I am sitting outdoors on a balmy morning, sipping my coffee in one of the last surviving “streateries” on 17th Street. Without these curbside tables, many of the restaurants on the street would not have survived COVID-19.
I appreciate this one still being here, because the relative peace and quiet of the McDonald’s was disrupted by a mentally ill man in a wheelchair shouting f-bombs and homophobic epithets at no one in particular — except possibly his personal demons.
I resisted an impulse to say “Shut the hell up.” It does not help to challenge a crazy person, as numerous reporters have discovered when questioning the president.
Before I headed out one morning, Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) was on TV grilling Dr. Anthony Fauci at a Senate hearing. Fauci, former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), is a well-deserving recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Sen. Paul treated him like a notorious criminal about whom it is a shock to the public conscience that he remains at large.
Fauci invoked his Fifth Amendment rights so skillfully that he had no need to yell or curse.
It is 45 years since the AIDS pandemic hit the front page of The New York Times. Friends of mine who are HIV/AIDS policy professionals have nothing but praise for Fauci. He is a distinguished scientist and public servant. During the COVID crisis, he had to explain that our response to the virus inevitably changed as we learned more about it.
Meanwhile, President Trump called for less testing, as if ignoring the spread of the disease would magically make it disappear. He also suggested introducing ultraviolet rays and disinfectant into the body.
Taking their cue from the blathering ignoramus in the White House, Republicans — like Rand Paul — love to pontificate on matters in which they lack expertise. Paul’s medical background is in ophthalmology, not virology.
Elsewhere in the administration, efforts to bend justice to suit Trump’s hunger for revenge are not going well. Trump was angry at U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro for deciding to drop the case against former Olympian David Hearn when it turned out that the evidence for his vandalizing the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool was as flimsy as most of us knew all along that it was.
We live in a time when saboteurs and grifters are crudely bending the machinery of government to their own ends.
“The boss wants this money,” a quote from Trump fundraiser Meredith O’Rourke that has emerged thanks to The Wall Street Journal, is a vivid summary of her boss’s shakedown efforts to get multimillion-dollar donations from corporations.
Trump’s hand is perpetually in the cookie jar. This misuse of his office will end only with his departure or removal.
In the meantime, it helps me to go off-line and savor the simple joys of a summer day. Most of my neighbors do not curse at the top of their lungs. We are diverse, to use an unjustly demonized word, and we get along rather well.
Decent daily habits help keep progressive values alive, even if we are not, say, rescuing artifacts from the Smithsonian to prevent them from being smashed by MAGA fanatics. I worry that Trump’s slanders may inspire such destruction, though for now he has settled for posting signs outside museums warning of the lies allegedly being told inside.
As others have noted, every accusation 47 makes is a confession.
Smithsonian Secretary Dr. Lonnie Bunch led in the creation of the widely praised National Museum of African American History and Culture. He is one of the finest people in Washington. It is hard to imagine anyone feeling threatened by historians and museum curators; but white nationalists are afraid of the truth.
The problem for those eager to rewrite history is they overplay their hand and underestimate millions of fellow Americans determined to defend our ancestors’ legacy.
I have feared that Trump is pushing us toward civil war. He reminds me of the “rough beast” darkly described by Yeats in his poem “The Second Coming”as “slouching towards Bethlehem to be born.”
Yeats, however, never mentioned that his beast spoke, much less in such an ungoverned way.
Trump continually undermines himself because he can’t shut up. He is governed by whim, makes things up, lies and contradicts himself. This beast is malevolent, but also ridiculous.
This man aching to be a fearsome tyrant cannot stop his clowning. And on this hot summer evening I pour some chilled wine and raise my glass to our mouthy monster’s looming crash.
Richard Rosendall is a writer and activist who can be reached at rrosendall@me.com. Copyright © 2026 by Richard J. Rosendall. All rights reserved.