by W.D. Ehrhart
For the past few months, I have largely avoided political events and especially contemporary goings-on involving the staggeringly comically greedy egotistical narcissistic bigoted hate-fueled criminal he-would-be-unbelievable-except-that-we’re seeing-it-daily-with-our-own-eyes excuse for a human being occupying what has become the Whitewash House.
Instead, I’ve written essays that made fun of King Charles III’s impressive chest of medals and decorations, eulogized the writer Philip Caputo, mourned the passing of our 22-year-old cat, mocked the inability of politicians to keep their penises in their pants, remembered my high school graduating class of 1966, and written about my struggles with weight gain.
But today I’ve decided that it’s time to come out of hibernation and get back into the game. So I’ve gone through this week’s The Week magazine in a quest to discover what the Orange Cheeto has been up to lately. And here’s what I’ve discovered:
For starters, there he is on the front cover of the magazine, cuddled up close to Natalie Harp, who in an article on p.6 is described as Trump’s “binkie,” providing him with “constant adoration.”
Just inside the cover, the magazine’s editor-at-large details a litany of disasters resulting from global warming, “dismissed by Donald Trump as the ‘greatest con job ever perpetrated on the world.’”
A long article about Trump’s latest tariffs against Canada, and the negative consequences of the Trump team’s “clodhopping bullying,” takes up most of the next page, though mention is also made of Trump’s renaming of Lake Ontario as “Lake America.”
Half of the next page is an article about Trump’s efforts to tamper with mail-in balloting, most recently assisted by the lickspittle Injustices of his Supremely MAGA Court. The other half of the page deals with Trump’s effort to win his so-far-failing war-of-choice against Iran by levying sanctions against any country doing business with Iran, which would necessarily include China, Iran’s largest trading partner.
Then we get the article about Trump’s “adoring, omnipresent ‘human printer’” Natalie Harp, along with brief items about a Justice Department lawyer who told a court that if Trump is not allowed to put his name on the Kennedy Center, Trump will order the building taken down as “unsafe.” And another item mentioning that Trump’s State Department will no longer process asylum claims from people who entered the U.S. legally in the past decade.
In a section called “The U.S. at a Glance,” we learn that the wife of an active duty U.S. army sergeant was deported to Honduras this week, the lickspittle Injustices of his Supremely MAGA Court have ruled that construction on the Whitewash House ballroom and underground bunker can continue, Trump’s handpicked replacement for Lindsay Graham—his sister, who admits she’s “not that informed on national security”—will stand for her brother’s seat in November, and the future U.S. aircraft carrier that was to be named for African American Pearl Harbor hero Doris Miller will not be named for him after all.
On p. 10, we read a heartwarming item about how Trump has “forgiven” Michael Cohen, who paid hush money to the porn star Trump wanted silenced, but then testified against Trump, claiming now that he was coerced and bullied into testifying.
The following page contains a long article excoriating the Taliban, but mentions that it was Trump who signed a deal in 2020 to withdraw U.S. troops from Afghanistan while much more recently cancelling the legal immigrant status of 190,000 Afghans who had worked with or aided the U.S. during our long war there.
On the very next page, we learn that our new Attorney General, formerly Trump’s personal lawyer, refuses to pledge that he will “act independently of the White House,” and that his boss would “never ask him to do anything unethical or illegal.” Seriously; the guy said that.
And just below that we hear—this is the Wall Street Journal, no less—that “Trump is engaging in breathtaking levels of self-dealing, including his family’s crypto schemes, business deals with foreign governments, the sale of pardons, and demands for contributions and tribute from companies seeking regulatory favor.”
Under “Best Columns: International,” we are reminded once again that Trump thinks North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un is “very good.” Trump has drastically curtailed annual military exercises with South Korea, insinuating that the South Koreans must be punished for not supporting his war-of-choice against Iran. And under “Best Columns: Europe,” a British publication characterizes Prince Harry’s joke that America has “elected a king” as “tone-deaf” (though the only problem I can see with what he said is that it isn’t a joke).
An article in “Talking Points” about the rise of Islamophobia in the U.S. mentions that a real “shift” in American attitudes began in 2016 with Trump’s call for a “Muslim ban,” claiming falsely that thousands of New Jersey Muslims had cheered when the Twin Towers fell.
On the next page, we are told that the Trump Administration has begun the first deportations of Haitian immigrants, Trump claiming that conditions in Haiti are “safe enough for their return”—though back on p.8, we read about the largest mass abduction of Haitians by armed gangs since 2021, and this in a community that had never before been attacked.
That same page also carries an article about our staggeringly huge national debt, which can only be reduced by eliminating the tax cuts given to the wealthy and to corporations by G.W. Bush and Trump, and returning to a tax system that was geared to adjust for aging Baby Boomers, changes Trump has rejected out of hand.
Of the six “Pick of the Week’s Cartoons,” three of them depict Trump, and a fourth is directly connected to him.
We get a respite for a few pages, but The Nerd Reich, reviewed in the “Book of the Week” section, argues that uber-rich tech moguls are working to replace our republic with a CEO-style monarchy, and that the Trump regime is a favorable vehicle for that transformation.
A few pages later, we encounter an article about Trump lifting the tariff on foreign ground beef in order to try to bring down the cost, which has usually Republican ranchers up in arms, even though the temporary lifting of the tariff would only be for three months, just enough to get shoppers for ground beef past the November elections.
On the same page, we read that most companies are pocketing the refunds from tariffs illegally imposed by Trump rather than passing the savings on to customers. And we also learn that Trump has ordered his Justice Department to terminate its anti-trust case against Live Nation, allowing that company to keep control of Ticketmaster and—effectively—continue to charge outrageous prices for tickets.
And last but not least, on p.34 we read that Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent is at odds with Federal Reserve Chair Kevin Warsh over how to reduce the cost of borrowing, which can only be accomplished by reducing this administration’s spending or raising taxes, two solutions Trump will not even consider.
So there you have it: just one week of the news with our portly, petulant, petty, Primadonna-in-Chief. I don’t know, folks. I may just have to go back into hibernation for another few months. This is just really freakin’ hard to take.
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W.D. Ehrhart is a retired Master Teacher of History & English, and author of a Vietnam War memoir trilogy published by McFarland.