The president was in hiding

At 8:17 p.m. tonight, the president of the United States finally emerged from hiding. He had spent the entire weekend at Mar-a-Lago so that he wouldn’t have to face the humiliation of large protests, fractures within his own party, and the longest government shutdown in the history of our country. Now aboard Air Force One, Donald Trump stood in the doorway to the press cabin and gaggled with the traveling journalists, telling them the next country he would be targeting with our military, and calling the Democrats “terrorists.” After a quick update about his war with Iran, the president abruptly changed the subject and held up drawings of the ballroom he is building at the White House, one he said was needed for when authoritarians, or as Donald Trump calls them “dignitaries,” like President Xi of China come to visit.

After straightening his jacket, Trump spent the next 20 minutes and 46 seconds acting out the kind of performance that has become the hallmark of this presidency. One where confidence and desperation occupy his body at the same time, where every sentence contradicts the one before it, and where the man delivering it genuinely believes he is selling it, while also not fully understanding much of what he is even saying. He told the press that negotiations with Iran are going “extremely well,” that the relationship is strong, that progress is being made, and then in the very same breath said, “you never know with Iran because we negotiate with them and then we always have to blow them up,” effectively telling every diplomat working to bring Iran to the table and every foreign leader that the United States views diplomacy as a prelude to bombing. He said he would “probably” make a deal with Iran, that he was “pretty sure,” and then immediately added, “but it’s possible we won’t,” which is not a strategy and not a plan and not leadership but the verbal equivalent of a coin flip from the man who holds the lives of thousands of people in his hands and cannot commit to a single position for the length of a single sentence.

He told us that Iran has been giving him “presents” and “a tribute” out of “a sign of respect,” describing oil tankers being allowed through the Strait of Hormuz as personal gifts to Donald Trump. He was so pleased with himself when he said it, so certain that we would be impressed that a country we are actively bombing was sending him tokens of admiration, that he did not seem to realize, or did not care, what was actually happening. That countries like Pakistan have been negotiating directly with Iran for passage because the president of the United States has proven to the world that he cannot be trusted to negotiate anything. A fact that was even stated this morning by Representative Jim Himes, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, who told Face the Nation that Trump “flat-out” lied about negotiations last week because he saw a stock market crash coming with oil at $112 a barrel and simply “made it up.” Trump also claimed that Iran has agreed to most of his 15-point peace plan, but Iran publicly denies that any negotiations are happening at all. Leaving us all to wonder who is running this war and just how much danger we are in if this is the level of cognitive function the president is working with.

He told us that regime change has already happened, and the way he described it was against everything America stands for, because he talked about the systematic killing of three rounds of a country’s leadership the way a man talks about clearing out an old storage unit. “The one regime was decimated, destroyed,” he said. “They’re all dead.” He moved on without pausing. “The next regime is mostly dead,” he said, and then added that one of them “may have a little life” in him, a phrase so detached from the gravity of the situation and the reality of what he has done to an entire region of the world. “And the third regime, we’re dealing with different people than anybody’s dealt with before,” he said, and then called them “very reasonable,” the word “reasonable” applied to the people running a country that wounded more American service members just two days ago, that has closed the Strait of Hormuz for a month, that has launched missiles at U.S. bases until they are, in Himes’s words, “supposedly uninhabitable,” and that has killed 13 American service members and wounded more than 300 others.

When asked if the supreme leader Mojtaba Khamenei is alive, Trump said “he may be” and that he is “seriously wounded,” which means the president of the United States does not know whether the leader of the country he is at war with is alive or dead, does not know who he is negotiating with, and cannot identify a single person on the other side of the table, but he is “pretty sure” a deal will happen, or maybe it won’t, and either way “they’ve been very reasonable.” This is the same president whose Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said after the June 2025 strikes that “this mission was not and has not been about regime change,” the same candidate who ran in 2024 as the peace president and warned against this exact kind of war by saying “they’re all war hawks when they’re sitting in Washington in a nice building saying, ‘oh gee, let’s send 10,000 troops right into the mouth of the enemy,’” and the same man who said in 2011 when Barack Obama was president, “our president will start a war with Iran because he has absolutely no ability to negotiate.” Barack Obama never attacked Iran. Barack Obama negotiated a deal. Donald Trump started the war.

And then he was done with it. You could see it as it happened, the moment the war stopped being interesting for him to talk about, he pivoted to his beloved ballroom. The one he tore down the East Wing of the White House to build. He held up architectural renderings and told the press corps about the Corinthian columns that will be handcarved, the bulletproof glass on every window, the drone-proof ceilings, how it will be “the greatest ballroom anywhere in the world,” and he said it with more specificity, enthusiasm and genuine engagement than he had shown during any moment of the conversation about the war that is killing people right now.

He compared being “ahead of schedule” on the ballroom to being “ahead of schedule” on the war, as if the two are equivalent projects with equivalent stakes, as if Corinthian columns and a ground invasion of Iran belong in the same progress report. And then he explained why he was showing the renderings now, by saying: “I thought I’d do this now because it’s easier. I’m so busy fighting wars and other things.” Wars. He said the word wars. The word that his own administration has spent 30 days refusing to use because the Constitution of the United States requires Congress to authorize war and Congress has not authorized this one. He himself has stated multiple times just this week that he doesn’t call it a war because then he needs permission. “I don’t call the conflict in Iran a war for legal reasons,” he said. “To start a war, you need Congressional approval or something like that.” And Congress, the body that is supposed to hold that authority, has let him do it. Democrats have introduced resolutions to invoke the War Powers Act. Republican leadership has blocked every one of them from reaching the floor. The longest undeclared war in a generation is being fought because one man decided to skip the part of the Constitution he found inconvenient, and the people whose job it is to stop him have chosen not to.

But that wasn’t even all of it. He was not finished. When the conversation turned to the Department of Homeland Security shutdown, which today became the longest government shutdown in American history at 44 days, a record that belongs to Donald Trump twice over, the president of the United States called the Democratic Party “terrorists.” He used that word, the most loaded word in the American political vocabulary since September 11th, the word that has justified two decades of war, the Patriot Act, Guantanamo Bay, warrantless surveillance, and the entire reshaping of American life around the idea that certain people are so dangerous they forfeit their rights. And he pointed it at the elected representatives of roughly half the country. “The Republicans are wonderful people, but we’re dealing with very sick individuals. The Democrats are sick. There’s something wrong. They’re like terrorists.” He later said about the Democrats, “They don’t care about our country. They don’t care about people.” He said that while standing on a plane that costs $273,063 an hour to fly him back and forth to his club on the weekends. These weekend getaways have now cost the American taxpayers $101 million dollars since he has been back in office. He said Democrats don’t care about Americans, but Trump is the one hiding from them and costing us huge amounts of money.

He also casually confirmed yet again that Cuba is his next target, telling reporters that “Cuba’s going to be next” and describing it as a country that will “fail” and that the United States will “be there to help it out,” the same language of liberation that has preceded every American military intervention for a generation. I can’t imagine how our military and their families are doing during these constant threats, where they are treated like pawns.

There is something that happens in my head every night when I sit down to write these posts, where my brain tries to reconcile two things that cannot live in the same space. On one side is the sheer absurdity of what we are living through, the kind of absurdity that, if you let it, could almost make you laugh because none of it seems like it could possibly be real. And on the other side is the weight of what that absurdity is actually doing to real people, children, families, service members, to this country, and that weight is not funny at all. It is the saddest thing I have ever watched happen to something I love so much.

Because if you were going to cast the actors for some absolutely atrocious, D-level movie on purpose, the kind that goes straight to the bottom shelf because the plot is too unbelievable to take seriously, the people you would hire are the people Donald Trump has hired. A reality TV star running transportation. A Fox News host leading the military. A president who has been convicted of felonies and has faced numerous allegations of sexual impropriety. A vice president who is a chameleon who shifts to whoever is the highest bidder, and whose political career was built and funded by Peter Thiel, operating as the heir apparent to whatever this experiment becomes. An HHS secretary who is an attorney who is a known disinformation peddler, a man who built his career taking advantage of people and their fears about medicine, and profiting from the propaganda he spreads, now running the entire health apparatus of the United States government while measles cases climb to levels we have not seen in decades. And making sure we have a Congress that has somehow been brought to its knees, whether through ideology, blackmail, cowardice, or some combination of all three. And at the center of it, a president whose original motivation for seeking the office was to stay out of jail. If someone handed you this as a screenplay, you would put it down and say the writers lost the plot, because no country would let this happen, because it is too absurd to be real.

And yet here we are. And beyond what Donald Trump says and does on the plane or behind the resolute desk or any of his other favorite places to hear himself talk, there are children being killed and harmed. In Iran and here in the States. Children are always innocent, no matter what country they are born in, no matter what government rules over them, no matter what language they speak, or what God their parents pray to. And the United States military, under orders from the man who spent his Sunday night showing off a ballroom, dropped a missile on a school full of children in Iran, and we can never forget that. I think about my own three girls every time I close my eyes and think of the horrors they went through in those moments and what their families continue to suffer through.

And it is not just Iran. Right now, at the Dilley detention center in Texas, children, including autistic children and medically fragile children and their parents are being held in conditions that no human being should endure. And especially not without adequate medical care and psychological support. They are being held in an environment that functions as prisons in everything but name. There is no version of this that is acceptable. There is no framing of immigration policy that justifies holding a child in a cage. This is not a political issue. This is a moral one. And the people who are telling us this is necessary, the people who have built their brands on being advocates for children, are following a leader who has faced allegations of crimes against children of a sexual nature, allegations that were documented in detail in the Epstein files. Those files, which contain testimony and flight logs and depositions that implicate some of the most powerful people in the country, are files that this administration has actively fought to keep from public view. If the people running this government truly believed in protecting children, they would want those files released. They would demand transparency. Instead, they have done the opposite, and that silence tells you everything you need to know about whose children they are willing to protect and whose they are not.

At the heart of everything that is happening right now, underneath the ballroom renderings and the contradictions and the incoherent babbling of a president who cannot hold a single thought for the length of a sentence, are those of us who want better for our children and for future generations. We might be planting seeds for trees we never get to sit under, and most of us are okay with that, because this was never about us. It was always about what comes after.

And as much as what Donald Trump said on that plane tonight was riddled with contradiction and nonsense and the kind of confident incompetence that would be disqualifying in any other job on earth, I want to say something that might surprise you: that incompetence is one of the biggest advantages we have. He has surrounded himself with people just like him, people who are easily distracted, who are doing this for ego and self-interest, who cannot stay focused long enough to finish dismantling the thing they are trying to dismantle before they get bored and pull out a picture of a ballroom. History has shown us, again and again, that authoritarian regimes built on loyalty instead of competence carry the seeds of their own collapse. The Soviet Union did not fall because of some great external force. It rotted from the inside because the system rewarded obedience over ability until there was no one left who knew how to keep the lights on. The Argentine military junta of the 1970s and 1980s was brutal and terrifying, but it was also disorganized and riddled with internal rivalries, and when the Falklands War exposed the gap between the regime’s propaganda and its actual capability, the whole thing crumbled in months. Regimes that prioritize loyalty over competence do not last, because eventually the incompetence catches up to the cruelty, and the people see through both at the same time. We are watching that happen right now.

They can try to hide their incompetence behind words and images, like calling themselves patriots and wrapping themselves in a flag they have perverted into a symbol of their own power, all they want. But yesterday, when an estimated eight million people, nearly one in every 40 Americans, took to the streets in every single state in the country, that was real patriotism. That was not what Trump is trying to sell us. That was America, the actual one, showing up and saying no.

I keep thinking about standing at the No Kings Protest yesterday, surrounded by 2,000 people in a suburban neighborhood that has never seen anything like that, and seeing so many signs that talked about the obligation we have to the generations that come after us. And I keep thinking about the pendulum and how it swings, and how our job right now is not just to push it back but to catch it and hold it so it does not swing this way again. Yesterday showed us what we are capable of when we stop waiting for someone else to fix it. And I keep thinking about the next seven months, because that is our challenge now: to find the people who care but not quite enough yet, the ones who are uneasy but haven’t acted, the ones who are angry but haven’t fully committed, the ones who would vote if someone just made it a little easier for them to get there. If we can have the kind of turnout we had in 2020, we are going to be okay. The math is on our side. The energy is on our side. The Constitution is on our side. The only thing standing between us and accountability is showing up, and yesterday eight million people proved that showing up is something Americans still know how to do. 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: This quote has been on my mind since I saw it at the rally yesterday.

Sources:

President Trump Gaggles with Press on Air Force One En Route Joint Base Andrews, Mar. 29, 2026: Official White House Video

Himes on Face the Nation, March 29, 2026: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/jim-himes-connecticut-democrat-face-the-nation-transcript-03-29-2026/

Golf trip costs ($101M, $273,063/hr), HuffPost, March 28, 2026: https://www.huffpost.com/entry/trump-golf-100-million_n_69c6e1dde4b041837420f5ad

DHS shutdown at 44 days, NBC News, March 29, 2026: https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/trump-administration/dhs-funding-lapse-longest-partial-government-shutdown-us-history-rcna265645

No Kings protest (8 million estimate), ABC News, March 28, 2026: https://abcnews.com/Politics/kings-protesters-set-rally-cities-towns-country-saturday/story?id=131472712

Minab school strike, NPR, March 11, 2026: https://www.npr.org/2026/03/11/nx-s1-5744981/pentagon-iran-missile-school-hegseth

Dilley detention center, NBC News, March 2026: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/children-languish-ice-detention-long-20-day-court-limit-rcna262525

Hegseth “not about regime change,” Axios, June 22, 2025: https://www.axios.com/2025/06/22/iran-strikes-hegseth-regime-change

Trump “war hawks” quote, NPR, November 1, 2024: https://www.npr.org/2024/11/01/g-s1-31443/2024-election-trump-harris-cheney

Trump 2011 Obama/Iran quote, Snopes verification: https://www.cnn.com/2020/01/03/politics/kfile-trump-obama-2012-iran-war-reelection/