It’s Political Death Week! First, rank hypocrite and repulsive warmonger/lapdog Lindsey Graham. Next (if not already), rank hypocrite and party-before-country traitor Mitch McConnell. Congratulations to all who celebrate! But, as we know, these things come in threes. Who’s next?
Oh please. Who else? With a few more burgers and a little bit of luck it will be Donald Trump.
Not that there is any luck. God knows that Trump’s continued existence is dispositive proof, not only that there is no luck, but that there is no God. Nonetheless, all things come to those who wait. One day Donald Trump will die. Seriously. Yes, really. He will die.
We know: “Don’t threaten me with a good time.” That’s not a threat; it’s a promise. Not only will he die, but—get this—once he dies, he will be dead. Forever! “Then let the throng our joy advance/With laughing song and merry dance” (Gilbert and Sullivan, The Mikado). He will not die and then somehow come back to life. He will not self-reincarnate. He will be, and remain, dead. (Insert John Cleese’s lines from the Dead Parrot sketch here.)
Yes, it is a pleasant thought. And it leads to ruminations on what will be his legacy. Stop laughing. He will have one. It just won’t be the one he wants or imagines.
To approach that topic, we first posit this: Everything Trump does involves a dialectic-like, alternating current clash of conflicting elements. His ambition comes into conflict with his stupidity; his grandiosity is undercut by his pathological, and therefore easily-detected, lying. His need for dominance locks horns with his laziness. His vanity battles with his insecurity. His egotism, his desire to be thought great, slugs it out with his pettiness and obsession with revenge. His narcissism ends up in a fistfight with the fact that he’s losing his fucking marbles.
No wonder, then, he fails at literally everything. (His one indubitable success, The Apprentice, came not because of him, but in spite of him. The public only bought his genius-tycoon schtick after massive amounts of editing, packaging, tidying up, and fixing-in-post.)
No, wait. There has been one other thing at which he’s been successful: what economists call “capital accumulation,” but which we call theft, soliciting bribes, grifting, cheating the credulous, manipulating the stock market, harvesting kickbacks, acquiring “gifts.” And that is headed for the most Trumpian failure of them all: At the climax of the amassing of this large fortune, he will drop dead and get to spend none of it, enjoy none of it.
It sure doesn’t look like he’s spending it now. What is his routine? Rant and rave on Truth Social all night, waddle in to “work” at 11:00, fart up the room (and occasionally take a dump in his diaper) while extorting patently phony praise from flunkies and cynics, and play golf. All this, while worrying: about whether (or when) the Epstein Files will, finally, display to the public the monster he knows he is; what might (or will) happen when the Dems re-take at least the House next January; and how to lie his way out of addressing Iran, the economy, the cost of living, his tanking poll numbers, the depredations of ICE, and all the other scandals, crimes, and failures for which he is responsible.
Yes, it’s been a miserable life of greed, destruction, and cruelty. But all bad things must come to an end. And we’re already getting cranky and resentful about the dignified funeral he will be accorded. It would be great if, when his body lies in state in the Capitol rotunda, the crowd that arrives to pay its respects is as massive and adoring as the one that attended the recent Great American State Fail (sic). But he doesn’t deserve even that.
We think his funeral should resemble the ones held for mob bosses when they (for whatever reason) die, because the kind of autocrat he most resembles is not Putin or Xi or Kim Jong-Un or even Pinochet or Franco but a Mafia don. And we’re not the only ones who think so; the analogy has been around for years. For a recent iteration of it, getta loada Patrick Cockburn writing in The i Paper:
On the first day of the US-Israeli attack on Iran…US missiles struck the Shajareh Tayyiba girls’ school in Minab in southern Iran, killing at least 168 children as they sat at their desks along with 14 teachers—according to the Iranian media—in what may be the worst single atrocity in US military history since the Vietnam War.
Cockburn goes on to condemn the “moral depravity of America during Donald Trump’s second presidency.” He notes that “Trump boasts of assassinating the 86-year-old Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, but makes no mention of the killing by his side of his daughter, daughter-in-law and a 14-month-old granddaughter whose name was Zahra Mohammadi Golpayegani.” He mentions the 196 extrajudicial killings of people in boats in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific, and ends with:
This goes to the moral heart of the matter. The thought processes and behavior of the Trump administration in these cases resemble those of the gangster underworld, pitiless in targeting the weak and defenseless, respectful only of those who respond to violence with greater violence. If anything, the American Mafia arguably operates with greater moderation than Trump has here, making a distinction between civilians and its criminal rivals.
So, yeah: Trump as mob boss—who, when he kicks, deserves not a solemn cortege through D.C., a lying-in-state, and a series of encomia (however pro-forma, insincere, and universally mocked), but a real Don’s sendoff: in a cramped, crowded cemetery on Staten Island or in Queens, attended by weeping relatives in black (assuming any show up, and any actually weep), overseen by squinty-eyed capo thugs and dumb-as-dirt soldiers, decorated with vulgar floral displays, and all under the open and watchful gaze of FBI agents wielding parabolic audio antennas to catch the mobster chitchat. Good riddance? No. Great, excellent, fantastic riddance, maybe the best riddance of all time.
IT IS—AS YOU KNOW—WORLD SNAKE DAY, NATIONAL CHERRY DAY, AND FRESH SPINACH DAY. DO THE MATH. WHEN YOU SERVE THAT SIRLOIN SNAKE WITH NATIONAL CHERRIES, ONLY USE FRESH SPINACH. THEN—
And then, finally: What will be his legacy?
He will leave behind, like the criminal boss he is, no clear successor. Many will vie to inherit his power, and at least some of them can credibly present themselves as being just as greedy, dishonest, shameless, and sadistic as the old man himself. But no one (at least of whom we are aware) has his—what to call it?—Star power? Charisma? Twisted appeal to desperate believers? Instead, there will be squabbling family members, lawsuits, appalling revelations, grand jury indictments, trials, convictions, and sentencings. But he will leave behind nothing of value. The idea of a Trump Library is an oxymoron. And we’ve already seen what you get when the Trump family starts a charity (i.e., fraudulence, theft, court-imposed fines, and widespread ridicule).
Meanwhile, here’s the funny part:
The result of all of the self-mythologizing, the preening, the “Sir story” fictions, the gold decorations, the tinpot dictator currency-with-his-picture-on-it, the ludicrous architectural fantasizing, the Cabinet meeting praise-a-thons, the flattering of his fellow-tyrants…his legacy will be the opposite of everything he intends. He will only be missed and lamented by the stupid and the deluded—the suckers and chumps he was happy to exploit but would not have let get within miles of Mar-a-Lago.
His name will go down in history but in the worst way possible. It will become a term of opprobrium and scorn, like “Benedict Arnold” and “Hitler” and “Quisling.” The rich people whose ranks he wanted to join and whose admiration he courted will trade anecdotes about his ineptitude and constant, constant failure. (Fun Fact: A billionaire in New York, when asked to describe Trump when he was running in 2016, called him “a clown living on credit.”) The crappiest sycophants in his Cabinet will crack jokes at his expense—at least up until they’re indicted or sued. People will watch avidly for stories of his children’s failures. The day of his death will be celebrated for years to come.
And that’s what we can foresee now. Imagine how much worse it will get for his reputation and his place in history when the truth comes out—when the rest of the Epstein files are either released or leaked; when the jackals and hyenas who obey him today get their tell-all book deals; when decent government professionals are allowed to put on HAZMAT suits, go back into the agencies and departments the administration has defiled and polluted, and report on what they find.
Because it’s always worse than it looks. When Trump goes, what will emerge about Stephen Miller and Kash Patel and Pete Hegseth and Scott Bessant and Sean Duffy and Linda McMahon and Doug Burgum and Howard Lutnick, about their corruption, racism, mismanagement, and stupidity, will curl the nation’s hair. All that, along with the shameful decline and moral bankruptcy of the entire Republican Party, will be part of Trump’s legacy as well.
They will deserve, and we will need, a campaign of legal accountability—at best, a Nuremberg-like tribunal to indict, try, and convict; at worst, a Truth and Reconciliation Commission, to at least create a public record of the regime’s staggering lawlessness and corruption. No forgiveness without confession. Although we rather fancy a solution cribbed from the final scene of Quentin Tarantino’s Inglorious Basterds: let’s (without anesthesia) brand a T on the forehead of every one of these liars, criminals, and killers.
But wait, there’s more. We’ll also need a lot of physical (not to mention emotional) remediation. The White House will have to be fumigated. The Reflecting Pool will have to be re-re-refurbished. Any other material manifestations of Trump’s mashup of dictator-décor and dumb-yutz bad taste that do remain—the gold tat in the Oval Office, the paved-over Rose Garden, the imbecilic “Walk of Fame,” the idiotic/sinister ballroom, the gilt paint on those horses, any column-vandalism he perpetrates, etc.—will, we desperately hope, be removed, undone, imploded, and/or reversed by the first Democratic administration that replaces him.
And not just in D.C. The concentration camp detainment centers must be emptied, their occupants paid compensation out of Trump’s stolen billions, and the buildings be demolished or, preferably, re-purposed as recycling centers or DEI-study institutions or windmill manufactories. The Qatari jet should be confiscated and either auctioned off for charity or dismantled for parts. ICE must be abolished and its murderers arrested and tried.
You read all this, and it’s tempting to think that the less that remains in the public sphere concerning Trump, the better. Take his name off everything, take his mark off everything, take his self-parodying giant headshots down off of government buildings, and let’s say no more about it. We think that would be a mistake. For Americans to try to just forget Trump would be like Germans trying to forget Hitler. Sure, there will be the books, measurable by the ton. (We’re going to need a writer combining the talents of Robert Caro, Norman Mailer, Mark Twain, Martin Amis, Jonathan Swift, Terry Southern, and Hunter S. Thompson to produce the single definitive biography of this monster, but it won’t be enough.)
We’ll need some kind of official, public symbol that reminds us (and future generations) what an absolutely despicable disaster Donald J. Trump was.
The problem is that most such objects take the form of statues or memorials. The former valorize their subjects and the latter respect the victims of the wars they commemorate. Is it possible to create a public symbol dealing with a bad thing—or, in this case, the worst American who ever lived? There sure is! And there’s a prime example of it in the nation’s capital.
We propose the establishment of the United States Donald J. Trump Fascist Regime Memorial Museum (USDJTFRMM), to be created and managed along the lines of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Take it away, Wikipedia:
The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM) is the United States’ official memorial and museum dedicated to the history and legacy of the Holocaust. Opened in Washington, D.C. in 1993, the museum explores the Holocaust through permanent and traveling exhibitions, educational programs, survivor testimonies and archival collections. The USHMM was created with the stated purpose of helping leaders and citizens of the world confront hatred, prevent genocide, promote human dignity, and strengthen democracy.
Has the Trump administration been as bad as the Holocaust? No, although it depends on whom you ask. (Maybe talk to Renee Good’s kids. Or the people tracking the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Africans after the ending of USAID. Or the families of ICE murder victims.) But that’s not the point. When the fat man croaks, after the national (read: global) celebration, and it all comes out, we’re going to need a museum’s-worth of programs and resources to adequately explain what happened and why, so that it never happens again.
“Yes, sounds good, but guys—who’s going to pay for it?”
Trump’s got billions. And he’ll be dead, forever. Take it from him and his skeevy heirs and assigns. Meanwhile, we look forward to this new and exciting version of Splitsville (our term for when a single geo-political entity harbors two or more distinct “nations”). With Trump’s demise, one such “nation” will be MAGA: bereft, inconsolable, and willfully deaf and blind to the damning information that will emerge about their hero’s criminality. Another will consist of Republicans, either scrambling for opportunity or running for cover.
The rest will be us, in the tens of millions: exultant, relieved, and free at last, free at last, thank God almighty we will be free at last.
WANT TO SEE THE U.S. AS IT WOULD BE AFTER EIGHT MORE YEARS OF TRUMP? NO, OF COURSE NOT. BUT A FICTIONAL VERSION OF IT? OK!
https://theonion.com/when-youre-feeling-low-just-remember-ill-be-dead-in-ab-1819584806/
Nick Tosches was born to tell the Trump story. Shame he died!
Nice newsletter!