He most certainly is. ICYMI, see below. 👇👍🙏 Mr Trump's Theatre of the Absurd & the Sordid — The Grifter-in-Chief Goes Full Monty Feral Preface: As each day passes, it’s becoming increasingly clear that Donald Trump’s much vaunted MAGA™️ project is collapsing faster than the Twin Towers on 9/11. Those who deduced from the get go that the premise upon which he built his bespoke bully pulpit was decidedly dodgy will not be surprised at the turn of events. His first term performance alone should’ve put to rest any doubt about that. Taking more of a ‘high altitude’ perspective against offering up a ‘blow-by-blow’ of his faults, failings and shortcomings (though by necessity we are compelled to highlight some of the man’s “greatest hits” herein), in this article Aussie based writer Greg Maybury muses on the man hapless Americans twice voted into office in the forlorn belief he’d Make America Great Again, only to witness his tenure morph into what might best be termed a Great Mega MAGA ‘Trumpster’ Fire. Cue then the lights dimming in the fabled “City on the Hill”. gregmaybury.substack.com/p/m…

ARTICLE: Mr Trump's Theatre of the Absurd & the Sordid — The Grifter-in-Chief Goes Full Monty Feral. ICYMI. EXTRACT: At this stage of the second term of his truncated presidency, at least for some of those remaining “Trump Tragics” things must be looking grim. The cold, hard reality is that Donald Trump—the bloke so many Americans supported unwaveringly—is revealing his true colours. The MAGA faithful have been serially betrayed by a man clearly indifferent to the optics of his own ineptitude, narcissism, corruption, sordid nepotism, and historical ignorance. This, to say little of his tedious populist bombast and conspicuous political treachery. He has not just abandoned them; Trump has thrown them overboard without so much as a ‘by-your-leave’ let alone a life-jacket. Those still betting he’ll improve with age are either incurable optimists, incorrigible fantasists, or in the words the man himself would no doubt approve, “losers”. That said, a dead reckoning with reality must by now be nearing its denouement. Meaning? This presidential ‘performance appraisal’ of sorts comes with special irony as America ‘celebrates’ its 250th birthday—a country its founders imagined would set the template for what modern nations might become in the Age of Enlightenment. However, flag-waving celebrations of patriotic pride and national unity seem thin on the ground; indeed, cue more waves of regret and dismay all round. (Perhaps the best we might hope for by way of “enlightenment” is a final, collective realisation that all is not well in the “Land of Bilk n’ Money”.) We’re talking here then a profound and widespread sense of unreality about the State of the Union (what the shrinks might call a ‘derealisation’), one playing itself out on an unprecedented national level. Rather than embracing an identification with what they might be forgiven for thinking it once actually stood for, there appears now for most Americans more of a great detachment from it. Perhaps alienation is not too strong a word. Such has been the enduring grip of MAGA, one suspects many of them are still clinging desperately like Titanic survivors to any random flotsam within groping distance as they forlornly watch the doomed ocean liner sink into the icy, murky depths of the Atlantic Pond. At the risk of stating the obvious, the “ocean liner” in question is America itself. Though I’m on record as having never bought the MAGA schtick, even I have to admit I didn’t expect it to go as ‘pear-shaped’ this quickly. The disappointment permeating the zeitgeist now seems as palpable as it’s irreversible, with Trump attracting by some accounts the lowest popularity ratings in the history of ‘on-the-nose’ Oval Office tenants. It is difficult to see him coming back from this. It’s as if this is how he expected it all to turn out, and going on some recent reports, couldn’t care less if he tried. Back in the day, H.L. Mencken, that unflinching judge of folks who choose the world’s ‘second-oldest profession’ as their life’s calling, once observed that as ‘democracy is perfected’, the presidency increasingly reflects the ‘inner soul of the people’. On some ‘great and glorious day’, said Mencken, the ‘plain folks of the land’ would get their ‘heart’s desire’, i.e. ‘a downright fool and complete narcissistic moron’ in the White House. Be that as it may, one wonders if even the terminally cynical “Sage of Baltimore” might’ve imagined someone like Trump ‘snagging’ the lease to said House even for one term, let alone two. At all events, given the contemporary political milieu, we don’t need a pair of binoculars to see that Mencken’s sentiment has rarely been as ‘crystal’, with the present ‘Oval One’ first embodying, then reflecting in spades, the above characterisation. For the majority of the “fools” and “morons” who voted for him, they must by now be hard pressed coping with clinically treatable only measures of buyers’ remorse.’ Read on… gregmaybury.substack.com/p/m…