How much longer will Trump be able to keep doing this?

Last night, while the rest of us were asleep, the man entrusted with the nuclear codes and the safety of over 330 million Americans was somewhere in the White House in the dark of night, hunched over his phone, and shared what can only be described as a digital tantrum from the edge of reality. Between sunrise and sunrise, President Trump posted more than 160 times on his state propaganda platform, Trash Social. Just unfiltered rage, conspiracy, and ego.

He reposted a fantasy story claiming that Elon Musk saved the 2024 election by tracking IP addresses in Serbia that would’ve altered U.S. votes. He boosted a post insisting that Tulsi Gabbard, now serving in his cabinet as Director of National Intelligence, is in possession of classified documents proving Barack Obama orchestrated the “Russiagate hoax.” He ranted that Senator Mark Kelly and “a group of unpatriotic politicians” were guilty of encouraging disobedience against him, writing, “I hope the people looking at them are not duped into thinking that it’s OK to openly and freely get others to disobey the President of the United States!” And throughout the spree, he oddly shared many of these posts twice, once as-is, then again with his own deranged commentary layered on top.

Along the way, he also attacked Gavin Newsom, Ilhan Omar, Tim Walz, Nancy Pelosi, Barack Obama, Joe Biden, James Comey, and Eric Holder, all pretty much framed as enemies of the state. And then he ended the whole thing with a virtual scream: “TRUTH SOCIAL IS THE BEST! There is nothing even close!!!”

This is the documented behavior of the sitting President of the United States. And that was just the warm-up.

Because a few hours later, he shuffled into the Cabinet Room of the White House, sat at the head of the table, and appeared to nod off multiple times during what was supposed to be the final leadership meeting of the year.

What we saw today wasn’t exhaustion from a long day of service. It wasn’t even the kind of tired you’d expect from a man who spent the night making a mockery of the presidency. This was cognitive vacancy on full display, in a room meant to symbolize control, order, and the continuity of government. Trump repeatedly drifted off with his eyes closed, his head slumping forward, only to jolt awake as if startled. At one point, he sat silently for so long that others in the room noticeably showed concern, raising their voices as if trying to wake him up. At another, he blinked repeatedly without speaking, like he was trying to remember why he was even there. The meeting lasted more than two hours. But it wasn’t a leadership summit. It was a performance of allegiance.

Cabinet members took turns offering rehearsed flattery. Kristi Noem, the Secretary of Homeland Security, half-joked that hurricanes had stopped because of Trump. Others nodded solemnly while he declared the word “affordability” a “Democrat scam.” The Budget Director spent the session doodling cloud-like landscapes. Pete Hegseth, from the “Department of War”, sat behind a nameplate misspelled with a double S: “SSecretary.” Which, given the history of fascist regimes, felt less like a typo and more like a warning. And no one corrected it.

This was a room plastered with fake gold appliques to make the president feel like a king, and filled with adults pretending to have a serious discussion, all orbiting around the fragile ego of a man who struggled to finish a sentence with any real meaning. This is what authoritarian decay looks like. Power consolidated not through competence or clarity, but through fear, delusion, and silence.

Trump opened the meeting by praising the décor: “The Cabinet Room looks beautiful, like it should now. The Oval looks beautiful, like it should. Like the rest of the country, it was in disrepair.” Not a word about governing. Just aesthetics and grievance. Then came the delusion. “One year ago, our country was dead. It was said by many leaders, we had a dead country. Now we have the hottest country in the world. Anywhere. Think of that.” He called Biden “Sleepy Joe,” despite being the one visibly falling asleep in front of his own Cabinet. And when it came time to talk immigration, he dropped the mask completely: “Ilhan Omar is garbage. Her friends are garbage. We’re going to go the wrong way if we keep taking in garbage.”

That’s not leadership. That’s a man drunk on his own power, using the highest office in the land to dehumanize immigrants and political opponents, while those around him nod along in silence.

And even though the Cabinet Room was full of people actively choosing to help him dismantle our institutions, others in the Republican Party are trying to get out as fast as they can.

Across the country, GOP lawmakers are quietly leaving office. More than 30 House Republicans have announced they won’t seek re-election. Some say they’re exhausted. Others say it’s time for something new. A few cite safety concerns. But let’s be honest: they’re jumping ship because they know it’s sinking. They know this isn’t sustainable. They know history is already sharpening its verdict, and they’re trying to sneak out the back before the roof caves in.

Even Trump’s policies reflect that same desperation. Today, he promoted his new “Trump Accounts,” a program where the federal government deposits 1 000 dollars into investment accounts for eligible newborns, while Michael and Susan Dell have pledged 6.25 billion dollars to add 250 dollars each for about 25 million children in lower-income communities. The White House is marketing this as a signature Trump achievement, even though the largest share of the funding is coming from outside billionaires, not from Trump himself.

It’s the oldest Trump tactic: use someone else’s cash, brand it as your own, and sell it as patriotism and how he himself is making the world and more specifically our country “great again”.

He’s not investing in the future of this country. He’s investing in the illusion of control. And he’s betting that enough of us are too tired, too distracted, or too afraid to call it what it is. But we see it. All of it. And we’re not going anywhere.

Because underneath all of this lives a much more dangerous truth: Donald Trump is not just unstable. He is actively dismantling the meaning of American law with every breath. And today, he crossed into truly uncharted territory.

Just hours after his bizarre, sleep-filled Cabinet meeting, Trump posted the following message on his state propaganda platform:

“Any and all Documents, Proclamations, Executive Orders, Memorandums, or Contracts, signed by Order of the now infamous and unauthorized ‘AUTOPEN,’ within the Administration of Joseph R. Biden Jr., are hereby null, void, and of no further force or effect. Anyone receiving ‘Pardons,’ ‘Commutations,’ or any other Legal Document so signed, please be advised that said Document has been fully and completely terminated, and is of no Legal effect. Thank you for your attention to this matter!”

This isn’t just another one of his crazed ideas. It’s a direct threat to constitutional governance. A man currently holding the presidency is declaring, without a shred of legal authority, that every pardon, every executive order, every single document signed by President Biden is invalid. And even though he added the word “autopen” to dress it up in faux legality, we all know what he means. He means everything. All of it. Every single thing Biden did while president.

And the fact that he’s now attempting to unravel the entire legal foundation of those four years based on a routine, legally sanctioned signature tool used by every modern president is deranged, even for him.

And it raises the question: who is really behind this? Because while I have no doubt Trump wants this to happen, that he dreams of wiping away Biden’s legacy because he won the 2020 election and Trump lost, someone in the background is helping him write it down, polish it, and demand it be done. This is no longer just about Trump’s delusions. It’s about the system of enablers behind him, sharpening the edges of his chaos into policy. Manipulating a deeply broken and corrupt man into a more organized and deliberate threat to American democracy.

And even if he and his cronies have decided this is how our country will now be led, the rest of us know: this is not how American government works.

The presidential autopen has been in use since the 1980s. Barack Obama used it. George W. Bush used it. Ronald Reagan used it. It is legal. It is secure. It is universally accepted. The Supreme Court has never questioned its validity. And even if Trump somehow believed it was improper, which it is not, there is no clause in the Constitution, no statute in federal law, that gives any president the power to retroactively void the lawful acts of their predecessor.

What Trump is trying to do isn’t about law. It’s about power. It’s about rewriting precedent. It’s about conditioning the public to believe that legitimacy no longer comes from the Constitution; it comes from him. That court rulings can be reversed by tweet. That laws exist only if they flatter his ego. That pardons, prosecutions, budgets, appointments, all of it, can be nullified by decree from a man who couldn’t stay awake during his own Cabinet meeting.

And what makes this even more chilling is the silence that followed.

No one inside his Cabinet pushed back. No one from his legal team issued a correction. Not a single prominent Republican leader had the courage to say what should’ve been obvious: that this was illegal, delusional, and a violation of everything this country claims to stand for.

Because they’re not interested in preserving democracy. They’re too busy surviving its unraveling.

But we need to be absolutely clear: if Trump can declare every Biden action invalid, then so could the next president declare every Trump action invalid. That includes Trump’s own pardons. His own laws. His own judicial appointments. This path doesn’t lead to justice. It leads to anarchy. It leads to a government where the law is nothing more than a weapon, and truth is whatever the strongman says it is.

That’s not democracy. That’s dictatorship.

And that’s exactly what he’s trying to build, not with armies, but with repetition. Not with tanks, but with threads. Not with orders, but with erosion. Slowly, deliberately, breaking down the idea that this country belongs to the people, and replacing it with the fantasy that it belongs to him.

Trump doesn’t want to lead America. He wants to own it. He believes the courts are his. The banks are his. The police, the military, the classrooms, all his. Even the Constitution, in his mind, bends to his will. And if we allow that delusion to go unchecked, if we wait for someone else to challenge it, if we stay quiet while he rewrites the rules, history won’t remember us as victims. It will remember us as bystanders, and worse, as co-conspirators.

This isn’t just a national crisis. It’s a national test. And it’s not just Trump on trial. It’s all of us.

And so I end tonight’s post with equal parts sadness and steadfast hope, hope that we are beginning to witness the cracks in his reign of lawless cruelty, and sorrow in knowing that even when it feels like the worst of him and the shadow government propping him up are losing momentum, they are really just recalibrating. Just getting started.

We are not out of the storm. But we are not alone in it either.

We will get through this. And we will build a country better than it has ever been, more honest, more fair, more free. A country where power serves the people, not the other way around. I still have hope for America. And I hope you do too.

I’ll see you tomorrow,
Heather

P.S. If you’ve made it this far, chances are we see things the same way. You can help keep this work going by subscribing to my Substack; there’s a free option, or you can become a paid subscriber for just $5 a month. Paid subscriptions help me reach more people, cover more ground, and keep telling the truth about what’s happening to our country.