Does the President even know what is happening?

Just after 6:30 p.m. tonight, the President of the United States stood before a room of governors at a formal White House dinner and opened his remarks by confessing that he believes his own Cabinet or maybe others in the room want to overthrow him.

“Every time they look in the mirror, every time they wake up or go to sleep, they look at that mirror, and they say, ‘I should be president, not him.’”

And he said it with a slight smile. But there was nothing funny about it. It was raw paranoia on display for the world to see. And whether the fear was real or imagined, most presidents would have known how dangerous it is to say those words out loud. He didn’t. And the spectacle of what he said then, and the rest of his extended ramblings, deepened the sense that something is profoundly wrong.

It was also on display when he entered the room to the sound of “Pomp and Circumstance,” walking down the red carpet lined with military members and flags, where Melania had to hold his hand tightly, smiling widely to distract from his physical and mental decline. She subtly guided his pace, aligning his path and direction, steadying him when his body seemed stiff and unsure. Her grip was firm in contrast to his careful, almost hobbling movements.

When they reached the table, she was the one who greeted the governors. She shook hands. She carried the conversation. He lingered half a step behind her, his left hand pressed against the small of her back, his right hanging motionless at his side. He looked diminished and smaller than usual. And more than once, you could see concern in the eyes of the people watching him.

As Melania sat down, he made his way over to the podium, where he made that fateful Cabinet remark before continuing with the rest of his speech. In it, he recited the same propaganda lines he’s been repeating for weeks, almost word for word. Which makes sense, since it appears he’s just reading whatever was placed in front of him, instead of acting as the true leader of policy and decision-making.

And what was placed in front of him was embarrassing. Not just for him, but for the country.

He called Melania his “movie star wife,” “You know, now I can say my movie star wife; you believe this. I have to live with now another title.” An overplayed nod to her $40 million Amazon documentary.

He launched into a story about the Great Salt Lake that sounded like a man trying to work out, in real time, where a major body of water was located, despite the fact that it shares its name with the city right next to it. “We’re going to save the Great Salt Lake. You know that, right? We’ve got a problem,” he said. “He came in to see me today. These are the kind of things he said, sir: we have to save the Great Salt Lake. I said, ‘Explain this to me, please.’ In that city called Salt Lake City, somebody said, ‘Where is it located?’ I said, ‘It’s located in Salt Lake City, right?’” That was the President of the United States, standing in front of a camera, openly questioning the location of one of the most well-known landmarks in the American West.

Then came the 2020 election. Again. Because it always comes back to that. “When the election was rigged and I missed my normal second term,” he said. “I was the one that got the Olympics, and I was the one that got the World Cup. The problem was I was gonna be president for another four years, and this was going to take place.” And then, with what appeared to be genuine frustration: “I took credit for the Olympics. I took credit for the World Cup, and I’m trying to take credit for the 250 years, but I’m not getting away with it. I’m getting hammered. I’m getting hammered.” He was talking about the founding of the United States. Not just the anniversary. The founding. And he sounded genuinely frustrated that no one would let him take personal credit for something that happened 250 years ago.

Then he turned to the press. “Now we’re with some very special reporters tonight. It’s… I often say the fake news, but I will not say that tonight, even though I’m on live television. I will not call you fake news, okay, as the cameras are roaring.” And he pressed on. “The press has been relatively fair to me over the last year, meaning they’ve been bad but not horrible.” Then he floated a strange idea: that the governors should vote on whether to allow the press to stay for the musical performance planned later in the evening. “If you’d like, should we, by vote, allow the press to watch the great finale that we have planned tonight with the musicians?” It was extremely odd, and the room went quiet as it shifted uncomfortably. No one seemed to know whether to raise their hand, respond, or simply look away.

Much like his presidency, the speech was confused, unsettling, and deeply chaotic.

And when you watch that speech, and see how he is given the same talking points over and over again, at nearly all of his public appearances, and he seems fine with it, it begs the question, what if he doesn’t even know that he’s being fed the same topics because nobody in his inner circle believes he can handle more than that? And what if he truly doesn’t understand the extent of his own decline, or what they are doing?

We’ve all seen those moments, like when he turned to his doctors on camera, not too long ago in the Oval Office, and said, “Real fast,” turning to the doctors in the room. “Is my health perfect?” And his doctor, Jones, replied: “Your health is excellent, sir.”

What if Stephen Miller, or whoever is really pulling the strings, has convinced the people around him to keep the truth from him? What if the cover-up isn’t just for us? What if it’s for him, too? We might be giving Trump too much credit by assuming he’s actively hiding his condition. He may not know. And the people who do know have every reason to keep it that way, because the moment the performance ends, so does their grip on power and their pipeline to profit.

So that raises the harder question: how does this end?

Not in the broad sense of Democrats taking back Congress. I mean: how does this chapter close? When does this era get its last entry? Because the truth is, history tells us that the ideology behind what we’re living through doesn’t just go away when one man leaves office. There will always be people who are drawn to cruelty and power.

This chapter ends when we make it end. It ends when Democrats take back control AND when every single person who enabled this regime is held accountable. Not with a slap on the wrist. Not with a “let’s move forward and heal.” With trials. Real ones. The kind we haven’t seen since the Nuremberg trials that were conducted by serious people with the moral clarity and legal authority to match the scale of what has been done.

And that means every layer. It means investigating how Trump’s family increased their wealth while in office. It means asking real questions about Melania’s $40 million Amazon documentary, which looks less like a film deal and more like a bribe. It means asking how Cabinet members like Kristi Noem are affording extensive cosmetic work, designer clothing, and lifestyles their government salaries could never support. Where is that money coming from? And if it’s coming from their positions of power, from the public dollar, then it’s not just unethical. It could be criminal. This is why we need hearings. It all must come to light.

That includes every agency head and every ICE officer who carried out raids that violated people’s rights. Every single one of them must face accountability under the law.

We also need to make sure that convicted felons can never again hold the highest office in the land. That should not be a controversial statement. But here we are.

The pendulum is going to swing. And this time it’s going to swing farther than we’ve ever seen. And when it does, we cannot waste it. We must hold every enabler accountable. We must make changes to the systems that allowed this to happen.

Because part of the reason we’re here is that we never fully dealt with the darkest chapters of our own history. We never truly reckoned with slavery, Japanese internment camps, the genocide of Native American communities, and the systemic theft of their land. We’ve acknowledged them. And we’ve halfheartedly apologized decades later. But we never did the deep structural work to make sure the systems that allowed those atrocities couldn’t be reactivated. And now they have been. ICE detention centers. Family separations. Government-sanctioned cruelty carried out in our name. This is not new evil. It’s old evil in new uniforms. And it will keep coming back until we pull it out by the root.

I think about that a lot. Especially from my time as a travel writer. When I was on location in Germany, I asked people how they live with the history, how they carry it. And the answer was always the same: it’s a burden they bear to make sure it never happens again. They carry it so they don’t repeat it. It’s in the architecture. It’s in the memorials. It’s in the education system. It’s not something they got over. It’s something they committed to never looking away from.

I also think about a moment in Austria that I’ve never forgotten. I was walking down the street to quickly grab a coffee when I saw that someone had just put up Nazi propaganda on a wall. I was stunned. When I came back, maybe six minutes later, every single piece of it had been torn down, shredded, and thrown in a trash can. Six minutes. That’s all it took. Not because the police showed up, or a government agency intervened. But because ordinary people saw it and refused to let it stand.

That’s how this ends. Not with one election or one trial. It ends in the actions we take every single day and our refusal to normalize what is happening. It ends with ordinary people choosing, again and again, to tear down the hatred the moment it appears. This is the commitment each of us must make for the rest of our lives to truly end this dark chapter.

And that brings me to what we can do right now.

Support the attorneys and the legal professionals who are breaking down every executive order, every tariff maneuver, every constitutional violation so the rest of us can understand what’s happening. I spent over 8 hours today trying to understand the tariff situation alone: the legalities, what he can and can’t do, the 150-day limits, the acts he’s invoking. And I was only able to have the deeper understanding I do today because there are brilliant legal minds out there doing that work and explaining it in depth. They need our support. If you can, subscribe to them. Share their work. Make sure they can keep going.

Protect the truth. Support independent media. With the continued collapse of corporate newsrooms to Trump’s demands, it is on us to keep the truth alive. I keep my own work free so everyone can access it, and that’s only possible because of those who support it through paid memberships. Those who are able to offer support in this way are how I’m able to keep all of my posts and videos free of paywalls. But beyond my work, find the voices you trust and invest in them. Subscribe. Share. Amplify. That is how we win the war against propaganda.

Support each other. The real work begins at home, and by home, I mean in your community. Check on your neighbors. Make sure the people around you aren’t so desperate that they become easy to control, because desperate people are easier to manipulate, and they’ll vote against their own long-term interests just to meet an immediate need. That’s what this regime is counting on. Don’t let it happen.

I think back to whoever tore down those posters when I was in Austria, and I know that can be each of us. We can be the people who refuse to look away. Who act in the moment. Who tear it down before it takes root. That’s why I still have hope for America. And you should, too.

I’ll see you tomorrow,
Heather

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This commentary represents my personal opinions and analysis of matters of public concern, informed by publicly available information. Any references to individuals constitute opinion and commentary protected under the First Amendment.