The voices in Donald Trump’s head were unanimous. “Everyone says that I should get the Nobel Peace Prize,” he told the United Nations General Assembly. But if he really believes everyone agrees with him, why is he so consumed with revenge?
Also, are we really going to let a mad ignoramus destroy our country?
Trump’s popularity may be waning, but his increasing desperation makes him all the more dangerous.
He forced out a U.S. attorney whom he appointed for refusing to indict former FBI Director James Comey due to a lack of evidence. He then appointed his personal lawyer, Lindsey Halligan, despite her having no prosecutorial experience. She filed a bare-bones indictment just days before the statute of limitations was set to expire.
Trump’s public comments provide clear evidence of a selective and vindictive prosecution. A judge will likely throw it out.
It is difficult to say which is worse — Trump’s vindictiveness or his lack of discipline. The people he is eager to prosecute include California Democratic Sen. Adam Schiff and New York Attorney General Letitia James. From his frequent insults, he appears to have a lengthy enemies list, though he denies it’s a list.
He is increasingly erratic. After throwing Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy out of the White House, Trump is now disillusioned with his own buddy, Vladimir Putin, and is claiming to re-embrace Zelenskyy. Who knows what his position will be next week?
Trump has made our country a laughingstock. His UN speech was a tangle of his usual lies, petty grievances and meritless boasting. He demanded an investigation into the escalator stopping (which was caused by his own videographer), and the teleprompter failing (for which his own staff was to blame).
Every time Trump stubs his toe, it’s another Deep State conspiracy.
But Trump’s mischief is catching up with him. His attempt to silence his critics backfired badly in the case of late-night host Jimmy Kimmel. Disney and ABC returned Kimmel to the air soon after his suspension provoked a national uproar against censorship.
This does not mean Trump is about to lose power. He controls every branch of government, and his fellow Republicans have been mostly supine. The Associated Press reports that the Supreme Court has granted the Trump administration’s requests to block lower court rulings in more than 70 percent of cases brought by the administration that were decided via the shadow docket.
Still, Trump’s act has gotten old. His habit of creating problems rather than solving them is increasingly difficult to overlook.
Trump is Mr. Distraction. That might work for him if people gave up. But people are getting fed up. He has not made good on his promises to lower food prices, and his Big Beautiful Bill, which passed a few months ago, is threatening many people’s healthcare and food assistance. Meanwhile, he and Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. have endangered public health by embracing junk science, like the claim that Tylenol causes autism.
The midterm elections are 13 months away. If we tune out instead of holding Republicans to account, the toadies and incompetents Trump has installed atop our government will continue their wreckage.
So-called War Secretary Pete Hegseth summoned hundreds of our top military officers from around the globe to Marine Corps Base Quantico in Virginia on Sept. 30 to discuss his vision of “warrior ethos.” I doubt that experienced military officers needed a lecture from a guy known for drunkenness and sexual harassment, and whose main qualification for heading our national defense was being a weekend host on Fox News. Maybe he planned to give them tips on hair, makeup and manly gestures.
Francis Scott Key, in 1814, described in “The Star-Spangled Banner” the American flag surviving a night of British bombardment of Fort McHenry. I marvel each morning that we have survived another day of attacks on our norms and institutions. As Jonathan Rauch writes in The Constitution of Knowledge, “The miracle is how robust free expression and liberal science have proved to be, despite unremitting attacks from every direction over hundreds of years.”
I remain defiant. I’m thinking of cheering everyone up with a column titled, “Imagine how much worse things could get.” It could get so bad that a closeted senator could no longer safely cruise in the nation’s capital.
More seriously, the threat never feels quite so dire until we ourselves are being grabbed in the street by masked officers and disappeared.
Let’s not wait until it is too late. Freedom is kept alive by exercising it.
Richard Rosendall is a writer and activist who can be reached at rrosendall@me.com. Copyright © 2025 by Richard J. Rosendall. All rights reserved.