Disassociated, Dispassionate, Disconnected

Trump Officials Don't Care About The American People

It’s been all too clear that, for some time, Trump administration officials work for a party of one. We’re no longer as much of a functioning government as we are in a toxic, dysfunctional relationship with a sleeping, orange, deranged grizzly bear whose handlers are in fear of waking up…anecdotally speaking, that is. If ONLY he slept more instead of spending his waking hours until the early morning “Truthing” wild dictates ranging from threats to interfere with a city’s Mayoral race to rage-posting about AT&T during a conference call. I can just imagine what was going on with his staff in the background as it happened:

"Push the mute button again, Mr. President. No, no...that's the Diet Coke request button on your desk. The button one on the phone. No, sir. That's my nose. No, I don't think you can reach AT&T on Truth Social....oh, what the hell."

Okay, I’m being facetious. But sometimes, that’s all I have left in the wake of this dumpster fire known as America 2025.

As epic, catastrophic floods from the Guadalupe River near Kerrville, Texas, have killed 78 persons so far, Donald Trump has spent yesterday and today at his golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey. “Trump golfed while Texas flooded” is the modern-day equivalent of “Nero fiddled while Rome burned.”

Trump did manage to find time between holes to issue a disaster declaration related to the flooding. Thank goodness the once politically neutral Department of Homeland Security released this glowing press release of dear leader’s actions, including a paragraph full of ass-kissing on behalf of the DHS secretary:

“Thank you, President Trump. We are currently deploying federal emergency management resources to Texas first responders, and will work closely with state and local authorities to ensure the people of Texas get the support they need as search efforts continue and recovery begins,” said Secretary Kristi Noem. “Pray for the victims, the families, and our first responders. God bless Texas.”

Meanwhile, just outside the Central Coast community of San Luis Obispo, CA, the largest wildfire in the state has consumed more than 80,000 acres, and, in the past few days, 15 new California fires have ignited — on federal land — from Modoc to Klamath to Trinity. And from the White House: Crickets. Thank goodness we still have thousands of National Guard troops defending an empty building in Downtown Los Angeles!

Speaking of dog killers….errr, I mean, FEMA, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem’s remarks during the Texas flood disaster briefing were bloated, evasive, and politically self-serving. Rather than deliver clear, actionable information, she opened with excessive praise for President Trump’s “love” for Texas, repeatedly invoking his and Melania’s prayers as emotional cover. Her response to the failure of the National Weather Service to issue early flood warnings was particularly troubling—she deflected blame by noting the agency isn't under her department and cited “decades” of outdated systems while claiming Trump is “fixing” the problem. This amounted to political spin, not accountability (The old “Blame it on Biden” defense).

Instead of focusing on the victims or the federal government's concrete response, Noem rattled off a laundry list of agencies and acronyms, burying useful updates under layers of bureaucratic fluff. Her repeated religious references, including the implication that survival was due to divine intervention, came off as tone-deaf and insulting to grieving families. In short, Noem used a moment of mass tragedy for political and rhetorical performance, offering platitudes instead of leadership.

Perhaps most troubling was Noem’s repeated invocation of prayer and God’s purpose, implying, for instance, that divine intervention allowed one child to cling to a tree while others perished. While expressions of faith can comfort some, her suggestion that God's will explains survival outcomes treads dangerously close to theological fatalism. For grieving families, this can read not as comfort but as callousness—a way to sidestep systemic failure by framing it as divine design. It’s an abdication of moral and political responsibility dressed up as compassion.

I’m not against people relying on their faith in troubling times like these, but we shouldn’t allow people to be put in such high positions of power in our government to use sanctimonious banalities in place of an intelligent, thought-out plan of action. We expect them to be accountable for solving those issues. We expect them to take responsibility and provide solutions based on logic and reason. Instead, we are offered blame, deflection, and platitudes that solve nothing.

Meanwhile, over on the Sunday news shows, Director of the National Economic Council Kevin Hassett gave an interview on CBS’s Face the Nation that completely lacked intellectual humility. He attempted to discredit respected institutions like the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) by claiming their models are outdated or flawed without adequately acknowledging the speculative nature of the administration's own projections. He framed economic forecasting as a battle between truth and falsehood, asserting near-certainty in the face of complex variables. His claim that the bill will reduce the deficit—despite near-universal consensus to the contrary—was predicated on extremely optimistic GDP growth assumptions, unsupported by current trends.

A particularly troubling exchange came when moderator Weija Jang asked:

I know that the administration says the bill will actually shrink the deficit by $1.5 trillion. Help me understand why there is such a drastic difference between your numbers and all those others.

DIRECTOR KEVIN HASSETT: Well – well, first of all, let's remember that science is not democracy. Truth is not democracy.

On Medicaid, Hassett’s framing of potential coverage losses was misleading. He minimized the CBO’s projected 12 million coverage losses by implying many are either voluntarily insured elsewhere or will magically find coverage through employment.

On the Trump Propaganda Network (AKA “Fox News”), an interview between Shannon Bream and OMB Director Russ Vought served less as a substantive defense of the “big beautiful bill” and more as an exercise in political obfuscation and gaslighting. Vought’s core strategy rested on discrediting the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) and the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget—two institutions whose only offense appeared to be delivering inconvenient math. Rather than engaging with the specifics of their projections, which estimated the bill would add between $2.4 trillion and $5 trillion to the national debt over a decade, Vought leaned on the tired Washington trope of blaming the "baseline" used by analysts—an argument that, in this case, amounted to little more than semantic manipulation.

Vought’s insistence that continuing tax cuts shouldn’t be counted as a cost revealed a willful distortion of budgetary norms. His claim that the bill would actually reduce the deficit by $1.4 trillion was not only unsubstantiated by any external analysis but also heavily reliant on unrealistic assumptions about economic growth and behavioral responses to tax policy. In dismissing the CBO’s methods—methods that Congress itself has required and that CBO Director Phil Swagel (a Republican appointee) has defended as standard and impartial—Vought effectively asked viewers to ignore institutional expertise in favor of political spin.

Worse still, Vought attempted to discredit the CBO by citing a completely unrelated and misleading example: its scoring of a Biden-era border security bill. This rhetorical sleight of hand—invoking immigration anxiety to smear budget projections—was not only intellectually dishonest but blatantly manipulative, relying on emotional reaction rather than empirical argument.

Once again: Deflect, deny, and when all else fails, BLAME JOE BIDEN!

“Let’s all just pray.” “Maybe these people should just get jobs.” “It’s all Joe Biden’s fault.” And of course, from the dictator-in-chief himself, let’s not forget, “I hate Democrats.”

One nation, with liberty and justice…for some.