Donald Trump Archives - Ramblin' with Roger

Such a weird man, at 80

“The fake images and the false boast are not separate stories.”

Sure, I LOATH his politics. But, beyond that, he’s a weird man. I saw someone complain on their Substack, “Why does the media ignore his madness?” Lately, it’s been too difficult to avoid.

Why did he explain executions to kids? Was the lesson for children “to fear difference, obey power, and treat vulnerable people as threats”?

From April 13: His Erratic Behavior and Extreme Comments Revive Mental Health Debate. As he “threatens to wipe out Iran and attacks the pope, even some former allies and advisers are questioning whether he has grown increasingly unbalanced, describing him as ‘lunatic’ and ‘clearly insane.'”

Thomas Meisenhelder complained in Common Sense that the man “isn’t mentally ill; he’s evil.” Moreover, “repeating time and time again that [he] is crazy not only negatively affects the mentally ill but also seriously misunderstands the man and his policies.” Yeah, I get it. But isn’t it possible that he’s BOTH crazy and evil?

NOT a genius

I’ve been reading the Facebook feed, It’s a Lovely Life by Heather Delaney Reese. Here’s just a part of her June 1 feed:

“In the middle of the night, while most Americans were fast asleep, [he] was awake inside the White House. Unable to get any much-needed rest, he opened Truth Social and shared a post that had the complete opposite effect he hoped it would.

“And at exactly 12:35 this morning, [he] decided it was the perfect time to announce to the world that a cognitive screening exam, the kind doctors use to help identify signs of cognitive impairment and dementia, proved he possessed what he called ‘extreme intelligence…’

“But what he either doesn’t understand, or what nobody told him, is that these tests are not designed to measure genius. They’re not IQ tests, and they’re not difficult for those without impairments to pass. They are screening tools used by doctors to determine whether someone may be showing signs of significant cognitive decline. Healthy adults are expected to perform well on them. The goal isn’t to identify extraordinary intelligence. It’s to identify potential impairment.

This “makes [his] insistence that this was a ‘high difficulty’ test proving his ‘extreme intelligence’ far more revealing than the score itself…

“During a seven-hour posting spree on [May 30] alone, he shared more than fifty posts, including fake images of himself standing beside George Washington, multiple depictions of himself carved into Mount Rushmore, and jealousy that China has a ballroom and he doesn’t. And later, he even posted a bizarre power-fantasy image of Air Force One surrounded by a military escort…

Falsehoods galore

“The fake images and the false boast are not separate stories. They are the same story. Both are attempts to manufacture a version of himself that reality will not provide. He cannot place himself alongside anyone alive today who is of historical significance these days, so he commands others to create fake images of himself with George Washington. He cannot point to actual evidence of extraordinary intelligence, so he points to a test that was never designed to measure it. The medium changes, but the impulse remains the same. Image by image. Post by post. Claim by claim. He is constructing a version of himself that the facts cannot sustain…

“That is why we should expect more chaos, more spectacle, and more manufactured crises. We need to prepare now for more attempts to make us exhausted, divided, frightened, and distracted because they know the clock is ticking.”

Another Heather

Here’s Heather Cox Richardson on June 2: “His posts seemed designed primarily to reassure himself. By Saturday, so many of the musical acts his team had lined up to play at his Freedom 250 “Great American State Fair” from late June through the beginning of July had bailed that he posted that he was ‘thinking about bringing the Number One Attraction anywhere in the World, the man who gets much larger audiences than Elvis in his prime, and he does so without a guitar, the man who loves our Country more than anyone else, and the man who some say is the Greatest President in History…’

“A series of AI images in the style of the 1950s Dick and Jane readers show a town parade festooned with flags and patriotic bunting, little girls laughing together at an old-fashioned town fair, and little boys in a suburb playing ball. All of the images read: ‘AMERICA IS BACK!’ And in them, all of the people are white.

“He posted an image of a white family from that era standing beside a Cadillac Coupe DeVille parked on a suburban street, with the caption: ‘BILLIONS WERE SPENT TO CONVINCE YOU THIS IS EVIL.’

djt is 80 and appears to be utterly daft. Kim Wehle, opinion contributor for The Hill, says he’s “losing it and must be removed.”

Todd Blanche of The Worst Wing

SPLC

There’s a running segment on The Daily Show during which the program “highlights” the bozos in the regime. While I’ve complained about others, I hadn’t had a chance to kvetch about acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, formerly FOTUS’s personal attorney.

You’ve probably heard about the “$1.8 billion fund created by the regime to pay people who claim mistreatment by the federal government appears to violate longstanding Justice Department standards and practices, as well as a policy directive issued by the administration last year, legal experts said.

“Todd Blanche… defended the fund at a Senate hearing, calling it “unusual” but insisting it was appropriate, reflective of past settlements.” Even former AG Pam Bondi would not have allowed such egregious actions.

Some of the Jan. 6 rioters could get large spoonfuls. But the Family looks to be the biggest beneficiaries of all: “As part of the settlement, the U.S. government is barred from prosecuting or further auditing the Trumps or their family business for any potential misconduct preceding the agreement. That saves them from penalties that some estimate could have reached $100 million or beyond. More than that, it functionally puts the family beyond the reach of the law in these tax cases. The order is intended to last, according to Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, “FOREVER.”

This is A Department of Justice for an Age of Conspiracy Theories, per Quinta Jurecic of The Atlantic

Baseless allegations

“Not so very long ago, the Justice Department stood as a bulwark of facts against [djt’s] wildest claims. During his first term, a pattern emerged: Trump would make a bizarre assertion (say, that Barack Obama had illegally wiretapped Trump Tower), a litigant would point to this assertion in court to cast doubt on the Justice Department’s arguments, and DOJ attorneys would be forced to explain to an irritated judge that the president’s statements did not actually reflect the government’s position on the matter. Checking his comments against what a government lawyer was willing to swear in front of a judge was a handy way of demonstrating how FOTUS’s version of reality measured up to the truth.

In the second term, the Justice Department no longer maintains a polite distance from the baseless allegations he shares in his late-night Truth Social posts.”

Terry Moran is “righteously furious about the Slush Fund. And all the rest of the corruption cascading out of this administration. And, to me, some of the real villains here—aside from the president and his White House henchmen—are Trump’s lawyers, all the way up to the Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche. A law license is a public trust. And I know that’s a pretty low bar much of the time. You can get a lawyer to make a case for you that the sky is green and the grass is blue, and they’ll do it without blushing. For a nice fee.

“But this? At some point, the bar should step in. If you are an American lawyer and you have played a part in the plundering of our Treasury with this ‘weaponization’ slush-fund scheme, maybe you should lose your license?”

“Reverse racism?”

Substack: Trump DOJ will avenge the KKK by taking out SPLC by Liz Dye. The racism is not subtle.

“The SPLC is manufacturing racism to justify its existence,” Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche claimed.

“Flanked by embattled FBI Director Kash Patel, Blanche announced an 11-count federal indictment of the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC). The civil rights organization that effectively brought down the Ku Klux Klan.

“The indictment is a grotesque attempt to recast white people as the real victims of racism. In the Trump DOJ’s telling, the civil rights advocates who spent decades mapping and dismantling the Klan are somehow its secret benefactors, ‘enriching’ themselves by secretly creating racism — something which is apparently in such short supply that it can only be generated with constant infusions of cash.”

Newsmax: In an early morning Truth Social post on Friday, FOTUS described the SPLC as “one of the greatest political scams in American history.” He declared that if the allegations prove true, the 2020 presidential election should be “permanently wiped from the books.”

Bogus charge

National Memo: “The absurdity of the bogus indictment is obvious to anyone – including former federal prosecutor Blanche – who knows how the FBI prosecutes organized crime, terrorism, narcotics smuggling, or violent extremism, in nearly every case, depending on paid informants. In fact, over the past few decades, the FBI and the Justice Department have relied on information from SPLC and its informants to jail violent Klansmen and Nazis. The indictment also charges that SPLC ‘concealed’ its identity behind false fronts when sending money to informants, just as the FBI and the Justice Department would do, so as not to expose their paid spies.

BTW, per WaPo: Elon Musk posted almost daily about race on X in recent months, a Washington Post analysis found, at times sharing views experts said echoed white supremacy.

April rambling; alternative world order

Sid Krofft

Amnesty International’s annual report on human rights around the globe described a push for a “predatory alternative world order.”

His Erratic Behavior and Extreme Comments Revive Mental Health Debate

The Most Ludicrous, Morally Obscene, and Dangerous Man in the World

The deaf, dumb, and blind cult is still dazzled by the nastiest, most naked ‘emperor’ ever, and Jordan Klepper Gets MAGA’s Take on the Iran War & the War with the Pope | The Daily Show

‘Anytime you engage the Border Patrol in interior enforcement, the wheels are going to fall off.’

Google Broke Its Promise to Me. Now ICE Has My Data.

The insider trading suspicions looming over this regime

Flu vaccine no longer mandated for US troops, Hegseth says, citing “medical autonomy” and religious freedom.

When Ezekiel 25:17 Meets Psalms 3:16

The Pentagon doesn’t want you to hear about threats to the editorial independence of Stars and Stripes. They fired their ombudsperson.

He Wrote an Op-Ed. Then the police tracked him. A legal case in Kansas shows how surveillance technology can distort policing priorities. When authorities can monitor anyone cheaply, the temptation to target critics increases.

Jimmy Kimmel Provides an Alternative White House Correspondents’ Dinner Roast

AfA

Astronauts for America is a nonpartisan organization of former NASA astronauts who have sworn to defend the Constitution of the United States, committed to science, evidence-based decision-making, public service, and the rule of law.

Measles Took My Daughter. This Is What I Want Everyone to Know.

The Death of a Superman. How clothing donation bins quietly kill homeless people across North America.

988 Launch Tied to Drop in Youth Suicides

The Short and Ridiculous Trial of a Protester Arrested in an Inflatable Penis Costume. An Alabama cop who confronted the No Kings protester claimed she posed a risk to public safety.

The product liability legal case of the century arrives this summer: Coyote vs. Acme, the movie

Gerry Conway, Former Marvel EIC, Dies at 73. The first Spider-Man comic I read was the Death of Gwen Stacy, which he wrote, among MANY other pieces for Marvel and DC. He also wrote for television, including Diagnosis: Murder and, my favorite of his, Law & Order: Criminal Intent.

Sid Krofft: About and Memories, and H.R. Pufnstuf, Witchiepoo, Joy the Bugaloo, and me

Marvel Confirms 2019 ‘Avengers: Endgame’ To Be Replaced Before ‘Doomsday’ Released- a good reason to give up on the MCU, IMO

William Shatner is selling Kellogg’s Raisin Bran

“Your settlement payment of $9 for the In re EpiPen Marketing, Sales Practices and Antitrust Litigation, Civil Case No. 2:17-md-02785-DDC-TJJ is now available.” I’m rich!

Crease and Desist and The Cat Phone Came Back and The Crime of Borrowing a Teenage Witch? and The Good Advice That The DMV Rejected

MUSIC

Antichrist Superstar from Colbert

Aeolian Beauty by RZA · Colorado Symphony · Christopher Dragon

Goodbye Henry – RAYE, feat. Al Green

Solsbury Hill -MonaLisa Twins

Gladys Knight’s title tune for 1989’s Bond movie Licence To Kill

Meaning Business – Wendy Eisenberg

Musician Dave Mason, who was a member of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee Traffic, died at the age of 79

Coverville 1577: 50th Anniversary of Ramones and 1578: Dave Mason Tribute and Paul Carrack Cover Story

Favorite Songs By Favorite Artists (Series Four) #1: HOUSE Of ALL

Angel Of The Morning – Merrilee Rush

Kiss – Prince

Cruelty Is The Point: Mr. Brunelle

Robert Waldo Brunelle Jr re FOTUS

When my daughter helped me clean my office, she found an unused $25 Amazon gift card. Rather than let it go to waste, I bought Cruelty Is The Point, a Collection of “Mr. Brunelle Explains It All” cartoons. (This is not to be confused with The Cruelty Is the Point: Why Trump’s America Endures by Adam Serwer (2022).)

Robert Waldo Brunelle JR is “a painter, book illustrator, kinetic sculptor, retired art teacher, and political cartoonist.” Specifically, “I am a 7th-Generation Vermonter, born in Rutland in 1958. I am a descendant of William Brewster of the Mayflower and count among my ancestors a Great-Grandfather, Great-Great Grandfather, and Great-Grandmother who were all artists.

“My strip, Mr. Brunelle Explains It All, appears weekly in Seven Days VT, and monthly in Funny Times and on this site.” The strip began in 1997. When Mr. Brunelle posts his comics on Facebook, I repost north of 95% of them. It explains the current situation we find ourselves in quite cogently across four panels.

In his introduction to Cruelty, he writes correctly that the content is “‘ripped from the headlines,’ for your amusement.” Well, it’s not always amusing; sometimes it’s maddening. But it always has a heaping helping of truthfulness.

Relevant

He notes a particular felon, I mean fellow, “has kept all of us political cartoonists rather busy lately, and I churned hundreds of ’em in 2025. For this book, I selected 50 that I thought would remain relevant for a while (unlike other types of cartoons, political cartoons have a very short “shelf life,” alas.”

While this is generally true, the primary subject and his clown car of supporting characters – Stephen Miller, Pete Hegseth, and Jeffrey Epstein’s ghost, among them – are such cartoons that, months after their original appearance, their narratives are, unfortunately, not dated.

In case I haven’t sufficiently conveyed Mr. Brunelle’s political leanings, he writes: “We must laugh to keep from crying during these trying times, so hopefully this book will help you cope with the dystopian hellscape that is Trump’s America. Enjoy!”

Unfortunately, he indicates that the book is only available on Amazon, as are his previous works, including There Will Be Pain (2024) and Perpetual Panic Attack (2023). This may be stronger because the target is so much a cartoon. (Someone should update his Wikipedia page.)

Condolences

I was very sad to read that Mr. Brunelle’s beloved wife, Grace, who occasionally shared his cartoon pages with him, died on February 6. Here is her obituary and a link to the Facial Pain Association. “Facial pain can be a debilitating experience for many people, and there are numerous types of facial pain with a variety of possible causes. Precise diagnosis is crucial in determining an effective treatment. The journey to diagnosis and pain relief can be a long and winding road.”

“But he’d be gone!”

“arrogant,” “idiot,” “egotistical,” “ignorant”

A guy I vaguely know was complaining on Facebook that, according to reports, a number of Canadians would still not be coming to the United States, even if FOTUS left office. He complained, “But he’d be gone!”

I totally understand the Canadians’ trepidation. If you had a best friend who betrayed and belittled you repeatedly – “Governor Carney, ” “51st state,” on and off tariffs – wouldn’t you be wary?

The current political debacle may have FOTUS’s name on it. But he’s had a boatload of enablers, from a feckless Congress to a complicit Supreme Court, not to mention state officials who have drunk the Kool-Aid.

It’s not just Canada. The “marauding bands of immigration goons have made the United States so unsafe” that Germany has “issued a travel advisory to warn its citizens about coming here.” The Vances were booed at the 2026 Winter Olympics Opening Ceremony.

A recent Pew poll indicated that his approval rating stands at 37%, down from 40% in the fall. “By more than two-to-one, Americans say the administration’s actions have been worse than they expected (50%) rather than better (21%). Only about a quarter of Americans today (27%) say they support all or most of his policies and plans, down from 35% when he returned to office last year. That change has come entirely among Republicans.”

Analyze this

An analysis of the poll suggests “Americans voted for Trump, but never supported Trumpism.” I SO disagree. In 2016, I could almost understand his appeal as an outsider, a “businessman!” “He starred in The Apprentice!” Oooo!

In that first term, if you recall, news reports kept saying, “Well, NOW he’s being Presidential,” more as wish fulfillment. And there were SOME breakers who kept him somewhat in check.

By the time the 2018 Helsinki summit had concluded, I was convinced that he was Putin’s puppet, which the 2025 Alaska non-event seemed to amplify.

But after January 6, 2021, insurrection, and his charitable characterization of the actors, one would think that, even if the Senate didn’t convict him after his second impeachment, a thinking American would conclude that he was not worthy of his office.

So when he was elected in 2024, those people voted for Trumpism. They voted for disinformation, if not outright lies, and vulgarity.

Nothing new

A 2017(!) poll indicated the ten most common words that respondents gave describing him were: “incompetent,” “arrogant,” “strong,” “idiot,” “egotistical,” “ignorant,” “great,” “racist,” “a——” and “narcissistic.”

When a racist video involving the Obamas recently appeared on his social media feed, and even Republicans balked, it was said that “a staffer erroneously made the post.” But later, on Air Force One, FOTUS said that he had posted it himself. When a reporter asked if he would apologize, he said, “No, I didn’t make a mistake.”

Oh, that Project 2025, which he SAID he didn’t know anything about, despite the creators being in his orbit – surprise, surprise – was implemented.

Given the fact that SCOTUS gave the Presidency nearly complete immunity in 2024, well BEFORE the election, people voted for Trumpism.

“Oh, I didn’t know he’d do THAT.” Sure. Whatever. But this is why our once closest allies don’t trust us, and the next presidential election cycle will not resolve the stain.

The man, even among his lies, showed his colors.