Authoritarian Clown Show

From Epstein file cover-ups to DC checkpoints, Trump’s GOP is all in on repression, corruption, and a gift shop presidency.

Good morning! If you thought yesterday’s headlines were just bad, today’s lineup looks like the B-movie sequel where the villains aren’t even pretending anymore. The Trump regime and its sycophantic GOP courtiers are out here cosplaying as defenders of democracy while running a full-service protection racket for their felonious leader. And the hits just keep coming.

Let’s start with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, the Fox-News-to-Pentagon pipeline’s proudest export. Hegseth, who already thinks women don’t belong in combat, reposted a sermon from his spiritual guide Doug Wilson, a pastor whose greatest hits include arguing that slavery “wasn’t that bad” and that women shouldn’t be allowed to vote. Wilson also wrote Reforming Marriage and Federal Husband, which are basically handbooks for turning your wife into an indentured servant with a casserole dish. And this isn’t just some dusty old preacher Hegseth once knew, the Pentagon press office says Hegseth “proudly” embraces Wilson’s teachings. Imagine for one second the GOP reaction if Barack Obama had stuck by Jeremiah Wright after a controversial sermon. They practically staged a coup over “God damn America.” But Trump’s Defense Secretary can double down on a slavery apologist and the Republican response is a collective shrug. When they talk about “traditional values,” they apparently mean 17th-century ones.

Trump’s much-promised Epstein files were supposed to be handed over yesterday under subpoena. Instead, DOJ violated the deadline outright. House Oversight Chair James Comer, never one to miss an opportunity to lick the boot, called the delay a “good faith effort” and promised files would start dribbling out Friday. It’s the political equivalent of telling your spouse the incriminating text messages will be released “in batches” after you’ve had time to delete the good parts. And who did the committee haul in for cover? Bill Barr, whose father just happened to hire Jeffrey Epstein for his first teaching job at Dalton. Barr solemnly swore he never saw Trump’s name in the files, which is curious because victims have testified about underage girls at Mar-a-Lago, Trump is in Epstein’s logs, and the two were known to host “VIP nights” together that consisted of beauty pageant contestants and exactly two VIPs: Trump and Epstein. But sure, Bill Barr says nothing to see here. If you squint, you can almost see the redactions happening in real time.

The GOP wants you looking anywhere but Trump. They’ve subpoenaed Bill Clinton. They’ve floated lurid island conspiracies. Anything to distract from the simple, obvious fact: Trump and Epstein were joined at the hip in the years Epstein was trafficking girls. Which may explain why Trump doesn’t bat an eye when Putin runs his own state-sponsored trafficking operations, predators don’t tend to snitch on each other.

If you’d prefer your authoritarianism with a domestic twist, Trump has you covered there too. Washington, D.C. is now occupied territory, swarming with federal agents and 600–800 National Guard troops shipped in from red states that can’t even keep their own homicide rates under control. Checkpoints on 14th Street. Armed patrols through popular neighborhoods. Stephen Miller hopping on Fox to declare the capital city “cleansed.” All of it justified by Trump’s invented “crime emergency” that D.C.’s actual elected officials denied. But when you’re busy turning the Justice Department into a shredder for Epstein files, why not make the nation’s capital a stage set for your dictatorship cosplay?

And then there’s Texas, where Democrats trying to block Greg Abbott’s gerrymander were literally locked inside a room at the request of the governor. State Rep. Nicole Kier told MeidasTouch she was effectively held hostage until the Republicans could force their racist maps through. Protesters poured into the Capitol, reminding us that authoritarianism doesn’t just mean ballot boxes stuffed, sometimes it means doors locked from the outside. And the GOP, the party that once thundered about “liberty,” is just fine with it.

Trump himself is too busy embarrassing the country abroad to notice. Zelenskyy showed up in Washington in his war-time t-shirt, flanked by European leaders determined not to let Ukraine be carved up. Trump, ever the huckster, dragged Emmanuel Macron and Finland’s president through his Oval Office gift shop to hawk “Trump 2028” hats. Then he waddled out to announce Putin had agreed to NATO-style Article 5 protections for Ukraine and was eager for a “trilat.” Within hours, Russia released a statement: nope, no Article 5, no Zelenskyy meeting, no ceasefire. Trump had simply lied, again, like a guy insisting his girlfriend from Canada is real. And to cap it all off, he bragged that his plan to ban mail-in voting came straight from Putin, who told him postal ballots are “rigged.” Imagine taking election advice from the man who rigs elections for a living. But Republicans are dutifully nodding along, pretending state control of voting doesn’t exist and pretending Trump has any idea what the Constitution says.

So here we are: a Defense Secretary taking marching orders from a slavery apologist, a Justice Department stonewalling subpoenas to shield Trump’s name from Epstein files, a capital city under military occupation, Texas Democrats being held hostage, and a president hawking his own merch while parroting Putin. And through it all, the GOP keeps clapping like seals, calling it “good faith,” and pretending they don’t smell the rot. They are accomplices.

But let’s end on a lighter note. Jimmy Kimmel, defending his fellow “Strike Force Five” late-night comrade Stephen Colbert, says CBS’s claim that The Late Show was losing $40–50 million a year is “beyond nonsensical.” He reminded Variety that networks rake in affiliate fees worth billions, and that you can’t just pretend late-night doesn’t touch those numbers. Kimmel even pulled out his own receipts, noting ABC claimed his show wasn’t making money back when he had five times the audience he does now. In other words, CBS’s “financial decision” smells about as fishy as Trump’s DOJ promising to deliver Epstein files “soon.” Kimmel capped it off by calling Colbert “the salt of the earth” and putting up an Emmy billboard on his behalf. Which just proves that in the upside-down world we’re living in, Jimmy Kimmel might actually be the most honorable man in American public life. Now there’s a punchline.

Marz is holding steady, he may still need another surgery, but for now he’s doing a bit better. He knows he’s on paid sick leave, but he insists on reminding every UPS delivery person that he’s still very much on duty. As for me, I’m still catching up on the mountain of emails that piled up during his recovery, so please bear with me a little longer. Your patience means the world.