Dem
52
Ties
4
GOP
44
A sure sign that Donald Trump is feeling desperate and cornered is that he starts lashing out at various targets, like some sort of wild animal. Over the last several days, a significant uptick in this area has been detectable. Let's run down the most prominent targets the President has gone after:
Bill Maher: It may seem odd to start with someone who is a B-list celebrity, at best, but in this case it is appropriate. There was a dinner at the White House a week or so ago with a guest list that reads like a bad "walked into a bar" joke: Trump, Kid Rock, Bill Maher and sports talk windbag Stephen A. Smith. On the latest installment of his show, Maher addressed the dinner and said, to those who don't like his choice of dining companions: "You know what? F**k you."
It appears that Trump tuned in that night, so that he could hear firsthand the flattering things that Maher said about him. The problem is that Trump stayed tuned in, and so heard some things he did. not. like. In particular, Maher said that all the claims about illegal/fraudulent votes are nonsense. So, Trump got on his social media platform, and let Maher have it. The blast starts thusly:
Let's talk about this COMPLETE AND TOTAL LOSER, Bill Maher. He's got a Low Rated Show on equally Low Rated HBO, which was once, long ago, a Network of Quality and Excitement—But that's all gone. It's not "HOT" anymore!It goes downhill from there, both in terms of acridness and in terms of comprehensibility. In any event, what made this a particularly big story is that Trump apparently set a record for the longest Truth Social post he's ever written, at 1,323 words. Now that's angry; at the rate at which he writes, it must have taken him at least 90 minutes to knock that out. We don't know what poor intern got the miserable job of going through all of Trump's old posts to make sure there wasn't one longer than 1,323 words, but we are glad it wasn't us. For the fun of it, we asked Google's AI bot about this and it reports that indeed, this is the longest bleat ever, far exceeding the 723-word bleat in May about plumbing in the Kennedy Center and attacks on a federal judge and the Supreme Court's tariff ruling.
Barack Obama: Obama, of course, is also doing rallies right now. And at an appearance in Ohio, he poked the bear, telling the crowd:
He should be on HGTV. Guy's building a ballroom that's bigger than the White House. He's paved over the Rose Garden. Put a helicopter pad on the South Lawn, and there's gold everywhere. What's up with the gold? Everything, more gold! He's got the White House looking like Saddam Hussein opened a Cheesecake Factory!Obama knows how to play Trump like a fiddle, and knew full well that would trigger a response. It did, of course. The current president is pretty much always flummoxed by his predecessor, so the response was a little limp. Trump said: "Guys like Obama... for years, they were broken, and he wouldn't notice 'cause he doesn't notice that. He doesn't notice dirt and filth that hadn't been cleaned. The White House—we have to explain that to Obama 'cause he doesn't understand it." Hmmm... lives in filth, and not smart enough to understand the difference. That doesn't play into racial stereotypes at all. Nope, not one bit!
LeBron James: Trump does love to go after Black guys, in part because he has some retrograde views on race, and in part because his base eats it up when the President goes after "uppity" fellows who don't know their place. And so, a couple of days before slurring Obama, Trump went after basketball star LeBron James. Before the first game of the season, James continued to stretch and loosen up while the National Anthem was being performed. The footage, captured on someone's cell phone, was shared widely on right-wing media, and so Trump saw it, and responded thusly:
While listening to our National Anthem, LeBron James disrespects our Country! I said right from the beginning that he's no good, a TOTAL DISGRACE. LeBron James should apologize to all of those Great American Warriors and Heroes who died for the American Flag, and all that our Country stands for! President DONALD J. TRUMPNothing icky about a white man presuming to lecture a Black man on the proper way to behave. Nope, nothing at all. James, for his part, rolled his eyes when he heard about Trump's criticism and said, "Slow day at the office, I guess."
Fox: Trump thinks that Fox' "News" Channel should be as partisan as OAN or Newsmax. Sometimes, the folks at Fox disagree. And sometimes they agree, but they just aren't fanatical enough for Trump's tastes. On Sunday at 9:49 a.m.—so, presumably, right before heading out to church—Trump shared his thoughts on the matter: "FoxNews is spending far too much time putting on the OPPONENTS of Republican Party Candidates, people that love our Country, and have Great Policies and Ideas. These American Patriots are being absolutely "blurred out" by the Media, and Fox is doing little to help." How does he not know, at this point, that it's either Fox "News" or Fox News, but it's definitely not FoxNews? He's only been on the channel at least 2,000 times.
Norway: We find this very hard to believe, but apparently Trump really had deluded himself into thinking he would receive this year's Nobel Peace Prize. On Sunday, he let a crowd in Michigan know that he'd already told several people, including the First Lady, that the prize was in the bag. It was not, obviously, and now Trump blames the entire nation of Norway. After expressing his irritation and disappointment, Trump advised rally-goers that: "I'm not in love with Norway. Frankly, Norway sucks. Norway has become a sh**house country, actually." It is not clear to us if a sh**house country ranks higher than a sh**hole country.
Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK): And finally, the "disloyal" senator who might be Trump's single-biggest bugaboo among currently serving Republican politicians. Murkowski was not pleased about the phony lawsuit that asks for the Senate election results to be injuncted if Sen. Dan Sullivan (R-AK) does not win. And Murkowski was happy to share with both reporters and constituents that she was not happy. Trump responded with yet another screed that lambasted the Senator as "The Republicans' Worst Senator, by far" and ranked-choice voting as a "TOTAL DEMOCRAT SCAM."
So, that's a little less than 3 days' worth. If the Republicans do lose bigly next week, as is generally expected, then Katy bar the door, because Trump is going to make Three Mile Island look like a Sunday picnic. Meanwhile, we have two more DesperationWatch 2026 items planned, but we'll run them tomorrow to keep today's post from getting overlong. (Z)