Inside Trump’s Collapse: 24 Hours of Desperation and Delusion

“The decision to bring charges against President Trump was mine, but the basis for those charges rests entirely with President Trump and his actions, as alleged in the indictments returned by grand juries in two different districts.”

“Our investigation developed proof beyond a reasonable doubt that President Trump engaged in a criminal scheme to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election and to prevent the lawful transfer of power.”
- Jack Smith, testimony to the House Judiciary Committee

Day 331 of Trump’s presidency: December 17, 2025
Warning: tonight’s post is going to be brutal.

That should have been the top story tonight. The former Special Counsel for the United States Department of Justice, testifying under oath, told Congress that the president of the United States was proven, beyond a reasonable doubt, to have orchestrated a criminal plot to steal the 2020 election and halt the peaceful transfer of power. But instead of the country reckoning with that, we got a 20-minute nationally broadcast screaming rant from the man himself, Donald Trump. A speech so absurd, so riddled with fantasy and falsehoods, that it would have taken a large team of people to fact-check in real time, because it was all lies and propaganda. The harm wasn’t in the lies themselves, which is a strange thing to say or even think. It was in the fact that a meaningful portion of this country will still believe him. That’s the terrifying part. Not that he lies, he always has, but that the machine around him has normalized it so fully that his followers no longer require truth, only loyalty.

There’s something we don’t say enough. The people still pretending this is okay, the ones who shrug off the lies, repost the propaganda, excuse the hate, are the same people we used to believe would stand with us to stop something like the Holocaust from ever happening again. But looking at where we are, I no longer believe that they would. After the speech he gave tonight, so far gone from reality, so full of rage, we have to start saying the dark parts out loud. I swing between fear for what’s happening to this country and deep anger at the people who chose this. Who still choose it. Today, I was watching a World War II documentary, and it hit me, we have an entire generation obsessed with that war. And they still voted for him. How do you spend your life studying that history and miss the entire message and vote out the second coming of Hitler? And I don’t use that name loosely. I’m not comparing the Holocaust to today; I’m comparing the leaders.

The speech followed every hallmark of authoritarian propaganda. He lied. He repeated the lie. Then he did it again. He tried to gaslight us into believing the economy is strong. He invented fake enemies. He promised strength while offering chaos, plain and simple. He blamed everyone else for the mess he made. During the 20-minute speech, shorter than usual because Susie Wiles reportedly told him he wasn’t allowed to go longer, he mentioned Biden or “the Democrats” sixteen times. That was the point. It wasn’t a national address. It was a grievance dump. And noticeably missing was any mention of Venezuela, which stood out given all the talk that this might be his attempt to justify whatever military escalation is happening there. I even considered that possibility myself, especially with the Epstein files’ release landing so close. But that would require him to operate within some kind of political norm, and Trump doesn’t do that. He believes he’s above the law. And thanks to the Supreme Court, in many ways, he is. So he won’t warn us. He’ll act first, then talk about it later.

At one point, Trump claimed he brought peace to the Middle East for the first time in 3,000 years. He blamed Biden for unaffordable housing and said he had a big new housing plan, just like all the other plans that never existed. Then he announced a “warrior dividend” of $1,776 for more than 1.45 million military service members and claimed the checks are “already on the way.” That’s nearly two billion dollars. Yes, our military deserves better pay. But the president can’t just hand out money. Who approved it? Did Congress? He even said “nobody understood” the situation with the checks until about 30 minutes before the speech. This was a desperate man trying to buy approval with public money while pretending it was a gift from his own pocket.

He said the border was wide open under Biden and that 25 million people, many of whom he described as repeat murderers, just walked right in. He used the phrase “reverse migration” again, language pulled straight from fascist regimes, including the Nazis, who used it to justify forced removals. When a sitting president uses terms that echo Nazi-era policies of ethnic cleansing, we should all be alarmed. And remember, it didn’t end with just the first group of people labeled undesirable, and it won’t with Trump’s regime either. But maybe the most ridiculous moment of the night was when he said he had negotiated new medication deals that would give Americans a “600% discount.” No one around him seems willing to explain that you can’t get a discount beyond 100% without being paid to take the medication home with you. That’s how far from reality we are now.

Trump is playing right into the most basic human instincts. People are scared. They are hurting in every direction. And when people feel uncertain and unstable, they look for someone to blame. That’s the authoritarian formula. Manufacture insecurity, then position yourself as the solution, the only solution. Most people aren’t looking for power. They’re looking for stability. A place to live. Enough food. Healthcare they can afford. Some sense that tomorrow won’t be worse than today. Trump offers none of that, but he pretends he does

The danger goes beyond speeches. It’s in the tone Trump sets across the country, and across the world. Antisemitism is rising. Islamophobia is surging. And the people bearing the brunt of it are not extremists. They’re everyday people. They’re our neighbors. Our colleagues. Deeply religious families who practice Judaism or Islam with compassion and peace, just like their faiths teach them. These spikes in hate aren’t coming from them. They’re coming from the political exploitation of fear. A real president would speak directly to those communities right now. Would show up. Would name the hate clearly, and promise protection. But Trump doesn’t see citizens, he sees categories. People to fear. People to exploit. People to erase. And the president isn’t calming things down. He’s making it worse. He could’ve used this speech tonight to acknowledge the students killed in Brown. To send love to Australia and the Jewish community. To offer even a single word of unity. He could have said Happy Hanukkah. Or “Love thy neighbor.” But he didn’t. Because this isn’t about leadership. It’s about dominance.

And you can see how desperate he’s getting. The cracks are showing. His poll numbers are sliding. His enablers in Congress are backing away. Just this week, four House Republicans broke with party leadership to force a vote on ACA subsidies. Even Marjorie Taylor Greene admitted that the “dam is breaking” on Trump’s control over the party. This is a man unraveling. The impulse control is gone. Whatever filter he once used, age, stress, or fear of consequences has burned it away.

Meanwhile, in a textbook example of distorted priorities, Trump’s White House is spending time and resources installing insulting plaques under the portraits of Biden and Obama in the so-called “walk of fame.”

Biden’s plaque starts with “Sleepy Joe Biden was, by far, the worst President in American History. Taking office as a result of the most corrupt Election ever seen in the United States, Biden oversaw a series of unprecedented disasters that brought our Nation to the brink of destruction. His policies caused the highest Inflation ever recorded, leading the U.S. Dollar to lose more than 20% of its value in 4 years. His Green New-Scam surrendered American Energy Dominance and, by abolishing the Southern Border, Biden let 21 million people from all over the World pour into the United States, including from prisons, jails, mental institutions, and insane asylums. His Afghanistan Disaster was among the most humiliating events in American History, and resulted in the murder of 13 brave American Servicemembers, with many others gravely wounded. Seeing Biden’s devastating weakness, Russia invaded Ukraine, and Hamas terrorists launched the heinous October 7th attack on Israel.”

And continues with “Nicknamed both “Sleepy” and “Crooked,” Joe Biden was dominated by his Radical Left handlers. They and their allies in the Fake News Media attempted to cover up his severe mental decline, and his unprecedented use of the Autopen. Following his humiliating debate loss to President Trump in the big June 2024 debate, he was forced to withdraw from his campaign for re-election in disgrace. Biden weaponized Law Enforcement against his political opponent, while also persecuting many other innocent people. He left office issuing blanket pardons to Radical Democrat criminals and thugs, as well as members of the Biden Crime Family — But despite it all, President Trump would get Re-Elected in a Landslide, and SAVE AMERICA!”

And instead of having his picture above his plaque, Biden’s image is of an autopen with his signature.

Obama’s plaque says he is “one of the most divisive political figures” and attacks him for the Affordable Care Act, mockingly called the “Unaffordable Care Act”, as well as the Iran nuclear deal and the Paris Climate Accords. It refers to him by his full name, “Barack Hussein Obama,” a dog whistle long used in far-right circles to stoke fear and racial hate. It repeats Trump’s baseless claim that Obama “spied” on his 2016 campaign and accuses him of orchestrating the so-called “Russia hoax”, what the plaque calls “the worst political scandal in American History.”

According to Trump’s press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, Trump personally wrote the text on “many” of the plaques himself. She told NBC News they were “eloquently written descriptions” of each president’s legacy, and said Trump, who she described as a “student of history,” had a direct hand in crafting them. The absurdity of calling Trump anything to do with history was not lost on me. This is a man who confuses the Declaration of Independence with the Constitution and thinks Frederick Douglass is still alive. Calling him a historian is like calling a wrecking ball a preservationist.

This is exactly what fascists do. It’s petty and performative, but it’s also dangerous. Because these aren’t just insults, they’re historical erasures, turned into government-sanctioned propaganda. It’s how regimes create their own mythologies.

And if you’re wondering how the systems of power are holding up while all of this unfolds? The FBI is failing at every turn, with Deputy Director Dan Bongino announcing his resignation. This is no loss for the American people, but it does clearly show that the radio host who was given such a high position is jumping ship, and probably because he knows what’s coming. This whole administration is going down and dragging the country with it. Those inside are starting to scramble for plausible deniability. But we can’t let them rewrite their roles when this ends. We can’t let them slink away and forget their part.

We are in a dangerous moment because the man in power is weak, and this speech showed just how desperate he really is. The world sees it. And we’re sitting wide open, waiting for that weakness to be used in even more dangerous ways than it already is. We are being played by adversaries who know exactly how to exploit chaos, and they’re doing it. What happens when they push harder? What happens when someone decides they’ve seen enough of Trump’s mess and makes a move? We’ve lost our allies. We’ve lost our credibility. We’ve got a man in charge who can’t be trusted to lead a press conference, let alone a global response. Desperate people do desperate things. And we are governed completely by desperation right now.

What we needed tonight was a leader. Someone who could look into the camera and say something steady, something true. Instead, we got a man with a microphone and a list of enemies. We got a man pretending his lies still land the way they used to, who writes delusional, hate-filled plaques instead of being the president this country needs and deserves. We needed a speech about stability, healing, and the path toward better days. Instead, we got more fuel on the fire from a truly awful human being who just so happens to hold the highest office in the land. But fires burn out. Lies collapse under their own weight. And even now, with everything we’re facing, the cracks in his foundation are growing, and when it all finally falls, we will still be here, and he and his enablers will have to answer for every lie, every betrayal, every attack on our democracy. And we will be ready to rebuild what they tried to destroy.

Someday his lies will end, and we won’t have to carry the weight of his delusions on our backs anymore. And that will be the day we start to heal.

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.