Daily Kos Names Congressional Coward of the Year

"I am a Bible-believing Christian.... What does Mike Johnson think about any issue under the sun? Well, go pick up a Bible... and read it. That's my worldview."

 

by Emily Singer

Daily Kos Staff

 

REPUBLISHED BY:

Blue Country Gazette Blog  

Rim Country Gazette Blog 

Sunday, December 28, 2025 at 1:00:08p MST

This year was filled with cowardly behavior from GOP lawmakers, who rolled over at every turn to let President Donald Trump neuter them of their power, trample on the Constitution, and destroy the economy and job market with his idiotic tariffs and evil deportation policies.

And their subservience to Trump didn’t do anything to help their own political fates, as Trump’s approval rating sinks to new embarrassing lows that threaten the GOP’s congressional majorities heading into the 2026 midterms.

For obvious reasons, GOP Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia was a top contender for the 2025 Congressional Coward of the Year award.

Even as his poll numbers began to nosedive, Republicans still chose to defend Trump’s every whim—so much so that we launched the Congressional Cowards series this year, highlighting the most embarrassing Trump sycophants.

Now at year’s end, we are crowning the inaugural Congressional Coward of the Year—the biggest Trump toady of 2025, who deserves every last mocking jeer from Daily Kos readers.

There were a few top contenders.

For example, Sen. Susan Collins of Maine has said multiple times this year that she was very “concerned” about what Trump was up to, but she never actually asserted her power to block any of his actions. Cowardly behavior at its core.

We also contemplated giving the award to Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, who, yes, stuck her neck out to criticize Trump, but then chose to cut and run from Congress rather than use her power to rein him in.

Still, neither of those lawmakers held a candle to our ultimate winner, who debased himself time and again in subservience to Dear Leader.

So congratulations Daily Kos' Congressional Coward of 2025: House Speaker Mike Johnson.

Now let’s take a trip down memory lane to remember some of Johnson's most cowardly moments throughout the year.

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Standing by Elon Musk’s DOGE disaster

As Americans turned out in droves to protest former co-President Elon Musk’s destructive cuts from the now-defunct Department of Government Efficiency, Johnson completely dismissed their concerns—going as far as deriding the American people.

"The videos you saw of the town halls were for paid protesters," Johnson said during an appearance on CNN. “They had Democrats come and fill the seats.”

Of course, not every protester was a Democrat. But even if they were, why would someone’s concerns be more or less worthy because of the political party with which they associate?

But Johnson continued to show his disdain, saying that the protesters—some of whom lost their livelihoods and benefits due to Musk’s cruel cuts—should actually be thanking the billionaire buffoon for his DOGE effort.

“Elon has said in recent weeks and told me in his office a couple weeks ago, [that] he thinks it’s very possible, this year, to identify and eliminate a trillion dollars of waste of your taxpayer dollars,” Johnson told the Washington Post in February. “You ought to be standing up and applauding.”

Yeah … we’ll pass.

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Defending tariffs

Virtually no one likes Trump’s destructive tariffs, which—despite Trump’s lies—are shouldered by U.S. businesses and consumers.

A November Politico poll found that just 22% of voters who supported Trump in 2024 think that his tariffs are helping the economy. But that hasn’t stopped Johnson from defending Trump’s tariffs at every turn.

"Look, you have to trust the president's instincts on the economy," Johnson told reporters in April, right after Trump issued his nonsensical “Liberation Day” tariffs that imposed massive levies on nearly every country, even ones uninhabited by humans.

Even worse, Johnson has actively blocked Congress from asserting its constitutional authority to end the tariffs.

“What are we, about three weeks into the tariff policy of this new administration? I don’t think it’s appropriate for Congress to jump in the middle of that and try to legislate,” Johnson said in May. 

Not only does that make Johnson look weak, but it also means that his party now owns the negative impacts that Trump’s tariffs have on the economy, including a spike in inflation and hammer to the job market.

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Epstein files flop

Johnson’s most embarrassing debacle this year was his handling of the Epstein files, serving as Trump’s righthand man in the effort to squash the release of the files. 

But in the end, Johnson folded when it became clear that his indefensible battle was lost. 

Even when Johnson was forced to put the Epstein files bill on the House floor for a vote, he said that he was voting for it with the assumption that the Senate would water it down. This led to Johnson looking like a fool yet again, after the Senate passed the bill unchanged. 

Had Johnson just put the bill on the floor months ago, the Epstein files saga could have been old news by the time the 2026 midterms came around. But by dragging his feet to appease Trump, the issue is now spilling over.

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Pathetic deflections

Of course, there are times when Trump’s actions are too much even for Johnson to take. But rather than speak badly of Dear Leader, Johnson takes the cowardly route of ridiculously claiming to have not seen any reports of Trump’s abhorrent conduct.

Trump did something hypocritical? Johnson didn’t see it. The Trump administration brutally attacked religious leaders? Johnson didn’t see that either. Trump is trying to pocket $230 million in taxpayer dollars? Johnson doesn’t know enough to have an opinion.

Trump once infamously said that he could shoot someone on Manhattan’s Fifth Avenue and not lose any voters. And if he actually did, we bet Johnson would let that slide too. He just didn’t see it happen!

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So here's to you, Mike Johnson, for being crowned Daily Kos' very first Congressional Coward of the Year.

 

You certainly earned it.

Dear Britain: Things Are Bad, but America Will Recover From Donald Trump. Just Give Us Three Years

 

JIMMY KIMMEL'S HOLIDAY MESSAGE TO THE UK: When the president targeted me and my TV show, millions said no. So don’t give up on us – and always remember, we’re not all like him

Jimmy Kimmel / Guardian UK

26 December 25

 

I have no idea if you know who I am, but I was asked to deliver this year’s alternative Christmas message (which I’ve heard is a big deal) so I hope you do, but if not I host what you call a chatshow (we call it a talkshow) in what you call the colonies, I think? I honestly have no idea what’s going on over there.

I do know what’s going on over here though, and I can tell you that, from a fascism perspective, this has been a really great year. Tyranny is booming over here.

You may have read in your colourful newspapers that my country’s president would like to shut me up – because I don’t adore him in the way he likes to be adored. The American government made a threat against me and the company I work for, and all of a sudden we were off the air. 

But then, you know what happened? A Christmas miracle happened. Well, it was September. It was a September miracle. But the holiday does seem to come earlier and earlier every year, doesn’t it?

Millions and millions of people stood up and said: “No, this is not acceptable.” People who never watched my show, people who were on record saying they hate my show spoke out, they marched. They did this all to support the right to a free expression of speech – and because so many people spoke out, we came back. 

Our show came back stronger than ever. We won, the president lost – and now I’m back on the air every night, givin’ the most powerful politician on Earth a right, and richly deserved, bollocking. That’s a word, right – I used it properly?

And the reason I’m telling you this story is because maybe you’re thinking: “Oh a government silencing its critics is something that happens in places like Russia, or North Korea, or LA, not the UK.” Well, that’s what we thought, and now we’ve got King Donny the Eighth calling for executions. It happens fast.

You know, it’s funny, we Americans are very proud of not having a king. It’s kind of why we left. Earlier this year tens of millions of us marched at protests called No Kings. You had some of those there. 

And just for the record we have nothing against your king. I mean I don’t know if you know this, but his son lives here. We just – well some of us – have a problem with the guy who thinks he is our king.

Here in the United States right now, we are both figuratively and literally tearing down the structures of our democracy. From the free press, to science, to medicine, to judicial independence, to the actual White House itself, we are a right mess. And we know this is also affecting you, and I just wanted to say sorry. And we want you to know or, at least I want you to know, that we’re not all like him. We’re not all like that.

Look I know (from the musical Hamilton) that our countries didn’t start off on the greatest note, but I also know (from seeing Love Actually) that we have a special relationship. So, if I might speak on behalf of my country – which I most certainly do not – our message to you, our friends across the pond this Christmas is: don’t give up on us. We’re going through a bit of a wobble right now, but we’ll come around. It may not seem like it, but we love you guys. We even love the things about you that you don’t like. Like Simon Cowell, for instance. 

We are not bright. We’re Americans. No one knows better than you we’re always just a little bit late to the game, but do we come through in the end? Maybe. Give us about three years. Please. Thank you for your patience, and thank you for Spider-Man. Merry Christmas, and happy holidays.

Trump, Epstein, and the Women

 In one of the newly released images, Trump—who was a real estate developer at the time of his early friendship with Epstein—is seen with a group of women whose faces are redacted.  Probably just enjoying a cup of tea together.

Around twenty women have publicly accused the President of various forms of sexual misconduct.

  David Remnick / The New Yorker

24 December 25

Just weeks before the 2016 Presidential election, the American public was provided with dispositive information on Donald Trump’s beliefs about women, sex, and the rights of men, particularly famous men. 

The information was delivered, unmistakably, in his voice. On October 7th, the Washington Post’s David Fahrenthold published a video of Trump, circa 2005, chatting merrily on a bus with Billy Bush, the co-anchor of “Access Hollywood,” as Trump prepared to make a guest appearance on an episode of the soap opera “Days of Our Lives.”

Trump bragged of his impulsivity. “I don’t even wait. And, when you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything,” he said. “Grab ’em by the pussy. You can do anything.”

In the same session, Trump was recorded saying that he had tried and failed to seduce Bush’s co-host at the time, Nancy O’Dell. “I did try and fuck her. She was married,” he said. “And I moved on her very heavily. In fact, I took her out furniture shopping. . . . I moved on her like a bitch. But I couldn’t get there.”

Initially, Trump failed to follow the dictum he had learned at the feet of Roy Cohn: Never apologize, never explain. After a fashion, he did both. He minimized the offense as “locker-room talk,” adding that his opponent’s husband, Bill Clinton, had “said far worse to me on the golf course.” 

Soon, however, he began denying that the recording was even genuine. At Trump’s second debate with Hillary Clinton, Anderson Cooper asked him, “You bragged that you have sexually assaulted women. Do you understand that?”

Trump, after allowing that he was embarrassed by the incident, tried to change the subject—to Isis terrorists chopping off heads—and insisted, “I have great respect for women. Nobody has more respect for women than I do.”

Cooper: So, for the record, you’re saying you never did that.

Trump: Frankly, you heard these things I said. . . . I have tremendous respect for women— 

Cooper: Have you ever done those things?

Trump: —and women have respect for me. And I will tell you, no, I have not. And I will tell you that I’m going to make our country safe. We’re going to have borders for our country, which we don’t have now. . . . We’re going to make America safe again, and we’re going to make America wealthy again.

Many things go into a voter’s decision, but the “Access Hollywood” tape and the gross lack of character reflected in it did not prove disqualifying in the 2016 election. 

A year later, Billy Bush, who is George H. W. Bush’s nephew, wrote an Op-Ed in the Times declaring, “Of course he said it.” Bush said that he and “seven other guys present at the bus at the time . . . assumed we were listening to a crass standup act. He was performing. Surely, we thought, none of this was real.” 

But, after reading numerous firsthand accounts of women who had been on the receiving end of Trump’s forcible affections over the years, he believed them. He was appalled and clearly resented Trump’s attempts to deny that the voice on the “Access Hollywood” tape was his. 

Bush wrote, “To these women: I will never know the fear you felt or the frustration of being summarily dismissed and called a liar, but I do know a lot about the anguish of being inexorably linked to Donald Trump. You have my respect and admiration. You are culture warriors at the forefront of necessary change.”

Trump’s attitude toward women was never unclear. As a businessman on the make for publicity, he was always eager to describe his conquests, real and imagined, for the benefit of gossip columnists and talk-show hosts. 

Since he became a politician, the picture has only sharpened. Around twenty women have publicly accused the President of various forms of sexual misconduct. (He has always denied the accusations.) In 2023, a New York jury awarded the writer E. Jean Carroll a five-million-dollar civil judgment against him for defamation and sexual abuse. She accused Trump of assaulting her in the mid-nineties in a dressing room of the Bergdorf Goodman department store, in New York. (Trump has denied Carroll’s account and has called on the Supreme Court to overturn the ruling.)

On Tuesday, as the Justice Department continued to release the avalanche of documents and photographs known collectively as the Epstein files, some, but hardly all, major news outlets reported on a letter purportedly written by Jeffrey Epstein to Larry Nassar, the former U.S.A. Gymnastics team doctor who abused hundreds of female athletes and pleaded guilty in 2018 to seven counts of first-degree criminal sexual assault. The letter was postmarked August 13, 2019, three days after Epstein killed himself in his Manhattan jail cell.

The handwritten text reflects contempt for Trump and hints darkly about his past. While all three men shared a “love of young, nubile girls,” Epstein supposedly wrote, and the President “loved to ‘grab snatch,’ ” only Epstein and Nassar had “ended up snatching grub in the mess halls of the system. Life is unfair.”

The existence of a letter was cited in a 2023 dispatch by the Associated Press. But is it real? There is no reason to believe that it is. Julie K. Brown, the Miami Herald investigative reporter who has been on the Epstein beat for many years, wrote on X, “This is suspect to me, largely because Jeffrey Epstein didn’t know how to spell. It doesn’t seem to fit with the way he wrote, either. Plus it really looks like a woman’s handwriting.” The Justice Department later announced on X that “the FBI has confirmed this alleged letter from Jeffrey Epstein to Larry Nassar is FAKE.”

The case for this President’s indecency hardly requires putting a dubious letter into evidence. As we continue to sift daily through the detritus of Trump’s accumulating record and biography, we keep living with the notion that somehow, somewhere, there will appear a document or a detail so grotesque, so damning, that the country will finally rise as one to declare this Presidency at an end. Just one more instance of sexual assault; of cruel and illegal deportations; of financial self-dealing. Just one more indulgence of racism and antisemitism in the maga camp; one more outrageous insult hurled against a foreign leader or a female reporter; one more violation of constitutional and institutional norms.

There has already been a mountain of accurate reporting on Trump’s attitude toward women and the close relationship between the President and Epstein. Among the best and most comprehensive accounts was published last week in the Times. Nicholas Confessore and Julie Tate explored countless documents and interviewed more than thirty of Epstein’s former employees, as well as victims. They described the relationship as one of common carnal interest.

“Neither man drank or did drugs. They pursued women in a game of ego and dominance. Female bodies were currency,” Confessore and Tate wrote. “Over nearly two decades, as Mr. Trump cut a swath through the party circuits of New York and Florida, Mr. Epstein was perhaps his most reliable wingman. 

During the 1990s and early 2000s, they prowled Mr. Epstein’s Manhattan mansion and Mr. Trump’s Plaza Hotel, at least one of Mr. Trump’s Atlantic City casinos and both their Palm Beach homes. They visited each other’s offices and spoke often by phone, according to other former Epstein employees and women who spent time in his homes. With other men, Mr. Epstein might discuss tax shelters, international affairs or neuroscience. With Mr. Trump, he talked about sex.”

That passage is the “billboard” of the piece, the thesis, and it is amply supported by multiple sources who describe the details of their relationship, how Trump regaled Epstein over the telephone “with tales of his sexual exploits” and how Epstein delighted in making his discomfited assistants listen on speaker. Confessore and Tate reported the recollections of a former Epstein assistant, who recounted “one call in the mid-1990s on which the two men discussed how much pubic hair a particular woman had, and whether there was enough for Mr. Epstein to floss his teeth with. On another, Mr. Trump told Mr. Epstein about having sex with another woman on a pool table.”

In the Times’ reporting, both men are portrayed in all their vanity and blithe aggression. In 1993, at one of Trump’s beauty pageants, one contestant, Béatrice Keul, then a bank employee and part-time model from Switzerland, was asked by one of Trump’s employees to meet with him privately at a suite at the Plaza: “Almost as soon as she arrived, Ms. Keul said, Mr. Trump began groping her, kissing her and trying to lift her dress. ‘I yelled, I screamed, I pushed him,’ she said. ‘He didn’t want to give up.’ ”

Before her meeting with Trump, Epstein had approached her, according to Keul, saying he was “Don’s best friend.” Would she come to Mar-a-Lago to party? “When Ms. Keul demurred,” the Times account went on, “Mr. Epstein tried other tactics—going on about the wealth he kept in Swiss banks, then about famous friends with whom he could arrange meetings. ‘Epstein knew exactly what he was doing,’ she said. ‘He had a hunting method. It was a routine.’ ”

The White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, responded to the paper’s questions about its reporting by saying it was all a “fake news story.” Which is precisely where we began, on that bus, so many years ago: Deny, deny, deny, and move on. In his Op-Ed for the Times, Billy Bush recalled another off-camera remark from Trump, when Bush confronted him about lying—in this case, inflating his television ratings. “People will just believe you,” Trump said. “You just tell them and they believe you.”

 

This photo needs no caption.

Trump gives masterclass with Epstein files on how to appear very guilty

Commuters walk past a bus stop near Nine Elms Station as activists put up a poster showing President Donald Trump and Jeffrey Epstein near the US Embassy in London, on July 17.

 

Trump included in deleted photo with Epstein victims? His lawyer seems to imply as much.

by Emily Singer

Daily Kos Staff

Monday, December 22, 2025 at 11:30:22a MST

There is a concept in the legal world called "consciousness of guilt," which in layman's terms means that if a defendant acts guilty after committing a crime, prosecutors can use that behavior as evidence to prove guilt. The Trump administration's behavior with the Epstein files release is a great example of that legal concept.

Over the weekend, the Department of Justice—which has been bastardized into President Donald Trump's personal legal team and revenge squad rather than an independent law enforcement agency—deleted at least 16 of the Epstein files that had been released. One of those deleted files depicted Trump himself.

Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche tried to defend the deletion of the photo, but ended up making things even worse for himself and Trump.

"You can see in that photo there are photographs of women. We learned after releasing it that there were concerns about those women," Blanche told NBC's Kirsten Welker as to why the image—which was a picture of photographs in a drawer that showed Trump—was deleted.

"Are you saying that one or more of those women is a victim of Epstein?" Welker asked, catching Blanche in a bind, as that means Trump was included in photos with Epstein victims.

The deletion of files came after the DOJ did not follow the law and only released some of the documents relating to the late accused pedophile Jeffrey Epstein—even though the bill Congress passed compelled the administration to release all of the files it possessed. 

That was predictable, as Attorney General Pam Bondi had telegraphed after Congress’ bill passed that the DOJ would not be complying with the law.

Even more egregious is that the DOJ redacted mentions of "politically exposed individuals and government officials" in the files, according to Fox News, which likely would protect Trump, who we know was mentioned multiple times in the documents.

It also appears some of the redactions were done to make certain people look guilty.

For example, a photo of former President Bill Clinton, late pop icon Michael Jackson, and singer Diana Ross was included in the files. That image had big squares blacking out images of other people in the photo, implying that the trio was with victims of Epstein's abuse. However, the photo had been public for decades, and the redacted faces were of Ross' and Jackson's children—making the image deceptively redacted to imply guilt in a despicable politicalization of the files.

Of course, Trump has been acting guilty about his ties to Epstein for months.

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., speaks about the Epstein Files Transparency Act, on Nov. 18, outside the U.S. Capitol in Washington. 

He refused to release the Epstein files himself, vowing revenge against any Republican lawmakers who would join Democrats to force the documents to be released. In fact, his once close relationship to Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) went up in flames after she helped force the Epstein files vote.

Ultimately, now that the administration is playing fast and loose with the law, Democrats and Republicans alike are vowing to seek punishment.

Reps. Ro Khanna (D-CA) and Thomas Massie (R-KY)—who authored the legislation that forced the files to be released—said they will seek to hold Bondi in contempt.

“Unfortunately, @AGPambondi is breaking the law. Epstein survivors aren't satisfied with the DOJ's incomplete and redacted Epstein files disclosures, and neither am I,” Massie wrote in a post on X. “Congress should assert its ability to hold Bondi in ‘inherent contempt’ to get justice for the survivors.”

And Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said he is introducing legislation to "initiate legal action against the DOJ for its blatant disregard of the law in its refusal to release the complete Epstein files."

Shocking surprise: Trump regime breaks law on Epstein files release

 Deputy Attorney General "Slippery" Todd Blanche has his own idea about how laws (and lies) work.

"We got some half-assed DOJ website with an impossible-to-navigate structure" and lots of redactions

by Lisa Needham

Daily Kos Staff

Friday, December 19, 2025 at 5:01:05p MST

Well, we got our Friday Epstein Files news dump. Sort of. 

The Department of Justice did indeed post some files. The website is messy, incomplete, and impossible to search. As in literally impossible—the search feature is utterly broken. 

But the operative word here, really, is “some.” As in “not all.” Which we knew was coming, because Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche took time out from declaring war on judges who rule against the Trump administration to explain that the administration has no intention of obeying the law and releasing all the Epstein files by Friday’s deadline. 

Todd, did it ever occur to you that judges might not consistently rule against you and your former private criminal defendant client, who now happens to be the current president of the United States, if you just followed the laws to begin with?

“I give you my blessing” by Pedro Molina

Blanche went on Fox News to announce the Department of Justice’s plan to comply with the Epstein Files Transparency Act. Complying would mean releasing all of the files about Jeffrey Epstein, President Donald Trump’s longtime pal, by Friday.  But Blanche dares ask: what if we just don’t?

“I expect that we’re going to release several hundred thousand documents today. I expect that we’re going to release more documents over the next couple of weeks, so today several hundred thousand, and then over the next couple of weeks,” Blanche said. “I expect several hundred thousand more.”

The law set a deadline for releasing all the files. Friday. Not the deadline to start to release and then roll it out over several weeks. Not the deadline to “expect” to release. Friday. All of them. Friday. 

Instead, we got some half-assed DOJ website with an impossible-to-navigate structure and no information as to how much has already been released and how much the DOJ still has left to try to read through and figure out a way to limit any damage to Trump. 

But per Blanche, the delay is because they are just so gosh-darned worried about protecting Epstein’s victims. “There’s a lot of eyes looking at these, and we want to make sure that when we do produce the materials that we’re producing, that we’re protecting every single victim.”

Corrupt Attorney General Pam Bondi

This excuse might land better if Blanche’s boss, Attorney General Pam Bondi, hadn’t bragged back in February about how she very sternly requested all the Epstein documents for her review. Or talked about how she was ready to review the Epstein client list sitting on her desk right away, only to later backtrack and say there was no such thing. Or if the DOJ hadn’t announced back on July 7 that it had finished its “exhaustive review of investigative holdings relating to Jeffrey Epstein.”

If any of these things were actually true, these documents would have been reviewed multiple times, making a last-minute scramble to determine where victims’ names appeared and get them redacted unnecessary. 

And it’s not like the administration didn’t know this was coming. Sure, they worked night and day to stop the release, and sure, House Speaker Mike Johnson basically shut down the House of Representatives to lend a hand, but given that the public pressure on this has been unrelenting for months, the DOJ could have been reviewing and redacting all along. 

Unfortunately, when the administration thumbs its nose at yet another law, what on earth would be the recourse? Congress was barely able to get it together to pass a law requiring the release. The United States Supreme Court seems very willing to agree that if Trump doesn’t want to follow laws, he doesn’t have to. 

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Related | Epstein kept photos of Trump, young women, and sex toys

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However, the Democrats on the House Oversight Committee are smartly playing the long game here, releasing material in bits and pieces with no fixed schedule. Keep that threat hanging over the heads of Trump and the DOJ, House Democrats. 

Blanche and Bondi aren’t in their roles to execute the laws; they are there to protect Trump. And if that means breaking the law, they don’t care.

This Is What Presidential Panic Looks Like

 Donald Trump delivered a fear-drenched rant live from the White House. (photo: Graeme Sloan)

 

INTO YOUR LIVING ROOM: Panic-Drenched Trump delivers a fear-laden rant live from the White House

 

Tom Nichols / The Atlantic 

19 December 25

The president of the United States just barged into America’s living rooms like an angry, confused grandfather to tell us all that we are ungrateful whelps.

When a president asks for network time, it’s usually to announce something important. But tonight, Donald Trump did not give anything like a normal speech or address. 

He was clearly working from a prepared text, but it sounded like one he’d written—or dictated angrily—himself, because it was full of bizarre howlers that even Trump’s second-rate speech-writing shop would probably have avoided, such as his assertion that inflation when he took office was the worst it had been in 48 years. (Why did he pick 1977 as a benchmark? Who knows. But he’s wrong.) 

He read the speech quickly, his voice rising in frustration as he hurled one lie after another into the camera.

We could take apart Trump’s fake facts, as checkers and pundits will do in the next few days. But perhaps more important than false statements—which for Trump are par for the course—was his demeanor. 

Americans saw a president drenched in panic as he tried to bully an entire nation into admitting he’s doing a great job. For 20 minutes, he vented his hurt feelings without a molecule of empathy or awareness. Economic concerns? Shut up, you fools, the economy is doing fine. (And if it isn’t, it’s not his fault—it’s Joe Biden’s.) Foreign-policy jitters? Zip it, you wimps, America is strong and respected.

In effect, Trump took to the airwaves, pointed his finger, and said: Quiet, piggy.

I consider myself a connoisseur of Trump’s speeches. I’ve watched them and live-tweeted them for years because I think Americans need to see what kind of man sits in the Oval Office. But even by Trump’s standards, this was an unnerving display of fear. 

I can only imagine America’s enemies in Moscow and Beijing and Tehran smiling with pleasure as they watched a president losing his bearings, berating his own people, and demanding that they absolve him of any blame when things get worse.

His rant contained no news, other than an example of his contempt for the U.S. military, whose loyalty he thinks he can purchase with a onetime $1,776 bonus check. This is projection: Trump has shown his willingness to be bought off with gold bars and trinkets, and he may think that the men and women of the armed forces are people of equally low character.

This was not a holiday address from the president of a great democracy to its citizens. This was a desperate tin-pot leader yelling into a microphone while cornered in his palace redoubt. Trump has been unraveling for weeks, and his speech tonight, like Trump himself, was unworthy of America and its people.

 

Really old blubbermouth in action. 

Trump takes next step in quest to turn DC into a horribly gaudy Mar-a-Lago

A new gold script sign is seen mounted outside of the Oval Office on Dec. 6.

 

No pencils or dolls as Trump takes aim at building a tacky Arc deTriomphe knockoff and stealing DC golf courses

by Lisa Needham

Daily Kos Staff

Monday, December 15, 2025 at 6:01:22p MST

 

REPUBLISHED BY: 

Blue Country Gazette Blog

Rim Country Gazette Blog 

President Donald Trump definitely wants to leave his mark on our nation’s capital. Too bad that mark is nothing but a gross, gilded stain. Trump’s aesthetics are as awful as his politics—a hollow and ugly horror. 

The East Wing is being demolished to make room for President Donald Trump’s new gaudy ballroom.

While the White House has borne the brunt of his gold-plated attack, Trump has big plans for the rest of Washington. There’s a whole city out there for him to wreck, and there are some golf courses he would really like to get his mitts on. The man’s got big developer dreams, and they don’t certainly just stop at the White House. 

While we no longer have an East Wing of the White House so Trump can build his ballroom, no one officially knows exactly what that monstrosity will look like because he hasn’t submitted any official plans and just broke up with his architect. Still, all signs point to it being Mar-a-Lago-style garbage. 

There’s also the gilded Oval Office decor, which is oozing tacky gold-plated plaster everywhere. And, of course, there’s the Lincoln bathroom, which he turned into a marble and gold nightmare.

But Trump’s gilded dreams can’t be contained to just one building, so why not try to ruin Washington’s public golf courses too?

Back in 2020, the National Links Trust was awarded a 50-year lease to manage Washington’s three public courses. But on Oct. 29, the Trump administration issued a notice that NLT is in default. No, it doesn’t say why it’s in default or how to fix it—a classic Trump move. 

NLT gets 45 days to fix that default—the one that hasn’t been explained—which is soon coming to an end. If NLT doesn’t somehow fix the imaginary default, it will lose operational control of the three courses this week, and voila, they’re all Trump’s.

The timing of the notice helps explain the weird Oct. 31 Washington Post report that a bunch of dirt from the East Wing demolition was dumped on the East Potomac Golf Course. Think of it as Trump marking his territory. Oh, and no one knows if it’s chock-full of asbestos or not. 

Let’s face it: the golf courses will likely join the Kennedy Center as another piece of Washington that’s been wrecked by Trump. 

And we’re also going to get a tacky Arc de Triomphe knockoff, which Trump says is the main priority for his domestic policy chief. Sure, Trump is telling people that their kids can’t have dolls or pencils because of skyrocketing inflation thanks to Trump’s tariffs, but that arch must get built.

Really can’t wait to find out which private defense contractors, big tech, and media corporations will rush to “donate” to Trump’s latest hideous remodel. You know, for freedom.

 President Donald Trump sits in the gold-plated Oval Office.