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I was battling a gastrointestinal something or other last week and missed Trump’s address to Congress, but watching the president conduct a campaign rally for a gallery of sycophantic Republican senators and representatives on live TV would have made me nauseas anyway. A majority of politically engaged Americans found the spectacle sickening, as did most of our allies around the world. Vladimir Putin was pleased. He didn’t feel queasy at all. American comedy writers were probably conflicted: On the one hand, they got a stomach-churning reminder that their country is being run by the most malignant and unqualified administration in the history of the United States of America, one that has and will create a lot of unnecessary suffering, much of it by design. On the other hand, a deeply uncurious and inattentive-to-detail president once again provided plenty of material that would be amusing if witnessed in isolation.
But Trump spoke in the context of our current political arena, where his team says or does laughable (or laughably terrible) things at such a frantic pace that any humor is destroyed. “It’s exhausting,” people say. It’s like a Three Stooges marathon playing everywhere all the time. It takes considerable effort (or a distracting illness) to escape it.
Donald Trump confusing transgenic with transgender in a public speech would be comedic gold in a political sitcom, but it’s a lead balloon in an environment of constant attacks on trans people and other marginalized communities. It’s downright dismaying amid the cheering and derisive laughter of Congressional Republicans who automatically embrace the lie as fact. It is aggravating to hear it and know that it is stupidly false, and that Trump and his stooges will double down on it at least three times before the cock crows.
The supposed spending on transgender mice Trump spoke of was “discovered” by DOGE, an organization made up, from what I can tell, of post-pubescent boys who dabble in racism and leaking proprietary information to their employers’ rivals. Reading is not their strong suit, hence the confusion between transgenic and transgender. They are also not good at simple math and have made enough amateurish mistakes and misrepresentations to script a full season of Veep. Their boss, Elon Musk, is a creepy Gilligan who has removed the magnet from the National compass in the name of efficiency. In the process, he has become the person most likely to be voted off—or abandoned alone on—any island (or planet). His car company, Tesla, has been efficiently shedding value, the stock price dropping fifteen percent for the day on Monday and forty-five percent since the beginning of the year. And as Tesla stock implodes, SpaceX rockets explode. Not sure Musk finds that as funny as most Americans do.¹
It is not just the damage being done or the overwhelming pace of error and malice that turns this comedy into a horror, though. It is also the arrogant assumption that the rules don’t apply, that all previous agreements about how we are governed can be abandoned at the whim of whomever is in office or holds the most wealth or power. We know, both instinctively and intellectually, that our system is built to oppose that kind of tyranny. The rich and powerful do not get to impose their political will on the rest of us, even if they have been increasingly able to do so.
This abandonment of the rules and agreements that have helped us live together for so long feels like betrayal because it is one. The Founders did not accidentally create a system of checks and balances. We all agreed to a government that resolves issues through testimony, debate, and compromise and is guided by reason, not whim. By design, no person or party always gets everything they want, and change is often slow. The system evolves, mostly toward greater freedom and participation, through many tiny and a few more significant actions and decisions. We expect those actions and decisions to be thoughtful and transparent. DOGE is neither. We expect all three branches of government to stay in their lane and do their jobs, but Congressional Republicans have pulled to the shoulder and let the DOGE Cybertruck hog the freeway.
The Federal government is a large enterprise that does not turn on a dime. The ship of state stays on course with small adjustments in heading. Now, while the most thoughtless president in our history flaunts the rules and an equally thoughtless billionaire turns us toward the shoals, a Republican-controlled Congress sits on its hands and keeps its mouth shut. They don’t dare stand up to Trump and take back their proper authority because all that matters is staying in power, and if they were to boldly say what they should be saying, they might receive death threats.
If the possibility of death threats keeps you from doing your job, it’s time to get a new job. Resign, Representative, and preserve what’s left of your honor. You signed up for this, Senator. At some point, you probably emboldened the people who would threaten you with violence. Either do your job or get out of the way. And you might try showing up at a town hall meeting or two. That was always part of the agreement.
In a bald attempt at market manipulation, Trump has now said that he will buy a Tesla.
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