The King Is Mad But So Are His Subjects
An unpleasant reality
Donald Trump posted an unhinged, even for him, message on Easter Sunday:
Tuesday will be Power Plant Day, and Bridge Day, all wrapped up in one, in Iran. There will be nothing like it!!! Open the Fuckin’ Strait, you crazy bastards, or you’ll be living in Hell - JUST WATCH! Praise be to Allah. President DONALD J. TRUMP
He followed that with a more bonkers message on Tuesday, when he threatened genocide as casually as someone ordering a pizza: “A whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again. I don’t want that to happen, but it probably will. However, now that we have Complete and Total Regime Change, where different, smarter, and less radicalized minds prevail, maybe something.”
I’m writing this a few days in advance, but it’s safe to say that Trump was not immediately removed from office and institutionalized. I’m also assuming that we all survived “Power Plant Day” and Trump didn’t launch nukes in a fit of rage, like President Woody Boyd in Frasier’s nightmare from Cheers. (Watch below.)
I’ve often called Trump a “mad king,” but that’s not entirely fair to kings, even the historically insane ones. After all, you can actually depose a king — especially one as old, withered, and mentally grotesque as Trump. Ludwig II, King of Bavaria, was known as the Swan King, the Fairy Tale King, and the Mad King. These were not flattering titles. Ludwig avoided actual leadership duties and wasted his time and money on vainglorious artistic and architectural projects, including lavish palaces. However, Ludwig’s courtiers don’t just clomp around in ill-fitting shoes. They presented his insane actions as proof of his insanity. He was removed from power and possibly murdered (his death was officially ruled a suicide).
Alas, we are seemingly stuck with Trump. That’s become the Republican Party still enables him, despite all his crimes and obvious madness. His approval rating keeps sinking but he maintains almost unwavering support among Republicans, who hate liberals more than they worry about their kids dying in the shadow of a mushroom cloud.
Self-proclaimed “Christian broadcaster” and “conservative truth teller” Erick Erickson expressed his disappointment with Trump’s insane post in a typically anti-anti Trump fashion: “Look, I don’t think it’s appropriate. Wish he hadn’t. But if I have to choose between this and Trans Recognition Day or whatever on Easter, okay.”
Two years ago, the Biden White House posted a polite acknowledgement of the Trans Day of Visibility, which coincidentally fell on Easter and The Matrix Release Day. Erickson openly prefers a president who spends Easter instead threatening to blow up Iran and indiscriminately kill millions of people. As Nietzsche said, “How evangelical!”
Erickson’s remarks reinforce my quibble with the “No Kings” protest. The problem isn’t just that Trump behaves like a mad king. The problem is that millions of Americans want to see him in a crown. (Watch below.)
Democratic Michigan Sen. Elissa Slotkin argued last year that “no kings” is easier for her constituents to understand than “no oligarchs,” but she is focused on the superficial image of a king in frilly clothing wearing a crown. King Charles can’t unilaterally gut Britain’s foreign aid or start wars with nations that looked at him funny, and if he tried, it probably meant the end for the Royal Family.
King Charles actually obeys norms and separation of powers. He has respect for institutions. He’s also not completely insane, but if he were, there is precedent for swift action against a deranged king.
Vice President JD Vance is reportedly skulking about, biding his time until 2028. That is the extent of any “palace intrigue.” His wife, of her own volition, Usha Vance is doing her best to make her husband look like a mammal — “somebody that drinks water and breathes air.” During a Fox News interview with Kayleigh McEnany, Usha Vance said she wished more people knew that Vance is “just the nicest, funniest guy.”
Usha Vance said all this without bursting into flame, thus proving there is no moral order to the universe: “He’s really just a wonderful person to be around, and our children, our family has so much more joy because he is a part of it,” she rambled. “I wish that people saw more of that.”
No one can see this, because anyone with functional human senses will perceive JD Vance as a malicious bully who lies without hesitation. Perhaps shameless deceit is what the Vances have in common.
If Vance became president tomorrow, the free world would celebrate but only because it would mean Trump has died and there’s one less vacancy in hell. Still, Vance could easily overthrow Trump, and he wouldn’t need an army — just the 25th Amendment. He convinces a majority of the Cabinet to declare that Trump is “unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office,” which is obvious from listening to his words or, worse, looking at him. Trump would obviously object, but Vance and the Cabinet could counter his “nuh uh” with a firm “uh huh.” Then Congress would decide, and Trump’s madness is about to cost Republicans the House and force them to put pants on and actually defend Senate seats in Alaska and Texas. Still, it seems unlikely when Trump’s taken the precaution of staffing his Cabinet with spineless weasels.
Impeachment and removal is more straightforward and easier than the 25th Amendment emergency option. That would require a majority in the House and a two-thirds majority in the Senate (as opposed to a two-thirds majority in both chambers of Congress). The latter seems like a reach, but there are at least 47 Democratic/independent votes for removal (46 if you exclude John Fetterman, MAGA’s new best friend). Vance just needs around 20 Republicans to say “enough already.” Republicans would have a better chance of holding the White House in 2028 if Trump were no longer president, just as we’d all have a better chance of actually seeing 2028.
Trump is not a constitutional monarch. There is no reason Republicans should have such loyalty to him. Incredibly, polls show that Democrats are not significantly more popular or trusted than Republicans. However, Trump is such a political anchor, he will drag most of them to a crushing defeat in November.
This is why some people suggest that the GOP has become a cult of personality, wholly devoted to a leader whose entire personality is toxic. Yet, if you believe what some Senate Democrats say about their Republican colleagues, they are not true believers of the MAGA cult. They act as they do because they believe it’s in their political and personal best interest. (Watch below.)
“There are really good people in the Senate on both sides of the aisle,” Cory Booker said last month because it’s always sunny in his West Wing fantasy world. “I have these private conversations with my colleagues about what's wrong. But they're afraid or unwilling to say these things publicly. And that is the crisis that we’re in. It’s a crisis of conviction.”
Booker is unclear on why Senate Republicans are so afraid to defy Trump. He did famously stir up a lynch mob against his first vice president, but if Republicans are afraid of blowing up in their cars like Appolonia Corleone, that’s a serious indictment of MAGA voters. And if they’re worried about losing their cushy, do-nothing jobs in a primary challenge, like Dan Crenshaw and soon John Cornyn, that’s just as damning. It means that no matter how low Trump goes — how much he tanks the economy, destabilizes the world, and makes us dread reading the news on Easter Sunday, the United States of MAGA will keep demanding more.
It’s almost better if Trump were a king. A democratically supported tyrant is far worse.
trump may be mad, but he's also an evil moron, and has always been. It's worse now if he's truly mad, or has dementia, or both. George III went mad, but he lost the American colonies before he went mad, and when he was mad, he didn't start any wars - it was Napoleon who did that. Besides, George III was put away and his oldest son, Prince George, became regent, because the British Parliament and the royal family weren't as spineless and as stupid as today's American Congress and trump regime are.
That trump is both stupid and evil, and has surrounded himself with stupid and evil people needs to be emphasized more because it explains why we can't get rid of him.
Someone should tell Cory Booker that if his colleagues were "good people" then they would not refuse to speak up and say what they really believe about Trump. That they don't is evidence that they are not, in fact, good people. Evil is as evil does, to paraphrase Forrest Gump's mom.