playbook that has kept the state divided.

Read my full conversation with Dr. Amy Acton below.

Many national and beltway observers still treat Ohio as a foregone conclusion for Republicans, yet recent polling shows this race is tied or even tilting your way. Why do you think so many people continue to underestimate Ohio voters — and what are they missing about this moment?

Ohio is ready for a change.

Everywhere I go in this state, I hear from folks who are working harder than ever yet they still can’t make ends meet. Ohio has put special interests and billionaires before working families in this state for far too long, leaving working Ohioans to foot the bill. Ohioans are tired of watching all of their costs rise and seeing nothing but corruption in our statehouse.

That’s why I’m running for governor—I refuse to look the other way while people in my state suffer. I’m fighting to lower costs for working families, fully fund our public schools, end corruption in our statehouse, and build an Ohio where all of us can thrive.

Looking back on your time leading Ohio’s public health response during the pandemic, what did that experience teach you about leadership under pressure — and how did it shape the governor you would be?

I’m proud of the work that I did alongside Governor DeWine during an unprecedented crisis, putting public health over politics to keep Ohioans safe. I continue to be inspired by how willing Ohioans were to lead at the local level–putting politics aside to keep their communities healthy and safe.

As governor, I will work with anyone to solve problems and make life better for Ohioans. Ohioans deserve public servants who truly want to tackle the issues of everyday life, and that will be my mission as governor.

Beyond the national headlines and political noise, what is the most urgent issue facing Ohio families that you think politicians are talking around instead of actually addressing?

The cost of living crisis is overwhelming Ohioans. While my opponent calls affordability a “buzzword,” the reality is, costs of everyday life are skyrocketing and Ohioans are struggling. That is why my number one priority is to lower costs for Ohio families.

As governor, I will fight to institute a working families tax cut, lower healthcare costs, bring property tax relief, root out waste, fraud, and abuse, and combat the soaring energy bills and child care costs that are holding families back.

This race is shaping up as a contrast between national culture-war politics and a more governing-focused approach. What’s the biggest difference in leadership style between you and your opponent, Vivek Ramaswamy, and why does that matter for Ohio right now?

Vivek Ramaswamy is an out-of-touch billionaire. Whether it’s declaring Medicaid a mistake, or flying from Cleveland to Akron on his private jet, it’s obvious that he does not understand the struggles of everyday Ohioans, and that we cannot trust him to fight for our working families. He will double down on failed scam policies that only benefit billionaires, special interests and corporations, while making life harder for everyday Ohioans.

I’m a scrappy kid from Youngstown. This is personal for me. As a child I moved countless times, lived in a basement, and even lived in a tent during the winter. I often didn’t know where my next meal would come from or if the bills would be paid. I know what it’s like to struggle. But through hard work, I overcame all those challenges to become a public health doctor, public servant and problem solver, and I refuse to look the other way while people in my state can’t get ahead.

Winning statewide in Ohio requires strong support in urban centers and meaningful engagement in rural communities. How do you plan to energize the Democratic base while also earning trust in parts of the state that often feel overlooked or written off by national Democrats?

While my opponent flies over the state in his private jet, I have been on the ground meeting with voters in every corner of the state, from our rural counties to our urban core, from small towns to our Appalachian communities.

Everywhere I go in Ohio, I hear the same thing; Ohioans want lower costs, accessible and affordable healthcare, childcare and a strong public education. That is what I’m fighting for in every corner of Ohio.

To end on a lighter note: Is there an Ohio tradition, place, or simple ritual you love the most?

As a Youngstown girl, I have to say Handel’s Ice Cream, which was founded in my hometown! On a recent visit to Youngstown, I stopped by the local Boardman location and thoroughly enjoyed a scoop of the salted caramel. As governor, it will be a priority to support economic development opportunities and small businesses in cities like Youngstown and across the state.

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A poll released Sunday by CBS News should have alarm bells ringing inside the White House and Republican campaign headquarters ahead of this year’s midterm elections.

Not only do Americans think Donald Trump is failing at the two issues that defined his 2024 campaign — improving the economy and avoiding another costly war in the Middle East — but they also recognize when he's trying to bullshit them about both.

According to the poll, 58% of Americans say Trump’s policies are making them financially worse off, while nearly 8 in 10 say his administration isn’t doing enough to lower prices.

On Iran, 65% disapprove of Trump’s handling of the conflict, and 63% believe the war is going badly for the United States.

But tucked deep in the poll is one piece of data that I believe is more politically devastating than it may seem at first glance: 60% of Americans say Trump is making the situation with Iran sound better than it really is. Only 25% believe he’s describing events as they actually are.

In other words, the man who’s built his entire life on BS and bluster has finally discovered that his greatest talent — convincing people not to believe what they're seeing — isn't working anymore.

For decades, Trump has survived one self-inflicted disaster after another by insisting they weren’t disasters at all.

Businesses failed, but he called them successes. Promises fell apart, but someone else was always to blame. When reality became inconvenient, he simply declared a different reality and counted on enough people to believe him.

And most of the time, it worked on just enough people. The strategy carried him from the business world to reality television and ultimately to the White House.

But now, the consequences of Trump’s presidency have become so obvious that most Americans have no choice but to judge him by the results instead of the rhetoric.

For a guy who’s never been able to deliver positive results for anything he’s ever touched in his life, that’s a dangerous place to be.

Trump has always believed he could talk his way out of failure, and he’s mostly been right. The evidence never seemed to matter as much as the performance. As long as enough people bought the story, he was able to survive almost anything.

This poll is the latest sign that Americans aren’t buying the story anymore.

And that’s a problem for a man who’s spent his entire life relying on the story. Because once the bullshit stops working, all that’s left are the results.

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Is there a bigger loser in American politics than Donald J. Trump?

Seriously.

Six years after losing the 2020 presidential election to Joe Biden, Trump used a nationally televised speech Thursday night to once again whine about his defeat while sowing further doubt about American elections.

There was a time when something like that would’ve been shocking from a political figure. Now it’s just pathetic.

Trump has spent his life calling anyone he dislikes a "loser." He mocks weakness. He ridicules people he considers soft. His supporters celebrate him as the ultimate alpha male — the embodiment of toughness, masculinity and strength.

Yet what could possibly be weaker than spending year after year crying about an election you lost?

At one point during his speech, Trump declared, “You can't have a great country without free and fair elections.”

On that, he’s right. Free and fair elections are the foundation of American democracy.

What Trump never says is that free and fair elections also require something else: candidates who are strong enough to accept defeat when they lose.

Donald Trump never has been.

Instead, he used his Thursday remarks to discredit an election that has been settled for nearly six years, all because he still isn't emotionally capable of admitting he lost.

As The New York Times pointed out, “It is notable that while President Trump used this speech to suggest American elections are vulnerable to being ‘rigged and stolen,’ he did not actually assert or provide any specific evidence that any vote was changed or altered in the 2020 election.”

Let’s just make this really simple: Donald Trump lost the 2020 election.

That’s it. That’s the entire story.

Americans have lived through countless campaigns. We know how this works. Sometimes your candidate wins. Sometimes your candidate loses. And when they lose, they concede, accept the outcome and let the country move forward.

Jimmy Carter lost. George H.W. Bush lost. John McCain lost. Mitt Romney lost. Hillary Clinton lost. Kamala Harris lost.

None of them enjoyed it. None of them believed the country had made the right choice. But they accepted reality because that’s what emotionally mature adults do. They didn’t invent alternate histories to soothe their egos or spend years grifting off supporters by pretending they were secretly the real winner.

Donald Trump couldn’t even muster that.

So while the shrinking number of Americans who still support Trump see a strong man, I see someone too emotionally weak to admit he lost — and willing to convince millions of Americans to reject reality instead.

The consequences of this weakness have been enormous.

A violent mob attacked the U.S. Capitol on January 6 after being told the election had been stolen. More than 140 law enforcement officers were injured defending Congress.

Election workers across the country received threats simply for doing their jobs. Trust in American elections plummeted.

And after returning to office, Trump pardoned those convicted in connection with January 6, even those who violently assaulted police officers. He even tried to establish a slush fund that would’ve compensated many of those same defendants.

Now, all these years later, the country has to sit through televised tantrums as an 80-year-old former game show host uses the presidency to undermine confidence in our elections.

All of it because he couldn’t bring himself to say two simple words: “I lost.”

That’s not strength. That’s weakness in its purest form.

The greatest irony of all, of course, is that Trump returned to the White House after winning in 2024. Most politicians would’ve viewed that as vindication. They would’ve turned the page and let that victory speak for itself.

Trump couldn’t.

Even after reclaiming the presidency, he’s still obsessed with the one election he lost.

Imagine winning the most powerful office in the world and still being haunted to the point of delusion by a defeat from six years earlier.

For all the MAGA chest-thumping about masculinity, toughness and strength, Donald Trump has spent the better part of a decade demonstrating the exact opposite.

History will remember him as a remarkably weak and pathetic man.

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According to a report published Monday by Politico, a former girlfriend of Maine Democratic Senate nominee Graham Platner accused him of entering her home without permission and forcing her to have sex despite repeatedly telling him to stop.

Republicans are predictably wasting no time trying to turn those allegations into a political weapon against Democrats.

But is this really a fight they want to have?

If anything, the Democratic response is just the latest reminder that only one major political party still believes allegations of sexual misconduct should carry political consequences.

The revelations are disturbing and disqualifying. Platner denies them, which he’s entitled to do, but that doesn’t mean political parties can’t decide they don’t want someone accused of conduct this serious representing them.

Democrats are making that decision now, just as they have repeatedly when one of their own has faced similar accusations.

Republicans, meanwhile, made their decision a decade ago — and continue to make it today — by proudly standing with Donald Trump as the leader of their party.

Democrats Didn’t Circle the Wagons

Within hours of the allegations becoming public, Democratic leaders began calling on Platner to end his Senate campaign.

The Maine Democratic Party urged him to step aside. Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer called for him to withdraw. The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee announced it would no longer support his campaign if he remained the nominee. Several Democratic elected officials quickly withdrew their endorsements.

Even Platner’s most high-profile supporter, Sen. Bernie Sanders, told him to withdraw.

Platner isn’t some obscure candidate running in a race nobody’s paying attention to. He’s the Democratic nominee in one of the most important Senate races in the country — and one of the Democrats’ best opportunities to flip a Republican-held seat and move closer to reclaiming the Senate majority.

Pushing him out this late in the campaign throws the party into a complicated and uncertain process of finding a replacement, rebuilding a statewide campaign and trying to salvage one of their best pickup opportunities — and they did it anyway.

That’s what accountability looks like.

Democrats aren’t attacking the accuser or pretending the accusations don’t matter. They’re not dismissing the story as a politically motivated “witch hunt” or insisting voters ignore everything because winning is all that matters.

Instead, they’re doing something Republicans abandoned when they chose to stand behind Donald Trump: they’re holding one of their own accountable.

This Isn’t New

Platner isn’t the first Democrat to face pressure from within his own party after allegations of serious misconduct.

Former Sen. Al Franken famously resigned from the Senate in 2018 after allegations of inappropriate conduct. Former Sen. Bob Menendez faced overwhelming calls from Democratic leaders to step down after his federal corruption conviction in 2024. Earlier this year, prominent Democrats urged former Rep. Eric Swalwell to end his California gubernatorial campaign after he was accused of rape, sexual assault and sexual harassment.

The same pattern emerged during the renewed focus on the Epstein files.

There was no widespread Democratic effort to block their release or shield former President Bill Clinton from scrutiny, even though his name appeared repeatedly in Epstein’s orbit over the years.

The instinct wasn’t to protect one of their own.

Democrats certainly haven’t handled every controversy perfectly, and reasonable people can debate individual cases.

But the broader pattern is difficult to ignore.

When members of their own party face serious misconduct allegations, Democrats have repeatedly shown they’re willing to sacrifice political advantage rather than close ranks around them.

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Republicans Made Donald Trump Their Standard-Bearer

Now compare that record with today’s Republican Party.

Donald Trump was found liable by a jury for sexually abusing and defaming E. Jean Carroll. Over the years, numerous women have accused him of sexual misconduct.

Americans heard the Access Hollywood tape, where Trump boasted about grabbing women without their consent. They watched him become the first former president convicted of felony crimes.

None of it diminished his standing within the GOP.

Republicans nominated him in 2016 after they heard him brag about sexual assault. Then they nominated him again in 2024 after he became a convicted felon.

Since he returned to the White House, they’ve done nothing but look the other way as Trump engages in some of the most brazen corruption this country has ever seen.

MAGA has built an entire political movement around a man whose sleazy and sometimes-criminal personal conduct would’ve ended the career of any other politician.

That’s why Republican outrage over Graham Platner rings hollow.

The same people demanding Democrats answer for one accused candidate continue to defend, excuse and even worship a man found liable for sexual abuse who has repeatedly been accused of sexual misconduct by numerous women.

Republicans Don’t Get to Pretend They’re the Party of Accountability

No political party is perfect, but moments like this reveal a pretty glaring difference between the Democratic and Republican parties.

When Democrats are confronted with allegations this serious against one of their own, the conversation quickly turns to accountability and whether that person should continue representing the party.

When Republicans are confronted with allegations against Donald Trump, the conversation almost always turns to attacking the accuser, questioning the media and demanding loyalty to their leader.

That’s the real story here.

The allegations against Graham Platner are disturbing, and Democratic leaders have responded by making it clear they don’t want someone facing accusations this serious representing their party — no matter what kind of political chaos it triggers in a key Senate race.

Republicans don’t get to mock that response.

If anything, it highlights the difference between a party that still believes power should come with consequences and one that decided long ago that winning matters more than character.

Sit this one out, MAGA.

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This Fourth of July should’ve been one of the proudest moments in American history.

For 250 years, the United States has endured civil war, depression, global conflicts, political violence, economic collapse and every prediction that our democracy would eventually fail.

We’ve made terrible mistakes along the way, to be sure. We’ve betrayed our own ideals more than once. But we’ve also corrected course, expanded freedom, strengthened our democracy and kept moving forward — because generation after generation believed this country was worth fighting for and worth leaving better than they found it.

That’s what makes this Independence Day so painful.

America only turns 250 once. This anniversary should’ve been a celebration unlike any other — a chance to reflect on the improbable success of the American experiment, to look back with pride and ahead with hope.

Instead, it’s a tragedy. It’s a reminder of how far we’ve drifted from the ideals that gave birth to this country.

Worse still, the presidency — the office that should represent the very best of America — is occupied by a man who embodies everything the founders feared.

The Man the Founders Feared

Donald Trump has always viewed the presidency through the same lens he's viewed everything else throughout his sleazy life: What's in it for me?

You can see it in the way he demands personal loyalty instead of loyalty to the Constitution, treats critics as enemies, attacks institutions that refuse to bend to his will and repeatedly bulldozes the line between public office and personal gain.

The presidency was never meant to be another asset to exploit or another brand to promote. Under Trump, it has become exactly that, in its most extreme form.

That’s the opposite of the American experiment.

The founders didn’t risk everything to escape one man who demanded unquestioning loyalty only so we could arrive at another 250 years later. They built a constitutional republic because they knew ambitious men would always seek power and that no individual could be trusted with it unchecked.

That’s why they created institutions stronger than personalities, laws stronger than men and a presidency that was supposed to be an act of service — not a vehicle for brazen self-enrichment.

Trump has spent his entire political life taking a machete to that vision — and his spineless enablers have cheered him on every step of the way. The result has been the steady erosion of standards that used to be non-negotiable.

Behavior that once would’ve shocked the country now barely registers. Each new controversy buries the last before we've had time to reckon with it.

That’s one of the greatest tragedies of the Trump era.

The damage isn't just in the individual scandals, which seem to happen almost daily. It's in all the filth we've come to accept as normal.

He’s disgraced the presidency and diminished this country in ways no previous president ever has. He’s the last person who should represent America during its 250th year.

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What This Anniversary Should’ve Been

As America marks its 250th birthday, the East Wing remains an active construction site for Donald Trump's massive White House ballroom — a no-bid project that will cost taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars despite Trump's promise that it would be privately funded.

Add in the administration's embarrassing Reflecting Pool makeover — also awarded through a no-bid contract — the proposal for an "Arc de Trump" and Trump's endless obsession with gold, grandeur and self-glorification, and one thing is painfully obvious: this has never really been about honoring the republic. It isn't about celebrating the Constitution or the remarkable endurance of American democracy.

It’s about indulging Trump’s endless appetite for building monuments to himself.

And each day leading up to this historic Independence Day brings us a fresh embarrassment — whether it’s the UFC spectacle that transformed the White House grounds into a tacky theme park or the so-called “Great American Fair” that makes even the most half-assed church festival look luxurious.

All of this is the perfect metaphor for the Trump era. Everything becomes bigger, flashier, gaudier and, somehow, smaller at the same time.

Trump has spent his entire life putting his name on things and leaving someone else to clean up the mess. Now he's doing it to the presidency — and our 250th anniversary.

Just like so many of his failed ventures, someone else will eventually have to clean up the damage, restore the dignity of the presidency and reclaim the moment he stole from America during its 250th year.

This was supposed to be our moment.

It should’ve belonged to the Constitution. It should’ve belonged to the generations who fought and died defending this republic. It should’ve belonged to teachers explaining the Declaration of Independence to their students, immigrants who came here believing in the promise of America and every citizen who still believes this country’s best days don’t have to be behind us.

Instead, Trump seems to believe all of this belongs to him. That's what's so hard to stomach as families across the country fire up their grills, light their fireworks and wave their flags.

I certainly don’t love America any less because Donald Trump is president. But I do love this country too much not to grieve what its 250th birthday should’ve been.

This milestone deserved so much better.

So did every American who wanted to celebrate it with pride.

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One of the stranger developments of the past few weeks has been watching Trump supporters discover that turning a Reflecting Pool renovation into a major political symbol carries an unexpected downside: people might actually pay attention to it.

The reaction on social media has often sounded something like this: Why are liberals obsessed with a pool? Don’t they have anything better to do?

Ordinarily, those would probably be fair questions.

The Reflecting Pool isn’t the cost-of-living crisis Trump has made worse. It isn’t the health care he’s cut. It isn’t the war against Iran that he’s lost. It’s not the Epstein coverup he’s orchestrated.

It doesn’t even come close to making the list of problems Americans actually worry about every day.

If you had asked the average voter six months ago what condition the Reflecting Pool was in, you’d likely have gotten a blank stare. Now it’s become the national conversation.

The reason isn’t complicated: Donald Trump made it one.

Nobody forced Trump to wheel out those oversized, campaign-style poster boards celebrating the Reflecting Pool project at every public event. Nobody required him to transform routine maintenance into a showcase for his administration.

He did that all on his own.

It’s a continuation of his lifelong effort to brand himself as a builder, a businessman and a man of action.

The Reflecting Pool wasn’t just a pool. It was supposed to be another exhibit in the myth that Trump can fix things nobody else can.

The problem is that when you turn a pool-cleaning project into a monument to your own greatness, people are going to point and laugh when things don’t go according to plan.

That’s not unfair criticism. That’s just a logical side effect of turning this exercise into a legacy item.

If a restaurant hangs a giant banner advertising its signature dish, customers are going to order it. If a car company spends months promoting a new vehicle, people are going to kick the tires on it.

If a buffoon president spends weeks highlighting a Reflecting Pool project as proof of his leadership, people are going to look at the Reflecting Pool.

Trump wanted this to be the center of attention. Unfortunately for him, the spotlight arrived just as the algae began to bloom and the flag-blue paint started floating to the surface.

Governing Isn’t a Branding Exercise

One reason this story feels so perfectly Trumpian is that it highlights a recurring pattern.

Trump has always excelled at self-promotion. He understands headlines, spectacle and how to create more smoke than substance around an event. Few politicians have shown a greater talent for turning routine functions into political theater.

What’s always been harder for Trump is the part that comes after the unhinged press conference or social media proclamation.

Anybody can create buzz by beating their chest and shouting at clouds. But delivering results actually takes something Trump doesn’t have: competence.

Even the smallest projects succeed because engineers, planners, environmental specialists, maintenance crews and career professionals do their jobs correctly. They don’t succeed because politicians hold press conferences, unveil slick poster boards or declare victory before the work is finished.

Government projects aren’t completed through force of personality. They succeed because people with specialized knowledge do their jobs well.

Roads function because experts maintain them. Air traffic systems function because experts manage them. Infrastructure projects succeed because experts plan them.

The Reflecting Pool may be a relatively harmless example, but it illustrates a larger truth: governing isn’t the same thing as branding.

The skills required to post AI renderings on a knockoff social media platform aren’t the same skills required to deliver results.

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Why Everyone Is Laughing

Ultimately, what makes this episode so hilarious isn’t just the pool itself. Most Americans didn’t really think twice about the Reflecting Pool just a few weeks ago.

What makes this ordeal so damn funny is the gap between the hype and the outcome.

Trump spent weeks hyping the renovation as evidence of his effectiveness. It was going to be the eighth wonder of the freaking world.

His supporters eagerly amplified the message. The Reflecting Pool became one more example of how Trump was restoring greatness, fixing problems and succeeding where others had failed.

After millions of taxpayer dollars were spent, things went sideways quickly.

Suddenly, the same people who had spent weeks celebrating the project wanted everyone to stop paying attention to it. The conversation shifted almost overnight from praising Trump’s accomplishment to blaming the media or spinning new theories about vandals sabotaging the Reflecting Pool.

That’s only made the punchline land even harder.

At this point, the Reflecting Pool has become something far more significant than a maintenance project. It’s become a perfect metaphor for Trump’s presidency.

In the end, it wasn’t undermined by the president’s foes. It was undermined by the same thing that undermines so many Trump initiatives: reality.

Trump wanted the Reflecting Pool to symbolize his success. Instead, it reflected the gap between the image he’s spent decades selling and the results that image was supposed to deliver.

For a project built around reflection, that’s a pretty fitting ending.

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If you’ve followed Susan Collins’ career for any length of time — especially in the Donald Trump era — you’ve probably noticed a familiar pattern.

A controversial Trump nominee emerges. Collins expresses “concern.” She schedules meetings and asks questions. She receives assurances. She tells reporters she had a productive conversation and appreciates the nominee’s answers.

Then she votes yes as if that wasn’t the plan all along.

This familiar plot is playing out once again as acting Attorney General Todd Blanche seeks to become the nation’s next top law enforcement official.

According to Alex Bolton of The Hill, Collins says she recently had “a very good meeting” with Blanche and received assurances from him that he does not support creating a slush fund to hand taxpayer money to January 6 attackers and other crooked MAGA dead-enders.

Let’s just take a beat and and appreciate how absurd this standard is.

Todd Blanche isn’t earning Susan Collins’ confidence because he’s qualified to serve as attorney general. As Trump’s former personal attorney and the front man in the administration’s Epstein cover-up, that’s obviously an impossible argument to make.

No, Collins is instead highlighting Blanche’s promise not to move forward with one blatantly corrupt scheme as a reason she may vote to confirm him.

Apparently we’ve reached the point where “I won’t use taxpayer money to reward criminals” is considered a key pillar in determining whether someone deserves one of the most powerful jobs in the country.

That’s the standard Susan Collins wants us to be impressed by.

We’ve Seen This Movie Before

If all of this sounds familiar, it should. Susan Collins has been running the same playbook for decades.

The most famous example came in 2018, when Collins announced her support for Brett Kavanaugh’s nomination to the Supreme Court. At the time, Collins pointed to Kavanaugh’s statements about Roe v. Wade, his respect for precedent and his assurances that settled law deserved respect.

Collins didn’t just vote for Kavanaugh — she vouched for him. She used her reputation as a supposedly independent and thoughtful Republican to reassure Americans that concerns about Roe were overblown.

Four years later, Kavanaugh joined the right-wing majority that overturned Roe v. Wade, stripping away a constitutional right that millions of women had relied on for nearly half a century.

Instead of acknowledging that she got it wrong, Collins says she stands by her vote.

“I do not regret that vote,” Collins said this week, while describing herself as merely “disappointed” by the court’s 2022 decision to overturn Roe.

Collins even suggested the issue shouldn’t be a factor in her reelection campaign, arguing that the SCOTUS ruling “has not had an impact on the state of Maine.”

Apparently helping put the deciding vote on the court to overturn Roe is something Collins believes voters should simply move on from.

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The Susan Collins Scam

The real story here isn’t really Todd Blanche or Brett Kavanaugh.

It’s Susan Collins.

Collins has built her entire political brand around the idea that she’s different from the rest of her party. She’s supposed to be the thoughtful Republican. The reasonable GOP lawmaker who has legitimate “concerns” and asks tough questions. The one who isn’t afraid to break with her party when the facts demand it.

But that’s never what she’s actually done.

When it mattered most, Collins helped confirm Brett Kavanaugh, a key vote that turned back the clock on women’s rights. She’s still proud of that vote.

Now she’s applying the same formula to Todd Blanche.

Once again, she’s highlighting a few reassuring comments from a controversial nominee. And once again, we’re supposed to believe she’s engaged in a serious evaluation rather than following a script we’ve all seen before.

In some ways, Collins is even more valuable to Trump than the loudest members of the MAGA movement.

The Tommy Tubervilles and Jim Jordans of the world don’t provide legitimacy. Nobody expects them to be independent. Nobody mistakes them for moderates. Their support for Trump is automatic and unconditional.

They’re sycophants.

Collins serves a different purpose. She provides the appearance of moderation. She gives Republicans a senator they can point to and say, “See? Even Susan Collins is comfortable with this.” Her value isn’t that she occasionally breaks with her party. Her value is that she helps legitimize the MAGA agenda.

That’s why the faux concern doesn’t matter. The carefully choreographed meetings don’t matter. The assurances matter even less.

What matters is the result, which is the same almost every damn time: Susan Collins finds a way to vote for whatever unqualified nominee or destructive MAGA policy is put in front of her.

The charade exists only to help Collins maintain the image of a thoughtful, moderate Republican even as she helps advance the same agenda she claims to be scrutinizing.

Maine voters don’t need six more years of this routine.

After a decade of Donald Trump, Susan Collins has proven herself to be nothing more than a reliable enabler wrapped in the packaging of a moderate.

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On Thursday, The Wall Street Journal reported that Donald Trump and his allies are exploring ways to “expunge” his impeachments from the historical record.

According to the report, “The resolution would allow Trump to claim a symbolic victory on a matter that has dogged him since his first term, part of a broader effort to burnish his presidential legacy.”

The effort would, of course, be toothless.

Trump was impeached twice on serious grounds, and no congressional resolution can change that fact. No matter how much Trump whines about it, those impeachments happened. They’re part of the historical record, and no symbolic vote by a compliant Congress can erase them.

But the effort is revealing for a different reason.

It reflects a pattern that has defined Trump’s public life for decades. When reality threatens his brand, Trump never accepts it, learns from it or moves on.

He simply attempts to redefine or even erase it.

The story of Donald Trump is, in many ways, the story of a serial failure — a morally and financially bankrupt clown — who has spent a lifetime convincing people that his humiliations were victories and his incompetence was intelligence.

The Brand

One of the most remarkable achievements of Trump’s life is that he successfully convinced millions of Americans that he was the embodiment of business success.

That image remains deeply ingrained in the public consciousness. Even today, many supporters view Trump as a uniquely gifted businessman whose accomplishments speak for themselves.

The reality is, of course, quite different.

Over the years, Trump casinos went bankrupt. Trump Airlines disappeared. Trump Steaks disappeared. Trump Vodka disappeared. Trump University collapsed in scandal and ultimately paid millions to settle fraud allegations.

Countless ventures carrying the Trump name either flopped outright or failed to deliver on the image that had been sold to the public.

For most business leaders, a record like that would have become a defining liability — a humiliation that gets somebody laughed out of every room.

For Trump, it barely mattered.

That’s because — as his record shows — Trump’s real talent was never business. It was selling an illusion. He spent decades crafting a public image that bore little resemblance to reality, and eventually the Trump brand became more important than the facts it was built upon.

Long before he entered politics, Trump understood that many people would believe a story if it was repeated often enough. When reality threatened the image he had created, he didn’t revise the image.

He simply attacked reality.

The Politics

When Trump entered politics, he brought that same approach with him.

Most politicians try to explain failures, defend unpopular decisions or persuade voters that criticism is unfair. Trump responds by dismissing reality altogether.

When women accused him of sexual assault, the story became that the accusers were liars, opportunists or politically motivated enemies.

When he lost the 2020 election to Joe Biden, the story became that the election had been stolen.

When a violent mob of his supporters attacked the Capitol on January 6, the story became that the real victims were the people who carried it out.

When investigations examined his conduct, the story became that he was the victim of a political witch hunt.

When criminal indictments followed, the story became that judges and prosecutors weren’t enforcing the law. They were attacking his supporters and trying to stop a political movement.

The details changed, but the formula never did. Trump was never responsible for the controversy surrounding him or the consequences that followed. He was always the victim of someone else’s wrongdoing.

And over time, millions of Americans were conditioned to view every scandal, investigation and act of accountability through that same lens.

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The Legacy Laundering

That’s what makes the impeachment story significant.

Despite the fact that he should have been convicted, Trump survived both impeachments. He was acquitted by a GOP-controlled Senate. He remained in complete control of the Republican Party, even after inciting a violent insurrection and later becoming the first former president convicted of felony crimes. He eventually returned to the White House.

For most human beings, that would be enough. But Trump is a deeply broken man, and he cannot abide even a minor wound to the carefully crafted fiction of his own greatness.

The argument is no longer that the impeachments were unfair. It’s that they — along with any other slight against this weak president — shouldn’t exist in history at all.

Reality must bow to the insecure man behind the mythology.

Business failures become evidence of business genius. An election loss becomes election theft. Criminal investigations become political persecution.

Now impeachment is actually proof that Trump was the victim rather than the subject of accountability, so that, too, must be thrown into the memory hole.

Like so many of Trump’s previous attempts to rewrite the record, this one is unlikely to succeed. Nobody outside the red-hatted cult is going to accept that history must be rewritten to spare one small man’s big feelings.

If anything, the effort will only serve as the latest reminder of how desperately Donald Trump is trying to escape a truth he cannot accept: that history will remember him not as the strongman of his own mythology, but as the most corrupt, dishonest and consequentially destructive president this country has ever produced.

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For much of the last decade, Ohio has been one of the strongest pieces of evidence that Donald Trump fundamentally reshaped Midwestern politics.

Barack Obama won the state twice. Then Trump carried it three times.

Since then, Republicans have tightened their grip on just about every statewide office. After Democrat Sherrod Brown lost his Senate seat in 2024 to MAGA car salesman Bernie Moreno, most political observers stopped talking about Ohio as a battleground altogether.

The conventional wisdom was simple: Ohio was gone. Democrats should stop wasting money here and focus on states they could actually win.

But we’re starting to get signals that reports of the Democratic Party’s death in the Buckeye State may have been greatly exaggerated.

According to a new Fox News poll, Sherrod Brown is leading Republican Sen. Jon Husted in Ohio's U.S. Senate race by a whopping eight points. Fifty-three percent of voters back Brown, compared to 45 percent for Husted.

The Ohio gubernatorial race is much closer, but the same poll still found Democrat Amy Acton ahead of Trump-endorsed Republican Vivek Ramaswamy by a point, 50 percent to 49 percent.

Insert the usual caveats here about how the election is still five months away, polls can be wrong and any single survey can turn out to be an outlier.

Even so, if you’ve followed Ohio politics long enough, you know this state has an occasional habit of telling us something important before the rest of the country catches on.

In 2016, Ohio was one of the first signs that the political experts had gotten it wrong.

While much of the pundit class was confidently predicting a Hillary Clinton victory, Trump’s strength in places like Ohio suggested there was something bigger happening beneath the surface — especially in the so-called rust belt.

His appeal among white working-class voters was stronger than many analysts understood, helping foreshadow the political realignment that would stun the country on Election Night.

Ten years later, Ohio may be sending another warning — but this time it’s for the MAGA-controlled Republican Party.

Iowa Has Entered the Chat

The bad news for Republicans is that this shift doesn’t appear to be isolated to Ohio.

Recent polling has shown signs of movement in Iowa as well, another state Democrats had largely written off after it took a similar turn to the right during the Trump era.

A poll released in April showed Democratic candidate Josh Turek leading Republican Ashley Hinson by a point in Iowa’s U.S. Senate race. Yes, that’s statistically a tie, but this is also a state Trump carried by 13 points in 2024.

Taken together, the numbers coming out of Ohio and Iowa suggest that things could be even bleaker for Republicans than they already appear.

The biggest reason, of course, is the man sitting in the Oval Office.

The same coalition of voters Republicans spent the last decade locking down — working-class voters without college degrees, rural communities and small-town Americans — are increasingly feeling the consequences of Trump’s failed presidency.

Trump promised to lower costs on day one. Instead, families are getting screwed with even higher grocery prices.

He promised to stand up for farmers. Instead, he’s dragged them into another trade war and left them paying the price.

He promised to be the peace president. Instead, he pulled the United States into a costly war with Iran that has driven up gas prices and made life even harder for the American people to afford.

All across the Midwest, folks are feeling the economic fallout — and they know exactly who’s causing it.

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The Foundation Is Starting to Crumble

For a decade, many voters were willing to overlook the chaos, corruption and incompetence because they still believed Trump was the successful businessman he played on TV.

But without that laughable façade to fall back on, Trump has nothing. All that’s left is people feeling betrayed and exhausted by the conman they thought would fight for them.

After handing their party over to an unqualified game show host, Republicans convinced themselves that Trump’s coalition represented a permanent political realignment. They assumed the voters he brought into the GOP would stay there indefinitely.

They were confident that places like Ohio and Iowa were theirs for a generation.

But maybe not.

Millions of Americans who thought Trump was uniquely capable of fixing their problems are now looking around and seeing the wreckage of his broken promises: higher prices, another war, more chaos and a staggering amount of grifting and corruption.

They’re coming to the pretty painful realization that Trump has always been better at selling the promise than delivering the results.

During the 2016 presidential campaign, Trump’s support on the ground in Ohio was a signal that he was stronger than many political experts realized. It was one of the first indications that something bigger was happening beneath the surface of American politics.

Now the Buckeye State may be serving as a canary in the coal mine once again — this time warning Republicans that the political foundation they’ve spent a decade building around Donald Trump may be starting to crumble beneath their feet.

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Republicans used to position themselves as the party of family values.

On a policy level, that was always mostly bullshit. You can’t claim to stand for families while constantly attacking the social safety net, cutting healthcare programs, undermining public education and handing massive tax breaks to the wealthy while working people struggle to survive.

But at the very least, Republicans used to pretend character mattered. They wanted voters to believe that morality, decency and personal responsibility were important traits for our leaders to have.

Then came Donald Trump.

He blew that façade to pieces the moment he rode down his tacky golden escalator at Trump Tower and began his takeover of the Republican Party. His success made it clear that character and personal conduct no longer mattered to GOP voters.

Maybe they never really mattered at all.

Turns out that as long as a politician attacked the right enemies — immigrants, transgender people, blue cities, the media or whoever else happened to be the outrage target of the day — almost everything else could be excused.

So a decade after Republican voters handed Trump the keys to the party, the moral collapse of the modern GOP isn’t exactly breaking news.

But even by the below-ground standards of modern MAGA politics, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton’s rise stands out as a stunning reminder that Republicans can always find a way to sink lower.

This week, Texas GOP voters decided that a corrupt, morally bankrupt culture-war clown is exactly the kind of person they want representing them in Washington.

This Is What MAGA Rewards

Ken Paxton spent nearly a decade under felony securities fraud indictment after being accused of misleading investors before becoming the Texas AG. The case dragged on for years before finally being resolved through a deal that allowed him to avoid trial altogether.

Paxton was also sued by the Securities and Exchange Commission over similar allegations tied to the securities fraud scandal. Unlike the criminal case that dragged on for years, the SEC case was thrown out by a judge in 2016.

Then came the corruption allegations from inside his own office.

Several of Paxton’s top aides — fellow Republicans appointed by Paxton himself — accused him of abusing the power of the AG’s office to help wealthy donor Nate Paul, a real estate developer tied to Paxton through personal and political connections.

According to investigators, Paxton used his office to benefit Paul, who reportedly employed a woman Paxton was having an affair with and helped fund renovations to Paxton’s home.

The scandal became so serious that Republicans in the Texas House impeached him in 2023 on allegations that included bribery, abuse of office and retaliation against whistleblowers. The impeachment vote was 121-23 — overwhelmingly bipartisan.

And the scandals didn’t stop there.

Earlier this year, Paxton’s office offered a plea deal to a Waco man who admitted to sexually abusing a young boy. The deal would’ve allowed the man to serve just one day in jail after felony charges were reduced to misdemeanors. A judge later insisted on a 60-day sentence.

Even former GOP Gov. Rick Perry was stunned, writing this on X: “Ken Paxton initially offered a plea deal to a MAN WHO ADMITTED TO MOLESTING a child to serve only ONE DAY IN JAIL.”

In today’s Republican Party, none of this is disqualifying.

If anything, it only made Paxton more popular with the MAGA base. After all, disowning a sleazeball like this would require Republicans to confront who Donald Trump is too.

The similarities are impossible to ignore.

Both men built political brands around grievance politics, endless culture wars and portraying themselves as victims whenever scandal caught up to them. Both faced serious allegations involving corruption, ethical misconduct and abuse of power.

And both have survived politically because today’s Republican Party no longer punishes corruption and vulgarity. It rewards them.

Every scandal becomes a rallying cry. Every indictment becomes a badge of honor. Every ethical failing becomes proof they're fighting the right enemies.

As long as you’re “owning the libs” loudly enough, almost anything else gets waved away as fake news, political persecution or some conspiracy cooked up by “the deep state.”

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Culture War Nonsense Is All They Have Left

Deep down, even Republicans seem to understand how morally hollow Ken Paxton is. You can tell by the way they’re already trying to campaign for him.

Notice how little they have to say about why Paxton deserves to be a United States senator.

There’s no serious conversation about leadership, ethics, accomplishments or public service — because there really can’t be.

What exactly is the substantive argument for Paxton supposed to be? That the felony indictments weren’t a big deal? That the bipartisan impeachment was meaningless? That it’s good for an admitted sexual abuser to get a sweetheart plea deal? That years of corruption allegations should just be ignored because Trump endorsed him?

They know how weak that sounds.

So instead, they fall back on the same culture-war garbage that’s become the crutch for the entire MAGA movement.

Suddenly social media is flooded with nonsense about Democrat James Talarico being a vegan, “not masculine enough” or somehow anti-Christian despite the fact that he teaches Sunday school and talks openly about his faith.

It’s all painfully transparent.

They can’t run on the issues or Paxton’s character, so they try to turn the entire race into another dumb internet fight instead.

And maybe that’s the clearest sign yet of how far the Republican Party has fallen.

The party of “family values” has become the party of looking the other way.

Looking the other way when politicians abuse power. Looking the other way as MAGA corruption spreads through every corner of government. Looking the other way when the values they spent decades pretending to care about get trampled by reality TV stars, serial grifters and crooked politicians.

The only unforgivable sin in today’s Republican Party isn’t corruption. It isn’t abuse of power or hypocrisy. It isn’t even helping your cronies at the expense of the public.

It’s disloyalty to Donald Trump.

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Donald Trump is openly using the power of the presidency to protect himself, reward loyalists and shake down the American taxpayer — and it’s happening at a scale never before seen in presidential politics.

As has been widely reported, Trump’s Department of Justice — now run by his former personal attorney Todd Blanche — has agreed to a stunning settlement tied to the leak of Trump’s tax returns, creating a nearly $2 billion so-called “Anti-Weaponization Fund.”

The details are every bit as grotesque as they sound.

The agreement is designed to compensate people who claim they were politically targeted by the Biden administration, even though many of them are just MAGA dead-enders angry that there are, indeed, consequences for committing crimes — or at least there used to be.

That means January 6 insurrectionists and other Trump allies who spent years trying to overturn a democratic election could now receive taxpayer-funded payouts — including some who have since been charged with additional violent crimes and sex crimes after Trump pardoned them.

Yes, the same movement that spent years screaming about “law and order” and “draining the swamp” is now creating a taxpayer-funded compensation pool for people involved in an attack on the U.S. Capitol.

Apparently, Americans struggling under Trump’s soaring costs, economic chaos and healthcare cuts can go screw themselves. This administration believes taxpayer money is better spent compensating MAGA loyalists upset that the government investigated and charged them for crimes.

If I stopped right there, it would already be bad enough. But it actually gets worse.

The settlement includes extraordinary language stating that the IRS is now “forever barred” from revisiting years of Trump family tax issues — shielding Trump, his family and related businesses from future scrutiny.

Read that again.

The sitting president’s own Justice Department, run by his former personal lawyer, is now shielding him and his family empire from future scrutiny tied to years of hidden finances, tax controversies and unanswered questions.

In a healthy country, this would be a five-alarm political scandal. People would be flooding the streets in outrage.

Under Trump — the most corrupt president in American history — it’s somehow just another day in the US of A.

Taxpayers Are Getting Robbed

The timing of this slush fund rollout makes the whole thing even more disgusting.

Americans are struggling to pay rent, fill up their gas tanks and afford groceries while Trump continues injecting chaos into the economy with a war in Iran that nobody asked for.

All the while, the same families getting squeezed by Trump’s policies are constantly told there’s never enough money in the budget for healthcare, childcare, housing assistance or student debt relief.

But suddenly the DOJ found billions of dollars in the couch cushions when it came time to protect Trump and reward his crooked allies with a taxpayer-funded MAGA grievance account.

All funded by us — and with no real oversight into how any of it can be allocated or spent.

Every damn day under this president feels like a smash-and-grab operation against the American taxpayer.

The federal government is barely even a public institution anymore. It’s been remade into a private loyalty machine designed to enrich Donald Trump and his fellow MAGA grifters while punishing anyone who refuses to fall in line.

And where the hell is the Republican Party — the one supposedly running the other branch of government that’s meant to provide oversight and accountability?

Completely gone.

The same Republicans who all but called for President Obama’s impeachment over a tan suit or a coffee cup salute now suddenly have no problem with Trump treating the U.S. Treasury like his personal piggy bank.

How are they not ashamed of themselves?

Trump Keeps Cashing In on Chaos

And somehow, in the middle of all this, Americans are also supposed to pretend it’s normal that the president of the United States is now tied to an enormous web of stock trading activity involving companies directly affected by his own policies.

According to Trump’s own ethics disclosures, accounts connected to his financial holdings executed trades worth hundreds of millions of dollars during the first quarter of 2026 alone.

The disclosures included major positions in companies like Nvidia, Microsoft, Amazon, Meta, Oracle, Boeing and other corporations directly impacted by federal policy decisions, trade negotiations and government contracts.

Think about how f*cking insane that is.

This isn’t some retired businessman quietly holding index funds in a blind trust. This is a sitting president whose public statements, executive actions and policy announcements can move entire sectors of the market within minutes — all while he personally profits from it.

And somehow we’re all just supposed to trust that there’s absolutely no connection between Trump publicly hyping industries, attacking companies, threatening tariffs, floating government deals or making market-moving statements about his war with Iran while massive trading activity swirls around portfolios tied to his financial empire?

Give us all a break.

Unlike previous presidents, Trump has never truly separated himself from his sleazy business empire. His assets remain tied to family-controlled structures while he continues wielding the power of the presidency.

This is the kind of corruption Americans used to associate with broken governments overseas, not the United States.

But we’re no longer watching the leader of the free world govern a country. We’re watching a bunch of insiders cash in on political power.

And while ordinary Americans struggle to get through the month, the people at the top just keep getting richer off the chaos.

It’s disgusting.

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There’s So Much Corruption It Barely Registers Anymore

At this point, none of this even feels shocking anymore — and honestly, that’s probably the most disturbing part.

A president hides his taxes for years, refuses transparency, surrounds himself with grifters, keeps his business empire intertwined with political power, makes market-moving statements while financially tied to the same system being affected by his decisions, then turns around and uses taxpayer money plus the machinery of government to protect himself and reward loyalists.

And Republicans just… shrug.

The same people who spent years whining about “weaponized government” and fiscal responsibility now have no problem funneling taxpayer money toward Trump’s cronies through a cartoonish MAGA victimhood fund.

Ultimately, Trump figured out that if you flood the country with enough corruption, enough scandals and enough chaos all at once, people eventually stop reacting to any of it.

And that’s exactly where this country seems to be right now.

A sitting president using the government to protect himself, reward loyalists and bulldoze the lines between political power and personal profit should be the kind of scandal that politically detonates a presidency.

Instead, it’s just another week in Trump’s America.

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There was a time when John Fetterman was considered a rising star in the Democratic Party.

A tattooed, hoodie-wearing guy who didn’t sound like he came out of a Democratic focus group. He talked bluntly, mocked the consultant class and built an image as someone willing to punch back against Republicans without sounding overly polished or rehearsed.

For a lot of Democrats frustrated with the party’s usual messaging, Fetterman seemed like a breath of fresh air.

Now? He sounds like a guy auditioning for a weekend contributor slot on Fox News.

Somewhere along the way, Fetterman stopped acting like an opposition senator and started acting like Donald Trump’s favorite cable news validator.

Every time Trump unveils another ridiculous vanity project or reckless policy decision, there’s Fetterman — popping up on television or social media to explain why Democrats are supposedly the real problem for criticizing it.

Trump starts a war with Iran without meaningful congressional accountability? Fetterman backs him up.

Trump obsesses over a grotesque $1 billion White House ballroom while Americans struggle with inflation, healthcare costs and economic anxiety? Fetterman rushes out to defend that too.

More recently, Fetterman has been angrily advocating for Trump’s expensive makeover of the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool — literally telling critics to “stop this henpecking” and accusing them of “Trump Derangement Syndrome.”

Think about how insane that is for a second.

The guy who built his brand as a blue-collar populist now spends his time justifying a billionaire president’s gilded vanity projects while taxpayers foot the bill at the exact moment many of them can barely afford to fill up their gas tank.

And he does it all while parroting the same MAGA dead-ender terminology.

Fetterman even went on Bill Maher’s podcast recently and laughed along about Trump’s infamous “quiet, piggy” insult toward a female reporter, agreeing with Maher that Trump’s behavior is “refreshing.”

This is what Pennsylvania voters signed up for?

The Democratic Senator MAGA Loves

Nobody elected Fetterman to become the Democratic Party’s in-house Trump whisperer. His job is not to sanitize Trumpism for disillusioned moderates or reassure cable news hosts that Democrats secretly agree with MAGA excesses.

And honestly, what makes it even more frustrating is that he clearly enjoys it. You can practically see the smirk every time he breaks with Democrats in a way guaranteed to earn him praise from conservatives online.

The corporate media class may eat this stuff up because they love the “Democrats bashing Democrats” storyline, but there’s nothing courageous about constantly punching left while MAGA Republicans march deeper into authoritarian politics.

Fetterman also frames all of this in an incredibly cynical way.

He acts like Democrats are somehow petty for criticizing Trump’s vanity spending, as if mocking a gold-plated ballroom obsession while working-class Americans are drowning in rising costs is just unserious partisan hackery.

No, John. The problem isn’t that people are criticizing Trump. The problem is that Trump keeps behaving like a tacky authoritarian cartoon character — and people like you keep rushing out to excuse it.

This is a president who treats the White House like a combination luxury resort, reality TV set and personal monument to himself. He’s consumed with aesthetics, loyalty tests and self-enrichment while the country grows more unstable by the day.

Democrats should be aggressively calling that out — not helping him launder it into something respectable.

And what exactly is Fetterman getting out of this?

His favorability rating among Democrats is in the sewer, and Republicans only like him because they can use him as a prop to validate their deranged cult leader. Being the “cool Democrat” who laughs along with Trump’s authoritarian nonsense isn’t going to advance a single meaningful Democratic priority.

All Fetterman is really doing is helping normalize behavior that belongs in a tinpot dictatorship, not the United States of America.

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There’s a Difference Between Independence and Betrayal

On top of it all, Fetterman has become a champion of Trump’s war of choice with Iran.

Trump campaigned all across Fetterman’s state in 2024, pretending to be the guy who would never start a new war. Instead, he dragged the country into another Middle East conflict that has rattled markets, driven up prices and given Iran leverage over a critical global shipping lane.

Democrats were right to demand congressional oversight and limits on Trump’s ability to continue escalating the conflict without authorization.

What did John Fetterman do? He cast the deciding vote to kill that effort.

Last week, the Senate failed by a single vote to advance a war powers resolution that would have imposed a check on Trump’s authority in Iran. Fetterman was the only Democrat to side with Republicans against it.

If he had simply voted with the rest of his party — and with what most Americans actually want — the resolution would’ve passed.

Think about how absurd that is for a second.

A Democratic senator from Pennsylvania became the deciding vote protecting Donald Trump’s war in Iran.

Not Lindsey Graham. Not Tom Cotton. John Fetterman.

In an interview Monday, the Pennsylvania Democrat doubled down, saying his views on Trump’s war are “pretty much locked and loaded.”

It increasingly just feels as if Fetterman is more interested in provoking liberals than opposing Trump’s reckless and unpopular agenda.

People supported Fetterman because they thought he’d fight for working people against right-wing extremism. They didn’t think they were electing a guy who would spend most of his time on television defending Trump’s ego projects, military adventurism and authoritarian impulses.

There’s a difference between being independent-minded and betraying the people who elected you — and the country.

John Fetterman crossed that line a while ago.

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As Donald Trump’s deeply unpopular war with Iran continues to destabilize the global economy and push prices higher, JD Vance pointed the finger at Joe Biden, who’s been out of office for well over a year.

During an event at the White House on Wednesday, a reporter asked the vice president a simple question: “What's your message to Americans as the Iran war continues to impact the economy, especially after yesterday's inflation report?”

“We know that the American people inherited a very bad inflation crisis,” Vance responded, apparently blaming the previous president for… what, starting a war with Iran?

Vance launched into a rant about post-COVID inflation under the previous administration, conveniently leaving out the fact that inflation was lower when Biden left office than it is today.

“What about 2022?” has become their favorite escape hatch these days. But nothing screams failure quite like an administration that promised “no new wars” and lower prices on day one now blaming a president who left office in January 2025 — for higher prices caused by its new war.

That’s exactly what Vance did today — with a straight face and his usual mix of folksy Midwestern condescension.

See more in the clip below.

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The American People Aren’t Buying This BS

The good news for the rest of us is that the American people don’t appear to be buying the bullshit Donald Trump and JD Vance are trying to sell.

Most voters can connect the dots just fine.

They understand that — unless Joe Biden secretly launched the Iran war from retirement and started personally controlling global oil markets from his home in Delaware — Trump is responsible for this economy.

According to a new AtlasIntel poll, Americans increasingly believe life was more affordable before Trump returned to office. Voters overwhelmingly say everyday essentials like beef, electricity, coffee, gas, bread, milk and housing cost less under Biden than they do now under Trump.

Another recent survey found that only 25% of Americans approve of Trump’s handling of inflation and prices, while 69% disapprove.

That’s the part panicking Republicans. So they desperately lash out at the press and blame everybody else for their own failures.

The anti-war, lower-prices message that helped elect Donald Trump and JD Vance is now collapsing under the weight of reality — and they have no idea how to stop it.

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Donald Trump once bankrupted casinos for a living.

Somehow the lesson he took from that experience was: let’s try the same thing with America — morally, financially and aesthetically.

At a time when families are struggling with the rising cost of groceries, gas, housing and health care, the president remains laser-focused on vanity projects, cosmetic spectacles and expensive made-for-TV distractions designed to make the country look like some tacky 1980s country club.

The latest example is his new obsession: repainting the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool in a bright artificial blue that resembles the swimming pool outside a roadside motel along Route 66.

After initially telling the country the project would cost $1.8 million, the price tag has surged to $13.1 million — an 88 percent increase that, according to The New York Times, includes a 20 percent profit margin for Trump’s handpicked contractor.

Nothing to see there, I’m sure.

And honestly, it tells you everything you need to know about how Trump sees the presidency.

With him, it all eventually turns into some gaudy branding exercise, because slapping gold accents on things is a lot easier than actually reading briefing books and trying to make life better for the American people.

Trump approaches the presidency the same way he approached many of his failed properties and business ventures: make it louder, shinier and more over-the-top so people don’t pay attention to the shitty product underneath the surface — or the incompetent crook trying to sell it.

Governing Like a Casino Owner

Trump has spent his entire public life confusing gold paint with greatness.

His entire aesthetic — starting with the orange sludge he plasters on his face every morning — has always felt less like actual luxury and more like a casino lobby trying way too hard to convince people it’s classy.

Those same instincts have now hijacked the nation’s capital, and it’s not just the Reflecting Pool.

As I’ve written about before, the thing that seems to excite Trump more than anything else is the construction of a massive White House ballroom that Republicans in Congress are trying to fund with taxpayer money — to the tune of roughly $1 billion.

For a guy who seems bored to the point of sleep by virtually every other aspect of governing, nothing appears to bring Trump alive quite like this dream of attaching a luxury wedding venue to the White House.

But the ballroom bunker is just part of a much larger pattern.

Trump also bulldozed the White House Rose Garden, stripping it of much of its character and replacing it with a giant stone slab that resembles the outdoor patio at a suburban Panera Bread.

He’s covered the Oval Office in cheap-looking gold accents, slapped tacky lettering onto parts of the White House as if he needs reminders about where he is, and turned some of the most recognizable spaces in American government into something that feels less like a historic institution and more like a tasteless golf course gift shop.

And this is all before we even get to that ridiculous 250-foot ‘Arc de Trump’ monstrosity he’s trying to build, which is already drawing pushback from veterans groups and historians because it would obstruct the view between the Lincoln Memorial and Arlington National Cemetery.

It’s one eyesore after another. One vanity project layered on top of the last. One more distraction from the actual job of managing the country’s affairs like a competent adult.

At the end of the day, Trump is a man desperately trying to stamp his aesthetic onto every inch of public life because he knows that when he’s gone, nobody else will want to do it.

There won’t be a spontaneous movement to erect monuments honoring him — a twice-impeached convicted felon who spent his presidency turning the federal government into one giant grift for himself and his family.

He’ll be remembered as a cautionary tale about what happens when a country mistakes a loud, flashy con man for a serious president.

What he’s doing now is the political equivalent of repainting the walls in a collapsing casino while the entire building slowly sinks into the ground.

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The Gold-Plated Illusion

What makes all of this so revealing is that it perfectly captures what Trumpism actually is underneath all the gold décor and fake populism.

At a time when the country feels exhausted, unstable and increasingly unaffordable for ordinary people, the president of the United States is consumed with cosmetic vanity projects designed to make Washington look more like his own royal kingdom.

That’s because Trump has never really cared much about governing, or the people he conned into voting for him.

He cares about central casting. He cares about spectacle. He cares about television visuals and whether something looks flashy enough to feed his ego.

That’s why everything eventually turns into some over-the-top branding exercise with him. If something is broken, his instinct isn’t to take responsibility or fix the underlying problem. It’s to slap gold trim on it, make it louder and distract people with reality show buffoonery.

And honestly, the casino comparison becomes more fitting by the day.

Trump built an image around wealth and success while repeatedly driving businesses into bankruptcy. The buildings looked flashy right up until the moment things fell apart. Then everyone else got stuck dealing with the fallout while Trump walked away richer and moved on to his next failure.

Now he’s applying that same formula to the United States itself.

He doesn’t want America to function better. He wants it to look richer, shinier and more intimidating on TV. He wants giant displays, oversized projects and North Korea-style nonsense designed to create the illusion of greatness while the real problems keep getting worse underneath the surface.

The terrifying part is that we already know how most Trump properties end.

And now he’s trying to turn the entire country into one.

If you’re tired of watching corporate media sanitize this insanity while people like Trump turn American politics into one giant vanity project, support independent media that refuses to play along.

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