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Hearing his own unsettling, repeated false salvos may make Trump decide to stop the daily froth from his MOUTH.
The most remarkable realization about Donald J. Trump’s rise to becoming America’s elected dictator is that it all came out of his MOUTH. Understanding that politics has become a performative exercise, Trump discovered that he could win the battle of words without having a record of achievement or any trusted experience in the business, government, or civic arena.
His lies sugarcoated his failed businesses. He wildly exaggerated his wealth (asserting that the Trump brand was worth $11 billion). He tried to explain away his numerous corporate bankruptcies as a business strategy, and blamed everyone for his commercial collapses—the banks, the workers, the students (Trump University, anyone?)—the government. This failed gambling casino czar never admitted he was ever wrong, ever sorry, and boasted he knew more than anyone because he was “right about everything.”
His MOUTH went into high gear during his introductory presidential debates with 16 Republican challengers during the 2016 GOP primaries. In retrospect, it is astonishing to see how, using his snarling mouth, he wrested control from those on the stage from the outset, targeting immigrants as invaders, criminals, rapists, and destroyers of America. Without rebuttals, he would repeat over and over again his sweeping bigotry.
Then Trump would move on to repeat how foreign countries have taken advantage of the US in trade, ignoring our Empire’s bleeding poorer nations, brain-draining their skilled people, and allowing giant US corporations to export millions of jobs to take advantage of serf labor and corruptible dictatorial regimes. He ignored the way the US-facilitated, corporate-driven trade deals pulled down worker and environmental protections in the US and devastated American workers and communities.
So many of Trump’s epithets fit him perfectly. So, throwing them back on him repeatedly rings the truth bell.
The MOUTH got major coverage in the mainstream media, including publishing his CAPITAL LETTERS OF CONDEMNATION, and because his targets were not given the right of reply, many people were inclined to believe him. This accelerated and entrenched his violent politics of intimidation. Again and again, he had the media field to himself, which deterred many of his critics from giving him a taste of his own medicine.
Trump—by far the most impeachable of presidents and the least negatively branded by his opponents—must wonder about his luck. Consider, he is a convicted felon; a chronic liar; a serial law violator; a repeated sexual abuser of women; a crooked extortionist; a hugely corrupt user of the White House to enrich the Trumpsters; a shatterer of the social safety net for tens of millions of Americans; a slasher of safeguards and scientific research against catastrophic climate violence and pandemics, leaving America rapidly defenseless; and a crazed suppressor of solar energy and wind power while boosting the omnicidal oil, gas, and coal industries. Moreover, he pathologically breaks his promises and pledges, presiding over record waste, shutdowns, and censorship, ushering in the DARK AGES for America.
His dictatorial rule—“Nothing can stop me”—dishonors the American Revolution and violates the Constitution’s defenses against one-man rule. He epitomizes “big government” against the people, suppressing free speech; piling up huge deficits; advocating mass arbitrary arrests; and shutting down the enforcement of laws to protect the health, safety, and economic well-being of Americans, endangering them in both red and blue states.
A deficit-funded tax cutter for the already under-taxed rich, the powerful, and big corporations, he illegally takes tax revenue from necessities of the people and loads deficits on the backs of the next generation while starving the IRS budget and undermining the collection of taxes due. He spends or refuses to spend at his whim, flouting the exclusive appropriations authority of Congress. He is “a fascist to his core,” said his former chief of staff, retired general John Kelly, and a full-blown RACIST in what he says, does, and portends.
It should be easy to label Trump “America’s Number One Outlaw,” given all these dangerous, deranged delusions. He is openly and visibly wrecking and weakening our country rapidly with his entrenched dictatorship and his masked storm troopers who are on the rampage in large US cities.
He has hollowed out the federal government’s critical civil service except for the omnivorous military-industrial complex with its bloated budget that is devouring our best lifesaving programs abroad and at home, and fueling his Empire’s illegal military raids abroad.
Now he is starting to plan the subversion of our elections come November with fake ads and the attempted seizure of voter rolls and people’s personal identification data. Conducting elections is reserved exclusively to the states under our Constitution. Trump’s present obsession is rigging the midterm elections through selective voter suppression, especially as his poll numbers drop.
So, what can be done about Trump’s hyperactive MOUTH and his assault on our democracy? Fact-checking, as was done by a leading fact-checker for the Washington Post, Glenn Kessler. He now concedes that fact-checking did not deter Trump. In Trump’s first term, Kessler documented more than 30,000 false or misleading claims. He gave up this reporting last year and left the Post, concluding that Trump’s fabrications over reality—lies about serious matters such as claiming the unemployment rate was 42% when it was 4.9%, or asserting that there was widespread voter fraud in 2020—were not slowing down the FAKER IN CHIEF and his ditto-head network. However, setting the record straight has its own value in reasserting a truthful society.
There is another part of the MOUTH—the tsunami of invectives hurled at named public figures and his private victims. He calls prosecutors and judges “deranged” and “traitors.” Other opponents are described as “lunatics,” “communists,” “crooked,” “crazy,” “lying,” “corrupt,” “murderers,” and “low IQ.” The latter is mainly reserved for African Americans. Lately, he has gone berserk, instantly libeling the two innocent American citizens shot and killed in Minneapolis by federal immigration agents as “domestic terrorists.”
Then there are his disparaging nicknames of critics—that are too numerous to mention. Trump’s bullying expletives are relayed by the mainstream media to the broad public, which helped make Trump the Supreme Foul-Mouth Soliloquist. For years, to their detriment, the Democrats and other critics did not respond in kind and with frequency, with the truth on their side.
They could have defined him with memorable depictions such as Tyrant Trump, Dictator Donald, Crooked Donald, Deranged Donald, Lying Donald, Crazy Donald, Dangerous Donald, Corrupt Donald, Lunatic Donald, Cruel Trump, and Terrorist Trump. These on-point adjectives would have unsettled the thin-skinned Prevaricator-In-Chief, making him rethink what his daily false salvos are provoking in return. No more free rides would sober up his MOUTH. Hearing his own unsettling, repeated false salvos may make Trump decide to stop the daily froth from his MOUTH.
So many of Trump’s epithets fit him perfectly. So, throwing them back on him repeatedly rings the truth bell. It so happens that bullies, including Trump, stop their smears when they realize what they have provoked in return. Attending a Washington Nationals baseball game in his first term, the crowd started chanting “Lock Him Up,” a phrase he goaded his base to use for months against his political opponents. Trump and his followers lost their enthusiasm for this chant when he started getting a taste of his own medicine from anti-Trump crowds.
Since Minneapolis, some Democrats in Congress are describing Trump as “deranged,” and after the animal caricature of the Obamas, more Democrats are ending a much-delayed labeling of Trump as a many-sided RACIST. Because the Democrats have had a low expectation level for Trump and hitherto have satisfied themselves with derision, he has gotten away with the lies about his alleged successful economic policies, with enough voters—seeing no strong responders—to have him squeak through the 2024 election.
The one word Trump cannot stand to hear is a power neither he nor his toady six Injustices on the Supreme Court can control—IMPEACHMENT. We’re starting to hear it more these days from the Democrats, despite the political foolish leaders Rep. Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) and Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY), who are willing to remain silent on this one last resort against monarchy put exclusively in the hands of Congress by our far-seeing Founders. A majority of voters now appreciate the insights of our Founders. With Trump, IT IS ONLY GOING TO GET WORSE, MUCH WORSE. In the coming weeks, the polls should show over 60% of Americans want Trump Impeached.
Leave it to Trump to dictate ever more crazed, distracting actions to save himself.
As with the GOP revolt in 1974 against former President Richard Nixon for transgressions far, far less than Trump’s daily crimes and constitutional usurpation, so too today’s congressional GOP may well move to protect their own sinking fortunes this November by unloading the baggage of the Trump Dump.
The racist imagery that briefly appeared on the official feed is not a rogue error. It is consistent with an administration that has repeatedly deflected harm while avoiding responsibility.
On a February morning in 2026, the opening days of Black History Month, something unthinkable appeared on the official social media platform of the president of the United States: a video inserting the faces of Barack and Michelle Obama onto cartoon apes, set to "The Lion Sleeps Tonight." It flashed at the end of a broader montage promoting 2020 election conspiracies and remained online for roughly 12 hours before deletion.
This was not a careless post. It tapped directly into a long, cruel lineage of racist caricature used to demean and dehumanize Black people. That this imagery came from the nation’s highest office demanded more than embarrassment, it demanded accountability. But what followed was predictable: dismissive deflection, minimization, and no consequences. The White House initially labeled criticism “fake outrage,” claimed it was “just a meme,” and then said it was “erroneously posted by a staffer.” No staffer has been named, and the president publicly declared no one would face repercussions. When pressed on an apology, he said he “didn’t make a mistake” because he had not seen the offensive portion.
Rhetoric cannot erase history. This episode, jarring as it was, is most meaningful as a mirror: It reflects a longstanding pattern of denial, obfuscation, and racialized harm that extends far beyond any single meme or social post.
Long before this video ever appeared, Donald Trump’s public life was intertwined with racial controversy. In 2011, he propelled himself into national headlines by demanding Barack Obama release his birth certificate, questioning whether the first Black president was even born in the United States. He called Obama a “foreign-born fraud,” despite clear evidence to the contrary. This birther campaign wasn’t a slip of judgment; it was a deliberate, sustained effort to delegitimize and diminish the first Black occupant of the White House—a strategy that inflamed racial distrust and energized nativist resentments across the country.
Trump’s repeated insistence that he is “not a racist” functions as a rhetorical shield. It resonates rhetorically but cannot wipe away decades of documented behavior, public statements, and the lived experiences of those harmed by policy and symbolism.
That pattern continued. In 2018, Trump reportedly referred to Haiti, El Salvador, and several African nations as “shithole countries,” expressing preference for immigrants from Norway. Such language dehumanizes entire nations and the predominantly non-white populations within them, shaping global perception and domestic attitudes alike.
The harm extends into domestic policy and public memory. In the late 1980s, during the Central Park Five case, Trump took out full‑page newspaper ads calling for the death penalty for five Black and Latino teenagers later exonerated by DNA evidence. Even after their innocence was proven, he publicly insisted on their guilt, reinforcing false narratives that fanned racial fear and distrust.
Long before he was in politics, his real estate company was sued by the US Department of Justice for discriminating against Black tenants, steering them away from apartments while offering vacancies to white applicants. The case was settled under a consent decree—but the episode underscores a pattern of exclusion that predates his political career.
Through all of this, denial has been central to the strategy. Trump routinely insists personal friendships with Black Americans prove he cannot be racist. But anecdotes do not outweigh outcomes. Leadership is not measured by denials or self‑serving narratives; it is measured by decisions, actions, and real consequences for communities.
Viewed in this light, the racist imagery that briefly appeared on the official feed is not a rogue error. It is consistent with an administration that has repeatedly deflected harm while avoiding responsibility. When damaging content appears and the response is to blame an unnamed staffer, with no transparency, no accountability, no corrective action, it signals at best a tolerance for racial insensitivity and at worst tacit acceptance of damaging narratives from the nation’s official channels.
Beyond symbolic offenses, the lived realities of millions reflect deeper injury. Immigration enforcement under the administration has subjected families from Latin America, Africa, and Asia to detention, deportation, and family separation, deterring entire communities—disproportionately people of color—from seeking healthcare, education, and legal protections. Threats to Medicare jeopardize access to care for Black, Latino, and Indigenous seniors already navigating health disparities, compounding generational inequities. Efforts to slash support for public education disproportionately affect students in underfunded schools—disproportionately Black, Latino, and Indigenous—by stripping Title I funding, free lunch programs, after‑school initiatives, and protections against discriminatory practices. Proposals to restrict the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) leave hundreds of thousands, again disproportionately people of color, struggling with food insecurity and impossible choices between rent, medicine, and nourishment.
These threads are not separate. Families impacted by immigration enforcement often rely on SNAP or local schools, all parts of a social fabric that, when weakened, frays most quickly at its most vulnerable edges.
Representation at the top matters, too. In the second Trump administration, only a handful of Black officials hold top leadership roles, including Scott Turner as Housing and Urban Development secretary and Lynne Patton in White House outreach. Most high‑level offices remain overwhelmingly white, signaling whose voices shape policy and whose perspectives are absent from critical debates.
Language and civic rituals shape how a nation understands justice, belonging, and whose histories are honored. Martin Luther King Jr. Day is more than ceremony; it is a moral touchstone. Yet this year, the administration failed to recognize the holiday officially and removed it from the federal list of free pass days in national parks, a symbolic demotion that strips public access and diminishes public commemoration. Such action may seem bureaucratic, but it is telling: When national institutions downgrade the public recognition of a civil rights icon while championing narratives that demean Black leadership, the message is clear.
Trump’s repeated insistence that he is “not a racist” functions as a rhetorical shield. It resonates rhetorically but cannot wipe away decades of documented behavior, public statements, and the lived experiences of those harmed by policy and symbolism. True leadership is not measured by denials but by accountability and moral clarity.
The Obama video, the birther attacks, the attempts to delegitimize Black leadership, the Central Park Five advertisements, the housing discrimination lawsuit, and the “shithole country” comments are not isolated incidents. They form a pattern in which racialized harm is consistently dismissed, deflected, or minimized, even as policies continue to disproportionately affect communities of color.
Moral leadership demands more than words. It demands recognition of harm, centering those most affected in decision‑making, and ensuring that power and opportunity are equitably shared. On these measures, the administration’s pattern of deflection, denial, and exclusion is a failure, one that cannot be concealed behind memes, conspiracy theories, or personal relationships. For a nation still wrestling with the legacy of race, the cost of inaction is lived, generational, and real.
If billionaires continue to shape political systems while states become hostage to corporate and neoliberal agendas, we should expect more authoritarianism.
The latest Oxfam report delivers a stark warning about the direction of the global political economy. In 2025 alone, billionaire wealth surged by $2.5 trillion, pushing total billionaire wealth to $18.3 trillion, the highest level ever recorded. Wealth at the top is now growing three times faster than in previous years, even as poverty reduction stalls and hunger rises. Oxfam calls this not just economic inequality but dangerous political inequality, a world in which the ultra rich increasingly shape laws, media systems, and public policy to serve themselves.
This builds on Oxfam’s earlier finding that the richest 1% own more wealth than the bottom 95% of humanity. The organization describes the moment as one where the shadow of global oligarchy hangs over multilateral institutions, tax cooperation, debt relief efforts, and global public goods. Billionaires are not only accumulating wealth, they are accumulating influence, with an outsize presence in politics, corporate ownership, and media control.
At the same time, another long-term trend has unfolded. Over the last four decades, beginning with Reaganomics in the United States and Thatcherism in the United Kingdom, neoliberal reforms normalized austerity, privatization, and shrinking public welfare. The welfare state was reframed as a burden rather than a foundation of stability and dignity.
This shift was not only economic but moral: Market efficiency displaced social solidarity, and welfare came to be viewed as dependency rather than dignity.
The irony is that once in power, many populist leaders deepen the very insecurity that propelled them to office.
Today the richest 1% have more wealth than the bottom 95% of the world’s population put together, while the welfare state has steadily eroded. What has followed has worsened inequality; fueled resentment; broken trust in state institutions; weakened the social contract; and led to feelings of exclusion, helplessness, and marginalization. The result has been a rise in populist anger and right-wing governments characterized by anti-immigrant sentiment and hostility to multilateralism.
This trajectory has not only reshaped economies, but politics itself. So who is to blame? Is it the right-wing populists who are now eroding democratic norms, or the neoliberal austerity that hollowed out welfare systems long before them. In reality, the link between the two is the helplessness and anger felt by ordinary citizens who feel invisible in a world marked by inequality and social injustice. As Oxfam International executive director Amitabh Behar notes, being economically poor creates hunger, being politically poor creates anger. It is this economic and political poverty that fuels today’s rage, and much of it traces back to economic disenfranchisement and austerity.
A recent report to the United Nations by Special Rapporteur on Extreme Poverty and Human Rights Olivier De Schutter reinforces this picture. He warns that welfare retrenchment, harsher conditions for benefits, digital surveillance of claimants, and stigmatizing systems have increased insecurity and humiliation rather than reducing poverty. These punitive approaches erode trust in public institutions and create fertile ground for far-right movements that claim to speak for those left behind.
The irony is that once in power, many populist leaders deepen the very insecurity that propelled them to office.
The United States offers a clear illustration of this paradox. Donald Trump returned to power on a message of defending forgotten citizens and challenging elites. Yet recent policy directions have narrowed the social safety net. Cuts to Medicaid and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, stricter work requirements for food assistance, and the expiration of enhanced healthcare subsidies have increased costs and reduced access for low-income households. Earlier efforts to weaken the Affordable Care Act and promote short-term insurance plans with thinner coverage followed a similar logic. While framed as efficiency or fiscal responsibility, these measures shift burdens downward even as tax and regulatory environments remain favorable to corporations and wealthy interests.
What the world needs now is a serious reset where the common citizen feels seen and their rights and needs are valued. The state must play its role as an active dispenser of social protection, justice, and welfare. As the UN Special Rapporteur De Schutter notes, social protection and welfare should not be seen as a cost to be reduced, but as part of a strategy that has been proven to deliver security and well-being for all
If billionaires continue to shape political systems while states become hostage to corporate and neoliberal agendas, we should expect more authoritarianism. The outcome will be deeper division, fragmentation, and conflict. The world cannot afford that trajectory.
What is missing in today’s political economy is empathy, a basic regard for human welfare that has been crowded out by indifference and market logic. Without restoring that moral foundation, neither democracy nor social stability can endure. Reclaiming democracy therefore requires not only restoring welfare states, but curbing the political power of extreme wealth through taxation, regulation, and democratic accountability.