August 17, 2025

The woke jokes and belligerent bloviating won't save Trump from his disasters, let alone owning the catastrophe that will cost lives, by Hal M. Brown


 Trump doesn’t care about what’s in The Smithsonian. He’s just puking up another distraction. It’s an unfunny woke joke. It’s along the lines of his Kennedy Center Awards nonsense. It got a lot of coverage, much of it mocking his insatiable need for attention, but it was a distraction.

The distractions seemed to be meant to take public attention away from the Epstein matter, the bad jobs numbers, and the failure the tariffs, but that was two days ago. 

Right now they aren’t about a “mere” disaster, they are about a catastrophe which he wants you to ignore and desperately wants to go away. This, of course, is the Alaska meeting and the war in Ukraine. 

If he watches MSNBC, and he’s known to do this, he will see discussions about the failure of the Putin meeting and how he reacted:

How he reacted to news about the Putin meeting failing shows us how this got to him:

This one reeks of flop sweat:

Now the rubber is hitting the road. He has to achieve an end to the war. He has an extraordinary meeting tomorrow. Previously we expected Zelinskyy to be meeting with Trump alone. Now we learn he won’t be meeting with Trump by himself:

I don’t know whether Zelenskyy thought of this or not, but if he did it is brilliant. I hope the other seven world leaders fly in and join him in a caravan of limos driving up to the White House for the meeting. That would be some photo op even before they go inside. Trump probaly will have his minions in the meeting as he did the last time. Monday Zelenskyy will have his own heavy hitters. They aren’t just national leaders, but they also have their own armies.

Trump won’t end the war, because doing so would mean Ukraine giving up territory to Russia. He can’t allow this because Putin won’t let him. He knows this. This will all end up in a huge stamp on his presidential promise to end the war saying it was an epic fail (hence my illustration).

What Trump is likely to do is escalate the war he can control, at least to some extent. He thinks he can control it. This is his war against Amercian cities and to a lesser extent his war on woke.

The city war isn’t going as well as he hoped it would. Consider coverage like this:

He is counting on the active duty military to act as his SS, but whether they will do this remains to be determined. If you subscribe to The NY Times read what David French, a combat veteran himself, had to say about this here.

Excerpt:

Much of the commentary surrounding President Trump’s decision to deploy National Guard troops to Los Angeles and now Washington, D.C., has centered on its impact on American democracy. Do we want to live in a republic that puts military boots on city streets at the whim of a politician, rather than in response to an extraordinary need?

He concludes:

I don’t doubt that members of the military deployed in Washington will still try to show the way. A vast majority have far too much integrity, far too much discipline and far too much affection for their fellow Americans to become the kind of jackbooted oppressors you see in the worst militaries abroad. They’ll perform a misguided mission with honor.

When that mission is a vengeful, partisan deployment to American streets, however, it risks straining the social compact that binds a democracy to its military. The Army may want to hold the line, but Donald Trump does not, and few people can do more damage to our nation’s armed forces than a commander in chief who is consumed with rage and drunk with power.

This is my reaction to this:

Trump has his Devil eyes on Democratic cities. Some point out that the local courts will impede this, but let’s not forget that while Trump so far has been able to control his people with guns (and now may arm the soldiers in DC) cities also have their own people with guns. The New York City Police have about 33,000 sworn officers. 

Whether Trump thinks his dictatorial control has hardened to the extent he goes beyond making threats remains to be seen. Still, these threats provide a distraction.

As for the war on woke, while this gets media attention, when it comes right down to it outrageous as trying to rewrite American history it doesn’t matter all that much in the great scheme of things. I doubt Trump cares about woke, even when it comes to drag shows or trans people in sports. His rants are a performance for people who do care. I doubt that most of those who do care believe Trump care as much as they do if he cares at all.

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The woke jokes and belligerent bloviating won't save Trump from his disasters, let alone owning the catastrophe that will cost lives, by Hal M. Brown

  Trump doesn’t care about what’s in The Smithsonian. He’s just puking up another distraction. It’s an unfunny woke joke. It’s along the lin...