Extra! Extra! The grand American experiment totters on the brink of absolute ruin as Donald J. Trump erects a self-serving 'Trumpocracy' upon the sacred soil of our founders. From foreign skirmishes to tantrums in the capital, this modern Caesar flouts the ancient laws of the republic while the very climate boils. It is a grim spectacle that would strike Washington and Jefferson dumb with horror, threatening to drag the entire globe into a fiery abyss!
**THE DAILY INK-SLINGER**
*The Voice of the Republic — Late Edition*
**PRICE: TWO CENTS**
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### **EXTRA! EXTRA! THE GREAT AMERICAN TRUMPOCRACY!**
#### **Scribes Gasp at the Madness of the Age! Is Uncle Sam on the Skids?**
#### *Eighty-Year-Old Chief Plays with Fire While the Planet Boils!*
**BY TOM ENGELHARDT**
*(Editor’s Note: The author, a seasoned ink-slinger who has run the TomDispatch broadsheet for a quarter-century, co-founder of the American Empire Project and author of the highly touted Cold War history, “The End of Victory Culture,” delivers a grim dispatch on the state of our Union.)*
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**WASHINGTON, D.C.** — If a fellow had cornered you in a speakeasy a decade ago and laid out the dizzying state of our Union today, you’d have sworn he was absolutely balmy! You’d have told him to tell his troubles to Jesus and called for the men in white coats. But here we are, citizens, standing on the heels of America’s big 250th anniversary, and the picture ain’t pretty.
Let’s look at the ledger. Two and a half centuries ago, when the Founders drew up the big paperwork, Uncle Sam was a slave-owning operation. Old John Adams was the only odd duck in the bunch who didn't keep folks in chains, while Washington, Jefferson, Madison, and Monroe had mansions full of unpaid labor. So, let’s give our current Chief, Donald J. Trump, his due: at least he isn’t buying and selling folks. But by Jove, that is the absolute peak of his praises!
#### **A TEMPER LIKE A STEAM ENGINE!**
Who could have guessed the American public would re-elect a fella who, back in ’17, gave Montenegro’s Prime Minister Duško Marković the old heave-ho just to elbow his way to the front of a photo line? This is the very same hot-headed gent who threw a genuine conniption fit in the White House, tossing his lunch—ketchup and all—right at the parlor wall because his Attorney General wouldn’t play ball with his tall tales about the 1920—pardon me, 2020—election!
And look at the international rackets he’s run in less than two years of his second stretch in the Big House! He’s swiped Venezuela’s head of state, tried to buy Greenland like it was a cheap suit, prepped for a scrap with Cuba, and sent ships to Davy Jones' locker in the Caribbean and Pacific. He’s ordered a dizzying number of airstrikes in Somalia and started a proxy war with Iran that has put the global greenback on the blink. What kind of wild caper will he pull in the next two years? It’s enough to give a straight-shooting citizen the jitters!
#### **HIGH SOCIETY AND THE 80-YEAR-OLD CHIEF**
What would George Washington make of this boorish behavior? Would the Founders rub elbows with the high-hats at Mar-a-Lago? Perhaps they’d spot Elon Musk—whose run as a trillionaire lasted about as long as a cheap cigar—lurking near the punch bowl.
Just recently, the White House lawn was host to a real sockdolager! Trump, Melania, the kids, and a pack of blood-sport-loving fat cats gathered to watch pugilists go toe-to-toe in a mixed martial arts spectacle to honor the Chief's "250th" birthday. Of course, Trump is actually a youthful eighty—making him the oldest geezer to ever hold the gavel in Washington, though there are plenty of older codgers running foreign syndicates.
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#### **THE "TRUMPOCRACY" RACKET**
If the Founders came back to life, they’d ask: "What kind of -ocracy is this?"
The answer, folks, is applesauce to democracy! It’s a *Trumpocracy*—a racket run by Trump, for Trump, to line the pockets of his favorite palookas. And the man is vengeful! Why, just last year on his "Truth Social" rag, he posted a phony moving picture of former Chief Barack Obama being pinched in the Oval Office and thrown into the slammer while Trump grins like a Cheshire cat. A Black man seized and put in chains in a house built by slave labor? Now there's a dark callback to the old days that Washington and Jefferson would recognize in a heartbeat.
Indeed, if the Founders could see this circus, they might have begged King George III to take us back!
#### **IS THE PLANET ON THE BOIL?**
The rural folks in the heartland—once Trump’s most loyal voters—finally seem to think he’s a flat tire, as his support there is hitting the skids. But the clock is ticking. Will the Republic survive another two and a half years? Will the globe?
The Chief is already hinting he won't give up the driver's seat. "Should we do it a fourth time?" he asked a crowd of Iowa rubes, completely ignoring the two-term limit that George Washington himself set down.
If he doesn't take the country down, he might just take the planet. While this reporter sits here sweating in 100-degree July heat, the Chief calls the changing climate "the greatest con job" and a "green scam." He’s ready to stoke the global furnace until we’re all boiled dinners.
The forecast? Hotter, and hotter, and hotter—and there ain’t a drop of bootleg gin in the world cold enough to cure this fever!