At 1:01 this afternoon, the cameras inside the Oval Office turned on just in time to see Donald Trump slouched in his seat behind the Resolute Desk, staring off into the distance, already checked out, heavy-eyed, with one side of his mouth drooping. Seconds later, he snapped back to reality and started reading from a binder of papers that had been placed right in front of him. Over the course of the next hour, Donald Trump managed to disgrace the office of the presidency multiple times as he made one outrageous statement after another, including his claim that he should win the Nobel Peace Prize because he had “stopped the total obliteration of the world.”
That was just the beginning. He shared his excitement that today was one of his dictator friends’ birthdays, and he asked a reporter if he was going to celebrate. “Today is Vladimir Putin’s birthday. I’m sure you’re going to celebrate it. Are you going to celebrate his birthday?”
He threatened past presidents, saying, “I could have done very, very bad things to Joe Biden. I could have done very bad things to Barack Hussein Obama too… I certainly even to this moment I have, I can do whatever I want, if I want.” He pushed it even further, declaring that “I could have done very bad things to Hillary Clinton.”
When he first started to speak, he spent the first six minutes surrounded by his billionaire donors and members of his inner circle, trying to connect the very reason they were there in the first place, savings accounts for children, to a made-up communist threat from the Democrats, saying, “Instead of Americans sharing in the misery of communism or whatever it is they’re out there promoting, which is, you know, I’m watching it all the time. They’re communists.” He also made sure to thank his sycophant friends for contributing to the “Trump Accounts” that conveniently bear his name.
At the end of his rambling opening remarks, he turned the event over to his wealthy supporters to each take a turn speaking, but not before reminding everyone that he did not want to be in that room, saying, “And uh we can go quickly because everyone knows what’s happening with the Trump accounts. It’s been written about so favorably. It’s been so successful, and these beautiful young children are extremely rich.” The event hadn’t been going on long at that point, and he was already making very little sense, because he said the children these savings accounts were being created for, to help them save money for the future, were somehow already rich. Shortly thereafter, he let the men and one woman standing right behind him finally talk, and then he started a whole new fight, one to keep his eyes open and stay awake.
It wasn’t until he had to answer questions from the press that he really started going off the rails. Just before he responded to the first reporter, he gestured toward the children in the room and told them to stay where they were so the press could admire their appearance. “Stay there, you’re so good-looking. The press can admire you. It’s how they used to look.” From there, the President spent the next 27 minutes taking the conversation in all sorts of directions that had nothing to do with the financial future of American children.
The White House made a big deal of this latest announcement about the “Trump Accounts,” with the President saying, “There are those that say this is one of the most important things that I will have done,” and then remembering there were other people in the room, many of whom had actually donated money, something Donald Trump didn’t do, he added, “that this administration with these incredible people will have done.” Senator Ted Cruz was happy to step in and back him up, saying, “This is unquestionably going to be one of the biggest parts of your legacy as president.”
There is nothing wrong with wanting to help children start saving money early in life. In fact, versions of this idea have been proposed by both Democrats and Republicans for years. But there is a difference between creating a program to help American children and turning that program into a celebration of the president and an event for his enablers to praise him on TV.
I spent some time really going through what is publicly available about the program, and aside from the fact that it bears the president’s name, it is, in essence, “free” money for children who qualify. If you have a child born between 2025 and 2028 who is eligible for the $1,000 government contribution, it makes sense to consider claiming that money. Even if you just took the $1,000 and did nothing more, it could grow into a small but not insignificant amount of money for your child. But there are a few things to consider before doing so. The new announcement is that accounts for eligible American children under 18 with Social Security numbers have essentially already been opened, which means parents and guardians now need to claim them.
Before this, families had to start the enrollment process themselves. What isn’t abundantly clear is exactly where the information used to create these accounts came from, who has access to it, and how the administration might use the additional information families would need to provide when they officially claim one of these accounts for their children. The other concerning part is that they are really pushing families to download and use their app to manage the account. That raises another set of very serious questions about privacy and security. We need to understand what information the app collects, where that information is being stored, who can access it, and how it might be used beyond the administration of the Trump Accounts before anyone agrees to put this government app on their phone. These are individual decisions families will have to make based on their own comfort levels, but they deserve clear answers before making them.
During the event, practically every time someone else was speaking, the President’s eyes started to close like clockwork. There were even multiple times he appeared to completely fall asleep. Everything got worse when he started answering questions from the press standing in the Oval Office with him. A reporter told him a hurricane was forecast to hit the Gulf Coast that weekend and asked if he was still planning to go to an Alabama football game on Saturday. His answer: “I hadn’t heard about a hurricane.” The President of the United States said from inside the White House that he didn’t even know about a hurricane that was about to land on American soil. His first instinct wasn’t very presidential either. There wasn’t any concern for the people in its path until later. His first thought was how much he wanted to go to the football game. “I love Alabama. I got to go to a game.” He eventually added that he’d “let the hurricane determine.”
He also had a moment when he couldn’t seem to locate a man standing almost right next to him. He wanted to thank Michael Dell for his $6.25 billion donation to the Trump Accounts, and Trump looked around the room, appearing a bit panicked, and said, “I want to thank Michael, wherever he may be.” Those standing near Donald Trump quickly jumped in and told the president, “He’s right here!” Trump responded, somewhat deflated, “I’m missing you, Michael. I didn’t like that.” He had just seen Michael Dell, referred to him and acknowledged his presence, and mere minutes later, he couldn’t locate the man standing close to him. At this same event, Trump said that Joe Biden “didn’t know what was, he didn’t know. He possibly didn’t know what was going on. I think he did. I think he had a mean streak, but uh not smart, but mean.”
It was around the same time that he went off on a tangent about the bad things he could have done to people and still could do. The full quote was, “I could have done very bad things to Hillary Clinton. I could have done very, very bad things to Joe Biden. I could have done very bad things to Barack Hussein Obama. I thought it was inappropriate to do so because you have to treat the office of the presidency with respect. Then I found out that they impeached me twice. And I certainly even to this moment I have, I can do whatever I want, if I want.”
Beyond how confused Donald Trump appeared to be and how he failed to mention that the people who impeached him were members of Congress, not Clinton or Obama, he had the audacity to pretend that there is any respect still in the Oval Office or that he has any respect for the office himself. What he was really saying is that he has been generous in not going after them, and he wants everyone to remember and never forget that his generosity could end at any time. What he said amounted to a threat.
He also added, “I’ve had my shot and still do at Biden, at Hillary Clinton, and Barack Hussein Obama. I’ve had plenty of people say, ‘Let’s go get them.’” This was another test balloon coming from the president, and it follows a pattern we have seen from authoritarians before him. It’s also a move of past dictators and fascists. They strategically erase the leaders who came before them because they don’t want them standing around as reminders that there was a time before the authoritarians’ rule where people once had rights, and that power once had time limits and that it was held accountable to the people that elected them to office. He does not want reminders of how he has destroyed our country for fear that we will all rise up together and demand better.
That’s also why he puts his name on everything he possibly can. He has done it, or at least tried to, with buildings, hats, and now children’s savings accounts. That’s also why he can’t stop talking about Obama and Biden and Clinton. They represent the thing he’s trying to destroy: the idea that someone else could have led before him and done so within the confines of the Constitution, rather than being driven by their worst impulses under a cloud of corruption.
Then there was the Nobel Prize moment, when a reporter asked him if he had any regrets about how he’s used his time behind “that desk”. Donald Trump did not even pause when he said, “I settled eight wars. Another one is coming. I got all the hostages back. I did things that nobody else has ever done. I’m not bragging. I’m just telling you the facts. No president has settled any wars. I settled eight wars and big ones. Big. Saved millions and millions of lives… I settled eight wars. Uh, and I’ve stopped maybe the total obliteration of the world.”
Donald Trump’s grandiosity is not separate from his authoritarian ambitions. It is the foundation of them. He truly seems to believe that he has saved the world, settled eight wars, and is the greatest president in history. With that inflated sense of himself, he no longer seems concerned with justifying whatever he does next. Every law you break and every norm you shatter, along with every threat you make, is just the cost of greatness.
He also told us what kind of country he is really working to build. He said very confidently that in a little while “we won’t need anything from anybody,” when he was talking about our trade relationships. He said we don’t need Canada for anything, as he talked about tariffs of 100, 200, and 300 percent, still not understanding how the math actually works on these things. He described a vision of the United States that is completely cut off and isolated from the rest of the world.
This too shows the opposite of strength and is further proof of his plan for isolation. It too echoes every authoritarian leader in modern history who told their people that the outside world was the enemy, and that dependence on our allies was weakness and unpatriotic. It is purely delusional thinking, because no modern economy functions in total isolation, and the people who will suffer most from escalating trade wars and diplomatic breakdowns are the same working families he just told that their children would be “extremely rich” from putting a one-time $1,000 deposit into a savings account. But it’s also very strategic on his part, because a country that believes it doesn’t need anyone is a country that won’t notice when its alliances finally collapse, and when the only leaders left on the planet still willing to talk to us are the ones who share Trump’s instincts: Putin, Orban, and the rest of the strongman club he so desperately wants to belong to.
Here is the main thing I keep coming back to tonight: there were children in that room listening to everything that was said. Sixth and seventh graders, who must have been thrilled to be on camera, who were brought into the Oval Office, carefully positioned close to the President of the United States, and told this was a historic day, and that they were part of something important. Some looked nervous, and most were smiling. They were doing what kids do when adults put them in a situation they don’t fully understand: they went along with it and tried to make the grownups proud.
Then those children stood there while the President of the United States fell asleep. They stood there while he talked about communism and threatened former presidents, and when he asked a reporter if he planned to celebrate Vladimir Putin’s birthday. When Trump was done using them as props, he told them to stay put so the press could look at them, because they were “so good-looking.”
I keep thinking about those kids and what it felt like to stand in that room today while the most powerful man in the country spoke like that. I think about my own children, about every child in this country, listening to him try to divide us and make us see each other as enemies with his divisive words. That’s what I can’t get out of my mind. Not just the threats, or all the disinformation. It’s the example being set for future generations that weighs the heaviest on me.
We are now just 26 days out from the midterms. All signs point to a blue wave, especially given what normally happens against the sitting president’s party, and how deeply unpopular Donald Trump is. I firmly believe that wave is coming. But we cannot, for a single second, treat that as a guarantee. We need every single person who is against what Trump is doing, especially those who didn’t vote in 2024, to understand that this election is the most important thing they will do this year. This is where elections are won or lost, with the people who haven’t decided if they’re going to show up. We need as many of those people as possible.
I just received my ballot. California has a well-oiled system where we are able to get tracking throughout the entire voting process as our ballot moves through the system, so I was alerted to when it was shipped. I normally wait to fill it out until the end, just in case there are last-minute changes to who is on the ballot, and then I hand-carry it to the polling place when the polls are open and put it directly into the box so I know it’s counted and it’s not lost in the mail. But for anyone who is brown or Black, or who feels unsafe for any reason right now, especially here in California where people are being pulled over just for how they look and forced to prove their citizenship even when they were born here, mail it back right away. Don’t wait, and don’t risk your safety to cast your vote in person.
For those of you outside the United States reading this, thank you for keeping the lights on for us, holding the torch up high while we work to save our country. And yes, it is this bad right now. Our community members are being targeted because of the color of their skin to make them fear exercising their right to vote. Most of us know that this doesn’t stop with brown and Black people. They are just the beginning. The next targets will be our neurodivergent community members, our LGBTQI+ community members, and our disabled neighbors. They will never stop until they have gotten rid of anyone they view as expendable, who they think is a burden, and really anyone they’d rather not spend the money on because they want it going to themselves.
I know it’s not the best way to live our lives, having to think about all of this right now. I know it’s uncomfortable and exhausting to have to find new ways to invite others into conversations about what is happening to our country at the hands of our president and his enablers. Sometimes it might feel like you’re the only one in the room who sees what is happening. But that is what this moment demands of us. It is our obligation to our children and to the world. So, as they say, do it scared, do it angry, do it with passion and kindness, but do it. Let the people around you know that you are not a safe place for racism or fascism, but that you are a safe place for people who are waking up and want to do better, and absolutely a safe place for our fellow Americans who are just now realizing what is happening. Let everyone know where you stand, because these are not normal political times. This is not about politics anymore. This is about a man backed by billionaires and their money, telling us that he believes he has no limits and that he only cares about himself.
When I think about those children standing in the Oval Office today, I am reminded that the future they inherit is not yet decided, and that there are still millions of us who care enough to stand up for something better. Which is exactly what we will be doing very soon when we exercise our right to vote. That is 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.
Picture of the day: Here are a couple of cute puppies to look at while I share a story that just infuriated me today. It didn’t make it into the main post, it was cut along with three or more pages, that I always end up cutting each night. There just wasn’t room for it, but I have to mention it.
According to reporting by The Wall Street Journal, Kimberly Guilfoyle, Don Jr.’s ex-fiancée and the current ambassador to Greece, asked a Trump donor to wire $100,000 to her Amex while she was lobbying to help him with his IRS and tax issues. The Journal reviewed messages that reportedly showed her telling him to pay her credit card if he wanted her help because it would leave no record. This happened just days before her Senate confirmation hearing, so the legal implications are still unclear.
One thing that is clear to me is that the questions surrounding this administration and the people connected to it are not going away. At any other point in our country’s history, allegations like these would have demanded serious investigations and real accountability. Right now, it feels like there are rules for the rest of us and an entirely different set for those surrounding Donald Trump. But hopefully that is coming to an end, and accountability for their corruption can finally catch up with the people who have spent so long acting as though they are above the law.
Links to sources used in writing this article:
President Trump Makes an Announcement, Oct. 7, 2026: YouTube Video
https://www.wsj.com/politics/policy/guilfoyle-amex-donor-100-000-0e02cdc3
https://401kspecialistmag.com/trump-accounts-to-auto-enroll-more-than-60-million-children/
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/michael-susan-dell-donate-6-130046758.html
https://www.thedailybeast.com/president-donald-trump-puts-kids-to-sleep-with-oval-office-rant/
I unfortunately watched much of this conference. It was as brutal in all regards as Heather reports. Why Trump isn't already in a dementia care nursing home is beyond anyone with a lick of sense.
We are living in fraught times, in a benighted nation led by a Malignant Narcissist who surrounds himself with sociopathic billionaires and bent politicians.
Vote like your life depends on it, because it does.
Peace