Donald Loses His Marbles - Trump 47 - October 2026

 

__________ 

“God made Donald Trump.” 

Line from a “public service” announcement paid for by taxpayers

__________ 

 

October 1, 2026: WITH THE MIDTERMS just around the corner, I decided to dedicate this month to creating a list of all the reasons, I won’t be voting Republican on November 3, and why I don’t think you should either. 

Well, if you are a crook, or a member of the Trump family, or those categories overlap, then, yes, you should. 

Also: If you are a racist. Then guys like Stephen Miller (Reasons 205 and 206) are just your lovely cup of tea. 

 

This list is based on stories as I saw them come up, but it’s massive, so feel free to skip around. Number 1 does worry me greatly. 

Number 270, where Elon Musk tries to buy the government really pisses me off. Then you have the highly dangerous attacks on the free press, which Trump fans seem to ignore, for example, Numbers 139-142, 146-150, and 156-160. 

See also, Jared Kushner and the $2 billion (Number 296).

 

Climate change is real – and glaciers are speaking. 

1. My first reason: Trump is a numbskull on the topic of climate change. And because he’s a powerful numbskull, he has forced the GOP to support numbskull policies and act and talk like numbskulls.

A winter drought last year, and unnatural summer heat, have caused massive ice loss in Switzerland’s mountains. Glaciers continue a worldwide retreat. In the last five years, Swiss glaciers have lost one-fifth of their mass.

In discussions with reporters for The New York Times, scientists painted a harrowing picture of the future. Barring drastic action, the glaciers in the Alps are doomed. 

“Alpine glaciers have no long-term chance of survival under such conditions,” the researchers said in a joint statement, by the Swiss Glacier Monitoring Network and by a Swiss body of scientists who document changes in the Alpine cryosphere.

 

Humans were to blame for the “staggering warming trend of the last years,” said Matthias Huss, who heads the glacier monitoring network.

 

“The global warming we are experiencing now can be attributed 100 percent to anthropogenic climate change,” Dr. Huss wrote in an email. “It’s as simple as that.” 

 

2. As glaciers become unstable, you have more landslides. One wrecked a Swiss village last year. Another, in Nepal this past August caused massive loss of life – as the earth rebels against humankind. 

“Glaciers are the ambassadors of climate change,” Dr. Huss told the Times. “They speak a very clear and simple language.” 

He added: “This is a desperately needed warning sign.”

 

3. This year, 2026, is almost certain to be the hottest year in recorded history. It will beat out the “old” record-holder: 2024.

4. The four hottest years on record, going back to 1850, will then be 2026, 2024, 2023 and 2025. 

 

* 

“They voted against me too often.” 

HERE WE HAVE another critical reason I won’t be supporting GOP candidates or issues. Let Donald Trump make the case: In an interview today, the President of the United States said that he regrets nominating three judges to the Supreme Court who are insufficiently loyal to him. 

5. Quite clearly, Mr. Trump fails to grasp the job of all justices – to uphold the U.S. Constitution. Neal Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, Amy Comey Barrett? “Yeah, what can I do,” he grumbled. 

“They voted against me too often,” the president explained. “I gave them the position of a lifetime, and they vote against me often.”

 

6. Justices aren’t supposed to vote for or against anyone. They’re supposed to uphold the rule of law.

As for his three picks, “These are not the people I interviewed to serve on the United States Supreme Court,” he complained on Truth Social later. “They are merely a shell of their original selves.”  

(Trump hates a lot of judges.)

___ 

 

“A grim political environment.” 

10/2/26: President Trump was in Texas today, talking to an audience of truckers about the climate change “scam.” 

7. That meant drivers were treated to an in-depth scientific explanation, courtesy of Dr. Donald J. Dumpling – who doesn’t believe in climate change – but does believe windmills cause cancer. 

8. “We’re supposed to all be dead. AOC [Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez] said that, right?” he suggested to the truckers. “That didn’t work out because the planet got cooler. In fact, you know, the ice that was melting, it’s right now just set a record. It’s the biggest ice cube that’s ever been in the history of the world.” 

No one knows what “ice cube” he’s talking about. His fans fall for it anyway. 

 

9. I won’t vote for Republicans, because I believe they enable this man who regularly babbles nonsense.

10. I have often pointed out that Donald can’t tell the difference between “weather” and “climate.” See, for example, my post from January 2017, “President Trump and the Coal Miner’s Granddaughter.” 

(The story of Sen. Inhofe and the snowball is typical of the GOP.)

 

* 

11. THE JOBS report for September is out and it’s a bummer. An anemic 29,000 jobs were added to the U.S. economy. 

Total jobs added in the first nine months of this year: 620,000. 

12. That number for nine months is crap: 68,889 per month. Compare that with the 1,461,000 jobs added in 2024, Joe Biden’s last full year in office. That wasn’t great – but it was still 121,750 per month. 

For even more fun, compare jobs added in 2016, Obama’s last full year in office. Remember? Donald Dumpling said he “inherited a mess.” 

(That total was 2,331,000. You do the math.) 

 

13. Unemployment ticked up slightly to 4.2%, and the labor participation rate, which includes people employed and people looking also ticked up to 61.8%, still lower than the day that Joe Biden left office.

 

* 

WE DO KNOW that the president is still making promises he’s never going to keep. In Iowa, for example, he promised a steel mill was being built – like the biggest new steel mill in the nation. The project would be worth $15 billion and Lee County, in eastern Iowa, would boom.

In fact, the White House said it was “a done deal.” Trump announced, “They’ve already started building.” 

14. Lee County officials were baffled. Local reporters went looking for all the construction equipment and people in hard hats. It turns out that the company that plans to build still hasn’t acquired any land to build on. 

Apparently, they’ve started building castles in the air.

15. Trump called in reporters for an Oval Office photo shoot recently, to tell them that an agreement had been reached with the government of South Korea to invest trillions or gazillions in a liquid natural gas pipeline in Alaska. 

So, The Dumpling reasoned, voters should send Sen. Dan Sullivan back to D.C. for six more years, since, Mr. Dumpling pointed out, “This is a man that works with me, shoulder to shoulder.” 

South Korean officials promptly announced that they were only considering a deal, depending on profitability, and conformance with South Korean law. So maybe they’d invest and maybe they wouldn’t. 

16. If one has a long memory, these Trumpian brags have the same feel as the $10 billion deal Trump announced in 2017, where Foxconn was going to build a huge factory in Wisconsin. 

And still hasn’t. 

17. One might also recall Donald’s boast about Lordstown Motors, and how he helped bring back good jobs to Youngstown, Ohio. With his help, starting in the fall of 2020, Lordstown would begin turning out 100,000 electric vehicles – trucks, mostly – annually. Sadly, the company produced, basically, zero new vehicles, and zero good jobs, and soon went bankrupt.

18. Also, out the window: local, state and federal tax incentives to get that Lordstown Motors miracle going.

___ 

 

10/4/26: In a new Gallup poll, 50% of Americans now identify as Democrats, or “lean more” toward the party. That is the highest figure since 2009. 

Republicans are at 39%. 

(Just thought Trump’s loyal fans should know.)

___ 

 

“GOP senator airballs perjury claim against Jack Smith.” 

10/5/26: If you binge on stories about Congress, you doubtless watched Sen. Eric Schmitt’s (R – MO.) colossal self-own today. 

It you don’t binge, because you have a life, with real friends, and real places to go, you missed a classic. 

After former federal prosecutor Jack Smith was called to testify before Congress, the senator from Missouri planned carefully. He dreamed of ensnaring Smith in a web of lies. Schmitt would simultaneously make himself a hero in adoring MAGA eyes – and destroy the former federal prosecutor’s credibility – since Smith is the guy who launched two investigations into the alleged crimes of the 45th President of the United States, the same man who is now 47th. 

The clever senator was in possession of inside dope (or so he believed) in the form of texts sent by Smith. At a critical moment during testimony, he planned to show them for the TV cameras. He had them posted on large poster boards, which his aides would hold up at the moment of truth. 

He knew (or thought he did) that Mr. Smith had been in Atlanta, Georgia on February 3, 2024, around the same time the Fulton County District Attorney, Fani Willis, was deciding to charge Donald J. Trump with conspiracy to steal more than 11,000 votes during the 2020 election. 

(That was another investigation into Trump’s crookery – but we digress.)

Smith vs. Trump. See #290.

 

19. Here then in my nineteenth reason for not voting for Republicans next month. Schmitt (who was being talked up as a possible VP candidate in 2028, on a ticket headed by J.D. Vance), had set the trap. Now he sprung it. 

When he asked Smith if he was in Atlanta at that time, he warned him, confidently, “I think you have already perjured yourself.”

Indeed, texts sent to and from Smith, mentioned his attendance at a “Hawks” game on the night in question – as in an Atlanta Hawks game. But Smith has long said he never consulted with Willis about charging President Trump. 

20. Were you not in Atlanta, sir? Schmitt suggested. Then, to make his point clear, he opined, you, Jack, are “a total dirtbag.” 

(That is a quote.) 

 

Poor Smith looked confused. A dirtbag caught, as it were, in the klieg light glare of American justice.

The witness, a respected prosecutor for decades, thought it over carefully. Did he really want to risk committing perjury again?

“Nope,” he said – if you don’t mind my paraphrasing. “Nope.” He had never been to Atlanta at that time. 

Nor had he ever talked to Willis, as he had previously said. Up went the poster board. Snap went the trap. 

Sadly, it soon became clear that Schmitt had caught his own right foot. The texts in question did mention a “Hawks” game – who had played that very night in Atlanta!

Sadly, for MAGA fans everywhere, it turned out Smith was indeed at a “Hawks” game. In fact, he was in Maryland, watching Caitlyn Clark and the Iowa Hawkeyes play the Maryland Terrapins. 

I should also thank the headline writers at NBC, who carried this story under the “airball” line shown above. If you know anything about women’s basketball, you know Clark rarely shoots airballs, no matter what the range.

 

21. President Trump, who had hoped his allies in Congress could nail Smith, is now asking the courts to delay release of any testimony related to Smith’s investigations until after the midterms. 

Because anyone who has looked at the limited documents that have been released and can read with at least a fifth-grade level of competency, knows that the evidence Smith gathered made Donald Dumpling look bad. 

Terrible, in fact. 

Smith’s evidence has been kept under a tarpaulin for four years, on orders from a federal judge in Florida, whom Trump appointed.

(We now have 21 good reasons not to vote Republican on November 3.)

 

* 

NOT ALL JUDGES are equal, although this blogger would argue that almost all of them try to follow the Constitution and the law – even if you or I disagree with their interpretations.    

22. A second Trump judge has roasted ICE agents for falsifying official records – to cover up for the fact they keep arresting U.S. citizens and detaining them without good cause. As Judge Gary Brown explained in his latest ruling, he has seen this same mistake too many times before: 

In countless ICE habeas petitions involving individuals detained for civil — not criminal — proceedings, respondents [ICE agents] advised judges of this court that various petitioners had been jailed due to misidentification: officers erroneously identified the petitioner as a “target” of an ICE “operation” based on similarities of height, weight, description, and sometimes a photograph. The undersigned [Judge Brown] has, in prior cases, accepted this explanation based on representations of counsel and/or sworn statements by ICE agents. This case required exploring that proffered justification in connection with two such non-criminal arrests. 

 

23. The folks at ICE, he decided, were lying about what they had done. Previously, Judge Brown had described an ICE action against a teenager, Hester Asaf Garcia Lanza, a Honduran boy who came to this country at age nine, who had gone on to become an honors student, and who had Legally Protected Status until snagged by over-zealous federal agents, in the harshest possible terms. 

“This isn’t how things are supposed to work in America,” he wrote. The judge went on to describe the actions taken against Garza as “unimaginable cruelty,” concluding, “The laws of human decency condemn such villainy.” 

24. In at least a dozen cases, Trump-appointed judges have taken ICE to task for stepping on the Constitution and ignoring human rights. 

___ 

 

Trump reneges on promise.

10/6/26: The president has been called out by The New York Times after reporters discovered that he had instructed his budget director to use $20 million in taxpayer cash to pay for “public service ads” that looked exactly like campaign ads for … Donald J. Trump and/or the Republican Party. 

25. Donald isn’t on the ballot – so how could spending that wad of cash be wrong? “Public service ads,” he calls them. Then again, one claim “We the People” paid for was, “God made Donald J. Trump.” 

(Fair enough, God also made skunks.)

26. Also, one TV spot was a copy of a campaign ad for Donald, shown during the 2024 Republican convention.  

Donald’s enablers first insisted that it was TDS to complain, “Trump derangement syndrome.” If we dared protest it only proved we hated America. 

Then it became clear that restive Republicans, running for office and hoping not to get ass-kicked, were not on board with the president spending taxpayer jack in such an unethical manner. 

Suddenly, the Dumpling Man reversed course, having been caught picking Americans’ pockets, and agreed to pay for the ads himself. In a post on Truth Social, Dumpling Don explained, “I have decided to do the Patriotic Ads, among others, and pay for them myself, and with money I raised for MAGA, Inc.”

Trump: As his fans see him.

 

27. We should also note that one of the four ads created, to that point, featured images of Mr. Trump as the song “Love Me” by Christian Berishaj played in the background. Berishaj, who performs as JMSN, has complained about the use of his song. This is at least the tenth time artists have warned Team Trump not to use their music for political purposes, without first gaining permission. 

Trump doesn’t care to ask. He doesn’t care about intellectual property rights or copyright infringement. 

Grab ’em by the music. 

28. Donald soon changed his mind. He said he wouldn’t pay for any of those ads. He might spend even more. 

29. On October 11, a federal judge enjoined Team Trump from paying for any more of the ads. When NPR checked documentation, $22 million in taxpayer cash had already been incinerated.

A whopping 86% of Americans, including 80% of Republicans polled, said the use of government money was inappropriate.

___ 

 

“Iran War continues – no end in sight.” 

10/19/26: SIX DAYS into October, I already had 29 reasons not to vote Republican. Despite my best efforts, the news got away from me, and I was unable to chronicle all the crimes and stupidities of Team Donald J. Dope.

Here then, a rundown of just the worst moments from the last thirteen days. We’ll pick up at #30.

(I’m sure I missed many more.)

 

30. Day #234 of the Iran War. Last Tuesday, the Houthis, allies of Iran, struck the airport in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. At least twenty people were killed, including one American national. 

Results of the airport strike.

 

31. Next, the Iranians struck two container ships trying to pass through the Strait of Hormuz. One vessel, the GFS Pride, caught fire and sank quickly, leaving containers filled with luxury goods floating off the coast of Oman. The GFS Giselle stayed afloat awhile, but soon sank, too. 

On October 15, an oil tanker was struck and set ablaze. 

32. Late that same night, the President of the United States could be found, posting on social media, explaining why it was so hard to get the Iranians to stop shooting at our troops, ships, planes, and regional bases. 

According to the man in the White House, the Iranians have been begging for a surrender deal, going back as far as March. 

But there’s a hitch. 

“Their leaders are gone,” Trump is now insisting. “I should have probably left the leaders because I don’t know who the hell we’re negotiating with now. They had their first-string leaders are all gone, their second-string leaders are all gone, half of their third-string leaders are gone, and now their main thing that they ask in negotiation is, ‘Will you please allow us to live?’”

 

The idea that the Iranians were begging for a deal – but Donald didn’t know who was doing the begging – stood logic on its head.

 

33. Oil prices are still high and that’s not going to change anytime soon. The average price of a gallon of regular gas today is $4.30 per gallon. 

34. Be glad you don’t use diesel. A year ago, a gallon was $3.63. On Friday, farmers across the country, we’re staring at $6.32 at the pumps. 

 

35. Rounding off, that means diesel has increased in price by 74%. Trump continues to blame Joe Biden. (See: Oatmeal, Reason #231.)

36. We must also point out that Imaginary Joe is still f**king with real Donald’s inflation numbers. The last report before the midterms dropped five days ago and “Biden” did it again! The Consumer Price Index was up 3.7%, year-over-year, in September.

Damn Joe Biden! 

37. That same afternoon, the president told a rally crowd in Arizona not to worry. “The prices are all coming down.” 

It may be time to drug test the president.

 

38. In a recent poll, 84% of registered voters said the economy would be their top issue in the coming election. 

IIf voters won’t or don’t fall for the “Joe Biden-did-it” line, I suggest that the current President of the United States blame “Barack Hussein Obama,” always emphasizing his predecessor’s middle name. Other targets for blame might be communists, socialists, Luddites, Know Nothings, or this guy:

  

Founding Fathers put power of the purse in lawmakers’ hands. 

39. The Government Accountability Office, watchdog arm of Congress, has found that Trump and his good pal Russ Vought, the man behind the curtain at Project 2025, decided – illegally – to withhold $1 billion in spending allocated by Congress. Much of that money was meant to fund the work of the Environmental Protection Agency.

40. This “impoundment” of funds, which has been a recurring theme during Trump’s second term, is illegal under laws passed in the wake of the Watergate investigation. You know, when we had another crook for president. 

41. Republicans currently control both houses of Congress, yet no one in his party has the nerve to stand up to the president. 

I prefer my lawmakers not to be a bunch of pussies.

 

42. The Founding Fathers placed the “power of the purse” in the hands of the legislative branch, specifically the House of Representatives, for good reason. House members are elected most often and if they screw the pooch voters can give them the boot. Impoundments negate that power. 

If you don’t see the danger you need to read up on the Constitution.

43. I’m pretty sure, if you love Trump like you love puppies, that you won’t. 

Franklin once said the two greatest dangers to good government
were "avarice and ambition."

44. Donald Trump is not Louis XIV. The French monarch once remarked, “I am the government.” Louis was famous for spending as much tax money on himself, his friends, his relatives, and his mistresses, as he could. 

Here’s a picture of Louis’ palace at Versailles. The French people paid the cost of building the place. 

The palace has 2,300 rooms. 

  

45. We should all be paying close attention to how the current occupant of the White House is spending money on all his vanity projects. For example: His big, beautiful ballroom. Also, his Oval Office décor. 

Trump is all-in on a gilded presidency. 

Some of gilding on the walls is real gold.

  

46. Also: Do you want Trump or any other future president to be able to punish enemies by withholding money Congress has allocated? Not unless you’re a numbskull, you don’t. 

47. Don’t be a numbskull. 

 

* 

The Epstein Files still not released. 

EARLY VOTING has commenced. After almost two years in control of all three branches of government, at least we know Republicans have been nailing Epstein’s clients, left and right, upstairs, downstairs, and under the beds and in the closets. 

We’re kidding. 

48. You may recall that in February 2025, with the dew still wet on Trump’s second term as president, his newly appointed Attorney General Pam Bondi told Fox News that she had an Epstein client list sitting on her desk. 

49. I for one was excited because, like all good and true Americans, I am not a fan of pedophiles or sex-traffickers. Today, we know there was no list. Or Pam stuck it in a stack of papers and couldn’t find it. 

Bondi was soon fired, but not because she lost the list.

 

50. In December 2021, while Joe Biden was president, Ghislaine Maxwell, Epstein’s #1 enabler, was convicted and sentenced to twenty years in prison. Then Trump returned to power and Maxwell was moved to a minimum-security federal prison – thanks to current Attorney General Todd Blanche. 

51. Or it may have been the president’s decision. 

52. Ghislaine is now lying low, relaxing in a prison that barely has walls. The place has a “campus.” It’s where white-collar crooks and people who can afford fancy lawyers get sent. Or friends of DJT.

Trump with Maxwell in happier days.

 

53. Not only can no one in this administration find the Epstein client list, not a single person has been charged with a single crime as a result of release of the Files (most of them, anyway). 

54. Congress voted, in nearly unanimous form, on November 18 and 19, 2025, for the Epstein Files Transparency Act, to release all the Files. That would be good, not another reason to add to my expansive list of why I’m not voting Republican – but Attorney General Blanche has still not complied with the law. On September 17, 2026, a judge warned the attorney general that he had a week to release all the Files or get slapped with a contempt order. 

55. Blanche is still sitting on some of the Files. 

56. I spent a couple hundred hours looking through the Epstein Files, and if I were Attorney General of the United States, I could come up with at least twenty individuals who I’d be investigating right now. 

Donald, Melania, Epstein and Maxwell in the good old days.

 

57. As of last week, former Republican Congressman Matt Gaetz, is facing a civil suit, filed by two young women who claim he trafficked them to other men for sex. 

58. Gaetz responded by doing his best to dox the two accusers. 

59. As we go the polls or lick the stamp on our mail-in ballot, let us never forget. Soon after Mr. Trump defeated Kamala Harris, he looked for someone great to be his next attorney general. Jeffrey Epstein was out. He was dead. 

Trump decided Gaetz was the man. 

60. Holy shit! In December 2024, the House Committee on Ethics released a report on Gaetz. Investigators found that Matt had paid at least $90,000 to a dozen women who were trafficked. 

61. Illicit drugs kept the party going; and at least one minor, a 17-year-old victim, was passed around among Matt and his pals. 

(Trump wanted that guy to be Attorney General of the United States.) 

(Donald gets along well with sex traffickers.)

 

*

Imaginary vandals and good times for billionaires. 

62. ON THE TOPIC of criminals, the Washington Post has examined an inspection report from August 6, regarding the failure of the new blue liner applied on the Reflecting Pool in Washington D.C. 

In those heady days of summer, the president was telling all the MAGA faithful that left-wing radicals had cut up the lining with box cutters and nail clippers and children’s scissors. The blunt kind.

Picture of weapon preferred by imaginary vandals.

He insisted that the worst of the vandals, a man named David Hearn, be indicted on various felony charges – meaning he faced as much as twenty years in prison. Then Trump got mad at his hand-picked people at the Department of Justice because they realized they had no evidence and dropped the case. 

63. Turns out there were no “left wing radicals” or “vandals,” either. The real cause of liner failure was poor application of incompatible materials and insufficient time allowed for drying. It failed in 85 different places. 

And that was the company that did the work reporting. 

64. Donald was willing to see an innocent man spend twenty years in prison, rather than admit the people he hired to fix the pool, including the pool guy at one of his private golf clubs, botched the job. That meant $16 million went down the drain.

(See: “Rule of Law,” #6 on our list.) 

 

65. Team Trump has delayed, since July, a report on how the One Big Beautiful Bill is affecting taxpayers. 

You know the findings can’t be good if Donald wants the findings released after the midterms. 

Preferably, never. 

The guy is blowing the federal deficit sky high. 

(You could respect conservatives who wanted to balance the budget. No more.) 

 

66. The administration is also withholding a report on the “tax gap,” the difference between taxes owed and taxes paid. Again, Team Trump, which slashed the number of workers at I.R.S., doesn’t want us to know how many people aren’t paying. 

 

67. No doubt you remember those first happy days, when Trump took office in January 2025, and Elon Musk made himself famous by promising he and his Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) would cut a trillion dollars in waste from the federal budget and wipe out the deficit. 

68. That never happened and for a time Elon and Donald were enemies. Elon suggested that Donald was going to be destroyed by secrets to be revealed in the Epstein Files. (See #48-56, above)

 

69. True, Trump’s name was all over the half of the Files that were released; but so was Elon’s name, and his brother Kimbal’s.

70. In one File, Elon asks Epstein where and when “the wildest party” in the Caribbean could be found. 

71. In another File, Kimbal Musk thanks Epstein for hooking him up with one of his girls.

72. Elon and Donald had a meeting of minds and patched up their differences. Today, we know that Mr. Musk is funneling $366 million into campaigns for GOP candidates and causes, for this single election cycle. 

He can afford to buy an entire government.

(The kind that won’t release all the Epstein Files.)

 

73. Thank God the One Big Beautiful Bill did so much good for billionaires who wanted their taxes slashed. 

74. Ignore the federal deficit, it’s our kids and grandkids who will be forced to pay the bills. (See #65-66).  

 

75. You can buy a lot of politicians with that kind of loot.

 

76. Billionaires in the news! And in the Epstein Files. In fact, Peter’s name appears hundreds of times. Recently, Thiel claimed that Pope Leo XIV and former-President Barack Obama are expressing fears regarding AI intelligence “to boost their own popularity.” Neither man is in the Files.

As Politico explains, “In a new series of talks in Nashville, Thiel singled out the two leaders as he sharpened his warnings about the Antichrist – a figure who he sees as stopping the progress of technology and advocating for a ‘one world government’ of regulation.” 

77. Peter sounds kind of nutty.

 

78-81. Have we mentioned that Thiel got a massive tax cut, thanks to Donald Dumpling’s One Big Beautiful Bill for Billionaires? Have we pointed out that Thiel financed the rise of J.D. Vance in politics? Did you know that Thiel is worth an estimated $37.8 billion. He’s the 59th richest person in the world, although, when I checked last Thursday, his wealth was down by $552 million.

That probably stung a little. 

 

82. We should check on Elon to see how he’s doing after spending all that cash to buy a government. 

He’s down $30 billion; but he’s still fine:

 

I should point out that I consider the Citizens United decision one of the worst in United States Supreme Court history. In that case, the five Republican-appointed justices ruled that spending money on campaigns was a form of “free speech.” The four-Democratic justices ruled that it was not.

This may seem like old news to include; I’d like to ensure that Trump doesn’t get to appoint any more justices to the high court. 

(Matt Gaetz was once suggested!)

 

83. If you don’t remember, Senate Leader Mitch McConnell blocked an appointment by Barack Obama and let Trump fill it. 

McConnell refused to hold confirmation hearings for eight months. “Too close to the next election,” he claimed. The Senate should wait. “Let the people decide,” based on who they chose as president in 2016. 

84. In October 2020, Mitch decided to advance a Trump appointment to a vote, and Amy Coney Barrett was confirmed to the U.S. Supreme Court. One month before the 2020 election. F**k the people getting to decide. The Democrats, McConnell crowed, “won’t be able to do much about this for a long time to come.” 

(Let me check my calendar. Yep. One month is less than eight.)

 

*

Trump and friends love some Russians. 

FRUSTRATED by his inability to make the Iranians admit the war is over, our president has decided to go after Vladimir Putin for his bloody invasion of Ukraine in 2022. This terrible war is also technically over – since Trump promised he would end it in one day, even before he took office again. 

All he needed was to be elected. 

85. In fact, he was on November 5, 2024. That means the war must have ended on November 6. Correct?

 

86. Not so fast, Dumocrats! On April 25, 2025, President Trump sat down for an interview with Time magazine. He said he wasn’t seriously saying he could end the war in one day. He was just promising he would use his deal making skills and get the job done quickly. Unlike Joe Biden. 

One day? 

Nope. Didn’t happen. 

Maybe during his first 100 days in office? 

Nope. 

Anytime, during 2025? 

Whatever. 

This is Day #291 this year. 

As we know, the president hates CNN and all the “fake news” they spread; and one day CNN sat down and made a list of all the times Candidate Trump had promised to end the war in 24 hours.

 

87. First, they quoted from the Time transcript. Did Trump promise to end the war in a single day? “Well, I said that figuratively,” the president told the interviewer from Time, “and I said that as an exaggeration, because to make a point, and you know, it gets, of course, by the fake news [unintelligible]. Obviously, people know that when I said that it was said in jest [emphasis added], but it was also said that it will be ended.” 

Trump was lying.

 

88. Next, CNN unleashed a “fake news” torrent and posted evidence, listing 53 times during the 2024 campaign where Donald promised he would end the war in Ukraine in one day. 

For example: 

Before I even arrive at the Oval Office,” Donald said, “I will have the disastrous war between Russia and Ukraine settled. It will be settled quickly. Quickly. I will get the problem solved and I will get it solved in rapid order and it will take me no longer than one day. I know exactly what to say to each of them. 

(He meant Putin and Volodymyr Zelensky.) 

 

89. Then he said this, during a Town Hall meeting, monitored by CNN’s Kaitlin Collins: 

Trump: “If I’m president, I will have that war settled in one day, 24 hours.”

 

Collins: “How would you settle that war in one day?”

 

Trump: “First, I’ll meet with Putin, I’ll meet with Zelensky. They both have weaknesses and they both have strengths. And within 24 hours that war will be settled. It will be over. It will be absolutely over.”

 

90. In a speech to Republican women in New Hampshire, he explained, “I get along with him (Zelensky), get along with Putin, I’d have that war – it would have never happened under me, never ever, would have never happened – but I’ll have that war settled in 24 hours. And it won’t even be a tough one by comparison to other things.”

 

91. At a rally in Iowa, he promised again. “Before I even arrive at the Oval Office, shortly after I win the presidency, I will have the horrible war between Russia and Ukraine settled.” And: “I’ll get that done within 24 hours. Everyone says, ‘Oh, no, you can’t.’ Absolutely I can. Absolutely I can.” 

Absolutely. 

That’s four examples, but there were 49 more. The bedraggled blogger was too busy to read them all.

 

92. So, here we are, 712 days since the start of Donald’s second term. Mostly, he’s mad at President Zelensky of Ukraine, because the leader whose country was invaded and bathed in blood, won’t surrender. With diesel prices through-the-roof-Joe-Biden, the current Leader of the Free World is fuming because the Ukrainians continued to hit oil refineries in Russia. Donald has told them to stop. Attacks on Russian refineries, he grumbled, were driving up the price of fuel round the world. 

93. What he really meant was f**k the Ukrainians. He’s worried about the anger of American motorists.

 

94. Donald insisted that the Ukrainians weren’t going to hurt U.S. farmers and said the war should never have been started. He did not mention, however, that Russia should not have invaded. 

95. Nor did he say, “Putin should withdraw his forces.” 

96. Or: “Putin should agree to an immediate cease fire.” 

97. Or: “Putin murders his own people.” 

98. Our beloved president said that it “was time for Ukraine to get a new president.” 

(Clearly, he missed the irony.)

Trump and his pal Putin.

 

99. Any decent human being should be able to understand why the Ukrainians are reluctant to stop fighting. An estimated 125,000 to 150,000 Ukrainian soldiers have died defending their homeland. At least 17,000 civilians have been caught in the bloody crossfire and slaughtered. 

Ukraine should get a new president??? 

(We should be so lucky, here in America – but we’re stuck with the old one.) 

824 days until January 20, 2029.

 

100. This morning, Trump suggested in an interview on Newsmax, that Volodymyr Zelenskyy (sometimes he spells the name with one “y,” other times, two) has not been “a good guy for us to deal with.” 

He called Ukrainian attacks on Russian refineries “a disgrace.” 

101. Then he shit-posted about the Ukrainian leader on Truth Social: 

 

102. It’s “funny,” if you think U.S. support for murderous autocrats is “funny,” but Donald never criticizes Putin – the man who kills critics with impunity – the man who hasn’t faced a real election challenge in a quarter century. 

103. Donald likes to talk about his “landslide win in 2024.” It was solid, but, historically, not a landslide. Putin – that guy knows landslides! When he ran for yet another term, the same year as Trump, he grabbed 87.8% of the votes.

 

104-105. Donald is the only American president ever to call the leader of China a “friend,” not to mention the murderous communist leader of North Korea, with whom he once said he “fell in love.” 

106. Trump is also the first U.S. leader to compliment a Chinese ruler for winning the chance to be president for life – and then laugh and suggest, “Maybe we’ll have to give that a shot someday.” 

107. We should point out that Putin has ruled over Russia since 1999.

Trump and Xi Jinping - the president is awfully chummy with authoritarians.

 

108. Donald is a pussy-grabbing asshole. I can’t ever accept that and if you can, maybe you need to reassess your values. 

 

109. Trump has also announced a deal with Russia to buy diesel fuel, a deal which allow Putin to replenish his war chest. The Dumpling hopes the deal will drive down costs at gas stations across the nation.

110. A bipartisan letter, signed by six senators from each party, warned: “Granting Moscow the ability to sell Russian diesel freely in global markets damages American security interests [emphasis added] and is a betrayal of the people of Ukraine.” 

111. On X, Mike Pompeo couldn’t bring himself to criticize Dumpling Donald by name but did make his feelings clear about who the problem in that war really is. “Russia’s unrelenting attacks on Ukraine and the intentional targeting of civilians proves that Putin has zero intention [emphasis added] of ending this war. He is a war criminal and a menace to the civilized world and should be treated as such.”

112. Mike served as U.S. Secretary of State for three years – under President Trump – during his first term. 

113. Republicans are showing a new willingness to criticize the president as they watch him drive their party into a ditch. They really want to keep their seats in Congress in years ahead. I don’t want that.

 

114. Meanwhile, we have seen multiple reports that Russia and China are helping Iran in their fight against the U.S. For example, we could listen to Putin promise the president of Iran help in evading U.S. sanctions. “During this difficult period,” said Vlad, “we are striving to provide you with the necessary assistance – as we have discussed – and are supplying you with essential goods.” 

115. That was Vlad talking. You could tell because his lips were moving. 

116-120. You could add: China supplying Iran with shoulder-fired missiles, China sending Iran 1,300 air shipments of parts for attack drones, etc., China supplying Iran with improved air defense systems, Russia supplying Iran with sophisticated drones, and Russia supplying Iran with advanced satellite imagery and targeting advice. 

(I could find more examples but five should give you a flavor.) 

 

121. Then you could listen to Mr. Trump tell reporters he doesn’t believe Russia and China are helping Iran in the war. 

122. Then you could smack your own forehead with an open palm, a universal sign meaning, “Does this idiot know what he’s doing.” 

123. Smack yourself again in the head if you are still voting red on November 3; because he doesn’t.

 

124. By the way, I don’t have “Trump Derangement Syndrome” because that’s just some made-up shit. What I do have is this list of reason – and they’re almost all from just one month.

 

125. We should also note there are reports that Suzie Wiles’ daughter has been doing pro-Russian lobbying work in Bosnia (Suzie Wiles being current White House Chief of Staff). So that’s not great. 

126. Even worse, if you support essential human rights, two top Trump political advisors, Chris LaCivita and James Blair, spent the weekend of October 4 in the same corner of Europe, doing paid consulting for a Putin-aligned, regional government that had claimed victory in a close local election.

127. I am guessing they were telling Putin’s pal how to get his supporters to riot if the final vote count doesn’t go his way

 

128. There are many reasons, I would argue, that no good American should favor the actions of Vladimir Putin. He’s a former KGB agent, which is like calling someone a “former Gestapo agent,” and he’s the kind of man who served as a pillar of the communist government that long ruled the Soviet Union.

(Current Republican leaders like to claim all Democrats are communists.) 

(I don’t know of any Democratic leaders who are sucking up to Mr. Putin.)

 

129. If you’ve never heard of “Russian gravity syndrome,” a term I am stealing from an individual I follow on X, it’s a great one. In Russia, critics of Putin often fall, mysteriously, out of tall buildings. 

130. Sometimes, for variety, his critics are poisoned with radioactive tea. 

131. They may also be stabbed, while out walking, with a poison-tipped umbrella that gets them in the shin. 

132-133. They can have the front door handle to their home smeared with a deadly nerve toxin or they can be sentenced to six years in prison for telling jokes about how the Ukraine War isn’t going so well.

 

134-135. See, for comparison, President Trump’s successful effort to get Stephen Colbert’s show canceled, and his daily attacks on Jimmy Kimmel, another late-night comedian.

136. See also: First Amendment (free speech). 

137. In Russia, Vlad can have his enemies shipped off to Siberia, where they will be abused in prison until they die. Trump still won’t whisper a bad word for the man who makes murder on demand. 

 

*

Crooks, criminals and Natalie Harp’s great legs. 

138. CLOSER to home, casualties are mounting in Trump World. Pam Bondi, Dan Bongino, Kristi Noem and Cory Lewandowski are gone. Now U.S. Ambassador to Greece, Kimberly Guilfoyle, once engaged to Donald J. Trump Jr., has been caught asking a fat-cat donor to pay off her $100,000 credit card debt. 

She has been ousted, as a result – not because she’s a crook – but because she’s a crook who got caught.

139. In fact, Kimberly could have asked a Russian to settle her VISA bill. That kind of scam worked for Don Jr., when he married last May. Some Russian lug chipped in hundreds of thousands of dollars to ensure that the nuptials and the celebration after would be memorable.

140. Don’t worry, Trump fans. The Russian oligarch says, since he and Jr. got caught, that Jr. has paid him back. 

141. Once again, the free press did the digging on the wedding story and, my God, MAGA fans, it wasn’t “fake news.” 

142. You’ve got to figure this out before the First Amendment is just trash.

 

Thinking it’s all cool, if Don Jr. paid the Russian guy back, is like forgiving a bank robber covered in red, after a hidden dye pack exploded in the bag of cash after he left the bank. Returning the stained money doesn’t negate the fact you tried to get away with robbing the place. 

So, how is Guilfoyle handling her ouster? Sources say she’s planning to write a book and insiders warn, “she knows where the bodies are buried.” 

(I would probably buy that book.) 

 

143. The president wants voters to understand. He hardly knew the woman he chose for ambassador. 

“She went to Greece. She was doing a good job, but we didn’t like what we were reading,” Mr. Dumpling told reporters. “She wasn’t a member of my family. She, I guess, dated my son a long time ago, but she wasn’t.” 

“I guess?”  Kimberly and Don Jr. were engaged on New Year’s Eve in 2020 but kept it secret until 2022. Meanwhile, they bought a house together in Florida. On April 24, 2024, Kimberly posted on social media, “Happy Anniversary to my love! The past 3 years have been amazing, filled with adventure and memories that will last a lifetime Here’s to many, many more.” 

144. Guilfoyle also had a featured speech at the 2024 GOP nominating convention and bellowed out her love for her future-father-in-law, who dreamed of being president once again. 

 

145. Also getting booted out of Trump World this past week: Longtime White House Press Secretary Katie Zacharia. You may may remember she had a bumpy on-the-job start way back last Tuesday. Her first problem was that during her inaugural briefing she looked like a second grader trying to read from a government report on advances in nuclear physics. 

146. Her second problem was that she had billed herself as an attorney. Asked by reporters when and where she took and passed the bar, she replied confidently, “When I was in China.” 

147. The free press found experts with knowledge of foreign legal policies and noted that China doesn’t allow foreigners to take the bar. 

148. The free press, doing its job, to hold the powerful to account, and keep us informed when they do, continued digging. It was soon clear. Katie did take the bar exam in California in 2011. 

She failed. 

149. Still don’t get why the free press is a necessary check on powerful people and institutions? I’m going to start pitying you. 

WAKE UP!

 

150. I think you could fairly wonder. Is it possible that Natalie Harp, Donald’s favorite, beautiful, White House aide, might have been nervous about competition for the president’s affections?

151. We can report that Zacharia (left) and Harp (right) both grasped how to ingratiate themselves with the president: 

 

152. As for Ms. Harp, we know that at a rally in Nebraska earlier this month, the president called her up on stage, to deliver a document. He could not restrain himself. He had to tell his adoring fans that Natalie reminded him of The Price is Right show, explaining, “This perfect person comes out on stage, hands it, walks up.” Then he asks the crowd, “We should go on television with this show, right?” 

153. We do know that Natalie has been on tour with the orange octogenarian. Wherever he goes, Tennessee, Nebraska, or Ohio, Natalie goes also. Melania apparently stays home and bakes the cookies. 

 

154. When not trotting Harp out on stage so he can show her off, Donald has been busy raging about losing out on the Nobel Peace Prize. The fact he didn’t win this year, he calls “an indelible stain on the country of Norway and called the decision not to give him the award “disgraceful.” Of course, bombing the shit out of Iran, alongside the Israelis, reduced his chances of winning.

As an aside, I must admit: Natalie’s legs look great. I have no doubt President Horn Dog has noticed. 

(The unsaid question: Is he back to grabbing pussy, because he can?)

 

* 

How to warp the American system of justice. 

155. We can also report that former Trump personal lawyer and short-time DOJ appointee Alina Habba Mildon has added another layer to the on-going Washington soap opera. Mrs. Mildon says that money donated by her husband, Turkish billionaire Turhan Mildon, to keep the Kennedy Center for Performing Arts in operation has gone … “missing!” 

Well, how much? Ten thousand? A hundred thousand dollars? A six-digit figure would be quite generous. 

Not even close. A gift of six million was never deposited to the Center’s accounts and Habba Mildon says Ric Grenell, Donald’s trusted pick to lead the Kennedy Center, may have made the money vanish. 

156. Even more fun: The free press is at it again. It appears Alina, 42, and Turhan, 29, and Ric, are all interested in money-making deals in Venezuela, which we recently invaded. 

An email reviewed by reporters indicates that Grenell promised Mr. Mildon access to the president and his closest allies, in return for that thick wad of cash. “Once the money comes to the company here [a defense contractor for whom Grenell had once done work], I will arrange the donation to Kennedy Centre [sic], and you’ll be joining the VIP events and get close with the administration, even with POTUS,” Grenell allegedly wrote. Now he denies sending the email.

That was in May 2025. No one has seen the loot since.

 

157. And there’s even more money to discuss. It seems that Julio Herrera Velutini, a billionaire banker from Venezuela – note the recurring appearance of billionaires in this saga – needed a pardon. Otherwise, he might soon be looking out at the world from between steel bars. How to get the attention of Mr. Trump and Ms. Habba Mildon? Ah, there was the rub. 

To get the ball rolling, Velutini’s daughter, Isabella Herrera, dug through her purse. You know ladies. Lipstick. Wallet. Coupon pouch. Maybe tampons. Where did that checkbook go? She found it at last and wrote a check for $3.5 million to a Super PAC tied to the President of the United States.

Does that sound like a bribe? 

158. Well, it should. The scheme was still only in planning stages. Ms. Herrera sealed the deal by offering Habba Mildon a job as a legal consultant to her father’s banking empire. Alina would earn $50,000,000 over four years if she helped make Velutini’s legal problems go away.

159. Anything else fishy about these back-channel machinations? 

The New York Times explains: 

Under the agreement, Ms. Habba [who was not yet married] would become general counsel at Concord Partners, a company that Ms. Herrera set up in late October 2025 in Florida. The company has no public profile and its business remains unclear even to some people associated with the Herrera business empire. Ms. Habba finalized her deal days after the company was registered, while she was still serving as U.S. attorney [emphasis added] in New Jersey. 

 

160. On January 1, 2026, Alina began her job at Concord Partners. A few weeks later, Julio had his full unconditional pardon. 

 

161. Again: I don’t have TDS. I’m just observant and I’m retired and have free time to study the news. If you haven’t noticed, because your life is complicated, Donald Dumpling is a big fan of killing other Americans. 

Still, he did cave recently on the idea of televising the execution of the Fort Hood killer – since televised killings have kind of a “Taliban vibe.” 

The fact that Secretary of Warmongering Pete Hegseth pushed the idea of televising a firing squad is repulsive. 

The Nazis loved to take photos and film firing squads.

 

162. Pete is also a fan of blowing up small boats in the Caribbean, or off the Pacific Coast of Central America, if he believes the crews are smuggling drugs. For some reason, he can’t figure out how to get our navy to interdict the shipments – or even ensure there are drugs aboard. 

You might argue that Pete has been responsible for the summary execution of more than 200 people. 

163. We must also point out that Pete’s boss, Donald Dumpling, is a fan of executing people who leak secrets. “Leakers should be – in my opinion, leakers should be shot,” Trump told a rally crowd a few days ago. “They should be shot. In the old days, we used to shoot leakers, you know.” 

We used to burn heretics, hang witches, and draw and quarter criminals. Not all old ideas are good ideas. 

164. Today, leakers often reveal the secrets powerful individuals do not want revealed. And they “leak” to the free press.

Are you still not getting it, Trump fans?

 

165. Anyone else, that Trump thought might need a few bullet holes added to their resumes? Pointing at reporters at the back of the same crowd who had just heard him say we needed to kill leakers, he added, “They look at me, those same people up there. They’re very, they’re almost as bad as a leaker because they leak,” the president said. “No, they leak false information. That makes them a leaker, right?” 

(Sure, if you think our legal system should rest on a president’s whims.)

 

166. At another rally, a female protester wearing a “Release the Epstein Files” t-shirt, was attacked by three MAGA men. At least one of those three has since bragged on social media about what he and the others did, including one of the three repeatedly punching the woman in the face. (See #48-56.) 

167. This attack provoked people in the crowd to chant loudly, proudly, and cluelessly, “USA! USA! USA!!!!!” 

Sorry, but this blogger is not a fan of punching anyone in the face, particularly a female. He also thinks 3 vs. 1, even if all males, would be wrong. (My dad believed a man should “fight fair.”)

 

168. Not Donald. The president reacted as only he would. He made fun of the protester’s weight. “They’re all paid,” he snarled, his go-to-explanation for why protesters criticize him to begin. “They get paid by the lefties in order to destroy our country. They’re scum. But he’s going back home to mom.”

Trump might have missed her sex, but he labeled the protester a “fat guy” who “needs to go on a diet.” 

That looks like a 48-inch belt, Mr. President.

169.The attackers were not escorted out of the arena, though the woman punched in the face was. Members of the crowd could then be seen exchanging high-fives with the three MAGA gentlemen.

 

170. Youngstown, Ohio Mayor Derrick McDowell watched the same video I did, and responded: “It must be emphatically stated that senseless (political) violence has absolutely NO place in our community or in our democratic process.” 

171. See how easy that is? 

172. The president could have condemned the attack but didn’t. He’s the guy who, during his first run for office, complimented a fan at one of his rallies after that supporter sucker-punched a protester. That protester was being led out of the arena by police. Donald told the crowd he’d pay the attacker’s legal fees.

The president loves it.

173. On the topic of political violence, as long as I live, I will never forgive Trump and his toadies for the January 6 attack on the Capitol. Trump showed he would be happy to ignore the rule of law on the first day of his second term in office. 

He pardoned every single rioter.

174. He pardoned several already-convicted sex offenders or rioters who went on to child-molesting fame. 

175. He pardoned individuals who tasered police. (See Rioter #553.) 

176. He pardoned rioters who struck police with hockey sticks (#154), baseball bats (rioter #156), broken table legs  (#1193), and flagpoles (#1309).

177. The rioters broke that table, too, and did several million dollars’ damage to the Capitol. My taxes (and yours) went to repairs. 

1178. The 45th President of the United States pardoned numerous rioters who sprayed police with mace (#312), bear spray (#377)and wasp and hornet spray (#1248)

 

179. To start his second term, Trump tried to get the Department of Justice to set up a deal where taxpayers would cough up $1.7 billion dollars to pay for “damages” done to the poor rioters, themselves.

F**k that, I say, and f**k the elephant the president rode in on, and f**k the President of the United States, too. 

In addition, f**k Attorney General Blanche, who was ready, set, go, about to go along with that plan. (The same asshole who can’t find a single Epstein client that he’d like to investigate and indict.)

 

180-182. Even worse, I am not aware of any efforts by Mr. Trump to pay the widows of five officers who died in the wake of the January 6 attacks, one by heart attack the next day, four by suicide in coming months. (At least one of the suicides probably suffered a brain injury during the riot.) Nor has Donald ever suggested paying compensation to the 140 officers injured that day. Because he’d rather jail a “vandal” who cut up his beautiful Reflecting Pool, even when his own DOJ realized there was no evidence.

This is who Trump is.

 

183. In related news, the 47th President of the United States is trying his best to drag Cassidy Hutchinson through the mud. The young White House aide testified (under oath) during a congressional investigation into the events of January 6. This blogger has more than a rudimentary understanding of the Constitution, of how the courts work, and watched her testimony. The case against her will go nowhere in court and it’s really about harassment of one of Donald’s “enemies.”

Hutchinson was a trusted aide - until she told the truth.

184. Have we mentioned? Trump is the first (and only) president who ever said he could pardon himself? 

 

Mike Tyson visited the White House this week. Unlike this blogger (who has never bitten off part of an opponent’s ear), Mike assured reporters that Trump was “going to win” the midterms – proving that Mike had suffered too many shots to the skull during his boxing career. 

185. I had forgotten that Mike was convicted of rape in 1992, and that Donald stuck by his friend even after he got out of jail.

186. Commendable loyalty? Perhaps. But Trump was also hanging out with Jeffery Epstein in those days.

 

187. With the midterms fast approaching, the president’s poll numbers are in the toilet, and many GOP candidates for U.S. Senate seats look like unflushed turds in a bowl. (Yeah, Ken, we mean you.) Even voters in Kansas, a dependably red state, seem restless. A seat in the “Sunflower State” may be within Democratic grasp – partly because the incumbent, Sen. Roger Marshall, appears … hmmm … not to reside in Kansas. 

A rather important detail. 

Reporters have been digging. It turns out that the senator uses a P.O. Box in Kansas as his primary personal mailing address. Meanwhile, Mrs. Marshall has had a license in Florida to sell real estate, and/or has an application pending, for years. Senator Marshall has had a Florida fishing license since 2019, which is no big deal, but he and his wife own a home in Sarasota, valued at $1.2 million, which kind of is. We also know they sold the family home in Great Bend, KS. where they had raised their kids, soon after Roger was elected to office. 

188. In the meantime, reporters discovered that Sen. Marshall billed taxpayers $18,000 for trips on “official business” which happened to take him to Sarasota. (See: “Power of the purse, #39-46.)

 

189. On the topic of shady characters, running for Congress, the Wall Street Journal has revealed that Ken Paxton spent last Christmas partying in Dubai – with a woman not his wife. 

Left: Mr. and Mrs. Paxton. Right: His mistress.

 

190. Even more amazingly, that lavish party in that Middle Eastern playground was attended by two Americans who were fugitives from justice. The two gentlemen had been indicted on charges of healthcare-fraud but decided to hide out overseas. The two fraudsters were Anosh Ahmed and Sameer Suhail. 

Ahmed, a healthcare executive, had donated $190,000 to Paxton’s campaigns, including a nice check for $25,000, just days before he absconded. 

Let’s not forget: Paxton is Texas attorney general. Where do Republicans dredge up these guys? 

(Don’t forget: Matt Gaetz.)

 

192. Ken and his main squeeze, Tracy Duhon were also seen traveling to Iceland this summer, for vacation.

 

193. Apparently, this humble blogger is not the only American who believes Donald is a conman, has always been a conman, and will go to his grave someday, still a conman. One recent poll is stuffed with bad news for Conman 47. When registered voters were asked, “Do you think President Trump prioritizes his personal business interests over the country’s interests, and by how much, 56% said he did, by “a lot.” 

194. Respondents were also asked if they thought Trump prioritized “people like me.”  A solid majority of independents, 56%, said, “not at all.” 

Another 19% responded, “only a little.”

 

195. If, on the other hand, you love Donald, and you believe the barbarians are banging at the gates, you may be thrilled to know that the Department of Justice has found sixteen individuals (16) who allegedly voted illegally in recent elections – in eight different states. 

196. This should be compared with the 11,780 votes Trump tried to convince Georgia officials in a phone call in 2020 to “find” for him, so he could “win” that state.

197. I have often suggested to my Trump-loving friends and family members that they listen to that call; I’m not sure any of them have ever dared. This is one of the big problems with the MAGA crowd. 

Incuriosity. 

198. Also: Gullibility. 

199. Just to be clear, Trump fans: 11,780 is way more than 16. You should understand how dangerous this is. 

200. Only you don’t.

 

201. Speaking of danger, last January, a U.S. citizen named David Streever sent an email to the acting head of ICE, Todd Lyons. Streever was angry after ICE agents killed two other citizens in Minneapolis. He warned Lyons that he would be haunted by the shootings and would “never know peace.” Streever went on to compare the head of ICE to Reinhard Heydrich, head of Hitler’s Gestapo, and the man tasked with carrying out the “Final Solution” and annihilating Jews. 

ICE agents showed up at Streever’s home in June, where they posted warning that he might be “in violation of federal law.” 

A federal judge has enjoined ICE from taking further action, pointing out that citizens still enjoy the right of free speech.

 

202. Someone should send a reminder to President Trump and put Brendan Carr (head of the FCC) on the email chain. (See #134-135 and 219.)

(If I compare Carr to Joseph Goebbels, will ICE show up at my door?)

(Goebbels was Hitler’s Reich Minister of Propaganda.)

 

* 

“White genocide” and other racist tropes. 

203. THE FOLLOWING STORY escaped my notice for several weeks, but let’s add it to the October list, because it fits. 

Paul LePage, a longtime supporter of the president, is running for Congress for a seat from Maine. A fan of cracking down on immigrants of all kinds, LePage has a new tune to oompah on his bassoon. 

LePage has a son. His son has a wife. His wife has a dad. That dad immigrated to America. Now LePage wants everyone to know that the dad is here legally. Dad is being deported, the would-be legislator says, “because he came from a country that’s not [to] the liking to certain people in Washington.” 

“That’s not right,” Maine’s former governor, LePage now says. His son’s father-in-law “has a work permit. He should be allowed to stay.”

204. No shit.

 

205. If we consider the many comments of Mr. Trump (he only wants immigrants from places like Norway, Sweden or Denmark) or the principles espoused by Stephen Miller, Trump’s favorite white supremacist aide, that would be a long list of countries. Most of those countries would be full of people who were black, brown, yellow or red.

Or mixed! 

206. Miller and others of his soulless type are deeply into the “White Replacement” theory. Look up “white genocide” for good measure, or “civilizational suicide.” See if you can figure out what folks on the right fear most.  

 

207. Why do you think President Trump was always talking about Haitian immigrants “eating the pets?” 

208. One of Team Trump’s favorite European leaders was, until last April, when he was defeated in his quest for reelection, Viktor Orban. In a typical Orban speech in 2022, he insisted that Hungarians did “not want to become peoples of mixed races.” Even one of his top aides felt she must resign, calling his words “a pure Nazi diatribe worthy of Joseph Goebbels.” 

Trump wanted more immigrants from Norway.

 

209. So, who the hell was in Hungary this past spring, trying to bolster Orban’s chances of winning??? It was J.D. Vance! And his kids are “mixed.” His wife Usha’s family immigrated from India. 

And she and her parents follow Hindu beliefs. 

210. There are, as I have said, many reasons why I won’t be voting for Republican on November 3. Racism is one of the biggest.

 

211. I also don’t like cowards. We know how malleable J.D. Vance’s principles are. He once called Trump, “America’s Hitler.” J.D. is a chameleon in a fine suit. He’s the guy out there – right now – warning that European nations are letting migrants flood in, and barking about “civilizational suicide.” 

212. What, essentially, is his message? The migrants are not white, and they are Muslim and Hindu and other uncivilized types. 

I might argue that “civilizational suicide” is more like Europeans slaughtering each other in World War I and World War II, and today, with the Russians trying to wipe Ukrainians off the map.

*

Lousy candidates, busy judges, and January 6. 

213. WITH THE NEED to vote upon us, most Americans would admit that both parties occasionally nominate the kinds of individuals to run for office that you would not want to invite over for dinner. 

And if you did, as one English gentleman said centuries ago, after they left, you would have to count your silver spoons.

The Republicans grace us with Ken Paxton; but the Democrats once put up Bob Menendez for another term in the U.S. Senate, a man, it later turned out, who hid gold bar bribes in his shoe closet at home.

 

214. Let’s focus on Rep. Henry Cuellar, a Democrat currently running for another term, from the 28th Congressional District in Texas. Oddly enough, he’s yet another reason I’m not voting for Republicans. Two years ago, Henry and his wife were indicted on charges of bribery, conspiracy and money laundering and it looked like his career in politics was over. 

Dandy.

After Trump took office again, however, he started dreaming about getting Cuellar to switch parties, if he pardoned him. So, he did. 

At another one of his recent rallies, Trump told the crowd that they should vote for the guy running against Henry. Donald’s reasoning was perfectly reflective of who Donald is. He wasn’t upset with the alleged bribery, etc. “But shockingly, after the pardon was given,” the president whined, “then he and the wife were freed up. No more court cases ... Cuellar announced only a few days later that he was going to stay and remain in the Democrat Party.” 

It wasn’t the money laundering that riled up the president. It was the fact that Cuellar didn’t follow through, didn’t switch parties, didn’t provide Donald with another vote in Congress. 

His character, Trump now insists, is “a faulty one.” 

215. It always was. It was faulty before Trump pardoned him. And Donald J. Trump didn’t care one bit. 

“Pot calls kettle black,” Mr. President.

 

216. As we have already noted (See #54, and #201, above.) judges have been busy reining in the president and the creeps who clutter his administration. After Donald had his minions cut down 429 trees on three adjacent public golf courses in Washington D.C., U.S. District Judge Ana Reyes ordered a halt. She expected officials to show cause why this destruction was necessary and why workers set about their work on a Saturday morning, at 7 a.m. 

Trump wants to create a “world class course” where he can hold professional tournaments – and replace the three courses with just his one. And we know he’ll want to name it after himself.

217.The president handled defeat exactly as we have come to expect. He called Judge Reyes a “crazed lunatic.” 

Then he suggested that the judge “may be insane.”

218. No other president has ever done more to undermine the authority of the judicial system of this nation. 

 

219. Earlier this month, it was the turn of U.S. District Judge Loren AliKhan to stop the president in the court of law. 

Her specific task was to stand up for the First Amendment, in this case the “free speech” portion of the amendment the Founding Fathers placed first in order, as of first importance. At issue was a plan hatched by the Federal Communications Commission, led by Brendan Carr, to call in eight broadcast licenses owned by ABC, and do it years ahead of schedule. The president, as you probably know, is fed up with ABC, because they don’t kiss his ass with sufficient fervor. 

So, he’d like to make it impossible for the company to present the news – unless they change their tone and tell their audience how great he is. 

Sort of like this: 

 

Judge AliKhan asked lawyers representing the FCC what the rush was and promised she would rule on the matter soon. 

Naturally, she sounded suspicious regarding the real reasons the FCC was pushing for review – perhaps knowing that Trump and Carr have been regularly threatening news agencies that fail to toe the company line. 

220. We also know that Donald has kicked ABC reporters out of the White House, because he doesn’t like what they say. 

221. He booted out CNN and Politico reporters, too. (He seems to take special pleasure in insulting Kaitlin Collins of CNN, whenever he can). 

(This blogger has a theory that Donald Dumpling lusts after Ms. Collins.) 

Trump insults Collins almost every day.

 

222. So, we have a president who keeps kicking out reporters; and we have an assortment of federal judges who consider his reasons and say that he can’t and the banished journalists are allowed to reenter. 

223. Donald decides to get clever. He bars CNN reporters from flying on Air Force One. And off he goes to Tennessee to hold another midterm rally.

224. Still don’t see the danger to the First Amendment? 

Jesus, wake the f**k up.

 

 

225. And how about just one more anti-free press gem? Once Donald found himself back in the White House, he sued the BBC over a story he didn’t like about how he had stirred up the infamous riot on January 6, 2021. In fact, he wanted $10 billion in damages for the “defamatory” report. 

Now he realizes that if he pursues the case, he and his unscrupulous enablers would be forced to sit for depositions. As part of the “discovery process,” lawyers for the British Broadcasting Corporation would have the right to ask for all relevant documents or records from the days leading up to the riot, during the hours of rioting, and afterward. Not only would Trump have to talk about what he did, so would top aides, guys like fascist wannabe Gen. Michael Flynn. 

226. Flynn suggested sending the military into battleground states where blue voters had smoked Donald J. Trump’s ass.

227. I taught American and World History, and I know a little about this and that. I will never forget that Flynn felt that fascist urge. 

Neither should you.

___ 

 

A shrug and a prayer. 

10/20/26: WE LEFT OFF YESTERDAY, with a list of 227 solid reasons, almost all from this month, why I don’t think any reasonable American citizen should vote for Republicans in the coming midterms. Today, we’ll add just three more, because #230 pisses me off too much to keep going.

228. The president continues to add to his massive list of people he hates. Recently, he issued warning on Truth Social. “The White House considers anyone that uses the term, ‘Artificial Intelligence,’ as opposed to the highly accepted new and more accurate term, ‘Super Intelligence,’ THE ENEMY!” 

Not everyone was on board with the new label. Geoffrey Hinton, the “godfather” of AI, told reporters the president’s use of his new, made-up term shows he understands “almost nothing” about the technology. Hinton, who does have a Nobel Prize – whereas Dumpling Don craves one for himself – did not stop there. 

He called the president “a corrupt, senile felon.” 

(You know Hinton’s on the Hate List now.)

 

229. Adding to an astounding list of stupidities, the president insisted again yesterday that the state of New Mexico should “immediately” be renamed, “New America.” 

Really? This is the president's focus?

 

230. What the President of the United States has not focused on in the last five days is how to deal with the school shooting in Bend, Oregon. That shooting, carried out by a 16-year-old, left three other children, ages 5, 8 and 11, dead, a teacher dead, another child and another teacher in critical condition. 

The teacher who died, Megan Lambert, was 25, likely in her second or third year in a classroom. It should not have been her last.

Five-year-old Rhoam Summer is now the youngest student ever murdered in this country in a school shooting. 

But sure. Let Trump focus his attention on renaming shit. A gulf, a lake, a state. Maybe an ocean. 

Rhoam is dead. 

It was “Picture Day” at Silver Rail Elementary School when all that blood was needlessly spilled.

(Rhoam told his parents he wanted to be a bunny for Halloween. Now he won’t.)

 

An armed Good Samaritan saw the shooter blast his way through locked doors and enter the school and chose bravely to follow him in and stop him if he could. That man, Kaylub Giamanco, showed that not all guns are bad – which almost all Americans know. He had to kill the teen shooter, himself. 

The president later praised him, rightly, as a hero. But as President Trump put it, “He took care of business.” 

Nah. 

We can’t just hope armed citizens will save the day. 

I’m a retired teacher, and I’m not going to vote for Republicans who insist there is nothing we can do about guns. 

We can stop transgenders from playing women’s sports. School shootings? Just a shrug and a prayer.

___ 

 

10/21/26: I had to quit working on my list yesterday, because I was so disgusted by #230, I just didn’t want to continue. 

We pick up today, albeit sobered, on the list of reasons I don’t think you should vote for Republicans on November 3. 

You may have your own list of examples, why you will and that’s fine, too. I just think it’s important to be informed. 

231. Let’s start with a stupid one today, straight from the desk of President Donald J. Trump. This graphic was posted first on Truth Social, then I saw it on X: 

 

I think this was supposed to make us run to the voting place, shouting hallelujah, on November 3. The idea that oatmeal had dropped 2.2%, however, and that this was what Donald was bragging about made me laugh out loud.

Then I noticed something else. Egg prices were down 90%. I know a little bit about math. So, I checked the price of a dozen eggs this month. Currently, a carton-full will set you back $2.27. 

That meant that eggs would have had to be selling at some point in the past for $22.70 cents, assuming you were going to drop prices to $2.27, or 90 percent.

232. I would think the geniuses working at the White House could have seen this mistake immediately.

 

233. Trump, of course, doesn’t understand how percentages work. See, for example, his claims that he has “cut drug prices by 1,200, 1,300, 1,400, 1,500%. I don’t mean 50%, I mean 14 – 1,500%.” 

234. I don’t trust an administration where no one has the nerve to tell the president to quit making such stupid claims: “Sir, that’s not possible.” Instead, you have sycophants like Howard Lutnick who smile and go along.

235. Howard went to Epstein Island, by the way. Then he forgot that he did. 

(He may be innocent of any crimes – save bad judgment, of course.)

(I can report: My name does not pop up in the Files.)

 

236. I don’t know if I had ever heard of Jeffrey Epstein until the Miami Herald did a magnificent expose on the man, his enablers, and his crimes in 2018. Julie K. Brown. 

You should look her up. 

237. Brown is exactly why every American with a brain should fear any attempt by any politician or powerful individual to stifle the free press. 

238. I really don’t like Donald J. Trump, because more than all other presidents, he has tried to stomp the free press. 

(See #139, 147, 156, 187 and #222, above.) 

 

239. Anyway, we were talking about that graphic. When I checked the price of eggs, I noticed that government statistics showed several other sizeable increases in food prices, unless you planned to live on oatmeal. 

And smother it in olive oil. 

 

As is always the case, I had to keep digging. I know you can pick statistics to prove many different points. But how about a pound of ground beef? In January 2025, when Biden left town, it was $5.55. 

By September 2026, it was $6.79. That’s a 22.3 percent increase, almost ten times the money you saved on Quaker Oats. 

The graphic Trump posted shows that chicken breast is down 7 per cent. Other government statistics seem to point in a different direction: Slightly up. It was $3.97 in January 2025. It was $4.20 when I checked yesterday, or about what you’d expect, given the inflation rate since Donald took charge. 

Not a big deal; but I do chase the truth, as best I can.

 

240. More importantly, we now live in a country made meaner. Judge Reyes, the subject of Trump’s ire over plans to build a professional golf course in D.C. is now getting death threats. (This supports reason #218, above.) 

“This is where we are... A federal judge is getting death threats over a golf course,” Reyes told reporters on Monday. 

“I really don’t think that’s what the founders envisioned.” 

241. Donald could call for his dogs to stop barking. He just never bothers and never cares. (See #164-172.)

 

242. Another reason I’m not voting for Vivek Ramasawamy or any other GOP candidates, here in Ohio, is that I used to be a teacher, and I know the scare tactics being employed about schools, and transgenders kids are buncombe. 

(Shout out to Buncombe County, N.C., from which we have the inspiration for the word “bunkum,” usually shortened to “bunk.”)

243. In any case, Vivek and some of the other boys and girls in the GOP keep spreading the bunk. By the time I retired, rules were so strict that our school nurse had to gently admonish me for giving a seventh grader two aspirin, after he said he had a headache. (I kept a bottle in my desk.)

(Aspirin, I mean.) 

 

Yet, we have the Liar-in-Chief, with Vivek parroting his untruths, insisting that you can drop your child off at school one morning and a few days later you get them back, but a different sex. 

244. Trump doesn’t even try to tell the truth. At a rally in Georgia last week, he claimed there were “five states where your child goes off to school as Tim and comes back as Tammy, three or four days later.” 

“And you say, ‘Where’s my son? My son is in the hospital.’ Can you imagine?” Trump added. “They don’t even need approval. It’s sick. You’ll have five – I think Minnesota and some others – I think it’s five or six states.” 

I assume this picture is AI, but it's still perfect.

 

245. “I think?” Donald thinks it happens? He’s the dolt who can’t make low-water-usage toilets work. 

If you’re the president and this was really happening you should know those states, and you should be prosecuting all the educators and doctors and nurses, and school janitors, and crossing guards involved. 

You shouldn’t “think.” You should find out and act; but you can’t because you’re just making shit up.

 

246. I have plenty of reasons why I’m voting Democratic. Most of us who vote blue do, even if you vote red and differ in your opinions. For example, we don’t believe all immigrants are bad. Now, even Team Trump seems to be figuring it out, as terrible poll numbers pile up. For that reason, the move to revoke Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for 100,000 Ukrainians who have found safety in the U.S., will not be revoked, as was planned. 

(I don’t like Republicans because they considered revocation at all.)

 

247. The misfits of Team Trump know every vote will count on November 3, and if you’ve been watching the poll numbers, you know they need way more votes. So TPS status for 232,000 people from El Salvador, many of whom have lived in the U.S. since the 90s, will also be extended. At least 273,000 children born in the U.S. to Salvadorian parents would have to consider leaving if their parents were forced to go. Many of those children are now old enough to vote.

They won’t vote for the party that wants to kick their parents out.

 

248. Neither will I. I don’t vote for people who push cruel policies. Those children have the same rights as you, or I, or anyone wearing a red MAGA baseball cap. Why would anyone see advantage to kicking their parents out and ruining the lives of hundreds of thousands of young Americans?

249. Oh, yeah. Stephen Miller. 

Stephen Miller.

 *

Trump always screws our allies. 

250. EVEN MANY REPUBLICANS are appalled by the president’s recent moves to force Ukraine to settle for a peace deal on Russian terms. It’s like asking a rape victim to kiss the rapist. 

It’s not surprising, however. 

251. After the Kurds in northern Iraq, and across the borders in Syria, helped the U.S. kick ISIS’s ass (the jihadis who had caused so much blood to flow in Iraq), Mr. Trump cut off support after ISIS was defeated and said the only reason we should stay in Northern Syria was to guard the oil. 

This is an older reason why I won’t vote Republican; but it still pertains. The Kurds lost thousands of men (and women) in the fight against the Islamic radicals, casualties we might have had to suffer, instead. 

252. I can also remember how, during his first term, Donald decided he wanted credit for getting us out of Afghanistan. Initially, he wanted U.S. forces out on January 15, 2021. Pentagon leaders convinced him that it would not be possible to withdraw our forces so fast. Donald worked out a peace deal with the Taliban (our enemies) and excluded the government of Afghanistan (our allies). 

253. What that deal did do was set May 1, 2021, as “date certain” for all U.S. forces to be out. That deal freed 5,000 Taliban prisoners – who spent their time from then till May 1, gearing up to fight the Afghan government and make our withdrawal harder. 

If you think President Biden botched the exit from that country, fine. Just remember, Trump wanted to bolt even sooner and didn’t much care what happened after he left the White House.

 

254. I also find Trump’s insults directed at NATO allies, and the Canadians, to be repulsive. The Canadians have fought by our side in almost every war since 1917. (They sat Vietnam out.) 

They took hundreds of casualties in Afghanistan. NATO troops took thousands. “Thank you for your service,” also applies to people who join us in our fights. 

255. Canada as a 51st state! All that juvenile hoopla. Trump is too dumb to realize Canada would be voting blue by huge margins. In a poll last year, 77% of Canadians “lacked confidence” in Trump to do what was right. 

256. Plus, Canada would (even in Donald’s imaginary world) expect to create more like eight states. You think Canada would willingly join the Union as one, with two senators like Wyoming? 

Please, child.

When Trump posted this, he failed to realize that's the Matterhorn.

In Switzerland.

 

257. Today, the Ukraine War drags on. The Ukrainians are fighting bravely. Trump can’t understand bravery. The Dumpling dodged any chance to fight when he was young and could have turned “patriotism” into action in Vietnam. 

258. I don’t vote Republican for many reasons. It galls me, particularly, the Trump family hypocrisy. They talk up patriotism. Yet, no member of that clan, going back to 1885, when the first Trump emigrated to these shores, has ever put on a uniform and dodged bullets. 

259. Don Jr, Eric – even Ivanka and Tiffany – young Barron – all could have donned the uniforms, or still could. 

None have ever felt the itch to serve. 

Didn't serve. Didn't want to.

Could have served. Wasn't interested.

 

261a. I’m not making this another reason for my list. I’m just going to bet that none of the grandkids ever serve, either.

260. Ivanka’s husband, Jared Kushner? Him, neither. 

(I’m too lazy to look up Tiffany’s husband. You catch my drift, I hope.)

 

261a. I’m not making this another reason for my list. I’m just going to bet that none of the grandkids ever serve, either.

I’m not a conspiracy thinker, either. I do wish the government was telling us more about the shooter in Butler, Pa. 

(I’m not a hater, either. I’m glad Trump was not killed.) 

(We should only remove terrible presidents by impeachment.) 

 

262. Today, the President of the United States chooses to “blame the rape victim” in the Ukraine War. 

Trump continues to attack the president of Ukraine, not the man who invaded his country. In a Truth Social screed posted on Sunday afternoon, October 18, Donald lambasted the Ukrainians and gave the Russians a pass. What about ending the bloodshed? According to our Bone Spurs Hero, 

Zelenskyy doesn’t care, and frankly, with all of the money that Europe is famously giving him, and that Crooked Joe Biden gave him in the past, he doesn’t want to end this war, and probably never did. He could have made a better deal two years ago than he can now. His country is in shambles, a large portion of his land is lost, his oceans and seas are gone, and his male population is low, wounded, and/or dead. I WANT THIS WAR [SIC] END! 

 

263. On November 3, I won’t vote for the party that caters to Elon Musk, the guy who owns the satellite system that provides information to Ukrainian defense forces to block incoming Russian missile and drone attacks. 

Mr. Musk, in consultation with Mr. Trump, temporarily cut service to the Ukrainians, to force them to the bargaining table – because their cities were getting battered. I don’t vote for people who let the Russians murder civilians; and I hope I am never craven enough to change that stance.

 

264. I mentioned the school shooting in Bend, Oregon earlier (#230); but I have now looked up the numbers. There have been fifty school shootings in this country, so far this year. I vote Democratic because, if nothing else, Democrats believe all gun purchasers should have to register their firearms. 

265. This is “cheating” a little, but I don’t vote Republican, because after the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School, Alex Jones and other right-wing nuts insisted it was a “false flag” or “fake attack.” The Republican Party then doubled and quadrupled down on gun rights – as if people who called for any kind of action wanted to take away every gun that “We the People” owned.

266. We have more guns than people in this country. One estimate is that we own 403 million. The threat that Big Government is going to take them all away, in some mythic future, is the stuff of Gun Lobby fever dreams. 

267. I think most Republican members of Congress s are owned by the Gun Lobby. 

(And owned by Elon Musk, for sure.)

 

268. I don’t like the Gun Lobby, Big Tobacco, Big Pharma, Big Oil, or the Gambling Lobby. I think the Gambling folks, to pick just one from that list, do more damage to ordinary Americans every day than all the transgenders who have ever played girls’ or women’s sports, or will do in a hundred years. 

But sure, Republican want to scare the shit out of the gullible with tales of sons or daughters sent to school coming back as daughters and sons. 

(Yes, I know Big Government is also to be feared at times. That’s another list)

___ 

 

Can you buy an election? 

10/22/26: If you have been following along, you know my list grows. Like a tumor. Yesterday, we stopped at Reason # 268, explaining, if anyone cares, why I won’t be voting red in the coming election.

 

We begin anew: 

269. I had a “holy shit” moment yesterday when I turned on CBS and listened to U.S. envoy Steve Witkoff address Vladimir Putin. Witkoff was in Russia to discuss an end to the war with Ukraine, and did manage to get an American prisoner, 74-year-old Stephen Hubbard, released after four years in a Soviet gulag.

Now known as a “Russian prison.” 

270. That was good; but then Witkoff said this, “You talk so much about my president, President Trump, being a humanitarian,” he told the Russian dictator. “You are a humanitarian also, sir, and I salute that, I commend you, and I thank you again.” 

Mother f**k. 

Putin is a humanitarian? Talk to Alexei Navalny’s widow. Read up on how Russian agents got hold of his baggage on a plane and smeared his underwear with a toxic nerve agent that almost killed him. 

And how he was sent to Siberia, finally, where the government finished the job. 

271. Know who else was tortured and abused in Russia’s penal system: Stephen Hubbard. 

272. You could also talk to the friends and families of the hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians killed or all the Ukrainians wounded since Putin launched his war of conquest – a war he may now lose.

Ukrainian child killed by Russian missile strike.

(Musk had slowed satellite anti-missile tracking defenses.)

 

273. In related news of war, we know the Houthis, Iranian allies in Yemen, have surrounded the city of Taiz, one of the largest in that country, and gateway to the capital of Aden. This advance complicates the larger war – the war that Trump started at the urging of Benjamin Netanyahu. (See #30.)

(I had never heard of the city of Taiz before. I bet Trump hadn’t either.) 

 

274. Our Saudi “friends” (think: 9/11) have had trouble defending themselves from Houthi drone and missile strikes. Yesterday, the United Kingdom agreed to send RAF fighter jets, with Royal Air Force pilots and crews, and British advisors on the ground, to defend against the threat. The Iran War takes new shape almost every day. I don’t believe the President of the United States was prepared for that.

 

275. In other news, measles are cool again! The Trump administration, with its anti-science vibe, has managed to double the rate of infection this year. Total cases reported, as of Friday, October 16: 4,410.

Cases in 2025: 2,289. And 2025, basically was a tripling of cases, compared to Joe Biden’s four years in office. 

This year, 451 individuals with measles have been hospitalized.

 

276. If Robert F. Kennedy Jr, the Secretary of Health and Human Services, can’t quite get a grip on measles, never fear. He announced recently that he would be putting scientists to work to study the hidden dangers in chemtrails. 

This has to do with the fact that there are people who believe the white trails of crystalized moisture left behind by jets are really government chemicals being sprayed on us to make us gay or turn us into unicorns. 

(Hey, why do I have a horn growing out of my forehead!) 

(Seriously, what a waste of money and resources.)

 

277. They say, “Money can’t buy happiness.” But Elon Musk and Donald Trump are trying to prove that money can buy an entire government. In the case of Elon, he is funneling $158 million into the race between Ken Paxton, the corrupt Texas attorney general, and James Talarico. 

278. Ken is famous for many reasons. For example, back in 2018, he claimed 58,000 non-citizens in Texas had voted. 

279. Donald heard the news and gasped at the audacity. Donald started yapping about illegal immigrant scum, and “rigged elections,” and Democrats who hated America, and did his best to terrify everyone wearing a MAGA cap. 

(Sadly, it worked.) 

 

Ken sent out letters to every county (there are 254) in Texas, telling county clerks to find these tens of thousands of criminals and lock them up. The lists for every county were quickly seen to be rife with errors, with McLennan, a rural county, getting 366 names to check and setting a sort of record. The folks in McLennan soon discovered that all 366 were actual citizens.

It is hard to achieve a 100% error rate. Ken managed that rare feat. 

Anyway, Elon wants to buy Paxton a seat in the Senate, whereas Donald J. Trump wants to buy your vote.

 

279. I used to respect fiscal conservatives, Republicans like my dad. Donald Dumpling is no fiscal conservative. This week he has announced that he will be gifting farmers another $8 billion because fuel prices are high. 

I like farmers because I enjoy eating. Also, I support government aid to farmers (which is basically socialism) because we need farmers to keep plowing and harrowing and harvesting. 

(Wait, does harrowing come last? I don’t know, I’m not a farmer.)

I don't mind socialism for farmers. Do you, Trump fans?

280. Of course, we’re all getting $5,000 checks if Republicans win in November. In fact, Donald might as well show up on prime-time TV and say, “Let me buy your vote.” He has said if Republicans don’t win: No loot for you. 

281. Don’t forget your $2,000 tariff rebate check. 

282. Or your refund of $500 if you “overpaid” for Obamacare. 

283. Then millions of senior citizens (like me) will get $90 checks, depending on how they receive Medicare Part B.

 

284. And the massive federal deficit will not shrink. This is similar to #74, already listed above. But these are all creative new ways Donald wants to make the problem worse, just so he doesn’t have to deal with a Democratic Congress – and maybe get his fat ass impeached for a third time. 

(I hope Democrats won’t waste time trying to impeach him again, if they gain control.) 

(But that’s another story.)

 

285. Well, just one more reason for today: In red state Florida, we see the unintended results of the Trump administration’s crackdown on illegal immigration. Whenever Florida is hit by a hurricane, crews pour in from across the country, with workers willing to do the cleanup, cutting up fallen trees, piling up ruined furniture and soaked and torn clothing, and hauling shingles up ladders to repair torn roofs. 

If you want the holes patched, or a new roof nailed down, the people swinging the hammers are often immigrants, both here legally and not, who come South or East to do the hard and nasty work in the Florida heat. 

As one worker explained to a reporter for The New York Times, 

“For sure, we need to make a living,” said Santos Alvarado, a disaster response veteran who has worked in the aftermath of more than 20 hurricanes since Katrina in 2005. “But the brutality of what ICE is doing to people scares us.”

 

Fear intensified this week after word spread that immigrants repairing a restaurant’s roof in Pensacola Beach were ordered by men who identified themselves as the police to come down, triggering a two-hour standoff until the officers departed.

 

I’m going to assume the owner of the restaurant would still like his roof repaired. With more than $1 billion in damages, because of Hurricane Isaias, there is much work to be done and all those willing to do it would be helpful.

___

The war we’ve already won continues. 

10/23/26: ANOTHER DAY means another grim opportunity to add to my lists of “Reasons I Won’t be Voting Republican on November 3.” 

Today, we begin again.

286: FEMA, the Federal Emergency Management Agency is supposed to get money and help to all Americans when hurricane, tornado, flood and fire disasters strike. President Trump keeps going out to campaign – and telling audiences that their states won’t be getting funding if Republicans lose in November. 

287. FEMA is supposed to help all Americans. Trump doesn’t care about all Americans. He cares about himself, first, and his pile of cash, second. Natalie Harp appears to have moved up to third.

 

288. The Iran War, which we have already won (says Donald) enters Day 237. The president has ordered U.S. diplomats and their families to leave the Middle East because Iran may be plotting attacks. 

Even though they’ve lost. 

289. The President has also ordered a third U.S. carrier, the USS Theodore Roosevelt, to the region, along with 10,000 additional Marines. 

290. In related news, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, said this week that the U.S. and Israel must topple the Iranian regime once and for all. Benjamin has big plans. His reasoning is the same as it has been since the mid-90s. Iran can’t have nukes, what he calls “the bombs of death.” 

(I have great sympathy for the Israelis; but Netanyahu is the worst.) 

(I also have great sympathy for the Palestinians; but Hamas is the worst.)

 

291. For a second time Houthi forces in Yemen have carried out a successful attack on an airport in Saudi Arabia. This time the blast at the King Fahd International Airport in the eastern city of Dammam left one person dead, eight others wounded. 

The Houthis, like the Iranians, don’t seem to grasp the fact that the war is over, Donald Trump is the greatest, and they have lost. 

292. I don’t like Trump, as a person. I find him repulsive. I know he hates reporters, but most often he picks on females with microphones. Wednesday, he attacked Kaitlin Collins of CNN for what may be the fiftieth time. 

When she pressed him about his decision to lift economic sanctions on Russia – having only recently signed those sanctions into action – Donald Toddler erupted. “You don’t know what you’re talking about,” he told her. “You’re a dummy. You’re a low-IQ person. You’re a dummy, and you work for CNN.”

 

293. Here’s a new one, I hadn’t noticed: Home heating oil is selling at a record price in Maine: $6.04 per gallon. That means a homeowner will pay $750 more this winter to fill a 275-gallon tank. 

That’s an extra $2.73 per gallon.

(Time to start eating oatmeal for lunch and dinner, too: See Reason #231)

 

294. Generally, I prefer smart leaders over dumb ones. So, I think a party should do better than pick Tommy Tuberville to be a U.S. senator, and now candidate for Alabama governor. I can never get over the fact that Tommy was once asked to name the three branches of government. 

He ventured a guess: “The House, the Senate, the executive.” Ouch. One out of three – and he was in one branch. 

If you don’t know the correct answer, someday you could end up as a Republican U.S. senator!

 

295. Now, Tommy wants to be governor; and a reporter (damn reporters asking questions) wondered why Tommy didn’t keep his promise in 2020, that, if elected to the U.S. Senate, he would donate his entire annual salary, $174,000 annually, to veterans? 

Tommy showed his love for the First Amendment by having the reporter kicked out of the venue where he was holding a voters’ seminar. 

Tommy had already tried to explain why he didn’t honor his pledge – but it was kind of like Tommy trying to name the branches. “When you go up there [to Washington D.C,] you have to take a check because they want your tax money for some reason,” he said. “You have to pay taxes on that.” 

Apparently, Tommy couldn’t figure out how to donate the money left after taxes to veterans; and it would appear he was too cheap to make up any difference out of his own deep pockets. 

When Tuberville quit his job as coach of the Auburn Tigers football team in 2008, he was still gifted $5,083,334. 

Even though he quit. 

In all, he made at least $20 million during his coaching days. So, I am guessing he could have afforded to make up the missing funds.

 

296. A new report makes clear: The teacher critically wounded during the Bend, Oregon school attack, Becky Drury, 54, survived by pretending to be dead, after being hit with a shotgun blast at close range. 

I’m not voting for Republicans because they not only refuse to do anything about guns, they demonize anyone who tries. 

297. In one typical poll, large majorities of Americans favored several useful changes in the laws related to gun purchases. 

  

298. If you pay close attention to the news, you will notice how often Team Trump performs its greatest tricks just out of the public eye. A federal judge has ordered the president to sit for a deposition in his lawsuit against the BBC. 

Donald Toddler has until December 11, or his case may be tossed. Remember: He brought this case to court. No one twisted his arm and made him cry, “Obama was a better president than me.” 

Donald is chickening out. 

If he continues, he knows the BBC can bring Jack Smith, the prosecutor who built two indictments against him. One was for his actions leading up to the attack on the Capitol on January 6, 2021. (See: Reasons #19-21.) 

The case against BBC involves that attack. Now Trump realizes Smith can talk about what his team discovered. 

If you are not a clueless dolt, you know what Smith’s investigators found won’t make Donald look like a Boy Scout.

 

299. If you’ve ever watched a deposition involving Mr. Trump, you know he’ll be pleading the Fifth at a record pace. His lawyers have stalled it out, so the midterms will pass before he embarrasses himself again. Now they don’t want the deposition to be filmed, because they know Donald will look like an ass. 

300. Donald missed a scheduled appointment to sit for deposition, on October 16, citing “a matter of national security.” 

Lawyers for the BBC noted that on that day he was down in Georgia, campaigning for Republican candidates.

Why I will vote blue on November 3. 

10/24/26: The list continues, with another installment of reasons why I vote blue, and why I find Donald Trump to be a despicable human being. 

(I used to vote purple, until he came along.)

 

301. Vanity Fair is reporting that Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner’s phone was hacked by Russians in 2017. Then Dutch intelligence operators began to monitor his phone, as well. Jared may have had access, in hidden bank accounts, to $2 billion coughed up by Middle Eastern governments. 

Of course, no one in this administration would ever put money above principles, unless we count Corey, Kristi, Alina, Ric, Don Jr. (see all of them, above), and the Big Orange Dumpling, himself. 

302. One member of the administration who won’t be around is Britt McHenry. Just after being promoted as a press advisor at the State Department, she was forced to resign. This comes after she was filmed at an NBA game, getting ejected, and then (it appears from the video) throwing a drink on another patron. 

Team Trump: We hire based on looks. Ms. McHenry.

   

303. Recently, Donald Dumpling told a friendly reporter that he believes his approval rating stands at 60%. 

If you’ve never noticed, Donald never calls reporters who suck up, “ENEMIES OF THE PEOPLE.”

(If you cherish the free press, that should attract your attention.) 

 

304. Here in Ohio, my reasons for not voting Republican only grow, after Vivek Ramaswamy tried a hit job on Amy Acton in a recent ad, featuring her mother. Mom called Amy a liar and said she couldn’t be trusted. Now The Hill reports that mom isn’t the best person to judge anyone’s character. She pleaded guilty in 1995 to passing bad checks. In 1996, she was sentenced to prison for … passing bad checks again. In 2021, she was arrested for animal neglect, after her cats were found in a filthy vehicle, with an internal temperature of 120 degrees. 

305. Acton’s mother lost custody of her children in 1978, after it was found that Amy had been sexually abused by her stepfather. That abuse started when she was ten and continued until she was twelve. 

Her stepfather was indicted – but skipped his court date – and he and Amy’s mom left the state.

306. I knew Trump was making promises that sounded like bribes; but he’s also warning voters, if he doesn’t get his way, they’ll get nothing. It’s a lot like extortion. This one hit a little closer to home, because I spent two years in the Marines and did infantry training at Camp LeJeune. 

Trump told voters in North Carolina that Camp Lejeune toxic water settlements would be on the way, but only if the GOP wins.

 

“If we don’t win, there’s no money,” he said at a rally in Greenville, N.C. “If we do win, you’re getting it.” 

 

A real president helps all the people of all the states all the time, whenever he can. A decent president – really, a decent human being – doesn’t just help the people who support him (or her, someday).

 

307. The Dumpling Man was at it again during a rally in Georgia. Would he get aid of any kind to the state, if the election went badly for his favored candidates? 

“You know there’s a big difference when a president likes the people representing a state. Like, [Mike] Collins could call me any time he wants,” Trump said. 

What if Jon Ossoff was elected to the Senate. (Trump calls him Pee Wee Herman.) Would Georgia voters, including those who voted red, and needed aid, be screwed? Donald offered an imaginary answer: 

“‘Sir, Pee Wee Herman’s on [the phone]’ — ‘tell him I’m not in!’ ‘But he needs money for Georgia!’ ‘I don’t give a damn what he wants!’” Trump said. 

“Probably I shouldn’t say that because they’ll say this is not appropriate, but no, it makes a big difference,” he added. 

Yeah, you shouldn’t say that – because you’re not just president for people you like. You’re president for the American people. 

You f**king asshole.

 

I do not believe most Trump fans are racists.

I do believe most racists are Trump fans.

 

308-311. For once, a Republican running for Congress, for a seat from Iowa, Joe Mitchell, 29, has proven he’s not prejudiced against black people. Unfortunately, Joe (he’s endorsed by President Trump) was captured on video during his college days, drunkenly shouting how he wanted to [expletive] a black woman he had a crush on, adding, “I want to marry a black woman.” 

Off camera, someone asks a question and Joe responds, “I want my kids to not be white, ok?” because “I don’t like [expletive] white people, ok? … Why do you think I hang out with people that aren’t white?” 

(Maybe this is good, in a way, for the GOP??)

 

Nope, I’m not voting Republican! I remember all those neo-Nazi guys celebrating when Trump won in 2016. Watch a clip of all the neo-Nazis shouting, “Hail Trump,” and giving the Nazi salute after he won in 2016. And don’t forget the “Unite the Right” march in Charlotte, with “good people on both sides,” and Rocky Suhayda talking about Trump, and the guy who edits the Daily Stormer giving kudos to Donald. 

Plus: Nick Fuentes eating dinner at Mar-a-Lago. 

Yeah, not voting red, as I said. 

* 

NEITHER are most Americans. Trump’s average approval rating, as of Monday morning, October 26.

 

 

 

 

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