The Kakistocracy Can’t Fly Straight

Two Navy crashes, a $130 million Epstein-tainted donation, and a Justice Department wheezing behind Jack Smith’s endurance.

Good morning! This one’s brief, I’m off for minor surgery on my hand, but before I go, let’s take one last look at the regime that can’t land a plane, keep a secret, or tell the truth.

Two U.S. Navy aircraft, an MH-60R Sea Hawk helicopter and an F/A-18F Super Hornet, went down in the South China Sea within 30 minutes of each other while operating from the USS Nimitz. Separate incidents, same day.
No, it wasn’t sabotage or a mid-air collision; it was simply what happens when a government purges competence and demands loyalty over skill. Pilots and sailors pushed to exhaustion by endless deployments and budget chaos are serving under leadership that thinks “discipline” means retweeting the boss.

This is what a kakistocracy, government by the least suitable or competent citizens of a state, looks like when it reaches terminal velocity: the planes actually start falling from the sky.

Trump touched down in Tokyo to bask in the kind of respect he can only rent. The photo tells the story: a serene, perfectly composed tatami room with Emperor Naruhito, every line simple, neutral wood, no gold, just flowers, every surface intentional. Compare that to Trump’s gilded Oval Office, where the décor screams “dictator chic.”

He arrived in Japan wearing a gold tie, naturally, to match his ego. Tokyo pledged $550 billion in U.S. investments spread out through 2029, not an upfront payment, and reaffirmed its plan to double defense spending to 2 percent of GDP by March 2026, a timeline hurried forward to flatter Trump’s appetite for “big numbers.” In reality, much of the investment remains theoretical, a mix of loans and guarantees still waiting for parliamentary approval. The whole arrangement reads more like tribute, a long-term promise meant to keep the emperor of chaos smiling until he boards his plane.

Thousands of police guarded the capital, protestors filled Shinjuku, and markets soared on the illusion of a China trade truce. Trump called Xi “a great man” while his Commerce Secretary negotiated soybeans and pickup trucks over sushi. It’s all pageantry masking decay.

Then came the weekend’s most grotesque twist. The New York Times identified the anonymous $130 million “patriot” who supposedly paid the troops during the shutdown as Timothy Mellon, heir to the Mellon banking dynasty. Allison Gill, ever the forensic bloodhouse, connected the next, darker dot: Mellon’s ties to the Epstein financial network.

As Gill pointed out, Mellon’s family bank is currently being sued for knowingly enabling Jeffrey Epstein’s sex-trafficking operation, processing $378 million in payments tied to victims. The timing is ghastly: barely eleven days after that lawsuit was filed, Mellon cut a $130 million check to Trump, a “donation” that bypassed Congress and conveniently spared Speaker Mike Johnson from returning to Washington to sign the discharge petition releasing the Epstein files.

If you’re hearing the gears of corruption grinding, you’re not wrong. It’s hard to imagine a more on-the-nose example of transactional rot: Epstein’s banker’s heir swooping in to bankroll Trump’s military optics during a shutdown his own party engineered.

Gill also caught another major development: former Special Counsel Jack Smith has formally asked Congress for permission to testify publicly, and specifically to discuss Volume Two of his classified-documents report, the part still buried by Judge Aileen Cannon.

It’s a move that boxes in the administration: if the files still exist, Smith is daring them to admit it; if they’ve been destroyed, he’s daring them to deny it. Either way, he’s signaling that the fight for accountability isn’t over, no matter how many cronies Trump packs into the Department of Justice. And now that Trump’s DOJ is populated with the dimmest of the dullest, the loyal but lobotomized, they’re simply no match for Jack Smith, a man who literally runs triathlons for fun while Trump’s legal team can barely jog through a coherent sentence. It’s the perfect metaphor: endurance, discipline, and intellect pitted against a kakistocracy gasping for breath.

All of this unfolds as military families visit food banks during the shutdown, federal workers sell personal belongings to survive, and the administration’s press secretary assures reporters that the president’s “main priority” is his ballroom renovation.

The Navy crashes are tragic, but they’re also poetic. In Trump’s America, everything capable of flight eventually nose-dives.