Poetic Justice
Buck Banks | Jul. 27, 2025
Trump’s is the most tenuous of authoritarian tyrannies,
Founded on a web of paranoid hostilities and mental deficiencies.
It thrives on delusional finger-pointing
Crowned by sanctimonious self-anointing,
Culminating in a “harmonic convergence of competing conspiracies.“
Verbatim
“You are fat, you are a joke, you are stupid, you are not funny, you are not as smart as you think you are… This entire thing has been a scam. When we look back on the history of populism in America, we are going to look back on the MAGA movement as the biggest scam in history. And the liberals were right. The MAGA supporters were had. They were.”
— Far-Right influencer Nick Fuentes, quoted by Newsweek, denouncing Donald Trump over the Jeffrey Epstein scandal.
From his first day as a candidate, Trump has appeared animated by anger, fear, and, most of all, pettiness, a small-minded vengefulness that takes the place of actual policy making. It taints the air in the executive branch like a forgotten bag of trash in a warm house on a summer day—even when you can’t see it, you know it’s there.”
— Tom Nichols
“If a career prosecutor can be fired without reason, fear may seep into the decisions of those who remain. Do not let that happen. Fear is the tool of a tyrant, wielded to suppress independent thought. Instead of fear, let this moment fuel the fire that already burns at the heart of this place. A fire of righteous indignation at abuses of power. Of commitment to seek justice for victims. Of dedication to truth above all else.”
— Maureen Comey, quoted by Politico, the day after she was fired as a federal prosecutor.
Numerati
154,000
“The government is paying more than 154,000 federal employees not to work as part of the Trump administration’s deferred resignation program,” the Washington Post reports. “The number, which has not been previously reported, accounts for workers at dozens of agencies who took offers from the government as of June to get paid through Sept. 30 — the end of the fiscal year — or the end of 2025 and then voluntarily leave government, significantly reducing the size of several major agencies.”
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50%
A new Times/YouGov poll finds few Americans say they are better off under President Trump and most think the economy is getting worse. “Trump pledged to bring inflation down immediately and ‘make America wealthy again’ but only 13 percent of survey respondents said they were feeling any financial benefit. Some 50 percent thought the economy was worsening and only 24 percent that it was improving.”
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6 million
The “South Park” season premiere that mercilessly mocked President Trump drew nearly 6 million viewers on Comedy Central and Paramount+, according to the Hollywood Reporter.
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60%
Gallup: “Americans’ approval of Israel’s military action in Gaza has fallen 10 percentage points since the prior measurement in September, and it is now at 32%, the lowest reading since Gallup first asked the question in November 2023. … Disapproval of the military action has now reached 60%.”
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29%
G. Elliot Morris: “It’s hard to characterize just how bad 29% approval with independents is. You can explain the number in a couple of ways: First, 29% is somewhere between 11 and 17 percentage points lower than the president’s share of the vote with independents in the 2024 election (VoteCast says 40%, Edison says 46%). That means that roughly one out of every three political independents who voted for Trump in the 2024 election now says they disapprove of how he’s governing. … As it turns out, 29% among independents is also a record low for Trump, according to Gallup.”
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