A Morning in 'MAGA Mao’s' Cultural Revolution

Sipping Coffee While Surveying the Wreckage

Voters didn’t sign up for MAGA Mao. Trump promised Project America and instead we got Project 2025, the 900-page authoritarian plan to remake our country. The radical deconstruction of our nation has been so extreme, that even restrained voices, like CNN’s Fareed Zakaria, have compared Trump to the Chinese dictator.

“The fury with which the Trump administration has turned on academia resembles nothing so much as the early days of the Cultural Revolution, when an increasingly paranoid Mao Zedong smashed China’s established universities, a madness that took generations to remedy.”

It’s stunning how much damage this cult of political vandals does on an average day. While sipping my Monday morning coffee, here is what I learned MAGA did to my country:

Attacked Social Security: We knew this was coming when Elon Musk said last week that Social Security was a Ponzi Scheme. Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) has already slashed 12 percent of the Social Security Administration’s already overtasked workforce, at a time staffing is at a 50-year low.

“Everything they have done so far is breaking the agency’s ability to serve the public,” said Martin O’Malley, the former Social Security commissioner.

“It’s more like a drunk operating a wrecking ball,” said Jason Fichtner, who is the SSA’s former deputy commissioner and chief economist. (Maybe this was the right job for resident MAGA drunkard Pete Hegseth?)

Angela Digeronimo, a claims specialist who has been with Social Security for 28 years, told the New York Times she believed she was witnessing a dismantling of the agency.

Tuberculous is Back: The Atlantic wrote, “Now, as the Trump administration decimates foreign-aid programs, the U.S. is both making survival less likely for people with TB and risking the disease becoming far more treatment-resistant. After decades of improvement, we could return to something more like the world before the cure.”

(Just when we were getting used to Robert F. Kennedy’s reintroduction of measles and polio, we now must contend with TB. Perhaps, this is all a warm-up act for Ebola?)

Late Night Pardon Rant: The Huffington Post reports that on Truth Social, President Trump maniacally declared that Joe Biden’s recent pardons were, “VOID, VACANT, AND OF NO FURTHER FORCE OR EFFECT” because they were signed with an autopen. Trump implied that Biden was senile, and others were taking advantage of him. “In other words, Joe Biden did not sign them but, more importantly, he did not know anything about them,” wrote Trump.

(If we still lived in a real country, Trump would be impeached or removed with the 25^th Amendment. Then, he would be whisked away to the funny farm to live out his final days wearing a straitjacket in a padded room.)

Trump Disobeys Judge: Trump invoked the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 to deport Venezuelans, accused of being gang members, to brutal prisons in El Salvador. The Alien Enemies Act is shamefully notorious for its role in the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II.

Judge James Boasberg, of the Federal District Court in Washington, issued a temporary restraining order blocking the government from deporting any immigrants under the 18^th Century law. He also ordered that any flights that had departed with Venezuelan immigrants under the executive order return to the United States “however that’s accomplished — whether turning around the plane or not.”

Trump imperiously ignored the judge, creating a fresh constitutional crisis. His press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, unilaterally declared the courts “have no jurisdiction” over the matter. MAGA influencer Charlie Kirk wrote on X that this was, “A long overdue standoff with rogue district court judges.”

(I’m not sure who the hell these arrogant, lawless MAGA goons think they are. But if Trump can defy court orders, we can defy the president. It works both ways. All Trump’s legitimacy rests on his following the constitutional order. We don’t have kings in America.)

Voice of America Silenced: In yet his latest ode to dictators everywhere, Trump shut down Voice of America. This beacon of light shined truth into the darkest corners of the world, which is why Trump hated it.

Columnist Max Boot wrote in The Washington Post, “VOA and its affiliates reach 420 million people in 63 languages and more than 100 countries each week. Many of those people live in despotic countries such as China, Russia, Iran, North Korea and Venezuela, where they have no other independent sources of information.” Instead of broadcasting news, VOA’s radio frequencies now creepily play music, like a dystopian nightmare from behind the Iron Curtain.

The human rights organization Freedom House is also facing severe cuts. This is a group that, “provides vital assistance to activists persecuted by tyrannical regimes around the world.”

(It might be better if VOA isn’t revived, given that MAGA extremist Kari Lake may be confirmed as its director. Project 2025 stalwart, L. Brent Bozell III, has been tapped to be the chief executive for VOA’s parent, the U.S. Agency for Global Media)

Angry Podcasters Take Over FBI: Two “Quislings from Queens”, Kash Patel and his deputy Dan Bongino, are now running the FBI. Together, the right wing bloviators have the least experience of any leadership pair running the F.B.I. since its founding more than a century ago. The New York Times wrote, “The past five deputy directors had spent an average of more than 20 years in the bureau. Mr. Bongino, by contrast, has never been an F.B.I. agent.

These Keystone Cops might not protect Americans from the next terrorist attack, but at least Amateur Hour at the FBI will be fun. The Times said, “In a videoconference with senior agents, Patel said that he would like the F.B.I. to partner with the Ultimate Fighting Championship, the popular mixed martial arts company, and that he was not big on meetings or wearing suits.”

(Patel also plans to spend half his time at his home in Las Vegas, where this incompetent right-wing firebrand will gamble with our nation’s safety.)

Nuclear Monitors Gone: Trump and Musk got rid of at least a hundred key employees who played critically important roles in looking after 3,748 nuclear bombs and warheads.

(What could go wrong? And if it does, MAGA’s subserviant media will surely give Dear Leader “glowing” reviews)

Pentagon Agency Closed: The conservative Wall Street Journal editorial board slammed Trump and Hegseth for closing the Office of Net Assessment. The agency is a think tank that played a key role in winning the Cold War. Its role was to assess tomorrow’s military threats so the Pentagon could build systems to win future wars. A livid Wall Street Journal opined, “Perhaps the Administration has a plan beyond taking a wrecking ball to the office. But the Trump crowd is making no sustained argument about how it plans to deter—or win—a future conflict.”

(Always remember, every action Trump takes weakens America and benefits Russia’s Vladimir Putin)

The Rose Garden: The real estate tycoon is importing his vulgar tastes to Washington. CNN’s Kaitlan Collins reported that Trump, “shipped golden cherub decorations from Mar-a-Lago to the White House and plans to ‘pave over’ the grass in the Rose Garden to make it resemble the patio at his Florida resort home.”

(Trump is determined to Make America Tacky Again)

***

Each one of these items, save the Rose Garden, is unpatriotic, alarming and scandalous. That they all occurred before I could finish my morning coffee shows Trump’s obsession with decimating everything good and decent in America.

The good news is that Trump is beginning to experience political gravity. Republican pollster, Kristen Soltis Anderson, wrote:

Mr. Trump seems to view his job differently than many voters, which is one reason for his falling poll numbers…as I dug into Mr. Trump’s polling data, it looked increasingly that American voters’ mandate to the president was more narrow than he sees it.

And there is increasing evidence in public opinion data that Americans are growing impatient to get the primary thing they feel they were promised: a more stable economy where the cost of living is more affordable.

NBC News offered a similar view:

Majorities of voters disapprove of Trump’s early job performance on the economy (54% disapprove, 44% approve) and how he’s handling inflation and the cost of living (55% disapprove, 42% approve).

It’s a new development for Trump, who never previously had a majority against his handling of the economy in a national NBC News poll.

Trump won the election because he was seen as the “change” candidate. However, key swing voters wanted revisions to the status quo, not a right-wing Maoist-style revolution.

If Trump keeps smashing norms, disobeying court orders, wrecking the economy and blowing up institutions, at such a rapid pace, the American people will come to realize they are living in the ruins of a once great nation.

If the president wants a glimpse of his future, he should watch last week’s enormous protests in Hungary and Serbia against authoritarian leaders. Trump will eventually learn that he’s not the emperor and the people have the ultimate veto.