The rending of hair and gnashing of teeth from those who despise Donald Trump continues inside the Beltway and across the country two weeks after his election to a second presidential term. This week, the less-than-dapper Don continues to nominate members of his Cabinet in a seemingly unending cavalcade of circus performers and reality television stars.
Meanwhile the White House Correspondents Association is trying to negotiate a deal to provide a reporting pool to cover the president-elect while previously critical news organizations rush to fellate him with the same enthusiasm one would give to a worm-ridden corpse. It’s perfunctory but it is less than joyful to behold.
JD Vance, the presumptive heir to the throne is laying low, while Elon “Husky Musky” Musk is out front, whipping supporters into a continued angry frenzy while those celebrating Trump’s brand of populism are crashing hard into the wall of reality. Walmart, MAGA’s favorite one-stop shop, announced this week that if Trump places tariffs on foreign-made goods, guess what folks, your prices are going to rise.
All across the country the sound of moaning, giggling, laughter and anguished sobs – along with several well-placed one-fingered salutes, speak to the mental state of a divided and sometimes diffident, defeated, disinterested, disappointed, dizzy populace.
Let the games begin.
Trump is defending his choice for attorney general, the ludicrous and licentious Matt Gaetz, while promoting his nominee to oversee Medicare and Medicaid for millions of Americans, Dr. Oz, by telling us “He won nine Daytime Emmy Awards hosting ‘The Dr. Oz Show.’” In Trump’s execrable universe that passes for exemplary qualifications to do a serious job. It says something that Dr. Oz is one of the least offensive nominees for public office to be put forth by the incoming president.
Don’t expect the media to help. We sold our collective soul during the election, at least the six major companies that own and operate 90 percent of what you see, read or hear did as much. Fox News, of course, had no soul which is why Trump’s vetting process for some key nominees simply means hiring Fox talking heads – whether they’re qualified or not. At least he knows they’re loyal.
Trump’s incoming communication staff has a reputation for saying anything that favors the boss – which means a lot of feckless, fact-less, vile sputum parading as facts. Incoming White House communications director Steven Cheung is well known for his “pugilistic” bombast – particularly on social media – and like many of Trump’s inner circle – he has a background in entertainment. Before serving as a Trump campaign aide, he was the spokesman for the Ultimate Fighting Championship. That’s not satire despite it being an obvious setup line for a series of punchlines.
His press secretary will be 27-year-old Karoline Leavitt, a former Fox News intern and assistant press secretary under Kayleigh McEnany. Leavitt ran for Congress and lost during the 2022 midterm elections and attracted support from Lauren Boebert and Ted Cruz for her “brazen” campaign style. Hold the punchlines until the end, please.
Leavitt has never really worked as a reporter and has no idea how the press operates, but according to Trump, “Karoline is smart, tough, and has proven to be a highly effective communicator.” In a statement Friday, Trump said of Leavitt “I have the utmost confidence she will excel at the podium, and help deliver our message to the American People as we, Make America Great Again.”
That remains to be seen. She has as much experience at the Brady Briefing room podium as I have performing brain surgery. I’m sure she’s seen a few YouTube videos to school herself up, but her appointment and Trump’s statement begs the question as to whether or not the president-elect, as some rumors have suggested, will take over making the assignments in the Brady Briefing room (usually left up to the WHCA) to ensure a friendly atmosphere for his young protégé.
“These guys are the f***ing worst,” one long-time Republican congressman told me – on background — of the incoming administration. That sentiment was confirmed by several Democrats, reporters and members of the Secret Service.
Makes no difference. When Trump comes riding six white horses as he gallops back into the White House, he will have a young, inexperienced adult known for bombast speaking for him. She will be defending a convicted felon who cares about no one but himself. He will ban reporters, investigate them and otherwise silence them as he installs tariffs, rounds up immigrants and happily flushes fluoride from our water – making “Dr. Strangelove” that much closer to reality while eclipsing “Idiocracy” in its ignorant futility. Hey, at least he’s not spiking our water with electrolytes, right?
Just remember: “Evolution does not necessarily reward intelligence. With no natural predators to thin the herd, it began to simply reward those who reproduced the most, and left the intelligent to become an endangered species.”
Welcome to America in 2025.
His name isn’t Dwayne Elizondo Mountain Dew Herbert Camacho, but the second-coming of Donald Trump may go down in history for many things if there’s a future after he shuffles off his mortal coil. At the very least it will undoubtedly go down as the era that signaled the death knell for what many have come to regard as “traditional journalism.”
Rising in its place are “independent” podcasters, live-streamers and content providers who may be called many things, but “journalist” is not among them. In many ways, the new dynamic is reminiscent of the many pamphleteers and newspapers of the 19th century. Each party had their own publication which often printed fiction parading as fact about their political rivals.
As populism rose with Andrew Jackson (a Democrat) in the campaign against John Quincy Adams in 1828, voters saw it as a struggle “between the democracy of the country, on the one hand, and a lordly purse-proud aristocracy on the other.” Sound familiar? The young nation was divided and newspapers and pamphlets hammered home the differences between the two men – in many cases embellishing those differences.
In Congress, Jackson’s followers led by Senator John Randolph harassed President Adams (seeking his second term) without mercy from “almost the day of his inauguration until the day of his defeat.” Those in Jackson’s court called Adams corrupt, accusing him of installing “gaming tables and gambling furniture” in the White House at public expense.They also accused him of premarital sex with his wife and said when he was minister to Russia, he had procured a young American girl for Czar Alexander I.
Friends of Adams gave as good as they got. Jackson, they wrote, was “ignorant, inexperienced” and a “man of no labor, no patience . . . wholly unqualified by education, habit and temper for the station of the president.” By the time the election rolled around Adam’s angry minions had descended into the gutter and accused Jackson of adultery, gambling, cock fighting, bigamy, slave-trading, drunkenness, theft, lying and murder. Jackson won.
In some ways, the politics of that time helped shape the next 200 years of press freedom. As newspapers became ubiquitous, advertising became more popular and prolific. The direct influence of politicians waned, to be replaced by the advertisers. Thus newspapers became more than political rags and began reporting on every aspect of American society – attracting the advertisers of everything involved in American society along the way.
Now, times have reverted back. The press has become overwhelmingly involved in politics to the point of obsession — but without the acumen to provide insight. If Trump is right about anything, he is taking America back – back to a time when women didn’t vote, Black people were slaves and child labor was the norm.
The press is complicit in this. We report on self-serving lies, which pollsters then proceed to use to produce a desired result with no ambiguity. These polls are then reported on in the news creating a sense of public concern over imaginary threats – which the administration then will use to justify actions that in no way benefit the citizens it purports to serve. Immigrants eating dogs and cats, and crazed immigrant terrorists gunning down American citizens while both being too lazy to work while taking all of the jobs is one such issue where the press helps create the narrative Trump is using to support rounding up immigrants.
So, at the end of the day the vast number of Americans, right and left, have no idea what’s going on, but they certainly believe they are in the right and anyone who thinks differently is either a communist, socialist, stooge, or moron – and sometimes all of the above.
I recently asked on “X”: How do you deal with someone who has an opinion different from your own? More than 1,200 people responded, and several hundred more responded on “Bluesky” when I asked the same question. There were a variety of answers, and some professed to seek understanding, or greeted such opinions with indifference if it was about “something that didn’t matter,” like whether you prefer your steak rare or well done. But nearly everyone also harbored the idea, often stated, sometimes not, that their job was to listen to others only enough to convince others of the righteousness of their own cause. Intellectual curiosity - even about steak preference was woefully lacking.
That didn’t start with Trump. History shows it has been with us since the inception of our country and has been a staple of human nature since we crawled out of the caves. And sitting in the front row of today’s reality show, it is increasingly obvious that we haven’t advanced too far from the caves.
So, sit back and buckle up buttercups. The next four years are going to be a lot like cavemen throwing stones at each other. Some will die, some will be injured and some will survive.
But, no one gets out unscathed - especially since the press has already bowed in advance.
