Donald Trump's act just stopped working
At 2:50 this afternoon, the announcer’s voice echoed through the factory floor: “The 47th President of the United States, Donald J. Trump.” Seconds later, two Secret Service agents rushed out towards the stage before an unusually energetic Trump emerged beneath a massive American flag. Taking just a handful of steps at a time before stopping to catch his breath, Trump seemed painfully aware of every step he was taking as he grabbed the handrail and climbed the two final steps to the stage at the Mack Trucks manufacturing plant in Lower Macungie Township, Pennsylvania.
The factory had been transformed into a campaign-style Trump rally, and in front of those assembly line workers in bright yellow vests, Trump started his nearly 80-minute rally with “Ya-hello, Pennsylvania. I won this place so much.” The crowd immediately drowned him out with chants of “USA! USA! USA!”
And in that moment, Donald Trump forgot who he was there for. He forgot he was there to help Congressman Ryan Mackenzie, who is fighting to hold a vulnerable seat in a region struggling with the economic consequences of tariffs and a slowing economy. He forgot that was the entire purpose of the event. It took him nearly an hour before he even mentioned Mackenzie by name. And when he did, this is how he introduced him: “Nobody wants to hear you, Ryan,” Trump told the crowd. Then he ordered him onto the stage. “Get up here, fast.”
In the hour before Trump realized why he was in Pennsylvania in the first place, he gave the crowd the same rambling performance they’ve been watching for over a year now. Stories about himself. Complaints about how others have made him feel. Old grievances. Weight-loss drugs. A UFC fight he wants to host on the White House lawn. And at one point, he even gave a very troubling and deeply uncomfortable extended version of him reenacting a scene with a girl and her mother, where Trump moans and groans and makes very odd gestures involving nearly his entire body. To someone who has not seen him make this same performance a number of times before, some might genuinely wonder if they were witnessing some sort of medical episode before realizing it was simply another version of the same tired routine he has been performing for years.
The entire event was a disaster, not just for the congressman whose political future Trump had come to save, but for Trump himself. And more than the groaning, the rambling, and the endless stories about himself, the whole afternoon perfectly captured what this presidency has become. Donald Trump was standing in a truck factory surrounded by workers, campaigning for a Republican fighting for his political life, and he still couldn’t make the day about anyone other than himself.
This time, the performance didn’t work. It simply showed more people the truth. The man entrusted with our economy, our military, our alliances, and our nuclear arsenal remains incapable of making anything about anyone other than himself.
And it was not just the spectacle that gave him away. It was the lies he told while performing it. Trump bragged to that crowd that the stock market had just hit a new high. “The stock market hit a new high today again,” he said, “and oil, for the first time in months, hit, think of it, $70 a barrel.” By the time the markets closed, the Dow Jones, the S&P 500, the Nasdaq, and the New York Stock Exchange had all ended the day down, driven by a sell-off in AI-related companies.
He praised his own 25 percent tariff on medium and heavy-duty trucks as a gift to Mack, telling the crowd, “They weren’t gonna come in from foreign lands and steal your jobs.” But last year, Mack Trucks laid off between 250 and 350 workers at that same factory, citing economic uncertainty caused by those very tariffs. The company he was praising has publicly said his policies hurt them.
He called Governor Josh Shapiro “not much better” than the politicians he labeled “communists.” He never once mentioned GOP gubernatorial nominee Stacy Garrity, who was in the room. And at one point, a protester was escorted out after shouting at the president while raising both middle fingers in the air, surrounded by security as the crowd booed.
By evening, the mask slipped even further. Trump posted the following on Truth Social:
“So, I have Iran on the ‘ropes,’ ready to go down for the fall, willing to give us practically anything, and for the first time in decades, respecting the hell out of the United States and its President, ME, and the U.S. Senate decides to have a poorly timed and meaningless War Powers Act Vote, telling the Number One Sponser of Terror in the World that the United States doesn’t like what I am doing to them, and I must stop, and by so doing has provided aid and comfort the Enemy. Four Republican Losers voted with the Dumocrats, and Iran asked my people, ‘what does that all mean?’ These Senators have just made my job more difficult, but I will get it done, one way or the other, because I always get it done! President DJT”
He misspelled “Sponsor,” and he accused four United States senators of providing “aid and comfort” to the enemy, language pulled directly from the constitutional definition of treason, because they exercised the authority the Constitution demands of them. And he called them “Losers” for doing their jobs.
The Senate voted 50 to 48 to pass a war powers resolution directing the president to withdraw U.S. armed forces from hostilities against Iran. It was the first time both chambers of Congress had passed such a resolution since the war began. Four Republicans broke ranks: Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, Susan Collins of Maine, Rand Paul of Kentucky, and Bill Cassidy of Louisiana. Two other Republicans were absent, including Mitch McConnell, who has been hospitalized, and Dave McCormick of Pennsylvania, who also missed the vote. The resolution does not carry the force of law, and the White House dismissed it immediately, calling it insignificant and blaming its passage on “Republican absences.”
But the significance is not in the legal mechanism. It is in the signal it sent. For months, Democrats have been forcing these votes, and they have all failed. This time, it did not. And every Republican who voted yes did so knowing exactly what Trump would do in response, and they voted anyway. That is a shift.
And then there is what Trump’s post reveals about something far deeper and far more dangerous than his ego. He wrote that Iran is “on the ropes” and “willing to give us practically anything.” But the reality is that the United States of America is not even conducting its own negotiations. We are negotiating through Pakistan and Qatar, at a luxury resort in Switzerland. We used to be the ones who brokered these agreements. We used to be the country that other nations came to when they needed a mediator, when they needed someone credible and steady at the table. Now we are the ones who need intermediaries, because our word means nothing.
Trump started this war without congressional authorization. He signed a memorandum of understanding that he has already broken. Oman’s Foreign Minister, who had been mediating before the war broke out, said publicly that the United States had “lost control of its own foreign policy.”
The United States once led the world in diplomacy. A country that negotiated the Camp David Accords. That built the Marshall Plan. That brokered peace agreements across decades and continents because other nations believed our word meant something. We are becoming the very thing we once stood against. Every broken deal, act of unprovoked aggression, and reneged commitment chips away at something that took generations to build.
We get so lost in the daily cruelty, violence, and chaos of what he is doing to the world and how it impacts everyone around us, that we rarely stop long enough to talk about what is being lost underneath all of it. Not just our standing or our alliances. But what it means to be an American. What the United States of America used to represent to the rest of the world, and to ourselves. This was never a perfect country. We have never come close to what we could be. But there was always the promise that we were trying. There was always the idea, however imperfect, that this was a place where someone could build a life. Where opportunity existed, even if it was not yet equally distributed. Where the arc of our history, for all its failures, was bending toward something better. That promise is what made people risk everything to come here. It is what made allies trust us. It is what gave this country its moral weight in the world. And Trump is destroying it. Not just for now. Long after we are rid of him and his cruelty and his failed attempt to take over this country, this is what we will be left to rebuild. Not just the institutions or the laws, but the meaning of who we are. It will take generations to earn back what he has cost us. For our allies to trust us again and for us to trust each other.
But the most important thing that happened today wasn’t at that rally. While Trump spent nearly 80 minutes reminding everyone that he can only talk about himself, one of the country’s largest news organizations was doing something very different. They were standing up, and they were refusing to comply. And in doing so, they showed us something we’ve been waiting a long time to see. The fear is starting to lift. ABC News is fighting back.
On Monday, Disney-owned ABC began airing television commercials on national broadcast and across its eight local affiliate stations, directly challenging the Federal Communications Commission and asking viewers to speak out. One ad, airing nationally, says, “The View has welcomed your favorite guests and covered the issues you care about for nearly 30 years. Now, the FCC wants to control who is allowed to appear on the show. Viewers, use your voice.” A separate ad, airing on local affiliates in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Philadelphia, and other major markets, says, “Now, the FCC is questioning our commitment to the community,” and asks viewers to submit public comments to the FCC on their behalf. Each ad includes a QR code that links directly to the FCC’s public comment system.
This comes after FCC Chairman Brendan Carr launched an investigation into whether The View violated the commission’s equal-time rule after a Democratic Senate candidate appeared on the show. ABC maintained that The View qualifies as a bona fide news program and is exempt. Then, in April, the FCC ordered an early review of the broadcast licenses of all eight Disney-owned ABC stations, a rare and aggressive move targeting their diversity, equity, and inclusion practices. The review was announced just days after Trump and Melania Trump publicly attacked ABC’s late-night host Jimmy Kimmel. Disney-owned ABC affiliates’ licenses were not set to expire until 2028 at the earliest, but the FCC forced them to reapply now. In a legal filing, Disney called the early renewal “an extraordinary demonstration of power and coercion” that should alarm all broadcasters. They called the FCC’s actions unlawful, arbitrary, and unconstitutional. And they hired Paul Clement, a conservative Republican and former solicitor general under President George W. Bush, one of the most prolific legal advocates before the Supreme Court, to lead the fight.
When Trump first took power, institutions across this country folded before they were even asked to. Timothy Snyder, the Yale historian who wrote On Tyranny, calls this “anticipatory obedience.” It is a political tragedy in authoritarian takeovers. People and institutions comply in advance, surrendering their principles before the threat even arrives, because they assume resistance is futile. We watched it happen as company after company surrendered before they were forced to, and in doing so, they taught the regime exactly how much it could take.
ABC did that too. They settled Trump’s defamation lawsuit. They suspended Kimmel. And none of it made a difference. The FCC’s Brendan Carr told a conservative podcast host, “We can do this the easy way or the hard way. These companies can find ways to change conduct and take actions on Kimmel, or there’s going to be additional work for the FCC ahead.” Even Ted Cruz, a Republican, called that line “dangerous as hell” and compared it to a mob boss walking into a bar and saying, “Nice bar you have here. It’d be a shame if something happened to it.”
And now ABC has decided that compliance is not going to save them. That bending did not work, and that silence only invited more pressure. So they are doing the opposite. That is what it looks like when anticipatory obedience breaks. When the fear starts to lift. When one institution stands up and, in doing so, makes it just a little bit safer for the next one. It doesn’t mean the fight is over. Far from it. We have a long road ahead of us to the midterms and then to 2028, but we are seeing small rays of hope.
So what do we do? We make sure people understand why their lives are harder. People are being pushed to their limits. The economy is hurting real people. Children are losing access to food through cuts to SNAP benefits. Gas is still expensive. Families are feeling the cost of tariffs every time they go to the store. And after a year and a half of promises, things keep getting worse. Trump promised a nearly instant recovery. He promised better lives for Americans. The opposite is happening. And we have to make sure that people understand why.
It is not Barack “Hussein” Obama’s fault, as Trump likes to pretend it is. It is not Joe Biden’s fault. It is not Hillary Clinton’s fault. It is Donald J. Trump’s fault. Donald Trump is the reason all of this is happening. He is the reason we are at war. He is the reason prices are up. He is the reason the world does not trust us.
And if you do not feel safe speaking out, or if you cannot find the words because you feel paralyzed in this moment, that is okay. Take my words and use them. Share these posts. Start a conversation. This is on every single one of us. Make sure that everyone knows what side of history you stand on. Because the louder we get, the more of us who speak out, the less safe it becomes for the people on the wrong side of history to keep perpetuating what they are doing.
Donald Trump’s act is not working anymore. We can see it in his rallies and in his posts. We can see it in the Republicans breaking ranks, in ABC taking a stand, in the polls, in the protests, in the millions of Americans who are fed up and ready to vote to end this disastrous time in American history. This is not over. The danger is still real. The midterms are still months away. And the people propping him up are not going to stop until we make them. But the fear is lifting. 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: The boss of the house was ready to work on tonight’s essay.
Sources:
President Trump Delivers Remarks, Jun. 23, 2026: White House YouTube Channel
https://spectrumlocalnews.com/me/maine/politics/2026/06/23/trump-mack-trucks-rally
https://www.npr.org/2026/06/21/g-s1-129222/us-iran-deal-lebanon-israel-strait-hormuz-jd-vance
https://www.npr.org/2026/06/01/nx-s1-5838855/abc-is-acting-as-an-unlikely-first-amendment-champion
https://www.propublica.org/article/snap-benefits-children-food-stamps
I watched this Mack Truck performance through a fog of tiredness here in my time zone and something irrelevant and amusing and frighteningly real came into my head.
Trump is a Muppet ! Not in the way that people call various other people 'muppets' in an exasperated, affectionate way when they do something dumb, but an actual Muppet.
If he was re-created and put on the show nothing would need to be exaggerated or played up and no physical characteristic would need be emphasised .
His orange mask, swollen slitted eyes, like those of a dead pig, his waving arms, his thin white ducktail and hunched shoulders could be produced wholesale, with nothing added for fun.
There you would have him, the president of the United States of America, for all the world to laugh at , sitting in the box above the stage and yucking it up and gurning and flapping his arms while a selected audience below grinned and cheered and clapped.
Let us all hope, and have faith in the signs that the applause is thinning.
Proud of ABC