The Trump Presidency Is Going Great

The Trump administration has decided that if you’re going to wage a high-stakes conflict in the Gulf while juggling global commitments, you might as well also blow up your own chain of command for fun. Enter Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth, the Fox News green-room escapee now running the Pentagon like it’s a primetime segment about “woke generals” ruining America’s God-given right to blow things up.

Secretary of the Army Dan Driscoll – the guy actually trying to modernise the force with drones and lessons from Ukraine – just resigned after repeatedly clashing with Hegseth, who responded to concerns about readiness by firing the people raising them. Driscoll joins a long line of top Army, Navy and Air Force leaders who’ve been removed or sidelined, as Hegseth “un-wokes” the military by tearing up diversity programmes, railing against “fat generals”, and scrapping “stupid” rules of engagement that mildly inconvenienced war crimes.

While Trump tries to wrest control of the Strait of Hormuz from Iran with a force increasingly cobbled together from whoever hasn’t been purged yet, retired officers warn that Hegseth has “hollowed out” leadership at the exact moment the U.S. probably needs a functioning military. One critic even compares the top-brass shake-up to Xi Jinping-style political purges – except Beijing at least pretends it’s about anti-corruption, not an emotional support culture war for a president who gets his defence policy from cable news.

Donald Trump, a man who has never met a video edit he couldn’t morally bankrupt, shared a deceptively cut clip of King Charles on Truth Social that makes it look like Charles shrugs and strolls away from a fainting worker. The full footage – the part that accidentally contains reality – shows Charles reaching out to the man and staying nearby while he gets medical attention. Naturally, that part hit the cutting-room floor, because it didn’t fit the narrative of "only Trump cares about people, roll the hero montage."

The propaganda reel then pivots into a greatest-hits compilation of Trump hugging veterans, honoring fallen troops, and shaking hands with law enforcement, like a campaign ad directed by a guy who just discovered iMovie. It’s pure authoritarian fan fiction: world leaders are callous monsters, while Trump is the lone empath wandering through Normandy. Buckingham Palace declined to comment, the White House also said nothing, and the president of the United States just kept pumping out edited reality on his personal social network like state TV with worse graphics.

This is not some harmless boomer meme; it’s the same old strongman toolkit: distort video, erase context, and flood the zone with glossy lies that recast Trump as the only moral authority on the planet. When the commander-in-chief is basically running a low-budget psy-op from his phone, you don’t have an information ecosystem, you have a cult newsletter with nuclear codes.

The lawyer for Lindsay Clancy — the Massachusetts woman accused of killing her three children — went on national TV to ask Donald Trump for a pardon, which is a bold move given that the president has zero constitutional authority over state convictions. But who can blame him for the confusion? In the Trump era, the law is less a framework and more a suggestion, like a salad section on a Cheesecake Factory menu.

This isn’t happening in a vacuum. The article notes that Colorado governor Jared Polis already “succumbed” to pressure from Trump and his cultists and cut loose Tina Peters, a convicted state-level election conspiracy enthusiast. So now we’ve reached the stage where defense attorneys openly treat Trump as a kind of roaming national parole board, hovering over state courts and juries like an orange deus ex machina. Separation of powers? Federalism? That’s adorable. We now do criminal justice by presidential mood ring on cable TV.

The president, apparently bored with losing a war in Iran and watching gas prices spike, has moved on to the truly pressing work of American governance: trying to rename New Mexico to “New America” on social media. Donald Trump posted AI-generated images of himself slapping a "New America" sticker over a "Welcome to New Mexico" sign while doing the little rally dance that screams "stable genius" and not "grandpa found the filter button." He justified it by calling New Mexico "one of the great vote cheating states of all time" and declaring that "NEW AMERICA" is more "prestigious" and "beautiful."

This is not an isolated brainwave. It’s the latest episode in Trump’s cartographic fan fiction saga, where the guy who couldn’t find Kansas on a map has already signed executive orders renaming the Gulf of Mexico to the "Gulf of America" and Lake Ontario to "Lake America" as part of his trade war cosplay with Canada. He also re-renamed Denali back to "Mount McKinley," infuriating Alaskans, including Republicans, because nothing says "respect for local sovereignty" like a Florida man in Washington deciding what Indigenous Alaska should call its tallest mountain.

New Mexico Democrats, who have apparently read their own constitution, reminded him that a president can’t just Sharpie a state’s name change into existence. Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham noted that New Mexico’s name predates the United States and pointed out that while the White House is "coloring on maps," the state is busy doing quaint socialist things like free childcare and college. Deb Haaland, running to replace her, politely translated Trump’s stunt as "my opponent is running for New America, I’m running for New Mexico," while Sen. Ben Ray Luján went with the more efficient Spanish: sinvergüenza y corrupto. Representative Melanie Stansbury dispensed with diplomacy altogether and went full "Oh hell no."

Constitutionally, of course, New Mexico keeps its name unless its own voters change their state constitution. Trump can only order federal agencies to use his made-up labels in their databases, turning official U.S. records into a kind of state-sponsored fan wiki for his culture-war fantasies. So no, he can’t erase "Mexico" from the map with a Truth Social post — but he’s doing his best to condition his base to see anything with Spanish in it as not quite American, while his administration quietly rewrites reality in federal paperwork. The maps may be fake, but the authoritarian impulse to literally rename the world to fit his grievances is very, very real.

Jamie Raskin goes on “Meet the Press” and calmly explains that impeachment isn’t some Democratic kink, it’s the only remaining fire extinguisher in a building where President Trump has literally bulldozed the East Wing. When the guy in charge is playing SimCity with a historic landmark, you start to understand why the Founders wrote in a recall option.

Raskin rattles off the highlight reel: going to war without congressional approval, stealing Congress’s spending power, treating appropriations like a personal checking account, and presiding over what he calls the most massively corrupt presidential administration in American history. Other presidents decorate the White House; Trump appears to be testing how much of it he can demolish before someone notices the separation of powers has been buried under the rubble.

Meanwhile, Democrats keep insisting their top priority is healthcare and affordability, not just adding a third impeachment trophy to Trump’s mantle of shame. Hakeem Jeffries and Jim Clyburn are out there saying, "We’re focused on making life more affordable," while Raskin politely reminds everyone that a lawless president who thinks he’s a king can also make life very unaffordable, very fast. Trump, for his part, is telling supporters that Democrats will just "find a reason" to impeach him again — as though war without authorization, wholesale looting of the Treasury, and casual White House demolition are quirky personality traits, not a running list of felonies in search of a committee hearing.

President Trump has now achieved what every aspiring strongman dreams of: his own face on government-issued money while he’s still in office. Because when you’re busy hollowing out democratic norms, why not speedrun the whole Dear Leader starter pack? NPR notes he’s the first living president to pull this stunt, which is a nice, neutral way of saying, "We usually wait until presidents are done ruling — or at least done breathing — before turning the Treasury into their personal fan club."

At the same time, he’s “reshaping Washington in his image” and leaning hard into influencing the midterms, which is a polite euphemism for rigging the board before anyone gets to play. Consolidate power, slap your face on the money, then work the elections from the bully pulpit — it’s less ‘representative democracy’ and more ‘limited-time authoritarianism beta test.’ But sure, it’s just another week in politics, not the slow-motion branding of the capital — and the country — as a subsidiary of Trump, Inc.