Souvenirs of a Con Man

Trump clutches trophies, photos, and hats while America burns abroad and crumbles at home.

Good morning! Donald Trump’s week has been a study in what happens when a fading autocrat tries to rule by props and threats. The Oval Office has turned into a curio shop of souvenirs while the country itself is treated like another gaudy casino he can strip for parts.

At his latest presser, Trump declared Washington, D.C. a “rat hole” that he personally transformed into paradise with the help of National Guard patrols. He bragged of “zero murders” and an “87 percent crime drop,” numbers pulled straight from the Mar-a-Lago Math Department, while threatening Mayor Bowser with removal and promising that Chicago is “next.” This was dictator cosplay dressed up as urban renewal, a warning that every city is fair game for federal occupation.

Then came the World Cup spectacle. Trump, wearing a bright red “Trump Was Right About Everything” hat like a retired wrestler signing autographs at a county fair, treated FIFA like his personal trophy room. He promised $30 billion in benefits, 185,000 jobs, and even joked that he might suit up in shorts because he “sells extremely good in shorts.” He mused about renaming the Kennedy Center the “Trump Kennedy Center,” clutched the gold FIFA trophy like a family heirloom, and waved around a glossy portrait of Vladimir Putin he said had just been “sent to him.” At one point, he even quipped, “Can I keep it? We’re not giving it back,” as if the FIFA trophy were just another souvenir for his Mar-a-Lago storage closet.

And here’s where it turns from pathetic to dangerous: that Putin photo-op came literally one day after Russia deliberately bombed a U.S.-owned factory in Ukraine. The target was Flex, a company that manufactures consumer electronics and appliances, not weapons, there was no military value in the strike. The only strategic purpose was humiliation: to torch an American investment and rub Trump’s nose in it. Six hundred workers survived thanks only to strict safety drills, but the message was unmistakable: Moscow was giving Trump the middle finger.

World leaders from Zelensky to Macron to Starmer to Albanese asked the obvious, what would America’s response be? Trump’s answer: “I’m not happy about it… we’ll see in two weeks. I better be very happy.” In other words, U.S. business burns while Trump holds up souvenirs and checks his mood ring.

MeidasTouch captured it perfectly: Putin lobs missiles at American property, Trump brags about their friendship photo and wants him at the World Cup. Russian state TV could hardly contain its glee, praising Trump, JD Vance, and Pete Hegseth for staying quiet about the strikes, and even taking credit for the FBI raid on John Bolton’s home, a raid one Russian pundit claimed he personally recommended months earlier. In Moscow’s eyes, Trump isn’t just weak, he’s obedient. And in Washington, the “law-and-order” president is now using the FBI not to protect Americans from foreign attacks, but to settle scores with a hawk who dared to call him unfit. Moscow knows a stooge when they see one and Trump, wearing his “Right About Everything” hat, is only too happy to play the part.

Meanwhile, the Justice Department’s own souvenir trade continued with the release of the Ghislaine Maxwell interview transcripts. The court granted Maxwell, convicted of aiding Epstein in trafficking underage girls, two days of comfortable conversations with Deputy AG Todd Blanche, no FBI witness present, where she dutifully affirmed Trump was never in any “inappropriate setting.” The files were posted online like transparency theater, but they read more like an audition tape for a pardon than an interrogation. And yesterday, alongside this stage-managed release, DOJ quietly sent a packet of Epstein-related files to Congress, another carefully curated drop designed less to expose truth than to blunt demands for full disclosure.

And then there’s Kilmar Abrego Garcia. Wrongfully deported to El Salvador in March, arrested again in Tennessee this summer, and accused by Trump’s ICE of being an MS-13 ringleader, Garcia has finally been released to Maryland under monitoring. His attorneys call him a victim of “vindictive” political prosecution, a man targeted for daring to challenge Trump’s immigration machine. His freedom, however fragile, is a rare reminder that the courts can still deliver slivers of justice even as the executive branch tramples it.

So the week in Trumpworld boils down to this: souvenirs over substance. Putin’s photo instead of defending Americans. A FIFA trophy instead of a plan. DOJ transcripts instead of accountability. And a wrongfully deported man’s ankle monitor instead of dignity. For all the gold leaf and faux grandeur, the legacy on display is cruelty, corruption, and capitulation.

Every transcript we’ve been unpacking reads less like the words of a president and more like the rambling stage patter of a washed-up Vegas act who can’t remember his cues. He cycles through the same boasts, “I stopped 10 wars,” “I rebuilt the military,” “I’m very good in shorts”, like a broken slot machine endlessly spitting out the same lemons.

There is something almost tragic in it. The bravado has curdled into self-parody, the improvisation into incoherence. We’re watching a man who built his life on selling the illusion of power slip further and further into a world where the props, the hats, the trophies, the portraits, the fake statistics, have replaced the substance entirely.

It’s cringy, it’s sad, but it’s also dangerous. Even in decline, a con man with power still has the machinery of state at his fingertips, still orders raids on critics, still toys with military deployments against U.S. cities, still grins at Putin’s photo while American businesses burn.

With that, we close the week’s souvenirs of decline. Trump paraded his hat, his trophy, his photo of Putin, while the country and its allies bore the costs of his weakness. We’ve chronicled the sad unraveling of a con man who once mistook grift for greatness, and who now mistakes props for power.

Meanwhile, closer to home, there’s a brighter note. Marz genuinely seems to be on the mend. All your kind wishes have definitely helped. He isn’t quite photo-ready yet, give it a few more days, but he promises to sit for a portrait soon. And unlike Trump, when Marz finally poses, it will be for the simple joy of being seen, not for the desperate need to still be noticed.