This is very sobering, particularly since we are a mere three weeks away from Thanksgiving and less than two months before Xmas. If there is ever a time when people want fancy food and feasting it is now — yet we are told that food banks are being tasked and may not be able to handle the strain. The headlines you’re about to see would be bad enough, but juxtipose them with the images from Trump’s Gatsby-themed Halloween party Friday night and it truly becomes disgusting.
Meiselas: What’s happening in the United States, where Donald Trump has the lowest approval in presidential history? You take a look at the front page of newspapers from Chattanooga to Palm Beach to New Jersey and in Milwaukee, and you’ll see front pages like this: “Food pantries… pic.twitter.com/WEgNmUiZ66
— MeidasTouch (@MeidasTouch) November 2, 2025
And it also goes without saying that the horrific headlines are not limited to food insecurity or late flights due to TSA workers not being paid. No, we live with Trump deciding unilaterally to blow up fishing boats and the people in them on the fiction of them being drug dealers. And maybe they are and maybe they aren’t. That’s not the point. The point is that it’s not Trump’s place to act as judge, jury and executioner on the high seas.
These cases are likely to end up before a criminal tribunal at the Hague at some point. Meanwhile, America’s face in the world is covered in mud. We did not used to be a country like this. We were not known for cowboy statesmanship, yet Trump seems hellbent on just that. (We won’t get into Iran Contra right now. And even as messed up as that was, it wasn’t as crazy as picking off fishing boats.)
And Hegseth will carry out any order. That’s the terrifying part. Where we may have had a cautioning hand in Mark Esper at one point, that’s now lost. If Trump decides to nuke San Francisco tomorrow, Hegseth will go along with it. Whether the actual pilots flying the mission will do so remains to be seen, I guess.
I’ve said before that a pickle never goes back to being a cucumber. How far off the track can Trump take us before we get to a point of no return? And no matter who is in office, from what party, America simply cannot come back?
That’s what keeps me awake at night.
