The year in re-phew! #1: Tumblin’ Tubby

POTUS is #1 but falling fast

[Merry Christmas! Last of the the top-ten here! See #1, #2, and #3. Will stop by briefly on Friday, then a week off. Enjoy!]

As mentioned yesterday, Trump’s 2025 has been a year of decline. He rushed into his new term with a slew of questionable-to-illegal actions — lightning raids on immigrants, shakedowns of law firms and colleges, the DOGE sabotage, rescission of federal funds from blue states, mad claims on foreign nations — all forced through on his say-so with a flurry of Executive Orders which the Republican Congress and Republican Supreme Court were disinclined to block. Some people put up a fight from the start — mostly non-gutless Democrats like JB Pritzker, Ron Wyden, AOC; you know, the usual suspects — but despite a few early victories, they seemed overmatched.

But look at him now. He’s still criming, God knows, and still doing serious damage to the country’s foundations (and, with the aid of RFK Junior, its health and well-being, too). But the headlong momentum of early days is gone. His polls are a disaster. The courts are hobbling him. Hell, the Supreme Court — yes, that Supreme Court! — just told him he can’t use the National Guard in Chicago like a kid playing with plastic army men. Where once his threats felt like diktats, now they prompt resistance, in state legislatures, courtrooms, and the streets.

So what went wrong? Part of the problem is that, as the damage and madness of MAGA becomes more apparent, opposition grows more active and supporters more disheartened. Speaker Johnson still enables Trump by keeping Congress out of his way, but his minions leak and speak their discontent, and a few, like Thomas Massie, actually defy him, and others just quit. I’m aware this is mostly kabuki, careerism, and ass-covering, but the lack of a unified front for Trump is telling.

And some of it is Epstein. Jesus, what a clusterfuck. It was fishy when Pam Bondi announced the files she’d flaunted suddenly never existed, but since then their handling has been so clumsy that it seems like a bad parody of classic Trump misdirection — look, we’re giving you the files! OK, so a lot of them are blacked out -- here are more files! We only took a few down to protect the innocent -- not that the President was involved in crimes! Here, let us explain… Maybe Bondi’s really frightened of going to prison.

But frankly a lot of it is Tubby himself. I know my sketches are supposed to be a humorous exaggeration, but I find his actual public statements keeping up with my own Trump character in stupidity, mendacity, and, above all, personal disintegration. As I said after his universally-reviled Rob Reiner comments:

Beyond [revenge] and his own aggrandizement and enrichment, Trump has never had what could be called an agenda, though the cruelty and stupidity of his actions align closely with conservatism. We call him a fascist and he is, but by instinct, not ideology; he didn’t get it out of a book; he’s a fascist the way a badly brought up five year old might be if given unlimited power.

Now he’s in his final, lame-duck term — who knows if he even believes his babbles about a third. He has thus far kept Republicans in line with fear, but that’s starting to fade, or rather they’re becoming more afraid of the voters than they are of him.

What’s that leave him? As much viciousness toward his enemies and the weak as he can get away with, simply because he is vicious; graft, for sure, as much as he can milk donors for.

But mainly he just wants to act out his senile, puerile fantasy of power. He hollers for a Peace Prize, and one of his more corrupt donors gives it to him (and it pays off big!). He demands they make movies like they used to. He puts his name on battleships (that’s tough!) and the Kennedy Center (that’s class!). He runs through his greatest hits, like Gimme Greenland. Then, after a hard afternoon’s work, he goes to get his hand injection, and then “executive time” — and though my fantasies are amusing, I expect that in reality the drugs are of a more sedative nature. And as he dozes his lieutenants fight savagely for control of the scepter.

An old, mad, blind, despised, and dying King is not a healthy situation for America or anyone else. But ya gotta admit it’s funny!