At 9:23 this morning, the White House abruptly dismissed the press traveling with the president of the United States while he was away for the weekend at his private golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey. With the cameras now gone, just three hours later at 12:32 p.m., Donald Trump would share the first of 42 posts on Truth Social in a span of less than 3 hours and 15 minutes. The president’s public meltdown began when he posted his disappointment with one of his appointees, “I don’t know what she was thinking?” before he jumped straight into more delusional and dangerous images. Among the flood of posts, he shared an AI-generated image of himself kissing Jesus on a golden crucifix. He shared a “TRUMP 2028” campaign poster, a fake image of himself walking beside a handcuffed alien on a military base, and a renewed threat to invade Greenland.

He didn’t stop there. He posted a painting of himself as the commanding general, leading Revolutionary War soldiers into battle with his mouth open in a battle cry, while flames consumed the battlefield behind him, and a battered American flag flew overhead. This is how he sees himself. Not as a president spending the weekend at his golf course, but as a warrior king leading his nation into battle, one he would have never had the courage to actually fight in. That fantasy is not harmless, because right now he is leading us deeper into a real war where real people have died.

He also shared a fake image of his face merged with President George Washington’s, split straight down the middle, under the words “250 Years / In God We Trust.” It was a deliberate attempt to place himself alongside the founder of the American republic. Because he sees himself as his equal and inseparable from the nation itself. He’s saying he is Washington and he is the republic.

He posted a map of South America with Venezuela filled in as an American flag and labeled “51st State.” He shared an actual photograph of himself stepping out of a golf cart, hunched forward, a white USA hat in his hand, looking every single day of his eighty years, but with the caption “President Trump ages in reverse!”

Then there was the created image of himself as Elvis Presley in his iconic white rhinestone jumpsuit, with a deep V-neck and with his chest exposed, and a bald eagle embroidered across his heart. In it, Trump, masquerading as Elvis, stands in front of a microphone as though he is about to perform for a waiting crowd. And I couldn’t help but think about the irony of Trump choosing Elvis in this moment, knowing that he spent his final years overmedicated and isolated, surrounded by enablers who told him what he wanted to hear while his body and mind deteriorated. And how Elvis died alone in a bathroom at Graceland while the people closest to him pretended everything was fine. If Trump was trying to choose a metaphor for where he is right now, he could not have picked a more accurate one.

He just kept going. He posted an image of himself as a young man in a military school uniform, seated across a table from present-day Trump, with the caption “Same Guy. Even more energy now!” Present-day Trump is staring adorably at younger Trump. But what the image actually shows is the distance between who he was and who he has become. The young man in the uniform is upright, sharp, but not too far away from bone spurs and draft deferments. The man sitting across from him is eighty years old, and struggling. The fact that he felt compelled to post this, to insist publicly that nothing has changed, tells us everything about what he is afraid of. People who are fine do not need to prove they are fine. People who are declining do. Trump’s distraction machine was on overdrive today, but none of these were without at least some truth. Like the creepy image of himself looming over a small Greenlandic village, peering down from the clouds, captioned “Hello, Greenland!” He has shared this one multiple times before, but we can’t dismiss it as just a distraction. It is a threat with real consequences. And when taken in the context of what he said just yesterday: that the United States will have “operational control” of Greenland before he leaves office, we have to believe he is serious. Denmark, a NATO ally whose territory Greenland is, has said no over and over again. The people of Greenland have said no. But accepting no to anything is not something Donald Trump is known for. The President of the United States posted an image of himself hovering over the homes of people of a sovereign nation, like a predator surveying prey, because he thinks the entire island and everyone on it already belongs to him. This is what Trump’s imperialist dreams look like.

The post that really set Donald Trump off this morning was one of his first of the day, when he attacked Jeanine Pirro, his own U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia. This came after a late Friday motion to dismiss that Pirro had filed on the felony charge against David Hearn, the 67-year-old former Olympic canoeist who had been facing 10 years in prison for allegedly vandalizing the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool. For weeks, Trump and his administration had insisted the damage was caused by “radical left” vandals. Trump himself claimed someone had cut a 300-foot gash in the lining with a knife, and Pirro had held a press conference saying she had “tremendous evidence” and would prove it beyond a reasonable doubt.

But when the Department of the Interior finally turned over its documents, the truth proved it was all a lie. The lining had begun peeling almost immediately after installation, and the damage was the result of a botched job by the contractor on a no-bid contract from one of Trump’s own people. Pirro admitted in her court filing that the evidence did not support the charge and she dropped the case.

And instead of accepting the truth from his own appointee, Trump went on Truth Social and wrote, “I disagree 100% with Jeanine Pirro, the U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia, on the Reflecting Pool. I don’t know what she was thinking? To me, it was a pure case of VANDALISM.” Then, at 12:51, he posted a video, insisting that the material was “being cut with a knife or a box cutter, for all to see!” His own prosecutor told a federal court under oath that the case was baseless, and he attacked her publicly for refusing to keep his lie alive.

That is what triggered everything that followed. When reality and the truth get too close, Donald Trump lashes out. Often on his personal social media platform, Truth Social.

Today was also the day that Trump Media launched “Truth API,” the paid data service that gives hedge funds and trading firms faster access to Trump’s posts before the general public sees them, for a very large fee. His company described it as providing “a direct, licensed, real-time feed of the platform’s most market-moving Truths.” Senators Elizabeth Warren and Adam Schiff called it “an outrageous abuse of the President’s office for his personal benefit.” Senator Chuck Schumer called it “the definition of insider trading.” Even Republican Senator Bill Cassidy said it was “wrong” and “a form of buying access.” Jamie Raskin opened a formal congressional investigation. Trump holds over 40 percent of the company’s shares, and profits directly from every paid subscriber. He now makes money off the chaos he posts. The more erratic the posts, the more the markets move, and the more money he makes. His platform was struggling to be profitable, and he found a way to use the office of the presidency to enrich yet another one of his companies.

In their rapid, maximalist campaign to apprehend and deport as many migrants as possible as quickly as possible, Mr. Trump and top members of his administration have abandoned any pretense of being bound by the constitutional limits that have constrained presidents of both parties in the past on immigration. Instead, they are asserting that when it comes to people who entered the United States illegally, the president has unchecked power to expel them without recourse, and that he has neither the time nor the obligation to do otherwise.
“We’re getting them out, and a judge can’t say, ‘No, you have to have a trial,’” Mr. Trump said on Tuesday in the Oval Office. “The trial is going to take two years. We’re going to have a very dangerous country if we’re not allowed to do what we’re entitled to do.” Such statements are alarming to legal experts who note that in the United States civil rights are for everyone — not just citizens.

“It’s enormously disturbing,” said Erwin Chemerinsky, the dean of the law school at the University of California, Berkeley. “It is so troubling to hear the president and top executive officials give so little regard to the Constitution. It’s important to emphasize that the due process clause of the Fifth Amendment says no person can be ‘deprived of life, liberty or property, without due process of law.’ It doesn’t say ‘citizen.’”

The lawyer helping Robert F. Kennedy Jr. pick federal health officials for the incoming Trump administration has petitioned the government to revoke its approval of the polio vaccine. via @NYTimesnytimes.com/2024/12/13/hea… That campaign is just one front in the war that the lawyer, Aaron Siri, is waging against vaccines of all kinds.

Founded by 3 wealthy Texans in late 2020, the group, known as A.F.P.I., has quickly inserted itself into nearly every corner of Mr. Trump’s political machine, and is closer than any other outside player in his planning for a second term. via @NYTimesnytimes.com/2024/10/24/us/… Mr. Trump chose one of its leaders, Linda McMahon, a former member of Mr. Trump’s cabinet and a longtime friend, as co-chair of his official transition team. Brooke Rollins, who also worked in the Trump administration and is currently the nonprofit’s chief executive, has been discussed as a candidate to be Mr. Trump’s chief of staff. The institute’s ranks are stocked with other former Trump administration officials who have spent the past several years planning for a return, and in recent weeks several have quietly moved over to work full time for the campaign’s transition team.

Many migrants didn’t get time to pack their belongings before being loaded into buses, airplanes, trains and cargo ships. wsj.com/us-news/trump-… Some died of dehydration after being dropped off at remote locations, according to historians.

Beginning with a quote from Johnson, it assembles phrases that have worked well to bury the vast majority of mass shootings in the United States in pious nonsense, logical contradiction and legislative inaction. Please copy and paste as needed. washingtonpost.com/opinions/2024/… In the immediate aftermath of the mass shooting, you say:

“Prayer is appropriate in a time like this, that the evil can end and this senseless violence can stop.”

“One thing I still haven’t figured out well, and I don’t think anyone really has, is how to capture Trump’s level of rally unhingedness in a regular article. The only good way is to list like 30 things he said.” Trump wrongly claims nobody would have believed him if he’d promised there’d be 3.3 million jobs added between now and Election Day. Over the previous 18-month period, under Obama, there were 3.9 million jobs added.