Welcome back to Trump Trolls Trump, where the lies, corruption, grift, incompetence, and increasingly bizarre delusions continue piling up around somebody named Donald Jeffrey Epstein Trump. Once again, Donald reminds us that the fastest way to expose authoritarianism is not through fear, but through ridicule.
We have now reached Week 80, and somehow it has been 558 interminable days since Donald’s second occupation of the Oval Office began on January 20, 2025. You would think that by now we would have reached the limit of the absurdity. Instead, every week Donald somehow discovers entirely new ways to embarrass himself and, unfortunately, the rest of the country.
Let’s begin with one of Donald’s favorite talking points.
Apparently, America is now “the hottest country in the world.”
Donald: In just 18 months, we’ve turned this country completely around. The king of Saudi Arabia said to me a year ago, “Your country was dead and now you’ve got the hottest country anywhere in the world.” Today we are the hottest country anywhere in the world. Everybody respects us. Our country was laughed at from all over the world. They’re not laughing anymore.
I’m not laughing.
Trust me, though, everybody else certainly is.
I honestly do not know what Donald means when he says America is “the hottest country in the world.” What exactly are the criteria for determining something like that? Is there a ranking somewhere? Did somebody issue certificates? Metaphorically speaking, it makes no sense whatsoever.
On the other hand, if Donald, his billionaire oil executives, and the fossil fuel industry continue getting exactly what they want, perhaps America really will become the hottest country in the world.
Literally.
That may be the only prediction Donald ever gets right.
If you thought that opening display of complete detachment from reality was impressive, what happened next somehow managed to be even more revealing.
Donald visited Michigan this week and climbed into a Cadillac.
Now, ordinarily, watching somebody get into a car would not qualify as breaking news.
Except Donald did not get into the driver’s seat.
He climbed directly into the back seat.
That tells us something.
Donald has no intention whatsoever of driving that vehicle himself because people like Donald do not drive. They are driven. His instinct was to occupy the seat reserved for people who expect somebody else to do the work while they enjoy the ride.
It is a surprisingly revealing image because it perfectly captures the way Donald governs.
He tells us that over the last eighteen months he has completely turned the country around. In one sense, I suppose that is true. Eighteen months ago, Fortune magazine described the American economy as the “envy of the world.” Today that description no longer applies. Instead of leading the world, we are all sitting in the back seat alongside Donald while our national chauffeur drives the United States directly toward a cliff.
Later in the week, Donald visited Environmental Protection Agency headquarters to announce what was supposed to be an expansion of his so called Ratepayer Protection Pledge. Of course, no Donald Trump speech has ever remained on topic for very long. Teleprompters are optional. Coherent thoughts are apparently optional as well.
Before long, Donald was once again warning America about communists.
Not because communism suddenly poses an actual threat to the country, but because Donald continues to recycle the same tired Cold War rhetoric he has been repeating for decades. He talks about communism, socialism, Marxism, and democracy almost interchangeably, despite giving every indication that he understands none of them.
There is, however, one word he understands perfectly well.
Losers.
Donald: We have to stop the threat of the communist rhetoric that you’re hearing right now because these people, they don’t act. I’m very happy a poll came out and said they’re highly educated, but doing very poorly. In other words, they’re losers.
There he goes again.
Looking in the mirror.
Donald and the Republican Party continue warning Americans that communists are about to take over the country. According to them, if Democrats win elections, America will somehow cease to exist. It remains one of their favorite scare tactics, despite the complete lack of evidence supporting any of it.
The performance continued Friday morning when Maria Bartiromo interviewed White House National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett. Bartiromo asked a remarkably straightforward question. What does he see as the single greatest threat facing the American economy for the remainder of 2026?
One might reasonably expect answers involving inflation, labor shortages, growing deficits, tariffs, or financial instability.
Kevin Hassett: I think the biggest risk facing the US economy right now is that these socialist communist Democrats actually have a big victory and can start to have their policies be pursued by local governments and even perhaps the federal government because they really are looking at kind of a communist takeover of America. And if markets start to think that those people are going to be successful, then there’s going to be a lot of pain in markets. I think that’s the biggest risk right now.
Maria Bartiromo responded by calling it “a great point.”
No.
It was not a great point.
First of all, “socialist communist” is not a meaningful political category. Socialism and communism are entirely different systems. Lumping them together simply demonstrates either profound ignorance or deliberate propaganda.
More importantly, we are apparently expected to believe that the greatest threat facing the American economy is not Donald’s reckless tariff policies, the possibility of an AI market bubble, growing wealth inequality, soaring deficits, or any of the actual structural challenges economists discuss every day.
No.
According to Kevin Hassett, the greatest threat is apparently some imaginary communist sitting in a restaurant eating borscht and plotting the downfall of capitalism.
That would almost be funny if the people saying these things were not responsible for running the country.
Instead, it is simply another reminder that this administration prefers imaginary enemies to real problems because solving real problems would require competence.
Fear, on the other hand, is much easier.
Speaking of tariffs, we know Donald loves them. More accurately, he loves announcing them recklessly, threatening them indiscriminately, and talking about them as though they are some magical economic tool, despite repeatedly demonstrating that he still does not understand how they actually work.
That became painfully obvious once again during an Oval Office appearance this week, when Donald decided that sanctions apparently were not enough.
Donald: I’d like them to add Iran as tariffs, not just as sanctions. I think it’s important. That’s what Lindsey wanted because I heard that they have tariffs on Russia, but not on those five countries with having to do with Iran. I’d like to see tariffs on Iran.
On what?
Seriously.
What exactly does Donald believe Iran is exporting to the United States that is waiting to be tariffed?
Perhaps his next great economic strategy is for Iran to begin exporting all of the nuclear material he insists we have already destroyed. At least then there would be something to tax.
The remarkable thing is that this confusion is not new. Donald has spent years talking about tariffs while repeatedly revealing that he believes they are something other countries pay as punishment rather than taxes that ultimately increase costs for American businesses and consumers. Every time he discusses them, he manages to reinforce the fact that he still does not understand one of the central pillars of his own economic agenda.
Later this week, Donald convened what has become another regular feature of his presidency, his thirteenth vanity cabinet meeting of his second term. By now we have all become accustomed to the mathematically impossible claims surrounding his supposed prescription drug initiative. Depending on the day, prices have fallen by 600 percent, 800 percent, even 1,500 percent.
I am still waiting for my million-dollar refund on my inhaler.
But because consistency has never been one of Donald’s strengths, the story changed once again.
Apparently, the reason his imaginary healthcare miracle worked is because European governments simply agreed to raise drug prices for their own citizens.
Naturally.
Before you read what follows, it is important to remember one thing.
These conversations never happened.
They exist entirely inside Donald’s imagination.
Donald: And the drug companies agreed because they knew the countries wouldn’t agree. And when I called Germany, France, when I called the UK, when I called all of these countries, I said, “You got to do it. It’s unfair. We’re paying 10 times more than you’re paying for the same drug. You can’t do this.” And they said, “Well, we’re not going to do that because we’re going to have to double our price in order to make you happy.” I said, “No, maybe you wouldn’t have to triple your price.” They said, “Well, we can’t do it.” I said, “That’s all right. If you can’t do it, then I can’t do something also. And I’m going to charge you very substantial tariffs, which are far more than we’re talking about.” And they all said, “We’d love to do it. We would like to do it. It’d be our great honor to do it. So nobody else would do this. This would’ve never happened.”
The sheer intricacy of these delusions would almost be fascinating if they were not coming from the President of the United States.
According to Donald’s version of events, Germany, France, and the United Kingdom all enthusiastically volunteered to make prescription drugs dramatically more expensive for their own citizens simply to accommodate the uniquely dysfunctional American healthcare system.
Apparently every European leader responded by saying it would be “their great honor” to impoverish their own people because Donald demanded it.
That is not diplomacy.
That is fantasy.
It also reveals something much deeper about the way Donald sees the world. Every imagined conversation ends exactly the same way. Foreign leaders resist him briefly before immediately recognizing his greatness, praising his brilliance, and happily giving him everything he wants. Reality never intrudes because, inside Donald’s imagination, it never has to.
Unfortunately, the man entertaining these increasingly elaborate fantasies is also responsible for making decisions that affect hundreds of millions of people.
That is what makes all of this so unsettling.
We are no longer talking about ordinary political exaggeration.
We are watching someone construct an entirely fictional version of international diplomacy and then present it as though it actually happened.
And somehow, there are still people willing to applaud.
As though the week’s economic fantasy tour had not already reached peak absurdity, there was one final reminder that the Trump regime remains as committed as ever to punishing critics while shielding its own.
On a lighter note, at least for everyone except FBI Director Kash Patel, a federal judge dismissed Patel’s $10 million defamation lawsuit against blogger Jim Stewartson.
The lawsuit itself was extraordinary, not because it exposed some grave injustice, but because it attempted to transform political ridicule into a legal cause of action.
This is what Jim Stewartson wrote about Kash Patel:
Patel is a blatantly incompetent chud and a Kremlin asset who plotted to overthrow the government on January 6, 2021.
Patel argued that those statements were defamatory.
There was, however, one rather significant problem with Patel’s legal argument. Defamation law does not exist to protect public officials from criticism or ridicule. It certainly does not exist to insulate politicians from opinions people happen to find insulting. As the court recognized, it is not defamation if the statements at issue are substantially true or constitute protected opinion.
That must have been an exceptionally disappointing realization for someone serving in an administration that seems increasingly convinced the First Amendment exists only for people who agree with them.
The irony, of course, is impossible to ignore. This is a movement that constantly insists Americans are victims of censorship whenever somebody criticizes them, yet repeatedly attempts to weaponize the legal system against journalists, commentators, comedians, private citizens, and anyone else willing to point out the obvious.
It is difficult to imagine a clearer illustration of authoritarian fragility. These are people who desperately want to project strength while proving, over and over again, just how incapable they are of tolerating even the mildest criticism.
And that brings us back to why Trump Trolls Trump exists in the first place.
Authoritarian movements depend upon spectacle. They depend upon intimidation. They depend upon convincing people that those in power are larger than life, beyond criticism, and inevitable.
Donald and the people surrounding him spend enormous amounts of time trying to cultivate precisely that image. They want Americans to believe they are powerful, infallible, and untouchable.
They are none of those things.
They are insecure people who lash out whenever reality refuses to cooperate with the mythology they have constructed around themselves. Every lawsuit against critics, every imaginary conversation with foreign leaders, every impossible economic statistic, and every invented triumph reveals exactly the opposite of what they intend.
It reveals weakness.
That is why ridicule matters.
Mockery strips away the mythology. It reminds us that beneath all of the pageantry, self-congratulation, and manufactured outrage are profoundly insecure people whose greatest fear is being laughed at.
They deserve to be held accountable for the damage they continue to inflict on this country. They also deserve to be ridiculed whenever they hand us material this absurd because, week after week, they continue proving that nobody trolls Donald Trump more effectively than Donald Trump himself.
Thank you so much for joining me for Trump Trolls Trump.
Remember, mockery remains one of our greatest superpowers. We will be back next week to continue ridiculing this profoundly inept, corrupt, and dangerous administration because, as always, they simply cannot help themselves.
They keep giving us more material than we could ever ask for.
No , the President is right for once. America is now “the hottest country in the world.”owing to global warming
He's an asshat.