Each Sunday morning, I lay in bed a little longer. It’s the only day I don’t start at 5 am. Instead, the love of my life delivers me a cup of tea in bed, and I catch up on the broader events of the week, before sitting down with another cuppa and two slices of toast to write my Sunday piece for Substack. I’m always in a more reflective mood on Sunday because it helps me join the dots amidst another week of Trump year zero, as I like to call it.
I read a Substack last week bemoaning the MAGA infiltration of the platform and frustration that MAGA supporters were attacking the truth in the writer’s post. As the owner of a large X account, who lives every day with MAGA hate for my opinion, I believe it’s the right of anyone who reads our work to voice an opinion. Is that not the very foundation of democracy? I remain on X by the way, not because I am a masochist, but because it helps me keep up to speed on the MAGA narrative, which I think is vital in the work I do.
Writing for the political space is not for the faint-hearted, I’m afraid, and if you let the criticism and the hate shape your work, then there’s only one loser, and it’s not your critics. Many on Substack have migrated from X, including several prominent liberal voices. A number of the new migrants here don’t write articles at all; they use the platform as a social media platform. It’s one of Substack's key strengths, providing the flexibility for longer social media posts while presenting opportunities to create long-form content. It’s like the Swiss Army knife of literary expression, and I very much applaud and appreciate that. Also, there were MANY right-wing voices here before many of us set up camp.
My only real irritation, as I have said before, is that it can be fashionable to dismiss the work of the so-called ‘legacy media’ as no longer relevant in the delivery of news. Let me tell you, as someone who subscribes to over thirty media outlets and periodicals, from The New York Times to The Economist and The New Statesman, the phenomenal work that credentialed journalists do every day is inspirational to me. Their work is only possible because of the huge investment in media infrastructure made by the organisations they work for.
There’s no question that there are bad actors in the media space, such as Fox News, Entertainment, and One America News, among others, and I’m certainly not here to defend them. However, there are journalists who work across traditional media, doing important and valuable work that helps inform the public. I am more than aware that many journalists are compelled to work within the parameters established by editorial boards and owners, etc. I’m afraid that’s the cost for some keeping their job, and far be it from me to have them choose between not being as outspoken as they would like and feeding their kids. While there are examples, such as Jim Acosta , who decided to walk away rather than bend the knee, these can be challenging decisions when making career choices based on the financial security of your family.
Speaking from a personal perspective, I think it’s disingenuous to describe legacy media as irrelevant when you announce ‘BREAKING NEWS’ and then disseminate news as provided by the very media you have described as irrelevant. It’s a bit like doing a cover version of a Coldplay song and describing Coldplay as irrelevant. Don’t misunderstand; people might love your cover of the Coldplay song, but it doesn’t make you Coldplay.
Like it or not, social media is increasingly becoming a primary source of news for many people. ‘Influencers’ play a significant role in curating the delivery of important news to their audience, with whom they have developed a trusted relationship. That, however, does not make them journalists. It’s just an itch I have to scratch from time to time, no big deal.
Having established that I am not a journalist but rather a political commentator and opinion writer, let’s take a look back at the week and see if we can separate the truth from the lies that Trump has flooded the zone with.
As ever with Trump, it’s hard to know where to start. The more I listen to him, the more I am convinced of his cognitive decline. He has become totally detached from the truth, yet his rich enablers are urging him on because his attacks on the fabric of US society are making them richer by the day.
What concerns me most is that half the population is now addicted to the narcotics of greed and hate he provides them free of charge every day, mainlined through social media. Some say Don’t get distracted by the $400 million 747 jet gifted to him by the Qatari royal family, but it goes to the very heart of who he is. He’s a grifter in love with opulence. This is the man who has imposed his interior design style on the Oval Office, making it look like a cosplay room in a brothel. He wouldn’t know class if it smacked him in the face. His frightening inability to grasp the national security implications of accepting any gift from a government that has provided $1.8 billion to a prescribed terrorist group over the last decade is stunning.
The real kicker in this story is that Qatar has been trying to offload the 747 since 2020 and has been unable to find a buyer. It’s become a liability to the government, so why not give it to a useful idiot? He may have acquired a free white elephant, but retrofitting it will cost the taxpayer an estimated $1 billion, only for it to be handed over to him when he leaves office. Now, call me old-fashioned, but that doesn’t strike me as the art of the deal being used for the benefit of the American people.
Trump can spin it as he likes, but as the Guardian reports :
Former White House lawyers, diplomatic protocol officers and foreign affairs experts have told the Guardian that Donald Trump’s receipt of overseas gifts and targeted investments are “unprecedented”, as the White House remakes US foreign policy under a pay-for-access code that eclipses past administrations with characteristic Trumpian excess.
It’s his constant challenging of the norms that exposes a system unable to hold him accountable for rampant corruption while in office. This is made all the worse by a Republican Party he’s holding hostage, fearful for their jobs. I’m afraid any notion of moral integrity disappeared long before he was even elected.
The bigger challenge America faces is the obscene level of self-dealing going on on the taxpayers’ dime. His trip to the Middle East was as much about securing deals for his family's empire as it was about obtaining investment for America, possibly more so. As for the numbers he’s quoting as investments, more fantasy numbers, I’m sure it will transpire. That’s before we discuss his invisible crypto bribe pot. Democrats are now faced with having to expend time investigating his overt corruption while having to fight his avalanche of often illegal executive orders. In short, Trump does not give a damn, he believes himself to be invincible and certainly above the law. The reason he believes this is because, even when he defies the Supreme Court, they appear powerless to enforce their rulings. Once again, it highlights that the checks and balances are inadequate for their intended purpose.
The attacks on the judiciary are calculated to render challenges to presidential authority powerless. The level of ingenuity the Heritage Foundation and its coalition deploy in their political manoeuvres is impressive, despite being deeply egregious. As with all of Trump’s political shenanigans, they pick an angle that on the surface seems to make sense, to create a narrative that enables them to bastardise the system to their benefit.
At face value, it may seem odd that a lower court judge can issue a nationwide injunction to block an executive order. Trump’s enablers paint a picture that asks, How is it right for a ‘low-level judge’ to block an order from the President of the United States? It’s nonsense, right? No, it is not; As corrected by a reader rebecca “Marbury v Madison 1803 established the doctrine of judicial review, which allows courts to review legislation they determine is repugnant to the Constitution”. This precedent allows a brake to any executive action deemed to be a violation of the Constitution, allowing the appeals process to examine any perceived violation in detail before delivering a ruling. This can only work if the initial injunction is implemented nationwide.
If the lower courts were only able to apply the ruling in their local jurisdiction, it would render the judgment useless, and there would need to be the equivalent of a class action sought to apply a more expansive halt. The Founding Fathers never intended a president to govern by decree; governance was designed to be conducted through legislation in the elected branches of government. The role of the executive order is to give instructions on the application of legislation. It was never intended for use in creating legislation lite.
Imagine if Democrats were in power and the president issued an executive order suspending the Second Amendment of the Constitution. Without the ability to apply an initial nationwide injunction to halt the executive order, the government could begin seizing guns, knowing it might take months for the matter to reach the Supreme Court. I realise this is an extreme example, but using Trump’s current interpretation of the Constitution, it would be theoretically possible.
The likes of Stephen Miller and the authors of Project 2025 are seeking to dismantle judicial oversight and dispense with legislation. They view the role of Congress and the Senate as merely a rubber-stamping body, obligated to carry out the president's will, thus allowing absolute power to reside in his hands. This is a flagrant breach of the Constitution and should have no place in the country's governance. The problem is, the Supreme Court granted Trump absolute immunity for his actions while in office. In doing so, they laid the ground for Trump to do exactly what he’s doing today and ignore even their rulings. The natural extension of this is to call for a Constitutional Convention to rewrite the Constitution in their image. You might be interested to note that this is actually something Republicans are working on today.
This is why the United States is in a constitutional crisis. The system is unable to contain Trump’s rampant corruption and his malign ambition to dismantle the federal government and remove any obstacle to his absolute power. It is this pervasive ingress of malign intent that is driving his budget bill to the exclusion of social responsibility and any sense of moral decency.
Since 1981, the wealth gap is no longer a gap; it’s a chasm. As reported by Time Magazine, ‘The Top 1% of Americans Have usurped $50 Trillion From the Bottom 90%.’ It’s worth taking a moment to reflect on this statement. The primary thing I want you to focus on here is the impact this has had on tax revenue. When you shift money from the bottom and middle to the top, you have a significant effect on the tax take. Putting tax cuts aside for a moment, the wealthy during the period of wealth transfer have found increasingly creative methods of evading taxes. That would not have been available to lower and middle-income earners. Equally, low- and middle-income families tend to spend their money back into the economy, rather than shifting it to overseas tax havens.
At every single level, the rich have benefited while the middle class has been hollowed out, and lower-income families have been forced to live on the edge of poverty. This is the story of America’s fiscal holocaust, and there have been no Nuremberg trials to hold ANYONE accountable. Nothing has changed in decades. I can watch an episode of The West Wing tonight, as I often do by the way, and I would see current day political plots. US politics is like fashion, it’s cyclical, but in this moment, MAGA has euthanised the Republican Party and replaced it with an updated Third Reich and that, my friends, is no flight of fantasy.
Remember the days of President Obama? The days when speeches were made up of grammatically correct and coherent sentences. The days when an American president could step out on the world stage and people listened without laughing, except at his often reasonably good jokes? When I think of Republicans, this clip always springs to mind. It’s been true for decades. It’s just that now, it’s taken on a whole new meaning.
Trump’s ‘big beautiful bill’ is the poster child for cruelty. It is emblematic of what the Republican Party has become, no longer the party of small government and falsely perceived fiscal responsibility. They are now the party of cruelty and social Darwinism, a party with no intent to serve the people. They are slowly becoming a party even their voters are questioning, having fallen victim to the lies of a convicted criminal.
I have studied politics and social science for decades, and I can confidently say I have NEVER seen anything like the budget bill the Republicans want to subject the American people to. A bill, that by their own admission, is an extension of the 2017 tax giveaway to corporate America. They claim they want to govern America like a business. Were that the case, we would be asking for the resignation of the whole board. There is NO EVIDENCE that the 2017 tax cuts delivered growth, jobs, or even minor benefits to anyone except the top 5%. Judged as a business investment, it returned a massive loss, except for the corporate beneficiaries who used the tax cuts for stock buybacks. This bill is the epitome of madness, repeating the same thing and expecting a different outcome. Though I suspect they don’t care about the outcome, because once the wealth has been transferred from the bottom and the middle, it’s job done and couldn’t care less.
We are in the bizarre position where Republican holdouts are not blocking the bill because they feel it would be more prudent to reduce the trillions of dollars they intend to gift to those who already have more money than they can spend in a lifetime. Instead, they demand that more people lose access to healthcare, food assistance and critical social programs.
My friends, I cannot even begin to explain the catastrophic impact this will have on the poor, the vulnerable, the disabled, seniors and veterans. For many, I don’t have to explain because you already know first hand how it will affect you and your loved ones. This is going to impact millions of Trump’s voters in rural America directly, yet Republican lawmakers seem to be gathering in a field like Turkeys voting for Thanksgiving. The only conclusion I can draw is that Trump has informed them there will be no midterm elections for them to be concerned about, which all ties into his march towards absolute power.
The week ahead will be one of the most consequential weeks in American history, and you will all be in my thoughts as we traverse it together. The only thing that can stop this is Republican members’ fear of not being reelected, and that is going to have to be done by bombarding their offices to make this absolutely clear.
Yes indeed. I will write my representative again. And I won’t stop talking to MAGA friends and family. Questions work better than assertions, as openers - even loaded questions. “What if Biden’s library were accepting a 400m gift from Qatar, while he was aiming to gut social security?” “Who do you think pays tariffs?” “Do you really think America should replace China’s sweatshops with its own?” “Do you really think we should abandon our allies and alliances to Russian aggression?”
This is a phenomenal piece. You captured both the big picture of Republican policy over time and the extraordinary destruction this bill promises to deliver. I appreciate your years of experience in political commentary, because I had no gauge on how horrible this budget bill is, compared to ones from the past. I knew it was awful and would rip care from the most vulnerable while delivering a bonanza to the ultra-rich. But you put it in perspective. It's ugly and cruel, and I have been thinking the same thing - the only way Republicans would be so devoid of concern about mid-terms is that they believe elections are a thing of the past. Shame on every one of them.