It’s real­ly shock­ing to me how many peo­ple on both sides think 47 is not going to do just EXACTLY what he says he’s going to do. They just keep think­ing THEIR water’s edge will be HIS water’s edge.

And it won’t.

Both buyer’s‑remorse con­ser­v­a­tives get­ting their faces leop­ard-eat­en because they thought they were at the top of the social hier­ar­chy AND the “Stop over­re­act­ing” white dudes with sur­prised Pikachu faces every. sin­gle. fuck­ing. time. ALL of them are proven wrong about what they mansplain/whitesplain/cissplain to mar­gin­al­ized peo­ple that 47 can’t or won’t do.

They ALL seem to labor under the same assump­tion: he can’t/won’t/wouldn’t/couldn’t do “THAT.”

But actu­al­ly, he telegraphs every sin­gle move. Exact­ly. Pre­cise­ly.

I mean, he lies. So, there’s that. If his mouth is mov­ing, he’s lying. This is a guy who says he’s taller than Oba­ma (he’s not), used a Sharpie on a Nation­al Weath­er Ser­vice info­graph­ic because he insist­ed a hur­ri­cane was going to make impact­ful land­fall in Alaba­ma (it was­n’t, and did­n’t), and that he was a peace­keep­er. And, of course, he says he has­n’t even HEARD of the play­book lit­er­al­ly put for­ward by his own peo­ple for exact­ly what THE EXECUTIVE BRANCH intends to do to keep lib­er­als from even being a road­block to oli­garchi­cal and big­ot­ed agen­das in per­pe­tu­ity.

Even though he only men­tioned his igno­rance of Project 2025 once he found out it was wild­ly unpop­u­lar even on the right, and despite the fact that to even REMOTELY believe that bull­shit, you would have to accept that a bunch of trust­ed advi­sors and aides sur­round­ing him dur­ing his cam­paign did­n’t run their GRAND plan past the ONE per­son that was absolute­ly inte­gral to its suc­cess with so much as a, “This cool with you?” But sure. He nev­er heard of it. Right.

But he IS a liar. That’s demon­stra­bly true with­out even break­ing a sweat. He said he’d build a wall and did­n’t. He says he’s got the most beau­ti­ful plan for health­care (con­cepts of a plan?) and does­n’t have the first clue where to even begin. He says he won golf tour­na­ments he did­n’t. That he near­ly board­ed heli­copters he did­n’t. That he saw things he could­n’t have. That peo­ple said things to him who did­n’t. He lies about not real­ly know­ing Michael Cohen. The prove­nance of his art. The size of his… inau­gu­ra­tion. He breaks promis­es. He claims he’s the smartest per­son on Earth and makes up peo­ple who think so. He says he’s the health­i­est per­son to have ever exist­ed, even as he is cov­ered in bruis­es and angry splotch­es.

He’s just… a liar.

So, I can see there being some con­fu­sion about what truth even MEANS to a per­son like this—if he even has enough of a sense of real­i­ty to express truth. I can see why some­one who had­n’t been through four years of Trump might believe he was full of piss and wind. Like maybe noth­ing he says can be trust­ed, so why trust his threats against mar­gin­al­ized com­mu­ni­ties?

But there are pat­terns to his “alter­na­tive facts.” He also floats polit­i­cal ideas as throw­away state­ments and then starts bang­ing on them if he does­n’t get push­back. He has the “tells” of a shit­ty pok­er play­er. He uses not-at-all-slick cod­ed lan­guage to couch his racism and big­otry, most recent­ly say­ing DEI when he means non-white or women or dis­abled or non-cishet.

And it’s real­ly clear, after you watch him for a while, who he’s about to go after.

He showed us exact­ly who he was nine years ago when he was run­ning. He told us who he want­ed to hurt. He told us who he hat­ed and who he was pissed off at. He told us how impor­tant it was to hurt them. He revealed his racism over and over again. Then, for four years, he nev­er wavered in being exact­ly the per­son he showed us he would be. His absolute dis­con­nec­tion with the truth became the per­fect tab­u­la rasa on which a the right and mod­er­ates could project their OWN “water’s edge. By hav­ing no truth, every­one assumed Trump’s truth was their truth.

But they were wrong.

They said he would dis­close his finan­cial records. They were wrong.
They said he would­n’t go after Roe v. Wade. They were wrong.
They said he would­n’t have a major impact on the Supreme Court. They were wrong. (He got three appoint­ments.)
They said the CIA would nev­er “let” him do any REAL dam­age to nation­al secu­ri­ty. They were wrong.
They said he would­n’t give mas­sive tax cuts to the rich. They were wrong.
They said he would­n’t send the mil­i­tary into space. They were wrong.
They said he would take a glob­al pan­dem­ic seri­ous­ly. They were wrong.
They said he would­n’t con­test the results of a demo­c­ra­t­ic elec­tion. They were wrong.
They said he would­n’t leak secrets to Rus­sia. They were wrong.
They said he would­n’t run the pres­i­den­cy for his per­son­al prof­it. They were wrong.
They said he COULDN’T politi­cize the Depart­ment of Jus­tice. They were wrong.
They said he could­n’t bla­tant­ly obstruct the Muller inves­ti­ga­tion. They were wrong.
They said he would­n’t par­don peo­ple who had attacked police and staged an insur­rec­tion. They were wrong.
They said he COULDN’T par­don him­self. They were wrong (thanks to those three appoint­ments).
They said he would­n’t dan­gle Ukraine’s mil­i­tary aid in exchange for a quid pro quo inves­ti­ga­tion into his polit­i­cal rivals. They were wrong.
They said some­one would stop him if he was found to be guilty of a quid pro quo with Ukraine. They were wrong.
They said he would nev­er open­ly work with neo-Nazis. They were wrong.
They said he respect­ed democ­ra­cy and would­n’t fire whistle­blow­ers or bar access to the media. They were wrong.
They said they did­n’t think he would start trade wars that raised the price of every­thing. They were wrong.
They said they did­n’t think he would deport the law-abid­ing peo­ple doing menial jobs that no US cit­i­zen want­ed to do. They were wrong.
They said they did­n’t think he’d deport their undoc­u­ment­ed spous­es. Or the peo­ple that vot­ed for him. They were wrong.
They said his par­ty would stop him if he went TOO far and would­n’t enable his most out­landish bull­shit.

They. Were. Wrong.

And appar­ent­ly, they aren’t tired yet of being so utter­ly com­plete­ly wrong.

Because now there are whis­pers of him can­celling elec­tions. He’s telegraphed it sev­er­al times. Not in the way where he’s sling­ing bull­shit and he wants a jour­nal­ist to drop it, but exact­ly in the way he does when he’s launch­ing a test bal­loon to see exact­ly how much push­back he gets. And the same peo­ple who have been wrong every step of the way are say­ing that he would nev­er do that. Or he can’t.

But he would. And it is increas­ing­ly obvi­ous that with a rub­ber stamp con­gress of his own par­ty and 9/12 SCOTUS judges (who he ignores if they rule against him) he can.

Peo­ple just keep think­ing there’s some adult in the room that’s going to tell him no. Tell him how unpop­u­lar his poli­cies are. Slow his roll. Stand up with arms akim­bo and say, “Exec­u­tive orders can’t do that. You have over­reached! Stand down, ser­vant of the pub­lic. Stand DOWN!!” There isn’t an adult in that room. He’s fired them all. He’s sur­round­ed him­self with lick­spit­tle syco­phant flunkies because those are the only peo­ple his nar­cis­sis­tic frag­ile ego can han­dle.

His learn­ing curve is hard­ly a Machi­avel­lian won­der, but he does con­sis­tent­ly do the hor­ri­ble things that he jokes about in the months pri­or. Okay, he has hit some speed bumps because he’s com­i­cal­ly incom­pe­tent. So, he will need to fire some peo­ple who’ve said no to him…purge some agen­cies that inves­ti­gat­ed his allies… under­mine the pow­er of the judi­cial branch… edge Con­gress out of law­mak­ing… put his peo­ple every­where.

But make no mis­take about it: the play­book we’ve had since 2024 that says exact­ly what he’s going to do has been a paint-by-num­bers for him. He will attack the fourth estate, weaponize the DOJ, turn the mil­i­tary on his polit­i­cal oppo­nents. He HAS. And there’s no rea­son to think he won’t can­cel an elec­tion that Repub­li­cans are pre­dict­ed to lose by some 20 points. He will do what he intends to, and there’s no restrain­ing force out­side of resis­tance to stop him. No one is going to talk him down from his agen­da. Project 2025. Pull out of treaties. Destroy reg­u­la­tions. Attack coun­tries. Get rid of pro­tec­tions (con­sumer, civ­il, finan­cial). Start trade wars. Get us involved in a Mid­dle East war. Tar­get the LGBTQ+ com­mu­ni­ty. Assist in the geno­cide of Gaza. Let the world burn. Go for a third term.

Every­thing.