DCUM Weblog

Last October I wrote about the Enhanced Health Insurance Premium Tax Credits that were due to expire at the end of December. At that time, the government had shut down due to the Republican inability to overcome a Democratic filibuster in the Senate. In exchange for their votes, Democrats demanded an extension of the tax credits. Republicans adamantly refused to negotiate with the Democrats, instead relying on cult leader, convicted felon, and failed President Donald Trump to increase pressure on Democrats by withholding funds for Democratic priorities, particularly food stamps, while finding alternative methods to fund Republican priorities. Eventually, Democrats caved to Republican pressure in exchange for a promise of a meaningless vote on extending subsidies. Despite the failure of Democrats to make progress at that time, yesterday the House passed a bill that would extend the enhanced tax credits.

The Administration of cult leader, convicted felon, and failed President Donald Trump has completely rewritten the rulebook of how government officials should act. We now have a government of trolls who prefer social media insults written on the level of 4chan posts over policy. Childish behavior has become standard, and grifting has been raised to an art form. But most importantly, the truth has absolutely no value to this group. Starting right at the top with the liar-in-chief himself, this administration has absolutely no regard for the truth. Trump and his appointees lie like they breathe. In the cult-like environment of the Trump administration, knowingly supporting obvious lies has become simply one more requirement of government service. To be a Trump official means being willing to debase yourself regularly by mouthing what you obviously know to be false. We now have a government filled with officials who are incapable of feeling shame.

Yesterday I wrote about a political science framework proposed by Stacie E. Goddard and Abraham Newman that explains the behavior of cult leader, convicted felon, and failed President Donald Trump. A few hours after I published that post, Trump provided an excellent example of the theory in action. As such, today I am going to apply Goddard and Newman's theory to Trump's announcement that "the Interim Authorities in Venezuela will be turning over between 30 and 50 MILLION Barrels of High Quality, Sanctioned Oil, to the United States of America."

First, some background. The idea advanced by Goddard and Newman is that the importance of national governments has been replaced in many countries, including the United States, by ruling "cliques," which are networks of elites seeking to establish material and status hierarchies based on the extraction of tributes from those lower in the hierarchy. Goddard and Newman labeled this neo-royalism. Trump's clique is easily identifiable, involving family members and devoted loyalists. For instance, Trump's son-in-law, Jared Kushner, who has no official role in government, has been routinely involved in international negotiations on behalf of the United States. In neo-royalist regimes, laws and legal structures have little meaning. Instead, what is important is what will benefit the ruling clique.

As some readers may know, I have a political science degree from the University of Illinois (I also have a master’s degree from Georgetown University, but that is less relevant to this post). Over the past few days, I have spent quite a bit of time thinking about which political theory, if any, explains the behavior of cult leader, convicted felon, and failed President Donald Trump. Every theory that I considered fell short. While Trump has portrayed himself as "America First," it is quite evident in his second term that he is actually "Trump First." Trump is not a patriotic nationalist, but rather a self-serving narcissist whose loyalties extend beyond national boundaries. Explaining Trump and his actions requires a new political theory.

One clear aspect of Trumpism is that it does not recognize national borders. This may seem a strange thing to say about someone who has made border security and deportations a central part of his rule, but simply viewing this as an issue of borders is a mistake. Enforcing border security and implementing a policy of mass deportations has provided Trump with a justification for creating a national law enforcement force that is loyal to him. Trump has, in effect, created his own Republican Guard. He is now using that force to terrorise cities and to enhance his own power. In this way, combatting undocumented immigrants has been more of a means to an end rather than the end itself.

Because cult leader, convicted felon, and failed President Donald Trump chose late Friday to launch a military operation against Venezuela that led to the seizure of Venezuela's President, Nicolás Maduro, and his wife, I have had a couple of days to think about what I would ultimately write about the events. The result is that I have a lot of thoughts, but not really a coherent analysis of things. Therefore, today I am simply going to present a series of conclusions that I have drawn from what has occurred.

There is no plan

The most important point that I think must be understood is that the Trump administration has no real plan for what will come next. Last month I wrote about Trump's imposition of a blockade on Venezuelan oil shipments. In that post, I noted that Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, and White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller all likely had separate personal reasons for supporting a war against Venezuela. I went on to suggest that "My guess is that what is happening is less the result of Trump's desires and more of a case of him acquiescing to the wishes of his three powerful officials." Keeping in mind that Trump's brain these days is basically mush, I think that he was excited by the opportunity to watch on TV while U.S. forces blew things up and staged a daring raid into Maduro's home to abduct him. That was incentive enough for Trump to sign off on an operation proposed by Rubio, Hegseth, and Miller. However, there does not appear to have been any agreement beyond that.

Judging by posts on X, the Department of Homeland Security has become a proponent of white nationalism, Christian supremacy, and ethnic cleansing. Apparently run by Internet trolls, the official Homeland Security X account @DHSgov routinely steals the intellectual property of others and misappropriates it in support of white Christian ethnocentrism. As always when it comes to trolls, it is difficult to know whether trolling is the primary goal of the posts or whether the posts actually represent the agenda of the Department. That distinction probably does not matter in this case as the X account represents an official U.S. government department that is funded through taxpayers' dollars. If government employees are being paid to troll, that is concerning. If the content they are producing actually represents what DHS hopes to achieve, that is even more problematic. Either way, the content being posted by DHS is completely inappropriate and simply another indication of an agency that is out of control.

For the past several years, I have had a tradition of posting on January 1st about the ten most active threads of the previous year. However, this year I changed the focus of the blog to be on politics, while in previous years it had been about the most active threads of the time. I wasn't sure whether or not I should continue the tradition. Ultimately, I decided I should. So, today I will review the ten most active DC Urban Moms and Dads Forum topics of 2025.

The tenth most active thread of 2025 was titled, "Plane crash DCA?" and was posted in the "Off-Topic" forum. This thread, of course, is about the horrific midair collision between American Airlines Flight 5342 and a United States Army Sikorsky UH-60 Black Hawk helicopter that cost 67 lives. The thread was started just after news of the crash began circulating by a poster who asked, "Helicopter or plane? Anyone know?" The first several pages were consumed by posts about news and updates on the event. The day after the crash, cult leader, convicted felon, and failed President Donald Trump blamed the crash on diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts within the Federal Aviation Administration. This then became a major topic of discussion in the thread. However, posters soon began focusing on the helicopter crew, with suggestions that DEI had played a role in that regard. There was a false rumor that the helicopter pilot was transgender. When the pilot turned out to be a cisgender female, many posters alleged that she had been promoted due to DEI and was not qualified for the job. That debate is still continuing in posts this month. There was also a diversion into speculation about who the military helicopter may have been transporting with theories that the aircraft had made secret stops at either the CIA headquarters or the home of the Saudi Arabian ambassador.

Our president is not healthy. Nobody in an official capacity will tell you this, but it has been obvious for some time to anyone who has been paying attention. Cult leader, convicted felon, and failed President Donald Trump clearly is suffering from both cognitive and physical maladies. Republicans, who have repeatedly berated Democrats for allegedly covering up the reality of former President Joe Biden's fitness for the job, are now engaged in their own cover-up. Trump, who seems to be aware of his own mortality, is busily creating monuments to himself.

That Trump is suffering from diminished mental capacity is obvious in his daily behavior. He has repeatedly engaged in abnormal activities such as late-night, unhinged posting flurries on Truth Social that have sometimes gone on for hundreds of "truths." Most recently, he spent Christmas Eve and early Christmas morning sending more than 200 "truths." Many of these are reposts of various conspiracy theories or obvious misinformation. By all appearances, Trump accepts fringe ideas posted by obscure accounts, often of foreign origin, as fact.

As the saying goes, "The first casualty of war is truth." All sides of a conflict have incentives to spin reality in a favorable direction. Information itself can be a weapon, and deception is an effective tactic. But the issue of "truth" has become even more complicated during the second term of cult leader, convicted felon, and failed President Donald Trump. Trump lies as frequently as he breathes, and it is never clear whether he actually believes the falsehoods emanating from his mouth or if, instead, he is knowingly spreading misinformation. This is true across the board, regardless of the topic. But the gulf between reality and what Trump claims the facts to be is probably never wider than it is on issues related to war and peace.

One of Trump's most effective campaign promises was to end "forever wars" and to avoid new ones. In his inaugural address, he said, "We will measure our success not only by the battles we win, but also by the wars that we end, and perhaps most importantly, the wars we never get into." Instead of wasting blood and treasure on foreign wars, U.S. resources would be used to improve American lives. But in the first year of his second administration, Trump has largely abandoned that promise. He has eagerly engaged in multiple conflicts around the world. But, true to form, Trump has mostly lied about them.

On December 4, authorities arrested Brian J. Cole, Jr. and charged him with planting the two pipe bombs discovered near the headquarters of the Republican National Committee (RNC) and the Democratic National Committee (DNC) on January 6, 2021. Cole has been held in custody since that time, and a hearing is scheduled for tomorrow to consider the government's request that Cole continue to be detained pending trial. The government has sought to postpone the hearing, something that Cole's lawyers have opposed, so whether tomorrow's hearing will be held as scheduled remains to be seen. However, yesterday the government released a memorandum supporting its motion for pretrail detainment. The document has quite a bit of information about Cole's actions and motivation for planting the explosive devices.