'Wheat Kings'

Donald Trump is a deeply insecure man; he looks around the room, so to speak, and sees who he can mess with next.

He lives in a state of self-centered fear; covering it up with blustery words and actions to mask the inferiority he feels inside.

He is the type to smash a butterfly or a flower just because something else finds it pretty. He does not understand nature or art or human empathy.

He is the kid who threw rocks at the neighbor’s baby and was such a problem child in early classrooms that his folks shipped him off to a military school in the Hudson Valley. On the west side of the river.

Skipping over the elite prep schools of New York City and Connecticut to teach the maladjusted scion - knowing he wouldn’t have lasted half a semester with his reading skills and aberrant behavior. His parents wanted Donald essentially hidden from the folks who would become his peers later in life.

They couldn’t risk word getting out about him in local society - at least too soon. Better to hide his true nature for as long as they could.

Later in Trump’s career he used lawyers and NDAs to do much the same.

He has always been a ‘smoke and mirrors’ sort of creation. A rich, white guy in a suit is what the public is meant to see with Trump. A cartoon version of success - designed for people who don’t know what generational wealth really looks like and fall for the fake gold, purloined class and dubious deals.

If Trump had grown up poor in the Bronx he likely wouldn’t have seen his twenty-first birthday - or he would have spent it in jail - but his malignancies were hidden by his wealth. He has spent many decades getting away with sexual predation and he still hasn’t been made to answer for most of his crimes.

Trump has always felt ‘less than’ at his core, a common trait for untreated addicts and extreme narcissists such as himself, so he routinely lashes out at others to cover up his own inferiority and portray an image of dominance and masculinity.

In reality, he is terrified of being laughed at and has a need for attention that runs deeper than any human I have ever witnessed. (I spent six seasons observing his family up close on ‘Celebrity Apprentice’ finales).

He’s a soft man; artificial and toxic. He fools no one but himself - but many play along because he’s easy to manipulate and he’s a very easy partner if you’re looking to rip people off.

Just ask the banks that lent him money for decades knowing full well he and his accountants were ‘cooking the books’ regarding his own success.

He’s a carnival barker and a clown at heart but he is also extremely dangerous because of his deeply ignorant and racist worldview - and his innate criminality.

Trump will always make the worst choice possible in any given situation; considering his needs and his needs alone.

Everything about Trump and his children screams fraud - it always has - from his casino days in the 1980s to the ridiculous portrait of a successful businessman Mark Burnett created.

In reality, Trump barely worked; his full-time job has always been serving his own narcissism. He has spent every winter of his adult life in Palm Beach, too much a pampered, pretend businessman to tough it out in Manhattan with the real movers and shakers of his industry. Instead he followed their wives down to Florida and filled out his picture of himself as a playboy.

He rode around on golf carts and lied about his amazing scores; bragged of last night’s conquest, while hosting cheerleaders and beauty pageant contestants and partying with Jeffrey Epstein at his private club. A serial philanderer and a scoundrel with even darker connections to Epstein than most realize - thanks to Bill Barr and a supplicant ‘look the other way’ D.O.J.

Trump was always bad news and that was no secret to anyone who worked with him.

He was a grown man who walked in on teenage girls changing when they were competing in his beauty contests; an entire television industry somehow thought that this was ok for decades. At least in the C-suites at NBC.

Having worked on some of these earlier productions, it was no secret amongst the crews. He was universally loathed. I started speaking out about it when Trump first ran for office in 2015 but sadly much of his behavior seemed to be accepted or shrugged off by the media at large.

Trump flew to Mar-a-Lago this past Friday evening while a number of the victims of a horrific plane crash were still yet to be recovered from the frozen waters of the Potomac.

Another air disaster was unfolding as he was heading down to Florida for a weekend in the sun. Trump is no Commander-in-Chief: he is a drug-addled geriatric who is spending his days causing chaos and destruction in our lives and those of our allies.

Deep down he knows he is not fit to lead so he thrashes about and breaks things.

Trump is the guy you hire if you don’t want something to work anymore- which is why Vladimir Putin and Elon Musk invested so heavily in his being elected.

He will spew nonsense in his ‘America First’ brand of idiot-speak on matters of which he has no comprehension (such as tariffs), and start a trade war with our nearest allies without a moment’s thought as to the real world consequences of his actions.

He is too far removed from those consequences - or any connection with the human lives he has been elected to represent.

He doesn’t even care about the MAGA folks who voted form him - they will suffer mightily at the hands of his incompetence. Sadly, so will the rest of the world, given the rapid pace at which Musk and the Project 2025 gang have been dismantling our institutions.

I have no hope of helping conservative voters understand the effects on the world of dismantling something like USAID or what is gonna happen to their lives now that Musk essentially controls the U.S. Treasury payment system. They will find out soon enough.

The pain will be the point. Trump only feels alive if others are suffering.

He is bent and broken that way. Normal men do not start trade wars with their friends and neighbors. Let alone Presidents. It wouldn’t be under consideration for a normal POTUS.

The United Sates is extremely privileged to share a continent with Mexico and Canada; they have both had our backs in ways that are too many too articulate, despite the rhetoric of the far-right and Fox News morons.

In the case of Mexico, whose vibrant culture, art, literature, music, cuisine, agriculture, and industry - not to mention world class work ethic - we have a trading partner any nation would envy and would be wise to respect.

Instead, it is a neighbor that Trump has demonized and scapegoated since the beginning of his awful tantrum on the world stage.

Immigration is not the bogeyman the GOP would have you believe; our country would not function without the hard work, expertise and labor we receive from Mexico. It’s also staggeringly beautiful: we should be working alongside our neighbors to help mitigate the effects of climate change.

The ravaging effects of which will not stop at any geographical borders and will force as yet unseen migrations and global temperatures to rise.

We should be working in concert with other nations in our hemisphere and beyond to mitigate these factors and prepare accordingly. Instead, a mad king insults our allies and belittles the dangers posed by fossil fuels and carbon-based pollution.

As far as Canada is concerned, imposing tariffs on our neighbor to the North is like insulting your best friend who cheerfully had your back in every fight you have ever been in. It’s a betrayal so bracing and infuriating to those of us who care that it nearly beggars belief.

These tariffs will hurt the U.S. economy and they will cause hardship for our neighbors who did nothing to warrant them - and they only exist because of the rank stupidity of the American President. This is the exhausting part of what Trump’s strategy has always been; flooding the zone with chaos.

Hang tough and fight back in any way you can.

Help those around you understand the full scope of what we are truly up against and how quickly Trump and his gang are smashing to bits the USA’s diplomatic norms, trade policy and the very functioning of our government.

None of this will serve the greater good - and they will NEVER be held accountable if we fall silent.

We must illuminate the consequences of their actions, find a way to rise above the destruction and become united in our opposition.

We must resist.