At 12:53 this afternoon, Donald Trump was already struggling to keep his eyes open as he exited the Oval Office and walked straight to the Rose Garden luncheon to honor first responders. As “God Bless the USA” played over the speakers, the president stood with the right side of his mouth drooping downward, taking in the moment until every last note of the song had been played. He then walked up to the podium and spoke for 36 minutes, telling the audience of heroes that he should be sleeping right now, that he is not a controversial person, and that he has some “severe problems,” but that they are not related to drugs or alcohol. By the time he finished his incoherent, rambling speech, it was clear that Donald Trump’s long goodbye was already well underway.
Nowhere was that more apparent than in the way he treated the very people he was there to honor. The event was supposed to recognize first responders, including firefighters, police officers, paramedics, EMTs, and Secret Service agents, all of the people who rush toward danger to help others. These are people who deserved a president who would honor their sacrifice and service, not turn an event about them into an event about himself. Yet of the 36 minutes he spoke, very little was actually spent recognizing their service.
Trump began by telling the people gathered in front of him that he had just landed back in Washington, D.C., at 4:45 that morning. He said he was “supposed to be sleeping now,” and joked about sending a robot version of himself out on the campaign trail so he could stay home and watch on TV. He talked about the scandal-plagued Ken Paxton, who is running for the U.S. Senate in Texas, and then said, with all seriousness, that while Paxton might be considered controversial, he had this to say about himself: “I don’t happen to be a controversial person.”
He also spent a good amount of time talking about addiction, avoiding drugs and alcohol, and how fortunate he is that he does not drink or smoke. He said his friends who drink have “a real hard time” staying away from it, and then he went into a hard-to-follow story about the vicious cycle of Narcan use and how addicts are revived only to go right back to using. Then he said something he very much regretted saying: “I have other problems. I have some very severe problems. But those are not one of them. I don’t want to add them to the list. Do you understand that? I don’t want to add them to the list. Because if I did, I guarantee I wouldn’t be here right now.”
He kept talking for a little while before the lightbulb turned back on inside his brain and he realized what he had just admitted. Desperately trying to undo the damage, he said into the microphone, “The press is going to say, what problem does he have? Let’s figure it out. I probably set myself up for that one.” He then turned to Attorney General Todd Blanche and asked him for help: “Todd’s going to have to try and defend me.”
Donald Trump admitted something that many have believed for a very long time, that he has “very severe problems,” but he did so without explaining what they are. No president of the United States should stand at a podium and tell the world something like that without providing any context, and for good reason. We, the American people, and anyone tasked with negotiating with him deserve to know whether there is anything affecting his ability to carry out the responsibilities of the presidency. But at the same time, making a declaration like that with no explanation leaves us as a country vulnerable to speculation and uncertainty. This was yet another moment that should have prompted congressional questions at the very least, but his words were caught on camera, so when Congress is no longer a MAGA stronghold, they can be examined and investigated then.
He also talked about “reskinning” the exterior of the White House, which is an odd way of saying he is still obsessed with wasting taxpayer dollars on his gold lamé glorification projects. He talked about replacing laminate signs with “solid brass, half-inch thick” ones and about fixing the ornamental stonework around the windows. The way that he described the work he was doing was as if he were putting the finishing touches on his own mausoleum.
One of the more absurd and pathetic moments came when Donald Trump brought up the $22 trillion in investment he claims credit for. He then stopped to explain that someday a future president would stand at that same podium and announce the greatest economic growth in American history, but he wanted everyone to remember who deserved the credit. “Remember, I did it,” he said. “They didn’t do it.” Then he turned to a Border Patrol official named Paul and said, “Please protect me. Paul, would you please protect me? Get up to the microphone, Paul, and say, ‘It was Trump that did it, sir.’”
Later in the day, Trump gave us even more concerning comments when he sat down for an interview with Newsmax, where we saw a completely unfiltered version of the president. When he was asked about the possibility of yet another impeachment if Democrats win the midterms, Donald Trump responded by saying that he has “become good at anti-impeachment; I go with the anti-impeachment movement. But for them to do that, it cheapens our country so much. It’s really very terrible.”
You could tell he was a bit thrown by the question, so he deflected and turned the attention to others. “Honestly, I could have done numbers on Hillary Clinton. I could have done numbers on Bill Clinton. I do like Bill Clinton. I could have done numbers on Barack Hussein Obama. Still could, I still could. I could do big numbers if I wanted to.” He continued with, “I’ve turned down going after Hillary Clinton. Big numbers. I’m talking about going after them criminally. I could have done something having to do with their reputations, destroyed their reputations. We have a lot of information about Hillary, we have a lot of information about Barack Hussein Obama, we have a lot of information on Sleepy Joe.”
The president of the United States isn’t supposed to threaten former presidents or their families. He isn’t supposed to use the powers of his office to settle personal scores or boast about possessing information he could use to criminally prosecute people or destroy their reputations. And yet that is exactly how Trump presented it, as though deciding whether to pursue criminal charges against his political opponents was entirely up to him and had nothing to do with evidence or actual wrongdoing. Because if he really possessed information about serious crimes committed by any of these people, it would be his responsibility to make sure that information was turned over to the appropriate authorities and investigated through the proper legal process, regardless of who was involved. Instead, he talked about it as something he could choose to use or hold back whenever he wanted. It was more mob boss language coming from the president of the United States, and there was nothing presidential about what he said. The message he was sending today was that he can ruin your life if he wants to.
Then he was asked about pardons, and whether he was considering pardoning himself before leaving office. “Well, I don’t think about it because I did nothing wrong,” he said. “I could have given myself a pardon the last time I left office. I never thought that they’d bring me through the mud.” When asked if he regretted not pardoning himself the first time, he said, “Well, I won, but I won the hard way. I’m allowed to do a pardon, a self-pardon. I’m allowed to pardon.” He never denied he would do it. Whether he does or not, hopefully he remembers that pardons only work on federal wrongdoings and not state crimes. He can issue as many pardons as he wants; he will just have to be held accountable by the states.
He also was asked about his future plans in Iran, and if he would use a nuclear weapon. Trump told the reporter that “I wouldn’t use nuclear. We don’t have to.” But then he said he would use what he described as “tiny nuclear bombs.” He said there was a weapon he was considering, the GBU-43, known as the “mother of all bombs,” the largest non-nuclear weapon in the American arsenal. He called it “just an extremely large bomb.” Then he said, “It’s like a tiny nuclear bomb.”
When asked about Ukraine and Russia, he made sure to mention how he feels about Volodymyr Zelenskyy: “No, I’m not a big fan of Zelensky,” he said, while he accused the Ukrainian president of not wanting to settle the war. He called Ukraine’s strikes on Russian oil refineries “a disgrace,” saying “there’s plenty of other targets.” When asked if he trusted Benjamin Netanyahu, he said, “I don’t trust anybody, honestly. In the world of politics, I don’t trust anybody,” and he claimed that if he ran for prime minister of Israel, he would get “99 percent” of the vote.
Back in the Rose Garden, Trump said something that showed just how completely lacking in self-awareness he is and how far removed America has become from even the most basic standards of human decency. He told an audience of people whose lives have been dedicated to protecting and saving others from the worst situations imaginable about missiles fired by the United States military at boats “from 600 miles away” and said, “You feel terribly for the people.” Then he added, completely unprompted, “But you know, every boat kills thousands of people. Think of it that way. Then you feel better.” He took that moment, while talking about bombing and killing people, to tell a truly sickening joke about how missile strikes had ruined the fishing industry because nobody wants to go boating anymore. “Let’s go fishing, darling. No, thank you. Just in case somebody, one of you guys, has a happy trigger.” He was joking about his own military killing people. In front of the nation’s firefighters and police officers. During a luncheon in their honor. Thankfully, the audience gave him almost no reaction. They just sat there.
With the normalization of violence coming from the White House, what happened this afternoon in Bend, Oregon, was another devastating reminder of just how much it has become a part of everyday life in America. A teenager walked into Silver Rail Elementary School and opened fire, killing three children and a teacher. Two more people were injured and taken to the hospital. The shooter was also killed after a community member reportedly followed him into the school and shot him. On the same day that families in Oregon were facing an unimaginable pain few have felt, the president of the United States was spending his afternoon joking about his own military killing people.
We cannot keep accepting this. We cannot keep absorbing these headlines the way we absorb everything else in the news cycle, that Donald Trump has done or said. We can’t open our phones or turn on our TVs and learn about what happened and then go on with our lives. Three children went to school today and did not come home. This is the country we are living in. A country where our children are not safe in their classrooms and where families are being ripped apart on the street by federal agents.
Our children should not have to live in a country where they practice active shooter drills the way we used to practice fire drills. There is a right way and a wrong way to do everything, and Donald Trump, and the people who enable him, choose the worst way every single time. He has told us this himself. He sides with dictators. He admires their methods. He talks about weapons of mass destruction. He threatens to use the Department of Justice as a personal enforcement arm against anyone who opposes him.
But here is what today also showed us. He backed down. The president of the United States felt the pressure and backed down. He announced on Truth Social that he has abandoned his plan to livestream the firing squad execution of Nidal Hasan, a truly evil man and the convicted Fort Hood shooter. The president wanted Americans to be able to watch an execution by firing squad, and the backlash was immediate and overwhelming. 80 percent of Americans in a national poll opposed the livestream. Republicans and Democrats both condemned it. JD Vance said he would not watch. Archbishop Paul Coakley, president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, called it “a barbaric promotion of a culture of death.” The United Nations issued a formal objection. Military families spoke out, saying it exploited their grief rather than honoring their loved ones, and Donald Trump decided not to broadcast it.
That happened because we pushed back. Because the outrage was loud enough and unified enough to make them back down. That is resistance working.
In 19 days, it will finally be Election Day across the states, and we will finally have our voices heard. If you can vote early, please consider doing so. This vote is the start, but it is not the whole answer. We have to stop treating what is happening, all of it, as though it is normal. We have to stop adjusting to the temperature of the water as it rises around us. We have to come together as a country and say, not just at the ballot box but in every part of our lives, enough is enough.
Because here is the thing about a long goodbye and the person receiving it. It does not have to be a pleasant goodbye. It can be whatever we want it to be. And this time, it needs to be one he and other corrupt men like him will never forget. Our country still knows right from wrong, even when its president does not, and in just over two weeks, we will have a chance to remind the world of that. That is why I still have hope for America. And you should, too.
I’ll see you tomorrow,
Heather
PS. You can make a significant difference right now by subscribing to my Substack. Your support helps me cover more ground and keep telling the truth about the lies and destruction unfolding in this country.
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.
Picture of the day: I spend nearly every waking hour researching for these posts, learning from experts in various fields, and listening to everything that Donald Trump and his enablers say and do, but I still can’t keep up with everything I’d like to. That includes reading all the commentary being written and keeping track of where my own words are being shared. So please, if you see my words online, I’d love to know about it. Special thanks to those of you who let me know that Katy Tur quoted my post and used it as a springboard for a discussion on a recent episode of her show. When I started writing these nightly posts, I just wanted people who couldn’t spend the time I could researching what was happening day in and day out to have the information they needed to be more informed and involved. So I am deeply grateful whenever I learn that my words are reaching an even greater audience, because it is going to take all of us to get this country back on track.
Links to sources used in writing this article:
https://www.axios.com/2026/10/09/jd-vance-fort-hood-shooter-livestream-execution
https://www.fox7austin.com/news/texas-attorney-general-ken-paxton-announces-senate-run
“No Kings” .. tomorrow. See you there.
Thank you Heather.