Flailing to distract once-loyal cultists who've turned unexpectedly unruly on the murky matter of bestie Jeffrey Epstein - "The people are revolting!" - Trump is busy shouting "Look! Over there!" about myriad other shiny objects: The "Redskins," the FBI files on MLK, his "Golden Age," star-turn at soccer, "Dollar-Tree-Versailles" Oval Office, more spray tan, less corn syrup, the deranged need to jail "Barack HUSSEIN Obama." Still, MAGA remains wary: "He’s wearing makeup on his hands, so things are just getting weird."

The people's fledgling revolt - Mel Brooks: "They stink on ice" - is reflected in news polls showing Trump's approval plummeting at least 16 points to hover around 40%. On immigration, only about 35% approve of his crackdowns; just 23% support his deportations of undocumented immigrants with no criminal record, a figure likely to drop with news his flunkies gave ICE access to the Medicaid records of nearly 80 million people in another bogus hunt for "illegals," who can't get Medicaid. More smoke and mirrors: For all their performative cruelty, Trump’s ICE raids have led to fewer deportations than under Obama and barely more than under Biden, and the whole gaudy, ghastly spectacle of disappearing hundreds of Venezuelans to CECOT ended in a swap for 10 Americans jailed, intoned Marco Rubio with no trace of irony, "without proper due process."

Americans also hate the tariffs, big ugly bill, rising prices. They're worried about health insurance, also those ankles. And now Dear Leader is calling them "losers" and "bad people" because they wanna know the story behind Jeffrey Epstein's file, which Pam Bondi just said was sitting on her desk, but then she said oops never mind, and Trump keeps saying it's all a "scam” by Dems except if it doesn't exist how could Dems have written it and they "don't understand why (he) would do this - it doesn't make sense." His former bestie Musk chimed in - "Wow, I can’t believe Epstein killed himself before realizing it was all a hoax” - and he even lost Nazi Nick Fuentes. "Fuck you," Fuentes screeched. "You're fat, you're a joke, you're stupid...This entire thing has been a scam. We're gonna look back at the MAGA movement as the biggest scam in history. The liberals were right." Yikes.

Improbably, with all the atrocities he's committed - pussy, racism, Nazis, sedition, grift, seven gazillion lies - the furor over Epstein seems to be sticking, at least for now. About 80% of Americans think the government should release all documents in the case, including 85% of Democrats and three-quarters of Independents and Republicans. Only 4% think it shouldn't. It didn't help when Bondi made a big deal about releasing "raw" video footage outside Epstein's prison cell the night he died to prove nobody offed him, only for Wired to reveal nearly three minutes were missing, sparking MAGA frenzy about a Deep State plot nicely dovetailing with QAnon's insistence Bill Clinton and other Dems lead a child porn cabal Trump will save them from - except maybe for that interview where he said, "I’ve known Jeff for 15 years. Terrific guy. He’s a lot of fun to be with."

Since then, he's kept trying to steer his conspiracy-addicted base away from the mess even as his agitation grows. At a recent Cabinet meeting, he rambled about flags, clocks, lamps. He raved Chuck Schumer has "become a Palestinian” and the bombers that attacked Iran "went skedaddle." Asked about Epstein, he lost it: "Are you still talking (about) this creep? When we have Texas, we have this, we have all of the things...It's a desecration." Then he veered to the Serious Topic of interior design. Having packed the Oval Office with so many crappy gold tchotchkes it "looks like Liberace threw up all over it," he moved to vaguely musing whether to gold-leaf or gold-paint the corners and moldings: “If you paint it, that's easy, but it won’t look good because they’ve never found a paint that looks like gold." On each side of him, Rubio and Hegseth did their deer-in-headlights routine.

But Epstein kept re-surfacing. Trump reportedly fought to kill it, but the Wall Street Journal went ahead with publishing their story about a lewd birthday card Trump sent Epstein for his 50th birthday in 2003: Several lines of text framed by the outline of a naked woman, signed by a squiggly “Donald” where her pubic hair would be. "We have certain things in common, Jeffrey," he wrote ominously. "May every day be another wonderful secret." Caught, he said it was fake. He said Obama and Biden made it up. He said, "These are not my words...Also, I never wrote (sic) a picture. I don't make drawings." Online, 7,000 people helpfully posted images of his often-auctioned drawings, mostly of cityscapes drawn with a heavy marker. Straight-faced, the New York Times noted, "They are not dissimilar to how The Wall Street Journal describes the birthday note he sent Mr. Epstein."

Trump did what he always does: He threatened to sue for defamation: "Thank you for your attention to this matter." Then he did. In a complaint that misstated the WSJ story and "reads like a press release," he sued WSJ publisher Dow Jones & Co., its parent company News Corp, Rupert Murdoch and others for $10 billion in damages. Then, hoping to end "this SCAM," he asked Pam Bondi to release grand jury testimony on Epstein - "a meaningless trick" because courts tend to prohibit such disclosure, and even if it went ahead he asked the court for "appropriate redactions of victim-related and other personal identifying information." Still, The Good Liars jumped in to help foster transparency by stocking the gift shop display racks at Trump Tower with post cards of the famed image of the two smiling perverts, "up to no good." Next to them, Melania gazes out, robotic.

Sensing a losing fight, Trump's deflection campaign.grew ever more bonkers. Marking the six-month anniversary of "one of the most consequential periods of any President, including ending numerous wars" (say wut?), when "one year ago our country was DEAD" (ditto), he released a cheesy, cringey, AI-generated video declaring, "Day 179 of the “Trump Golden Age." Cue fireworks and fake eagles soaring over the White House while dropping dollar bills to the song Make It Rain Reviews: "Downright embarrassing,” "Really gross," "They need to use AI because we are not seeing tangible evidence of anything good." Musk’s Nazi chatbot Grok: "Where eagles crap cash and fireworks fix everything. Reality check: Golden parachutes for billionaires while the rest dodge inflation hailstones." And, “Why don’t you make it rain Epstein files?”

It got wilder Friday after Director of National Intelligence (sic) Tulsi Gabbard announced she's referring Obama officials to the DOJ for prosecution over allegations they “manufactured” intelligence about Russia in the 2016 election. Newly declassified documents show Obama and a pernicious "gang" "politicized intelligence to lay the groundwork for what was essentially a years-long coup" against Trump"; they must be punished "for the American people to have any sense of trust in the integrity of our democratic republic." MAGA piled on. It was "a pivotal fracture in American trust," it "makes Watergate look like Amateur Hour." Stephen Goebbels was feverish: Gabbard "has exposed the startling depths of a seditious coup against the republic. The forces behind (it) will do anything to protect their grasp (on) illegitimate power. Do not underestimate their capabilities or depravities." Whew.

On her Sunday show, Maria Bartiromo brought up Gabbard’s "news" 18 times. Epstein: 0. Trump posted about it 17 times; inspired, he's been tirelessly flinging spaghetti at the wall to see what'll stick. He proclaimed, with carefully curated images, "STACKING UP WINS": "Ice Cream makers pledge to remove artificial colors," "Consumer prices rise less than expected." He railed against "thief" Adam Schiff. He said Coke will replace their corn syrup with sugar. (Coke said, wait what?) He posted videos of wacky stunts. (A woman grabbing a snake was fake). Against the wishes of family and colleagues, he released 200,000 pages of records of FBI surveillance of MLK Jr., under seal since 1977. King's two surviving children called it “an invasive, predatory, and deeply disturbing” operation “to discredit, dismantle and destroy” King and the movement he led.

Speaking of "invasive, predatory, and deeply disturbing,” the fragile, petty, vengeful boy-king, feeling he hadn't gone quite far enough to offend and distract, also posted an AI compilation of fake mugshots, dubbed "The Shady Bunch, featuring Democrats - most notably "Barack Hussein Obama" - in orange prison jumpsuits. A day or so later, evidently feeling especially insecure, he went especially crass. A new AI video starts with multiple Democratic pols declaring, "No one is above the law." Then it goes to a fake scenario of FBI agents arresting Obama in the Oval Office as Trump sits, beams, gloats. It moves to Obama, jump-suited in a jail cell, all while the Village People sing YMCA. (what the?) In response, at least one sick fan of the cretin's urged Pam Bondi, "MAKE THIS A REALITY." Truly, you gotta wonder what malignant, hallucinatory reality these fucking creeps inhabit.

Behind the scenes, the most powerful one keeps flouting laws and probity; in a lawsuit by watchdog group CREW for refusing to disclose spending decisions as mandated by law his flunkies deemed "an unconstitutional encroachment" on their tinpot's whims - Judge Emmet Sullivana blasted their "extravagant and unsupported theory of presidential power" and declared, "Defendants are therefore required to stop violating the law!" Alas, arbitrary, punitive rules still reign. Press Barbie announced the Wall Street Journal will be banned from the press pool for an upcoming trip to Scotland for their "fake and defamatory conduct" - is fake conduct a thing? - aka committing journalism by reporting the ugly, "pubic-doodling" truth about the sexual predator defiling our pimped-up Oval Office. And now Mike Johnson has shut down the House to avoid a vote on releasing more Epstein info. Nothing to see here.

Meanwhile, Trump is still wildly deflecting, also racist. He's demanded the Washington Commanders, and Cleveland Guardians, regress to the Redskins and Indians names Natives long rejected as "a slur," witlessly claiming, "Our great Indian people, in massive numbers, want this to happen" and threatening to cancel a planned new D.C. stadium. "Indians are being treated very unfairly," he raved. "MAKE INDIANS GREAT AGAIN!!" Native activists called bullshit: "We are language keepers, land protectors, survivors of attempted genocide, part of sovereign nations. To equate Native people with cartoonish mascots (is) gross...We are being used as tools for a distraction." They were ignored by the "diapered buffoon (in) makeup" compromised "cognitively, morally, emotionally, and intellectually" who in a weird new ad calls himself "The Hunter," AKA "total fucking loser." Consensus: "Cultish and cringe-inducing. Also, insane."

In another notable cringe move last weekend, the forever-sports-wannabe again made it all about himself at the World Cup Final at New Jersey's MetLife Stadium, where Chelsea won a surprise 3-0 victory against Paris Saint-Germain. The crowd of over 80,000 loudly, repeatedly booed Trump before he crashed the postgame ceremony, lumbering onstage to hand over the trophy and then awkwardly staying put as Chelsea's Captain asked, “Are you going to leave?” and FIFA head Gianni Infantino tried to literally pull him away to allow the team their victory photo. But there he stood - fat, rumpled, cluelessly asserting he'd "earned a spot in the shot" - as players whooped around him. They didn't even get the real trophy; at an earlier White House photo-op, he'd claimed that too. But in sports as in life, strategy is key. For hours, no official photo of "the team moment” appeared on Chelsea's social media; when it finally did, Trump had been gloriously, blissfully scrubbed out.