SCOTT LUDWIG: Living through the Year of the Snake (Part II)

July. Trump signs the “One Big Beautiful Bill” on the 4th of July that reduces funding for Medicaid by $1 trillion and food stamps by 20%, although it provides ICE with an additional $75 billion.

Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche conducts an interview with Ghislaine Maxwell, Jeffrey Epstein’s accomplice, who is later transferred from a Federal Correctional Institute in Florida to a minimum-security prison camp in Texas. The assumption is it was to buy her silence.

Trump begins tap-dancing around the Epstein files when a hand-written/hand-drawn birthday card for Epstein’s 50th birthday is made public.

August. Trump fires the head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics because of a report indicating a significant slowdown in hiring. (Trump said the numbers were rigged. Sound familiar?) Trump deploys 2,000 National Guardsmen to lend a hand to the Washington, D.C., police force because the city is overrun with “bloodthirsty criminals.” (I wonder if he was looking in a mirror when he said it?)

And Doctor Strange, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., cancels $500 million going toward research for mRNA vaccines used to combat various diseases.

September. The Defense Department is renamed the Department of War, allegedly because it makes Trump sound like a really tough guy. Not so coincidentally, the announcement came with Trump revealing his plans for an immigration crackdown in Chicago.

The U.S. makes the first of numerous air strikes on speedboats in the Caribbean, which Trump claims — again without presenting any evidence — are carrying drugs from Venezuela to the U.S.

Conservative activist Charlie Kirk is assassinated in Utah, and Trump jumps the gun and blames it on various liberal groups (again, without evidence) and vows vengeance. Trump recommends that Attorney General Pam Bondi seek justice (i.e. retribution) against his political opponents (via social media, naturally: “Must be served now.”). Not long afterwards, James Comey and Letitia James are indicted on – for lack of a better word – made-up offenses.

October. Trump demolishes the East Wing of the White House – without approval, and probably just because he can – to make room for a gilded ballroom to the tune of $350 million (which later became $400 million) that will eventually, no doubt, bear his name. (May I be the first to suggest “Trumpatorium?”)

At an expensive pep rally of more than 800 generals assembled for a “warrior
ethos” rant by Hegseth, Trump advises the captive (and obviously bored) audience to use
American cities as training grounds to combat the fight against the “enemy within.” Trump
announces on social media that the U.S. will start testing its nuclear weapons in light of other countries’ testing programs.

November. Remember Musk putting a stop to USAID? A number of independent analysts
determine that since that happened, more than 600,000 deaths around the world have
occurred that would otherwise have been prevented. After six Democratic members of
Congress released a video urging the U.S. military to uphold the Constitution and “refuse illegal orders,” Trump says their actions are “seditious behavior, punishable by death.” 

Trump pardons Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernandez, who had been serving a sentence of 45 years in prison for conspiring with drug traffickers to move 400 tons of cocaine into the country because he had been “treated very harshly and unfairly.”

December. Trump announces at a rally in Pennsylvania that he has stopped inflation and that affordability is a “hoax.” The board Trump hand-picked for the board of the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts “voted” to rename it the Trump-Kennedy Center, and Trump’s name is added to the front of the building the very next day.

Trump accepts the newly created “FIFA Peace Prize” at the World Cup draw ceremony in Washington, D.C. Trump also wishes everyone a Merry Christmas in his own special way. After ranting about ‘the sleazebags who loved Jeffrey Epstein, the “radical left witch hunt,” faulty elections, fake news, and the “world of corrupt Democrat politics,” he ends his message of good will with this: “Enjoy what may be your last Merry Christmas.”

Gee, Santa. And all I wanted last year for Christmas was an end to the Russo-Ukrainian War. You remember: It’s what you promised back on the day you first took office.