What Would Nellis Say?

 

trump's wrecking ball

By Rick Stiller​​​​​​​

 

While our Despot-in-Chief is playing golf and galivanting around foreign capitals collecting bribes, giving $40 billion loans to the bankrupt government of Argentina, or tearing down the East Wing to build a $350 million “Ballroom” addition to bolster his ego, the government is shut down. Federal employees and members of the military are not receiving paychecks, and many are lining up at food banks to provide for their families. 

 

The FAA is faltering, and control towers are understaffed because those critical workers are being forced to take second jobs to make ends meet. Funds for federal SNAP and WIC programs that provide nutrition for 42 million hungry citizens are frozen despite having surplus reserves, and his tariffs and trade deals are bankrupting farmers and ranchers.

 

Little Mikey Johnson dismissed Congress in mid-September and refuses to call them into session or to begin negotiations until Democrats agree to pass the Republican funding bill, which will eliminate Medicaid coverage for 20 million citizens and double or triple the health insurance premiums for another 20 million. The American public knows that the Republicans control the House, the Senate, the White House, and the Supreme Court, and, no matter how shrill their threats and accusations, they have no one to blame for the disaster they have created except the MAGA minions who are too terrified to defy Trump’s ultimatums.

 

While American citizens are struggling to pay their bills, Trump and his family have landed construction and branding deals in countries across the world worth billions, got a $40 million plane as a “gift” from Qatar, made $10 million selling guitars, bibles, sneakers, and watches, made more than $57 million from his stake in World Liberty Financial, and is estimated to have earned $320 million in fees from the $TRUMP meme coin, to name just a few of his corrupt sources of income. Estimates for the total in the ten months since his inauguration range from $5 to $10 billion.

 

Trump claims that “narco-terrorists” are transporting drugs that will kill Americans to justify murdering the crews of small Venezuelan boats heading north through the Caribbean and now the Pacific with missiles that destroy whatever evidence might be on board. 

 

Sending the Coast Guard to intercept these vessels to determine what they are carrying would be an easy and effective way to solve the problem without killing innocent fishermen in the process. Cocaine is the primary drug being exported from South America, but the leading cause of overdoses in the United States is fentanyl. Most of it is manufactured in Mexico and enters our country by land, not by sea.

 

Our grifter is making a $230 million claim against his own Justice Department for his pain, suffering, and embarrassment from being investigated, indicted, tried, and convicted of numerous crimes before he was re-elected. He’s also joked about “paying himself,” as if the treasury is his private piggy bank.

 

This, while ordering his snarky kittens in the Justice Department to pursue indictments against his enemies (James Comey, Letitia James, and John Bolton being the most prominent of the current targets), despite vehement internal arguments against pursuing those cases because they lacked sufficient evidence to convince a grand jury to bring charges or avoid being laughed out of court. Several of those ethical career attorneys resigned or were fired for refusing to proceed.

 

Claiming without proof that cities with Democratic mayors are burning, crowds are rioting, and violence is out of control, he has deployed National Guard troops with Marines as backup, who have been assigned up trash and tend flower beds in public parks because the local police are perfectly capable of dealing with the unremarkable problems in their municipalities. Federal judges have blocked this invasion in several cities, but he keeps threatening to invade new blue targets.

 

ICE, Trump’s private police force, stopped pretending to pursue real illegal immigrant criminals and is making no effort to disguise the brutal assaults on anyone who looks or sounds Hispanic. Masked, unidentifiable goons in combat gear swarm through public parks and sweep down city streets to detain anyone who isn’t white, chase farm workers through the fields, and smash car windows to drag people out of their cars while they’re dropping their children off at school. 

 

Squads drop out of helicopters onto the roofs of apartment buildings in the middle of the night, brandishing assault rifles to arrest everyone in the building, separate them from their children, and ransack their apartments without warrants or charges. Scores of American citizens have been rounded up and physically abused in these raids, and many were held for days before being released without arraignment.

 

An ICE team collected more than twenty unaccompanied sleeping children from a federal shelter in the wee hours of the morning and transported them to the airport, intending to ship them off to Guatemala without any assurance that they had relatives there who would take them in. Fortunately, a judge ordered the flight cancelled at the last minute, but this is not an unusual procedure for our American Gestapo, and the next judge might not employ common sense and common decency to protect innocent children. 

 

We’ve all witnessed the unannounced demolition of the East Wing of White House, which was built during the Roosevelt administration in 1942, to make way for Trump’s 90,000 square foot ballroom that will occupy a larger footprint than the rest of the People’s House! That destruction was carried out by private construction companies hired by the president, who claims the $350 million project will be funded by private donations…from companies that want access to power.

 

There is no evidence to suggest that our ego-maniac-in-chief sought the recommendations or approval of the National Capital Planning Commission, which provides central planning for federal government projects in the D.C. area and approves their construction, or the Department of General Services that manages and maintains the District’s properties.

 

Most people do not make major renovations to their homes if they are planning to move out in a few years. Trump has bantered about running for a third term (he would be 82 years old when he took office), and is gleeful when he shows off his red ‘Trump 28’ hats which are prominently displayed in the Oval Office. In a recent interview, Steve Bannon insisted that "Trump is going to be president in ’28, " the podcaster and former White House aide told The Economist. "At the appropriate time, we’ll lay out what the plan is."

 

He has no plans to abandon his gaudily gilded residence or his grasp on the office, whether he creates a national emergency and cancels the 2028 elections or ignores the Constitution and the Amendments and refuses to leave, with our feckless Congress’s approval and the corrupted Supreme Court’s assent. Democracy be damned, he is determined to establish a Trump dynasty.

 

He and his administration are determined to dismantle and destroy our government and our social order, and they couldn't care less about the working class that is going to suffer as a result of their cruelty and their greed.

 

The question becomes, when will enough Americans decide that enough is enough? When will the social, political, and economic carnage force us to stand up for our democracy and the future of our country, and demand an end to this lunacy? According to The Harvard Kennedy School for Human Rights, “Nonviolent protests are twice as likely to succeed as armed conflicts – and those engaging a threshold of 3.5% of the population have never failed to bring about change.”

 

The seven million brave souls who participated in the recent peaceful No Kings demonstrations across the country equal about 2.05% of our population, so it will take about 12 million to reach 3.5%. 

 

With the millions of federal employees who are being fired or forced to work without paychecks, the millions of families who are going hungry, more millions who will lose Medicaid coverage or have their insurance premiums double or triple, the tens-of-thousands who will suffer and die because their rural hospitals and nursing homes have closed, the farmers who will declare bankruptcy because they can’t sell their crops or make a profit on the cattle they raise, the friends and neighbors who are being snatched off the streets and sent to deplorable prisons in distant countries, the combat ready soldiers wandering the streets of our cities, or the blatant graft and corruption that permeates everyone in or around the administration,…when will enough of us find the courage to put our differences aside and join together to end our national nightmare?

 

It’s up to you. Stand up! Speak Out! Make a Difference!

 

 

Thanks for your support! I look forward to your thoughts, appreciate your dedication to freedom, and hope you will share these opinions with everyone you know!

 

To read more essays or the first chapters of more than a dozen of my novels, visit: www.rickstiller.com, and for a moment of calm, enjoy my new portfolio of floral portraits from this season in Kelian’s Garden at www.rickstillerart.com. Beautiful prints and gorgeous merchandise make great holiday gifts!

 

 

PS – If you know any immigrants who have been, are, or might be subject to arrest for attending required court hearings, a group of volunteers, based out of the USC Dornsife program, has established a free hotline to help those with in-person immigration hearings file motions to move their appointments online. 

 

The hotline is available for use by anyone, anywhere, and may be reached at 888-462-5211. Services are available in both English and Spanish. For the full article, please visit: https://www.uscannenbergmedia.com/2025/06/18/usc-agents-of-change-establishes-hotline-to-help-move-immigration-hearings-online/

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