How much does Trump even know?
At 7:41 p.m. Eastern Time tonight, Donald Trump emerged from a full day of hiding inside the White House as the consequences of his actions continued to catch up to him. He hadn’t been seen on camera. There were no press conferences or recorded public remarks. And for a president who never misses a chance to stand in front of a camera or personally call a journalist to spin the news, it’s always concerning when he disappears for an entire day. Aside from his usual off-the-wall posts on Truth Social, we might not have heard from him at all, except tonight, he was offered something in exchange for showing up. In return for a public appearance at the Republican Party’s spring fundraising dinner, Trump was promised something he can never resist: a gold-plated trophy and the title of first-ever recipient of the “America First Award.” An award so exclusive it didn’t exist until tonight, created just to flatter his ego, so they could squeeze every last dollar out of his followers in return.
It was a win-win transaction. The Republican Party needed more money to keep funding their assault on our Constitution and our country, and Donald Trump loves shiny objects to take home.
As Trump took the stage at the event, held at Union Station in Washington, D.C., Speaker of the House Mike Johnson stepped up to the podium and, with a straight face, declared Trump “the suitable and fitting recipient of the first-ever America First Award.” He then gestured to the golden eagle statue trophy and called it “appropriate for the new golden era in America.” Then they cued Trump’s favorite song for moments like this, “God Bless the USA,” and out walked Trump to collect his trophy.
Everything is about prizes, titles, and awards for the current President of the United States—a position that used to mean something. Dependability. Allyship. Honor. Now it is held by a man who shows a consistent pattern of exchanging loyalty for flattery and performance for praise. FIFA invented the “FIFA Peace Prize” just for him after he complained about not winning the Nobel Peace Prize. The actual Nobel Peace Prize winner was manipulated into handing her award to Trump at the White House. And now the Republican Party has made up yet another award and statuette so he’ll ask his followers to give him, and the GOP, even more of their money. If you want Donald Trump to show up, you don’t appeal to duty, or country, or the oath he swore. You give him something shiny. You tell him he’s special and that he’s the first. And he’ll go anywhere, say anything, and do anything.
What he delivered over the next hour and nine minutes was more unhinged and more desperate than anyone in that room expected. As he was delivering his remarks, he was struggling to speak without a heavy slur. He kept having to stop after each sentence, dealing with saliva pooling in his mouth, almost spitting between words. It was physically difficult to listen to. He bounced from thought to thought without finishing any of them. One minute he was doing a full skit mocking Biden for not being able to find the stairs off a stage, then pivoting to say “maybe he’s a nice guy.” He ricocheted from bragging about decimating Iran to telling a long story about a waitress in Nevada, to attacking a female judge over a college sports ruling, pausing just long enough to add “not that that matters” while the room laughed, because they all knew exactly what he meant.
The whole time I was watching this, one thought kept running through my head: we are in so much trouble. If a catastrophic event happened tomorrow, we don’t have anyone at the top who can carry a straight thought.
He admitted the economic pain is real. “I thought that the energy prices, the oil prices would go up higher,” he said. “I thought the stock market would go somewhat lower.” He told the room he knew it was coming. He expected it. And then he said: “But it didn’t matter to me. It’s short term.” Those were his exact words, to a room full of wealthy donors at a $37 million fundraiser. And it probably didn’t matter to them either. But it matters to the families across this country who are watching prices climb and paychecks shrink and savings disappear. It matters to the people who can’t fill their gas tanks or keep up with their rent or put food on the table without doing math at the grocery store. The President of the United States said, out loud, that he knew the pain was coming and that it didn’t matter to him. He just said it to the wrong room, because out here, it matters to all of us.
Then he joked about killing heads of state. “They want to make a deal so badly,” he said about Iran’s leaders, “but they’re afraid to say it because they figure they’ll be killed by their own people. They’re also afraid they’ll be killed by us.” He laughed. The room laughed. And Iran’s foreign minister said on state television today that there are zero negotiations happening. So either Trump is lying to donors for applause and money, or he’s repeating what his handlers told him. Either version is terrifying.
And then, in two separate moments, he accidentally told us the truth. The first came when he was talking about the war. Except he won’t call it that. He told the room he avoids using the word “war” because, and these are his exact words, “they say if you use the word war that’s maybe not a good thing to do. They don’t like the word war because you’re supposed to get approval. So I’ll use the word military operation, which is really what it is. It’s called a military decimation.” He forgot the cameras were on, and he was in a room full of friends, donors, loyalists, and people he felt safe around; he said the part you don’t say out loud. He knows it’s a war. Everyone in that room knows it’s a war. But he also knows the Constitution requires him to go to Congress for approval before waging one, and he never did. So he’s workshopping his language in front of them, telling them the workaround, showing them how to talk about it so nobody has to say the word that triggers the constitutional obligation he ignored. And the very members of Congress whose job it is to authorize war listened to the president explain how he’s been sidestepping their authority, and they applauded him for it.
And while he was amongst friends, he also took a moment to remind every single person in that room that loyalty only flows one way with him. He called sitting judges across the country “criminals,” saying “We got rogue judges that are criminals. They’re criminals.” And then, separately, he went after two Supreme Court justices that he personally appointed, saying they “sicken me” because they ruled against him on tariffs. He chose them. He put them on the highest court in the country. And because they didn’t rule his way on one case, they’re enemies now, just like everybody else who’s ever told him no.
Then, in a moment that told you everything about how transactional this entire evening was, he went on a tangent about money. “The greatest thing about being president is you don’t have to make contributions,” he said. “Nobody ever asks you for money. It’s great. It’s the only thing where I save money in this business.” That’s what he loves most about the presidency. The fact that he doesn’t have to give. He only takes.
And then he bragged about the one exception. He told the room he gave Mike Johnson a million dollars of his own money. “He was close to raising $20 million and I said, ‘I’ll give you a million so you hit your mark,’” Trump said. “I never do that in politics. I never do it, but I do it for him.” He thought that would make him look generous, like the big man in the room. All it did was raise serious questions about ethics and corruption that someone needs to be looking into. Because regardless of how this donation came or will be reaching Mike Johnson, whether it went to the NRCC, a Super PAC, or some other channel, what he said on camera tonight screams of inappropriateness. Even if it’s technically legal, there are federal limits on how much any one person can donate, and they exist for a reason. The President of the United States standing at a podium and telling a room full of people that he personally gave or is giving the Speaker of the House a million dollars, without providing a shred of context around how or through what mechanism, doesn’t look like a citizen wanting to support a candidate. It looks like a man buying a check on his own power.
And he wanted every person in that room to understand that. He wanted them to know that the Speaker of the House, the man the Constitution positioned as a check on presidential power, now owes him. Personally. Financially. He didn’t even try to hide it. He said it like it was a favor. But it was really a payment receipt. He owns the Speaker. And both of them know it. The checks and balances that the founders built into this system to prevent exactly this? He just told a room full of donors that he purchased his way around them. Just like the trophy that got him there in the first place, everything about tonight was a transaction.
What we saw tonight just reinforces everything we already know about this man. We don’t have someone at the top who can carry a straight thought. And today we also learned that we don’t have someone who understands what he’s being told, or even what he’s not being told.
NBC News reported today that every day since the war began, U.S. military officials have been compiling a video montage for President Trump showing the biggest, most successful strikes on Iranian targets over the previous 48 hours. The montage runs about two minutes. One official described it as a series of clips of “stuff blowing up.” He also receives updates from advisers and foreign leaders, but the video briefing is fueling concerns that he is not receiving or absorbing the full picture of the war. And he’s making life-and-death decisions while thousands of our military members are in harm’s way.
Three current U.S. officials and a former official told NBC that the video briefing is fueling concerns among Trump’s own allies that he is not receiving or absorbing the full picture of the war. One official said the information Trump gets tends to emphasize U.S. successes with comparatively little detail about what Iran is doing back. And the montage is also making him angry at the press, because in his curated version of reality, we’re winning everything, so he can’t understand why the media isn’t showing what he’s seeing. He keeps asking his aides why the coverage doesn’t match his highlight reel.
This is why he stood at that podium tonight and told a room full of donors that “we’re decimating the other side,” and why he said, “if you listen to the news, you’d think we’re losing a war in Iran.” He wasn’t spinning in that moment, and he wasn’t even trying to share the usual propaganda. He actually believes it. Because a two-minute video of stuff blowing up is the version of reality they’ve built for him. And yet he’s also not asking for more.
We’ve seen this before. During Vietnam, Lyndon Johnson was accused of getting rosy briefings that didn’t reflect the reality on the ground. During Iraq, the Bush administration was accused of groupthink, of downplaying inconvenient facts and refusing to recognize when their strategy was failing. But those were still full intelligence briefings with documents and analysis and room for debate. What Trump is getting is a sizzle reel. And his administration is getting away with this because the man watching these war clips routinely can’t sit through a full briefing without falling asleep, so they are taking advantage of it. Aside from the ridiculousness of this, there is the reality that he is making life-and-death decisions based solely on what they show him.
And it’s not just outside critics saying this. His own party is frustrated. Even Republican members of Congress are walking out of briefings unsatisfied. The chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, a Republican, acknowledged frustration with the briefings, saying members need “substantive information” and that questions need to be “more fully answered.” Rep. Nancy Mace, also a Republican, walked out of a briefing and publicly criticized it. These are members of his own party telling you that even they don’t know what the plan is. And if they don’t know, and the president is watching a two-minute video of bombs going off every morning, then who exactly is running this war?
And while all of this was happening today, something else broke that connects directly to the man watching that highlight reel. Today we learned that the Department of Justice, in its rush to discredit former Special Counsel Jack Smith, accidentally gave Congress something it never intended to release. A January 2023 prosecution memo containing evidence so damning it’s hard to believe they handed it over on purpose.
According to the memo, first reported by NBC News and the Associated Press, and disclosed by Rep. Jamie Raskin of Maryland in a letter to Attorney General Pam Bondi, prosecutors had evidence that Trump took classified documents on a June 2022 flight to his Bedminster golf club and appears to have shown a classified map to passengers on the plane. The memo states that Susie Wiles, who is now Trump’s White House Chief of Staff, was on that flight and witnessed it. The memo also revealed that one particularly sensitive document Trump retained was so restricted that only six people in the entire U.S. government, including the president, were even authorized to view it.
The FBI also determined that Trump retained classified documents that were, in the words of the prosecutors, “pertinent to his business interests,” establishing a motive for why he kept them. And here’s the detail that makes all of this even more alarming given where we are today: Raskin wrote in his letter that if the classified map Trump showed on that plane is related to our military posture in the Middle East, and if it was shown to any foreign official, Saudi or otherwise, it would amount to, in his words, “an unforgivable betrayal of our men and women in uniform who are currently valiantly fighting in President Trump’s disastrous war against Iran.” We are at war in the Middle East right now. American soldiers are dying there right now. And in 2022, the man who started that war may have been showing classified military maps of that region to passengers on a private plane on the way to play golf.
Raskin’s letter to Bondi didn’t hold back. He wrote: “It is now clear that DOJ is in possession of evidence that President Trump has already endangered national security to further the interests of Trump family businesses. It is time for you to stop the cover-up. Our country is at war, American lives are at stake, and the answer to these questions has never been more pressing.”
And here’s the part that I keep thinking about. The DOJ has been releasing cherry-picked documents from Smith’s investigations to House Republicans for months, trying to discredit the special counsel’s work. And in doing so, they apparently included this memo without realizing what was in it. Maybe that’s what happened. Maybe someone didn’t read it carefully enough before handing it over. But I also believe in people. I believe that sometimes resistance looks like staying in a place where you don’t feel safe and quietly doing your part in ways the rest of us might never see. Whether this was an accident or an act of conscious resistance, the result is the same: the truth came out. And once it’s out, they can’t put it back.
Watching Trump embarrass our nation tonight is just as painful as it was a year ago. What’s getting harder is watching all of the members of Congress who are supposed to be our balance, our check on his power, bow down to him as if he’s a king. I don’t think that will ever get any easier.
But I’ve been reminding myself of something. When Trump won in 2024, I didn’t know if our country would make it this far. I genuinely wondered. And here we are, a year and a half later, still standing. Barely, some days. But still here. Still fighting. And not just surviving this, getting stronger through it.
This weekend, we have another opportunity to come together. Not just to remind each other that we’re not alone in this fight, but to remind each other that we’re not giving up. That we’re together. That we’re going to get through this. No matter how long it takes, we are not backing down. Not to a king. And definitely not to Trump.
If you’re on the fence about going, join us. Do it not just for yourself, but for everyone else who needs to look around and see just how many of us are out there. How many of us see exactly what’s happening. There is strength in numbers, and the numbers are on our side. This is not a popular presidency, and it’s losing popularity even amongst its strongest supporters, because they too are starting to not just see, but feel the destruction he’s causing to our country and to the world.
And it will send him a message, too. He loves to watch TV. And Trump is going to hate seeing this many people in the streets protesting everything he’s done and who he is as a person. Biden didn’t have nationwide protests. Obama didn’t either. Trump is the one who has them, multiple times a year, just like every other dictator, authoritarian, and fascist in history who pushed their people too far. The people aren’t happy. They don’t want their country taken over like this. So keep working on your signs. Let’s get as many people as possible to join us. Let’s make this the biggest turnout we’ve ever had. Let’s send a message to each other and to him: this is our country, and we are not letting his fascist, authoritarian dreams come true.
And if you need a reason to believe that pushing back still works, let me tell you about what happened today in Philadelphia. District Attorney Larry Krasner walked into the Philadelphia airport, stood in front of the cameras, and said what every elected official in this country should have said months ago. He looked at the ICE agents Trump deployed to the airport and said, “This is how it works. You commit crimes within the jurisdiction that is the city and county of Philadelphia, I prosecute you. No, I don’t take a phone call from the president saying ‘let them go.’ No, the president cannot pardon you.” Then he said: “I will put you in handcuffs and I will put you in a courtroom, and if necessary, I will put you in a jail cell.”
In a video he posted later that day, he added: “To all ICE agents who are going to keep their oath, who are going to follow the law and uphold the Constitution, thank you. To any agent who might think about doing it an illegal way, I’ll be seeing you in court and you’re not gonna like it.”
This is the messaging we’ve needed to hear for over a year now. A reminder and a plan. Trump and his enablers can try whatever they want on the federal level, but they will be held accountable by the states. Because no matter how many pardons Trump hands out, pardons only work on federal crimes.
What District Attorney Krasner did today is a turning point. He didn’t just make a statement. He put every federal agent operating in his city on notice, and he reminded every other DA, every other attorney general, every other state-level official in this country that they have the same power. His words today are going to empower other states to take the same approach. And just him standing at that airport, saying it out loud, with his name and his office behind it, is enough to change the way this fight is waged from here on out. And 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: Someone turned her bandana into a headscarf. Adorable either way.
C-SPAN full video of the NRCC dinner: https://www.c-span.org/event/white-house-event/president-trump-remarks-at-nrcc-annual-fundraising-dinner/441562
Sources:
https://www.thedailybeast.com/desperate-trump-goons-suck-up-to-him-with-bogus-gold-award/
https://thehill.com/homenews/5799507-trump-classified-documents-mar-a-lago-smith-memo/
https://perkinscoie.com/insights/update/federal-election-contribution-limits-increase-2025-2026
I don’t believe a word of his saying he donated a million of his own money to Johnson. He never gives anything. He just takes, no matter what it costs everyone else. He’s robbing our tax dollars and will leave this country in default. And he has exposed us all to great risk.
Can someone please explain why all these multi billionaires are so keen to scoop in more money and agree to nobble the real un fettered press so that all the news and money is supporting such an appallingly corrupt group of people who are running USA.
I don’t understand the counting the money in the counting house rather than wanting to live in a country that has happy cared for citizens who have food and medicines and a good life.
We are not talking about small change here, we are talking obscene unspendable money, corrupting a very small number of really greedy people in tech and media.