The most powerful attack ad of Donald Trump's comeback campaign was apparently repeated in the final weeks before the 2024 election. By attacking transgender rights, its punchline effectively landed a punch: “Kamala Harris is for them. President Trump is for you.”
2025: Broken promise. Back in office, the president has shown that the only pronouns he really recognizes are the first person pronouns: I, myself, and myself.
A year into Trump 2.0, those self-serving pronouns are now firmly entrenched as synonyms with his presidency, on matters important and mundane. They could also be mounted in gold in the Oval Office, in fonts so large that they won't get lost among all the glitter you've installed there. When asked in October who would be honored by Trump's planned Arc de Triomphe-style monument near Arlington Cemetery, the president was quick: “Me.”
To a degree that has surprised even critics long convinced of his sociopathic narcissism, Trump has formed a government that is of Trump, by Trump, and for Trump. “I run the country.” and world,” he boasted in April. Trump thinks “there's nothing he can't do. Nothing, zero, nothing,” his White House chief of staff, Susie Wiles, told Vanity Fair, as reported in two articles last month that indicated her own discomfort with Trump's continued vendetta against his political enemies; his clemency for even the most violent rioters of January 6, 2021; the pain of its erratic tariffs, overly cruel immigration raids, and the tragic shutdown of USAID humanitarian aid; his evasion of Jeffrey Epstein's files on that candidate. Trump promised to release; and the weaknesses of his servile Cabinet.
If Trump struts as the center of the universe in 2025 (unchecked by advisers like Wiles or a cowering Congress controlled by Republicans, the Supreme Court, and corporate bosses), buckle up for 2026. It's the 250th anniversary of America's independence, and our self-proclaimed master of ceremonies is focused on the festivities he'll be hosting not just on the Fourth of July, but all year long. One of his first acts as president was to create a White House task force, chaired by himself, of course, to plan semiquincentennial events, ignoring an eight-year commission created by Congress for that purpose. Coming soon: a (possibly illegal) $1 commemorative coin featuring Trump's image from the United States Mint.
Never mind that 2026 begins with a huge increase in health insurance costs for tens of millions of Americans, including many Trump voters. The president who campaigned on lowering living costs has opposed a legislative remedy to the Dec. 31 expiration of health care premium subsidies, repeatedly repeating his old promise that he will propose a cheaper alternative within weeks.
But this is how 2026 will end: with midterm elections in November looming as a referendum on whether Trump's Republican Party should maintain control of Congress. The initial bet is that no, it will not be like that. Especially after another year of Trump grandstanding and his party's genuflection.
In good times, Trump's strident self-esteem might be tolerable to voters, even comical. But these are not good times, much less the “golden age” that Trump announced in his inaugural address last January, except for him and the rich hangers-on at his seemingly endless round of parties at the White House and at Mar-a-Lago. The Gatsby-themed Halloween party at Trump's Florida resort was especially tasty, pun intended, and was held hours before federal food aid was set to expire for 42 million Americans amid a government shutdown he had done nothing to prevent.
Days later, voters trounced Republicans in elections outside of 2025 in several states, boding well for the same outcome nationwide in 2026. There are other signs. On Tuesday, a new Gallup poll showed that three in four Americans were dissatisfied with “the way things are going in America.” Trump's approval rating was just 36% in the Gallup poll in early December, his lowest reading last year and nearly equal to his record low after the Jan. 6 insurrection. Averages from several polls show Trump with negative ratings on his handling of immigration, the economy, trade and tariffs, and inflation, all issues that helped his re-election.
But go ahead, Mr. President. Keep talking about how great you are. You are a legend in your own time and mind.
Trump's deafness has become the great mystery of American politics, for both parties, especially considering that he harshly criticized President Biden for boasting about the economy's post-pandemic recovery when Americans were not feeling it.
As Americans struggle to buy a home or afford to maintain it, Trump has gilded the People's House (see the New York Times' recent 3-D recreation of the Oval Office for the full, disgusting effect) and transformed the bathroom next to the Lincoln Bedroom in marble and gold. Having demolished the East Wing to make way for a gigantic ballroom where Marie Antoinette would be at home, financed by corporations and favor-seeking billionaires, Trump told reporters Tuesday that it would have to be bigger than he had initially planned because “we're going to do the inauguration” there.
That? Is the man who is supposed to leave office on January 20, 2029 choosing the new location for the next presidential inauguration? Hmm.
Even before he is a year in office, Trump has put his mark on two Washington buildings, including the country's 60-year-old cultural center called by law as a monument to an assassinated president. The Kennedy Center (no, I won't call it by Trump's name) will have marble armrests; Trump took to social media the day after Christmas to show off samples. Meanwhile, he is renovating a royal Qatari plane, a “palace in the sky.”
Leveraging his power in unprecedented ways, Trump was a “crypto billionaire” in May, the Wall Street Journal reported, and in August the New Yorker estimated that he had made at least $3.4 billion in profits in office through licensing and cryptocurrency deals.
No, Trump is not for you. He is for him/her.
Blue sky: @jackiecalmes
Rags: @jkcalmes
UNKNOWN: @jackiekcalmes
