The worst people in America are running the country

After a long day of jet-setting across the East Coast, the President of the United States settled in for the weekend at Mar-a-Lago. It was his usual escape, gilded halls that insulated and disconnected him from the chaos he himself has unleashed across the country. While the real work is being done by the worst people in America, those he and his enablers handpicked for their positions, he can binge-watch TV in seclusion and not worry about governing. Because they don’t need him present to carry out their dirty work.

But this time, it was different. The peace he was searching for in Florida didn’t come. Trump was facing his third government shutdown since taking office. TSA workers were preparing to miss another paycheck. Coast Guard members, airport security agents, and other critical federal employees were working without pay. The system was grinding to a halt again, and the stark reality of his failed governance was catching up to him.

And instead of trying to broker a deal to end the shutdown or ensure that federal workers could rely on receiving pay for the hours they’ve already worked, Trump settled down in front of the television. It was late at night. He likely sat alone, the glow from the screen his only companion, as the program he’d been waiting for “Real Time with Bill Maher,” came on.

What was supposed to calm his nerves and feed his ego instead sent him into a spiral.

So much so that nearly ten hours later, he was still fuming and took to Truth Social to post a book-length rant about Maher:

Which, of course, is ironic. Because he clearly was extremely upset, and wasted nearly ten hours raging about it.

He could have spent that time actually trying to “make America great” by ensuring the government pays its workers. Instead, he proved again that he still lives as if this is all a reality TV show, where no attention is bad attention, and every chaotic moment is just another storyline to stir. Unfortunately for us, we’re the collateral damage.

And the rest of his administration? Their plotlines go even deeper. They’re playing their parts in the same scripted chaos. Which would be fine if this were just entertainment. But it’s not. It’s something much more dangerous.

The people he has placed in positions of power never take the weekend off. For folks like Kristi Noem and Stephen Miller, cruelty is their driving factor. According to The Washington Post, the Trump administration is preparing to spend $38.3 billion turning warehouses into detention centers. ICE plans to expand its capacity to hold over 92,000 people. They are creating the infrastructure for mass incarceration, facilities designed not to process, but to warehouse human beings. And we need to call them what they are: the early days of concentration camps. I use that comparison with full recognition of the horrors those words carry, and with reverence for the promise so many of us were raised on, “never again.” But unlike the generations who came before, we have the benefit of hindsight. We know how these systems begin, and we know what they look like before the atrocities are visible. And to ignore the parallels now is to break that promise. This isn’t about law enforcement. It’s about control and about sending a message that in Trump’s America, some lives are disposable. And as always, it brings us back to the poem “First They Came”, because these camps aren’t just being built for undocumented immigrants. They are being constructed for whoever they decide is next. Some detainees have already been shipped to offshore facilities that bear a closer resemblance to torture sites than anything resembling due process.

And we need to stop and ask ourselves a necessary, even urgent, question: If this is really about immigration, what if that $38.3 billion were spent compassionately and on actually fixing our immigration system rather than militarizing it and laying the groundwork to “collect” more than just undocumented people? What if every person facing deportation had guaranteed legal representation and due process promised to them in the Fourteenth Amendment? What if we separated true criminal threats from asylum seekers and workers, and created a process rooted in dignity and fairness?

Because this country was built by immigrants. And unless your family was Indigenous to this land or enslaved and brought here by force, you are here because someone immigrated. And yet now, our tax dollars, our money, are continuing to be used to terrorize families, imprison the innocent, and build a permanent system of state cruelty. We are funding it. And once it exists and is built out, it won’t just go away.

At the same time, we also learned more about the whistleblower complaint implicating Jared Kushner, Trump’s own son-in-law, in potential wrongdoing involving foreign intelligence. Meaning it most likely came from an allied country that overheard it and thought it was serious enough to bring it to the attention of our own intelligence community. This is the kind of thing that would have brought down entire administrations in the past. But under Trump, it was just another scandal buried in plain sight.

Because, instead of allowing a full and fair investigation, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard allegedly restricted distribution and delayed transmission to Congress for eight months. The name “Jared Kushner” was deliberately obscured, hidden behind classification protocols that conveniently protected the president’s own family. This isn’t just a redaction. It’s a cover-up. And it’s not subtle. And it’s exactly what we have come to expect when we have the least qualified people in such critical positions in our government. It’s important to note that Jared Kushner was not confirmed by Congress and is representing the United States as a private citizen with no official title, no oversight, and billions in foreign investments. This alone is a national security crisis.

We still don’t know exactly what was in that report. But we know enough to be alarmed. It started with a foreign intelligence service, most likely an allied country, that intercepted a conversation between two foreign nationals discussing Jared Kushner and Iran. They knew what they were risking by sharing it with the United States. They knew it involved the president’s own son-in-law, someone he treats as untouchable. And they shared it anyway, because that’s how serious it was. And then someone inside our own government looked at that same intelligence and came to the same conclusion, that it was alarming enough to file a formal whistleblower complaint. That’s two separate alarm bells, one from outside our borders and one from within, both saying the same thing: something is wrong.

And what makes it worse is the familial connection. This isn’t just any official. This is Trump’s family. Which means we’re watching a national intelligence agency being used to protect not just an ally of the president, but a relative. That is corruption by definition, and it’s weaponized proximity to power.

But there’s something even more disturbing here. This wasn’t a momentary lapse. It was eight months of calculated obstruction at the highest levels of national security, all to shield a member of the president’s inner circle from scrutiny. And the person responsible for that obstruction is Tulsi Gabbard, the Director of National Intelligence. The person whose entire job is to protect this country’s secrets and ensure that threats are taken seriously. If she had America’s best interests at heart, if she served this country and not this president, she would have followed the law. She would have processed the complaint. She would have transmitted it to Congress within the 21 days the statute requires.

Instead, according to reports, she locked it in a safe. She allegedly took a paper copy directly to White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles, not to the intelligence committees tasked with oversight, but to the president’s gatekeeper. And Wiles didn’t sound the alarm either. She received classified intelligence about a potential national security threat involving the president’s own family, and the response was to make it disappear. This isn’t about politics. This isn’t about money. This is about national security. And the people entrusted with protecting it chose to protect the president’s son-in-law instead. If this had been anyone else, there would have been bipartisan outrage. But instead, there was silence. Because this is what happens when you fill the most important positions in government with the worst people in America. People who don’t serve the country. They serve the machine.

This administration is run by people who see public service as a way to consolidate power. And Trump? He’s just the brand. The distraction. The one who draws the camera while the gears turn quietly behind the curtain. That’s why we have to stop waiting for the spectacle to burn itself out. It won’t. This isn’t reality TV. It’s real. And every minute we spend trying to decode Trump’s personal unraveling is a minute we’re not focused on the systemic damage being done in his name.

So what do we do? We stop imagining that anyone in power will save us. We stop waiting for Republicans to grow a spine or for Democrats to stop playing by rules the other side doesn’t recognize. Because that’s not what this is. This is not just a presidency in decline. It’s a presidency designed around distraction. And while he stumbles through press briefings and gets riled up by late-night segments, the people around him, the worst people, are hard at work. They aren’t trying to help him. They’re using him.

Trump and his enablers didn’t fill cabinet roles with experts. They filled them with wrecking balls, people laser-focused on implementing Project 2025 and its brutal spinoffs, including the one aimed directly at women. These are operatives who don’t need Trump to be present. They just need him to sign things. They dangle trophies and applause. They tell him he’s saving the country. And in exchange, he gives them cover. He is the circus. And his cabinet, Stephen Miller, Susie Wiles, and the rest of his sycophants, with billionaire backers like Peter Thiel pulling strings from the outside; they’re the ringleaders.

That’s why the 25th Amendment isn’t coming. It won’t be invoked. Because those behind the scenes depend on his chaos to keep us distracted. And he’s too eager for affirmation to notice what he’s being used to do. And that’s what this presidency has always been about, not governance or service, not even America. Just Trump. A distraction while the country is auctioned off behind the curtain and billionaires feed off our taxes.

But here’s what they can’t control. He can keep spreading his propaganda, but when enough people can’t pay for their basic needs, they will start to realize that they have been lied to. And when the billionaires start to see their own wealth slipping and numbers softening, they, too, will abandon him.

I spent the morning today continuing to work through where my dollars go. I am going line by line and researching who I am paying and where their donations have gone, and which side they are aligning with. It’s tedious work, but necessary. I acknowledge it won’t be perfect. And that’s okay. I’m not looking for perfection. I’m looking to do my best to make sure that my money goes to companies and individuals that are on the right side of history. In some instances, I have to pay slightly more to make sure that happens. In other places, I’m just not replacing services at all. Instead, I’m redirecting that money to supporting independent voices who continue to speak the truth and report so that all of us know what’s really happening.

I am only able to do this work and write these posts every night because there are reporters out there who are not letting fear dictate their work. I know the threats I personally receive to bring these posts to you. And I can only imagine what the reporters on the ground face in their inboxes and in the field every single day. They are holding the line. And so are we.

There was a lot of bad news today. Things I never thought I would hear coming out of the United States of America. It is a good reminder of just how deep the rot goes, and how this country is being run by the worst people imaginable. Not just because they’re unqualified, but because they’re loyal to the president more than the country they swore to serve. These are people who follow orders, not principles.

But then I remembered one of the best lessons that history can possibly teach us: the worst people rarely win in the end. Casey Wasserman, whose connections to Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell were exposed in the recently released files, felt enough pressure that he has decided to sell off his agency. Not just any agency. One of the most powerful talent firms in the world. And it’s not just a business move. It’s a signal.

The backlash is working. The walls are starting to close in. This is one of the biggest cracks we’ve seen inside the U.S., a major fall from someone deeply connected and protected. And the fact that he’s walking away from something that has defined his identity, that’s given him access and power for decades? That tells us something big: he knows what’s coming.

Seeing someone at his level of influence make this move is why I still have hope for America. And you should, too. Because when someone like Wasserman makes an exit, it sends a message. They’re not invincible. And this is just the beginning. More are going to follow.

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.