Thanksgiving is an opportunity to think about what we are thankful for in our lives: maybe it’s good health, a career that works for you, good friends and family, some enjoyable vacations and experiences, and hopefully enough money to feel secure. When it comes to our political world, there are some strange things to be thankful for too. Personally, I am thankful that Donald Trump was the guy the billionaire elites got behind to become our first American dictator because Trump is failing where another more thoughtful, careful, patient, less inept, less extreme or erratic person might have been successful. Trump just keeps creating a huge backlash to himself and the MAGA movement. And his inept team of fools is helping him seal his place in history as the worst, most corrupt, most damaging president this country has ever had.
For that I am thankful.
TRUMP GIVES RISE TO A STRONG PRO-DEMOCRACY MOVEMENT
Trump has been running the country as if he is already the anointed king of it all with a fully subservient Congress. But Trump has been subjecting our country to such a level of stupidity, nastiness, and extremism that Americans who never thought much about politics, except to be cynical, are waking up and activating their long dormant civic muscles.
Americans are: going to townhall meetings and getting out on the streets and in front of detention centers to protest, showing up in their communities with their whistles and cell phones to document government agents being thugs and to help Hispanic neighbors from being kidnapped by government goon squads, contributing to food pantries because people lost their SNAP benefits and are going hungry in America, the richest country in the world, writing letters to the editor, calling their representatives to protest, cancelling Hulu and Disney subscriptions to get Jimmy Kimmel back on the air, making sure everyone they know votes no matter how hard the Republicans make it to get to vote, and those participating in juries and grand juries are thinking for themselves — not willing to indict a ham sandwich anymore or convict someone who is the target of Trump’s revenge.
Many Americans are learning to flex their civic muscles in ways they didn’t need to before Trump came on the scene. Trump is prompting this backlash because of his shockingly bad judgement and dumb ideas: like tariffs that make almost everything more expensive, like attacking Venezuela, like committing war crimes by killing people who may NOT be drug dealers but just plain old fishermen trying to make a living, like helping Russia win against Ukraine in order to become one of the oligarch elites who will plunder countries to get precious minerals and make global deals to get richer and richer, like taking away Medicaid and SNAP and other parts of the social safety net while giving tax cuts to the richest of the rich, like the shutdown that Trump refused to end, like knocking down the East Wing of the People’s House and building a gilded ballroom that dwarfs the White House, like trying hard to cover up the Epstein Files which reminds everyone he actually WAS Epstein’s good buddy for 10 to 15 years and raising doubt about whether he is covering up for something about himself in those files, like having a lavish Great Gatsby party as 42 million Americans are about to lose their health care subsidies which will make their health insurance unaffordable.
I could go on.
A growing number of Americans are sick of Trump, and angry at the MAGA Republicans in Congress who are in lock step with him. Ten months into his second term Trump’s bad judgement and inability to listen and learn from people who are real experts instead of PR people that Trump thinks look the part but are inept and unprofessional idiots who will follow his orders, is finally directly affecting the lives of millions of Americans. Not in a good way.
Millions of apolitical Americans are realizing that the person in the White House and the party in charge of our government DOES matter after all. They are learning that to change things, Americans have to participate in their participatory democracy if they hope to keep it: voice dissent, get out the door, show up, get their friends and family to vote and know who really has their interests at heart and who is pretending to care about them, take action and work with a community of other pro-democracy activists if they hope to put a check on this demented, corrupt man in the White House and his Republican toadies.
HOW DO WE KNOW TRUMP IS FAILING?
1) Trump keeps falling in the polls.
Forbes reports the most recent Gallup Poll shows:
The president’s approval rating slipped 5 percentage points to 36% in a Gallup poll, marking the lowest score of his second term as his disapproval rating climbed to 60%.
Trump’s fall in the Gallup poll breaks from three straight months of steady approval, as he stayed between 40% and 41% from August to October.
Trump is still two percentage points shy of his all-time low, which was recorded in 2021 at 34%. (After the January 6th coup attempt)
The Gallup poll was conducted from Nov. 3 to Nov. 25, covering the end of the government shutdown that resulted in an $11 billion GDP loss, hundreds of thousands of furloughed government employees and the suspension of federal food assistance.
With an approval rating that low, Republicans are suddenly having to confront the reality that Trump is dragging them down along with him. He is not liked, and they have been totally subservient to him and his bad ideas, therefore they will be taking the heat for him. They are Trump’s fall guys.
Trump has mucked up the economy. Biden left him an economy that was the envy of the rest of the world, as reported by The Economist, Special reports – The American economy has left other rich countries in the dust.
Thanks to Trump’s dumb policies consumer confidence is sharply down.
Consumer confidence has reportedly dropped sharply, with the Consumer Confidence Index falling 6.8 points to 88.7 and the expectations index to 63.2. Economists have cited rising inflation expectations, reports of layoffs, and a weaker labor outlook. The present index has seen declines across income and political groups.
2) Margery Taylor Greene is breaking from Trump.
Margery Taylor Greene has been the MAGAiest MAGA out there. But she has had a falling out with Trump over releasing the Epstein files. Trump attacked her and threatened to primary her. She responded by posting her decision to leave congress on X and saying of her relationship with Trump: “I refuse to be a ‘battered wife’ hoping it all goes away and gets better.”
Greene’s decision to leave congress in January is likely to embolden her colleagues to challenge the Speaker on key legislation and/or reconsider staying in Congress. There are predictions that many more Republicans in the House are fed up with trying to exist between a rock and a hard place–embarrassed at town hall meetings by angry constituents who want them to take action to make their lives better and MAGA Mike who demands that they stay in lock step with Trump’s decrees and NOT take action–will soon announce that they are leaving congress.
3) House Republicans are going after Pete Hegseth for war crimes or murder.
Congress has been acting like a dog that rolled over and played dead. But suddenly the House looks like it’s perking up when it comes to Pete Hegseth and his war crimes.
One of Pete Hegseth’s first actions as Secretary of “War” was to remove the JAG oversight officers who are the watch dogs of the military. Then he claimed, at Trump’s urging, that the US was at war with narco terrorists and ordered our military to make lethal attacks on boats off the coast of Venezuela in the Caribbean. To date the US has used drone strikes on 20 boats and killed 80 people they allege are narco terrorists but to date have not offered any proof whatsoever that those killed were even connected to the drug trade. One reason to doubt that drone strikes are hitting boats carrying drugs is that some of these small craft are carrying as many as 11 people. If you were transporting drugs you would not have that many people taking up space in the boat. You would want to have that room to transport more bags of drugs.
Pete Hegseth issued a standing “kill everyone” order. On September 2, a live drone feed showed two survivors from the original crew of 11 clinging to the wreckage of their boat after the initial missile attack, The Post reported Friday afternoon. The Special Operations commander overseeing the operation then ordered a second strike to comply with Hegseth’s directive which killed the remaining two survivors. Killing survivors of the first strike would either be a war crime or murder according to experts in war crimes. Bipartisan leadership of the Armed Services Committees in both chambers vowed to probe the matter, with Sens. Roger Wicker (R-Miss.) and Jack Reed (D-R.I.) promising “vigorous oversight to determine the facts related to these circumstances” on Friday.
4) Democrats are gaining voters in formerly bright red districts and states.
Harry Enten on CNN reports that Democrats have outperformed their 2024 results by an average of 15 points in special elections in Arizona, Florida, Texas and Virginia, and since 2005, parties that outperformed in special elections went on to win the U.S. House majority in the following election five out of five times, Enten said.
5) Cracks are developing in the coalition that elected Trump.
A significant portion of 2024 Trump voters — more than a third — do not consider themselves to be MAGA Republicans. And not only are they less loyal to Trump than self-identified MAGA Republicans, but the poll also suggests some of them have already begun to turn on him: Non-MAGA Trump voters are much more likely to blame Trump for the state of the economy, say he has too much power and be pessimistic about the future.
6) Trump looks weaker, more tired, and says more cuckoo stuff every day.
We are seeing more headlines like this:
‘Thank You Very Much, Stephanie’: Trump Shows Signs of Cognitive Decline, Flubs His Own Daughter’s Name During Slurred Speech
Trump has repeatedly been caught dozing off in front of cameras, gotten names of people and places wrong, and thrown around numbers without data to back them up. He has also constantly appeared disoriented during speeches since getting reelected.
Theories about him showing early signs of dementia have been floating around the internet for months now. As if that wasn’t bad enough, a new photo that recently surfaced on the internet has solidified the theory that Trump’s age is finally taking a toll on him.
Trump is getting MRIs every 6 months. Neither the White House or Trump are saying whether the MRI scans are looking at his brain.
MRI and CT scans are diagnostic tests used by doctors to diagnose and detect dementia. MRI can reveal atrophy in specific areas of the brain, such as the hippocampus, which are often affected by dementia. Alzheimer’s disease, the most common form of dementia, presents with distinctive MRI features that have become crucial in its diagnosis and monitoring.
MRI provides unparalleled insights into brain structure and function, identifying early signs, tracking disease progression, and detecting early symptoms. It can also help identify beta amyloid plaques and neurofibrillary tangles associated with Alzheimer’s disease.
WHY I AM THANKFUL FOR DONALD TRUMP
It turns out that the Q’Anon crowd got something right- there IS a cabal of rich elites and Jeffrey Epstein was one of them. But the Q’Anon gang got it wrong when they thought Trump would expose the elite pedophiles. He won’t. Because he is not only one of them but he got elected thanks to that cabal of rich dudes who want to rule the world.
Representative Ro Khanna (D-CA) explained to NPR’s Scott Detrow earlier this month: “[T]he Epstein class is a group of people with extreme wealth who have donated to politicians and been part of a system where they think the rules don’t apply to them, and they have created a system that has shafted a lot of forgotten Americans. That’s why Donald Trump ran and was central to his campaign. And many people, like Marjorie Taylor Greene and others, believe he’s become part of the swamp that he said he would drain. He’s forgotten the forgotten Americans he said he would stand up for.”
I would say Trump did not forget these Americans at all. He never cared about them in the first place. He was and still is a con artist. One of the best. He ran as a populist on the side of working Americans to get elected. But that was part of the con. He really ran to make himself richer and avoid accountability for his many violations of the law.
Donald Trump is on track to fail as our first American dictator provided Americans stay vigilant and keep pushing back on the excesses, amorality, and illegal acts of this regime and our courts continue to function as a check on him and his administration. If the Democrats win back the House and possibly the Senate in 2026, Congress will function the way it’s supposed to- as an active check on this president. That won’t cure everything but it should help our country to preserve our wobbling democracy for the next 3 long years until we can vote for a new president.
Trump will not be able to run again in 2028 and, given his unpopularity, if he tries some kind of stunt to stay in power, it will likely be exposed in advance and put down. He might never face accountability thanks to the Supreme Court immunity decision but just getting this horrible man and his disastrous administration out of power will be a huge victory for this country. The next administration has the potential to be another New Deal if we elect someone capable of that kind of vision with the ability to unify Americans who will, I think, be more than ready to find common ground.
It is my hope that Trump be remembered in history as the failed would-be dictator that America flirted with and rejected who opened the door to a boldly progressive movement that re-imagined and created a stronger, more durable democracy in America.
If that happens, I will be even more thankful for Donald Trump. This powerful movement would not have happened without him.