Poor J.D. He’s learning the hard way what happens when you sell your soul and adopt somebody else’s credo and doctrines as your own. In the Before Times, J.D. Vance didn’t like Donald Trump. He saw what the rest of us saw. But then he saw something far more intriguing than Truth. Yes, he saw $$$ signs. And many’s the man who, when given the choice between money and power and the truth, have found that the truth is ever so expendable. So overboard the truth went and onward and upward went J.D. Vance’s political fortunes. For a time.
See, that’s the second part of the equation and J.D. has either forgotten the parable of the scorpion and the frog or maybe he never knew it. It’s like this, J.D.: If an orange-sprayed scorpion with a bad combover asks you for a lift across the choppy waters of the political lake, say no. Because to say yes will make it your last voyage. Mother Nature doesn’t improvise much, she’s pretty exacting in how she does things. And she made the scorpion as the very model of deception. And even she doesn’t know how Donald Trump makes the scorpion look moral by comparison.
But one thing Mother Nature does know although, alas, she won’t share the information with us mere mortals; and that is how long we’ve all got in this world. And that includes Trumpty Dumpty. This is one thing he can’t buy his way out of. Worse yet, he can’t cheat his way out of it. The sublime irony there is that there are, in fact, people who “cheat” aging but they do it by the healthiest of means, good diet, exercise, being of good cheer and serene attitude. We’ve all known people like that.
But Trump is not in that category, not by a long shot. If anything, he’s managed to speed up his demise with his lifestyle. People age differently and at different speeds. We saw that tragic truth indicated when a hearty Joe Biden announced he would run for a second term and then fell off enough to where numerous Democratic insiders decided that he needed to be forced out. And so back in bed with Trump we wound up. But we may not be there for the next three and a half years.
Wishful thinking? Absolutely. I’m not even going to pretend to be unbiased on this topic. I would take it as a gift from God Himself if we all collectively got a reprieve from Trump’s insanity. And we might. Take a look at what’s been happening lately. This is terra incognita. We’ve been through a lot with Trump but we have not been here before.
If you haven’t been paying attention, Washington and social media have spent Labor Day weekend in a frenzy over Donald Trump’s health. The president, who seems like he can’t stomach staying out of the public eye and spotlight for even a few hours, had no public appearances on Wednesday, Thursday, or Friday — nor any over the long weekend. That’s an unusually long period of time out of public view. Searches for “Is Trump dead?” soared on Google Saturday and became one of the most-searched terms of the holiday weekend, and #whereistrump trended on other social media sites.
After he was glimpsed from a distance by the White House press pool leaving to golf on Saturday, social media Carrie Mathisons picked apart his golf photos wondering whether the White House was circulating old photos of the president on the links. Uncharacteristically, during the golf outing, he never even wandered up to the press pool to rant or rave about recent world headlines. Illinois governor JB Pritzker trolled Trump by demanding a proof-of-life photo. On Sunday, group chats around the capital lit up with a 31-tweet-long thread by a crypto investor named Adam Cochran alleging that Trump was in ill health. This morning, the press corps was kept about 100 yards from the president.
The speculation wasn’t helped by a series of strange answers J.D. Vance gave in a USA Today interview last week, where he said he was ready to be president if needed: “I’ve gotten a lot of good on-the-job training over the last 200 days.” Maybe that’s just Vance being awkward and strange — it’s hard to think of any subject where Vance giving an interview has helped — but Trump himself (or someone on his social media accounts) also engaged with the speculation by posting a “NEVER FELT BETTER IN MY LIFE” post on Truth Social, which might rank second only this weekend to Rudy Giuliani’s bizarre car accident for raising more questions than it answered.
“Weekend at Bernie’s” jokes and memes have abounded, but this morning, there’s not a single story on the homepage of the Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, New York Times, or CNN about Trump’s health — but there is a story on the New York Post about how robust the president’s health surely is! (One of the few very good treatments of the subject in recent days has come from Public Notice.)
One of my running themes of media criticism in the Trump era has been that the national media knows all-too-well how to provide wall-to-wall coverage and elevate something from a “news story” to a “news event.” (Think Hunter Biden or Hillary’s emails!) It’s very clear — at least so far — that Trump’s health is not a news “event,” but what’s even more puzzling is the extent to which the national media doesn’t even treat it as a news “story.” As Public Notice wrote, “It’s shocking that since July, no major news outlets have done serious investigations about Trump’s health and what the White House is trying to cover up about it.”
It’s long past time we had a serious conversation about Trump’s increasingly puzzling health questions and apparent mental decline.
The mental decline is a feature, not a bug. And yes, the Trump of 2015 and the Trump of 2025 are two different people. I don’t think you’ll find an argument on either side of the aisle there. But a few things are now very different. First, Trump finally admitted to the venous insufficiency. That’s what caused his swollen ankles. They’re now constantly swollen and he can’t deny their existence any longer. Pretty much the same is true for the “bruise” on his right hand, which may well be an ulcer or sore that comes along with venous insufficiency. The only change there is that some days Trump chooses to swathe the hand in paint and other days he doesn’t. (His doctors want the *sore* to *breathe* maybe?)
That’s on the physical level. On the behavioral level, ALL of Trump’s men choose to go tieless on August 22. Anybody notice that?
At the August 22nd Oval Office event where photos of Trump’s bruised hands went viral, I was struck by something else — as Public Notice was too: The oddity of Trump appearing tie-less. In fact, all the men in the photo op are not wearing their ties, making clear that this was a coordinated decision to align with the president’s sartorial choice. Trump effectively never appears in the Oval Office without a tie — remember how they berated Zelenskyy for appearing in the Oval Office without a suit earlier this year? Scroll back through the summer and there appears to be no recent precedent for the president NOT wearing a tie in the Oval Office. It also is a rare — if not unprecedented — time that he wears a hat while sitting at his desk in the Oval Office. So for this one event, one where the president’s ill health appears on very public display, he and everyone else in the event, including JD Vance, chooses to go tie-less and he also wears a hat? At the very least, it would cause me to ask around about what else was going with Donald Trump on August 22nd?
The devil is always in the details. What made August 22 different? We don’t know now but bookmark it mentally, we may come to find out. And where is Ronny Jackson, anybody know? This would be as good a time as any to ask him just how — in his august medical opinion — is Trump “going to live to be 200?” Right now we’re all watching to see if Trump lives to hit 80.
Your words “… the “bruise” on his right hand, which may well be an ulcer or sore that comes along with venous insufficiency.…” It may also be seen by its owner as a sign – a ‘stigmata’ given his delusional ideas. But no, it’s surely not the a mark of a man who has paid in sacrifice for his country and its people – he’s too much of a selfish coward to deliver on that selfless service. Those in the real world do see it for what it is – the pathophysiology of self-inflicted total body rot seeking its end game. Those in the real world are also, to some degree, comforted by that feeling ‘hope’ – sooner than later, perhaps, because they, or as you state are “… all watching to see if Trump lives to hit 80…”
“Mother Nature doesn’t improvise much, she’s pretty exacting in how she does things. And she made the scorpion as the very model of deception.”
Huh? I don’t get this. How is the scorpion “the very model of deception?” There are plenty of other animals which would qualify–I mean, a spider is right up there in terms of “deception.” Whether it builds a standard web or is one of those species that live in the ground and create “trap doors,” it’s not like a spider is “out front” in its behavior–until the very end. And there are a number of different animals (fish and snakes, especially) which have parts of their bodies designed as “lures” to bring in their prey (while the main body of the animal stays relatively hidden).
For what it’s worth, scorpions don’t sting because it’s their “nature”–they do so as a defense mechanism against larger animals or to kill their prey. Not saying I’m not going to kill one of the little buggers if I find one in my house but they’re NOT the “model of deception.”
Scorpions don’t sting just for the hell of it? This ole jarhead (ok, so it was back when dinosaurs still ruled) suggest spending a week in the field at MCB 29 Palms (better known as 29 Stumps in the Corps) dealing with the little f**kers. But you miss the point of the metaphor, the moral of the story of the scorpion and the frog. Surely you know that little tale.
I often wonder why people go to such lengths to write things like Joseph did. Taking something in an article that is clearly referring to what is a common joke/fable/tale and trying to treat it literally is nonsense.
Maybe thast’s why there aren’t any conservative comedians.
Where are all the news stories about the protests? Did we do so badly?