Why? Because they are just like him — ignorant of the rest of the world; ignorant of their own history; selfish; bigoted; mean; phony “Christians;” gullible.
What was certain was that, by the end of 2025, Trump did not seem to be acting crazy like a fox: he just, by that point, seemed crazy, period. Or more precisely, he seemed in the grip of a kind of demented megalomania, which inspired him to do things such as demand that Washington D.C.’s NFL team name its soon to be constructed $3.5 billion stadium after him, or risk losing the federal subsidies helping to finance the project (“Imagine if Obama . . . “). Nor did any of this seem to be part of some sort of kayfabe or schtick: he simply appeared to have become even more stupid than formerly, as creeping dementia merged with a lifetime of ignorance and laziness, and a coterie of Rasputin-like courtiers swept into the White House to take advantage of their boss’s deteriorating state.
Indeed, by the concluding days of the first year of his second term, Trump’s speech and behavior had become so consistently bizarre that numerous observers began to wonder publicly if the regular bruising that appeared on his hands, which he often tried to disguise with makeup, might indicate that he was being given the new generation of intravenous drugs, that slow the progress of the Alzheimer’s disease he may well have inherited from his father. (In his final years, as he slid further and further into dementia, Fred Trump was sometimes given fake contracts to sign, to distract him from the terrible fate that had befallen him.)
As 2026 began, it was evident that similar measures might have to be taken with the president of the United States, before the expiration of his second, and hopefully final, term — although already some especially shameless enablers, such as Harvard Law School professor emeritus Alan Dershowitz, were busily concocting purported legal workarounds, to allow Trump to remain in office beyond 2029.
Trump’s boasting that he had “aced” yet another dementia test – at least the third such test his doctors had given him during his first year in office – only added to the surreal atmosphere surrounding his obviously deteriorating cognitive condition. That atmosphere took an even more surreal turn the very next day, when Trump announced he had ordered an invasion of Venezuela to kidnap the country’s president and his wife, because the president wasn’t really the president, but rather the head of a drug cartel. (This action took place just a few weeks after Trump pardoned the former president of Honduras, who had been sentenced to 45 years in federal prison for moving tons of cocaine into the US). He then announced that the United States was going to occupy the country indefinitely, while US oil companies extracted what his advisor Stephen Miller characterized as oil that had been “stolen” from America.
A few days later, in the midst of threatening to annex Greenland by military force, Trump hosted Venezuelan opposition leader Maria Corina Machado, and humbly accepted her purported transfer of the 2025 Nobel Peace Prize to him, as she handed him a medal symbolizing the prize. Nobel winners are given several gold-plated replica medals to go along with the “real,” solid gold medal they are awarded, and it was unclear which medal Machado gave Trump. What was clear was that Trump had ordered the invasion of Venezuela in large part to extort the Nobel Peace Prize from Machado, and for a moment it seemed he was both sufficiently childish and demented that he believed this pathetic farce did in fact magically transform him into the Nobel Peace Prize winner he so desperately longed to be.
That illusion was shattered a few days later when, on the eve of the first anniversary of his second presidency, Trump sent the following letter to the prime minster of Norway:
Dear Jonas: Considering your Country decided not to give me the Nobel Peace Prize [Nobel prizes are awarded by an independent committee that has no connection to the Norwegian government] for having stopped 8 Wars PLUS, I no longer feel an obligation to think purely of Peace, although it will always be predominant, but can now think about what is good and proper for the United States of America. Denmark [Denmark and Norway are different countries] cannot protect that land from Russia or China, and why do they have a “right of ownership” anyway? There are no written documents, [the United States signed multiple treaties many decades ago recognizing Denmark’s sovereignty over Greenland] it’s only a boat that landed there hundreds of years ago, but we had boats landing there also. I have done more for NATO than any other person since its founding, and now, NATO should do something for the United States. The World is not secure unless we have Complete and Total Control of Greenland. Thank you! President DTJ.
The theme that ties together this year-long adventure in various forms of deranged absurdity and flagrant criminality is this: We who are horrified witnesses to Trump and Trumpism have come to understand exactly why his most fanatical supporters love him – because he’s just like them.