The Strongman Who Isn’t

Trump is silenced by boos, outmaneuvered by allies, ignored by enemies, and left watching the world stage slip away.

Donald Trump spent Tuesday doing what he does best: lying, sulking, and looking utterly out of his depth while the world burned around him. A federal judge — one of those pesky independent ones Trump hasn’t managed to replace with a sycophant — smacked down his latest authoritarian whim, blocking his attempt to fire Federal Reserve governor Lisa Cook on fabricated “mortgage fraud” charges. Judge Jia Cobb didn’t even need a thesaurus for the ruling: firing a Fed governor requires cause, and cause does not include “Trump is cranky about interest rates.” For now, the Fed remains independent, which is more than you can say for Karoline Leavitt.

And here’s why she inspires such visceral loathing, (at least in me): it’s not just that she lies. It’s that she assumes we’re all too stupid to notice. She treats the American public like a captive audience, daring anyone to challenge her as she rattles off falsehoods about immigrants, crime, and the dystopia of her imagination. Her entire act rests on controlling the room and banking on silence. Independence from the truth? She’s never had it. Gaslighting as a profession? She’s perfected it.

But reality had other plans. In Washington, Trump tried to prove his relevance by showing up at Joe’s Seafood. Instead, he was greeted by chants of “Free Palestine” and “Trump is the Hitler of our time” as protesters nearly drowned out his steak order. The boos at New York’s U.S. Open, where the crowd also reminded him he’s loathed outside his MAGA bubble. His response? More delusion. On right-wing radio he declared there’s “no inflation” and that “prices are down on everything,” as if Americans aren’t watching grocery bills soar and Hershey bars jump 26% in a week. Maybe in Trump’s economy, caviar at the White House Rose Garden UFC fights counts as a price drop.

Trump claims to bestride the world stage, but it is slipping out from under him. Overnight, Poland became the first NATO member to shoot down Russian drones after Moscow’s latest mass strike on Ukraine. Prime Minister Donald Tusk called it the closest Europe has been to open conflict since World War II.

And here’s what makes it even more chilling: reports suggest some of those drones carried Polish SIM cards. That isn’t a navigational accident, it’s a technological probe. By slipping local SIMs into their Shahed drones, the Russians can use NATO’s own civilian cell networks as guidance systems, streaming real-time reconnaissance and adjusting flight paths mid-mission. It means every tower ping isn’t just keeping you connected; it could be feeding Russian drones live data about radar, air defenses, even electronic warfare responses.

In other words, Putin isn’t just testing Poland’s skies, he’s testing NATO’s entire nervous system. The line between civilian infrastructure and military target has blurred, and the incursion shows Moscow is mapping how far it can push without triggering a full alliance response. Trump’s contribution to this escalation was… nothing. No statement, no plan, just silence, as though if he doesn’t mention Russian drones using Polish SIMs, we won’t notice that NATO itself is being hacked by hardware.

And if Putin poking NATO weren’t enough, Israel dropped bombs on Doha, the capital of Qatar — a U.S. ally and, lest we forget, Trump’s personal gift shop supplier of aircraft. Qatar called it a “cowardly” act of terrorism against civilians. Netanyahu didn’t even bother to give Trump a heads-up, leaving the supposed master negotiator out of the loop while his “friends” leveled another capital. Senator Bernie Sanders demanded an end to U.S. military aid to Israel, pointing out the obvious: American taxpayers are funding the starvation of children in Gaza and the bombing of sovereign nations. Trump, meanwhile, was too busy posting ISIS-style snuff clips of fishing boats to comment. The world is collapsing into chaos, and he’s running a death-porn account.

Across the Atlantic, Emmanuel Macron was having his own problems. His brand-new prime minister, Sébastien Lecornu, took office under the slogan “Block Everything”, not his, but the protesters who flooded Paris, Lyon, Nantes, and Marseille to make their contempt for austerity crystal clear. Trash bins burned, police made hundreds of arrests, and Macron’s seventh prime minister since 2017 lasted all of a day before facing a no-confidence motion. It’s Yellow Vests 2.0: decentralized, grassroots, and rooted in the working class fury at governments who protect the wealthy while cutting pensions and wages. Macron promises stability; the barricades promise otherwise.

So, let’s tally it up. Trump can’t fire Fed governors. He can’t stop Karoline Leavitt from lying. He can’t walk into a restaurant without boos. He can’t stop Putin from wiring NATO with drones or Netanyahu from bombing U.S. allies. He can’t stop Macron’s France from reminding us that austerity breeds revolt. What he can do is gaslight the nation about inflation, dine under chants of “Hitler,” and sign Epstein’s birthday card in the shape of a naked woman.

America’s “strongman” looks more like a punchline: booed, sued, and screwed, while the rest of the world learns to ignore him entirely.

And on a lighter note, Marz thought yesterday’s power outage in Coquille was the best news of the week, since it meant an extra romp while the rest of us stared at dark screens. By the time we got back, the lights were on again and the world’s chaos was still waiting, but at least one of us got to revel in the blackout.