Trump couldn’t control himself today

Early this afternoon, while gripping the side of Air Force One just to stay upright, Donald J. Trump declared himself “totally exonerated” of all wrongdoing in regard to the Epstein trafficking ring. With words that seemed to slur with exhaustion and emptiness in his eyes, his energy went from dazed to agitated to borderline frantic the moment the question came from the reporter: “Do you think people in this country, at some point, associates of Jeffrey Epstein, will wind up in handcuffs too?”

And just then, something in him snapped awake. He didn’t become coherent. But the sluggishness gave way to something else. He went from slow and unfocused to jumpy and impulsive. He leaned in with panic and launched into an answer that didn’t explain anything. It just got weirder the longer he went on.

“Well, I’m the expert in a way because I’ve been totally exonerated. It’s very nice. I can actually speak about it very nicely. I think it’s a shame. I think it’s very sad. I think it’s so bad for the Royal Family. It’s a very, very sad thing to me. It’s a very sad thing when I see that it’s a very sad thing, to see what’s going on with his brother, who’s obviously coming to our country very soon. He’s a fantastic man, the King. I think it’s a very sad thing. It’s really interesting because nobody used to speak about Epstein when he was alive, but now they speak, but I’m the one that can talk about it because I’ve been totally exonerated. I did nothing, in fact; the opposite. He was against me. He was fighting me in the election, which I just found out through the last three million pages of documents.”

And the rest of his day went about as badly as that answer. It was filled with the same unraveling: rambling responses, scattered thoughts, moments of confusion, and a complete inability to stay on topic, or to stop saying things no President should ever say out loud.

This was the man who, just hours earlier, stood on a world stage and declared himself the architect of global peace. And when asked one of the most serious questions a leader can be asked, whether powerful men in this country who were involved in one of the most horrific crimes there is, trafficking children, would ever be held accountable, he didn’t answer. He didn’t even try. He spiraled the way he always does when Epstein comes up. Because this is the topic that breaks through whatever cocktail of medication, ego, and denial is holding him together on any given day.

And it made what we’d already seen earlier that day at the so-called peace summit feel even more disturbing. Earlier this morning, at the inaugural meeting of the Board of Peace, Trump pulled himself up to the podium using his left hand, gripping the edge just to steady himself. His right arm hung limp at his side, the way it has more and more in recent days. The room was filled with representatives from over forty countries. And scattered between the dignitary place cards were bright red MAGA hats stamped with “USA” in large white letters, propped up beside official country nameplates like party favors at a campaign rally, not something as serious as a global summit about peace in the Middle East.

And then he started talking. And what came out of his mouth over the next hour was not a speech about peace or diplomacy or even really about the future of Gaza. It was a rambling, incoherent performance that veered between ego, confusion, inappropriate comments, thinly veiled threats, and the ramblings of a man who appears to be battling some sort of cognitive decline. And it was delivered to a room full of world leaders who sat there and watched it happen because they came for access and legitimacy, not for peace.

He even made room in the middle of a global summit to focus on his Vice President, JD Vance. Not a brief acknowledgment, but a long, meandering tribute that turned into something between a roast and a loyalty test. He talked about Vance’s time at Yale, how he graduated in two years, how he married the woman who was ranked slightly above him, because, as Trump put it, he “gets a little uncomfortable” when he has to say someone else was first. He said Vance is “a pretty good guy” and “a great guy” who “says his mind now and then,” but then added, at an international peace summit, in front of world leaders, “we’re going to slow him down just a little bit on occasion.”

The President of the United States publicly told a room full of foreign leaders that he needs to rein in his own Vice President. And Vance just sat there and took it, the way he has taken everything since he decided the path to power was worth abandoning every principle he once claimed to hold. Because this is the same JD Vance who, in 2016, texted his former law school roommate: “I go back and forth between thinking Trump is a cynical asshole like Nixon who wouldn’t be that bad, and might even prove useful, or that he’s America’s Hitler”.

And then Trump pivoted to Marco Rubio, and the dynamic shifted into something that would have been comical if the setting weren’t so dangerous. Trump described Vance and Rubio as two different styles of the same thing, Vance being the blunt instrument and Rubio being the velvet glove. “Marco does it with a velvet love, but it’s a kill,” Trump said. “The result is the same. They do it very differently.” He praised Rubio’s performance at the Munich Security Conference, saying he’d done so well that “I almost terminated his employment” because people were asking why Trump himself couldn’t be that articulate. And then, with a grin, he said: “Don’t do any better than you did, please. Because if you do, you’re out of here.”

He thought it was funny to threaten to fire his own Secretary of State for being too competent. At a peace summit. In front of the world. And it’s important to note that this is the same Marco Rubio who, during the 2016 presidential primary, called Trump a “con artist” and warned the country that they were about to hand “the nuclear codes of the United States to an erratic individual.”

If you watched the two of them, Vance and Rubio, at this summit, what you were really watching was an audition. Both of them are positioning for 2028, and both of them know that the only path runs directly through Donald Trump’s approval.

And as the speech kept going, it just kept getting worse. Trump told a story about an escalator malfunctioning at the United Nations. He said it stopped suddenly, and he put his hand “on a certain part of” the First Lady’s body to stop himself from falling. “She was right in the proper location for me.” He then talked about Melania’s documentary, calling her “a big movie star” and telling the room, “I told her, we can’t have two stars in one family.” He said women go back to see the film “two or three times, four times.” This was at a meeting about peace in the Middle East.

He bragged about being more successful in real estate than his own peace envoy, Steve Witkoff. “I was a developer in New York, really successful, actually much more successful than Steve, but I don’t want to say that. I refuse to say it.” He called New York real estate developers “the worst, most evil people, horrible human beings.” Then in the next sentence praised them for liking Witkoff. He compared Witkoff to “Henry Kissinger Jr. that doesn’t leak” and then told a story about how Nixon’s own Secretary of State was leaking to the press, as if this were an amusing anecdote and not a description of institutional betrayal at the highest levels of government.

He went on an extended tangent about visiting China and how the military soldiers at a ceremony were all exactly the same height, “within a quarter of an inch”, and told the room you could have “played pool on the top of their helmets.” This is how the President of the United States describes a nuclear superpower he says he’s visiting in April.

He told Paraguay’s president he was “young and handsome” and then added, “It’s always nice to be young and handsome. Doesn’t mean we have to like you. I don’t like young, handsome men. Women, I like. Men, no.” At a peace summit. In front of the world.

He told Qatar’s prime minister, directly, to his face, “They have you down as evil. You’re not evil. You help us so much and you’re such a good ally.” He praised the Emir of Qatar as “smart as he can be” and said, “I only tell the truth.”

And then he abruptly got back on script saying, “I’m excited to announce that Norway has agreed to host an event bringing together the Board of Peace. Oh, I thought when I saw this note, “I’m excited to announce that Norway–“, I thought they were going to say that they’re giving me the Nobel Prize. Oh. This is less exciting. Oh, it says, “I am excited to announce that Norway.” And I’m saying, oh great, I’m getting the Nobel prize, finally, finally they got it right. But I don’t care. I don’t care about Nobel Prize. I care about saving lives, just so you understand.”

And then he eventually turned the attention to the made up “peace” prize he was given by FIFA, saying: “I want to thank Gianni and FIFA for all of the wonderful things they did and are doing. They gave me their first Peace Prize. They gave a Peace Prize, and I think they saw that I got screwed by Norway, and they said, Let’s give him a Peace prize. I mean, very good. Thank you, Gianni. I appreciate it.”

And it kept getting worse. He endorsed Viktor Orbán from Hungary for reelection from the podium. “I’m not supposed to be endorsing people, but I endorse, when I like people. You know, I’ve had a very good record of endorsing candidates within the United States, but now I endorse foreign leaders, including Viktor Orbán, who’s here,” General/president, okay? Prime Minister Orban of Hungary, who has my complete and total endorsement for election. Not everybody in Europe loves that endorsement. That’s okay; he does an unbelievable job. He’s done an incredible job on immigration, unlike some countries that have hurt themselves but they’re working on it. I just want to let you know you have my total and complete endorsement, and I’m putting it out. I already did, but I’m putting it out again, and you’re coming up with an election, and I think you should be good… You’re gonna do great, Victor. Thank you very much for being here; I appreciate it. You run a great country!”

This is the same Orbán who systematically dismantled press freedom in Hungary through political and financial pressure, who shut down Central European University because it promoted critical thinking, a move the European Court of Justice ruled violated EU law, who passed legislation banning any depiction of homosexuality in media accessible to minors, and who proudly declared his governing philosophy to be “illiberal democracy,” a term he coined himself in a 2014 speech to announce that Hungary was formally departing from Western liberal democratic principles. The European Union has sanctioned Hungary for undermining democratic norms, and the President of the United States endorsed its leader from the podium of his own peace summit.

And when he was finally done, when the rambling had exhausted itself, and other leaders took their turns at the podium, the cameras caught what should have been the lead story on every newscast in America: the President of the United States, slumped in his chair behind his nameplate, asleep. Not nodding off or “resting his eyes”, but asleep with his right side drooping.

And as disturbing as his physical and mental decline appears to be, it wasn’t what I noticed the most. I noticed who else was in that room and who seemed to refuse to be.

Let’s start with who showed up. Viktor Orbán was there, the architect of authoritarianism in Hungary. Javier Milei, the far-right president of Argentina, was there too. So were representatives from Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, and Uzbekistan, regimes with deep records of repression, political imprisonment, and state violence. Trump said he wants Vladimir Putin on the board. He said he wants Xi Jinping. That’s the direction this is headed.

Now, here’s who refused or only sent observers: France. Germany. Italy. Ireland. Sweden. Spain. Ukraine. The United Kingdom. Every major democracy that has stood beside us for the past hundred years, through world wars, through the Cold War, through 9/11, were not at the table. The Vatican declined. France publicly criticized the whole thing. And when Canada spoke up, Trump pulled their invitation.

That is not a peace board. That is a table of strongmen, monarchs, and autocrats, assembled under the American flag. Authoritarian alliances have never started with tanks crossing borders. They have always started like this, with handshakes and flattery and pacts of mutual benefit between leaders who agree to look the other way on each other’s worst impulses. The Axis powers did not begin with the invasion of Poland. They began with the Pact of Steel between Mussolini and Hitler in 1939, with the Tripartite Pact that formalized the alliance, with years of diplomatic flattery and economic agreements, and leaders praising each other at summits while the rest of the world tried to decide if it was serious. It was always serious. What I watched unfold in Washington today has happened before, and every time it has happened, the people watching it from the outside had the same thought: surely this isn’t what it looks like. It was. It always was.

Before the summit ended, Trump announced that the United States would contribute $10 billion to the Board of Peace. That means he just pledged $10 billion of taxpayer money to a fund he chairs and controls, with no congressional approval and no identified funding source. This is yet another way to drain public funds and make it appear to be going to a legitimate cause.

Today was a deeply frustrating day. Watching a corrupt administration flaunt its power and rewrite the rules in plain sight was enough to make anyone feel like the truth doesn’t stand a chance. But thankfully, we also saw some good news. On his sixty-sixth birthday, former Prince Andrew was arrested on suspicion of misconduct in public office. Thames Valley Police opened an inquiry after reviewing U.S. Department of Justice documents containing emails from 2010 that allegedly showed Andrew forwarding confidential trade envoy reports to Jeffrey Epstein during his official role from 2001 to 2011. Officers arrived at the estate, Andrew was arrested, held in custody for approximately eleven hours, and properties in Berkshire and Norfolk were searched. King Charles III issued a public statement pledging the royal family’s “full and wholehearted support and co-operation” with authorities, stating clearly that “the law must take its course.”

This matters enormously, and not just because of what it means for Andrew. Every investigation into anyone connected to Epstein, even when it doesn’t directly target the people we most desperately want it to target, forces more information into the light. Andrew’s case will require more documentation. More evidence will be gathered. More names will surface, and more connections will be drawn. And some of those connections will almost certainly lead back to our president. This is how these things unravel, thread by thread, until the whole fabric comes apart.

And it’s important to remember that Andrew isn’t being held accountable for the thing we most associate him with. He wasn’t arrested for trafficking. He was arrested for abusing his public office, for sharing confidential information with a convicted sex offender while serving in an official role. It’s not the charge people expected. But it still matters. Al Capone wasn’t brought down for his most violent crimes either. It was tax evasion that finally ended his reign. Accountability doesn’t always arrive the way it should. But when it does, it still counts.

And in South Korea today, former President Yoon Suk Yeol was sentenced to life in prison for leading an insurrection. A former head of state, who might actually be held accountable for trying to overthrow democratic governance. That’s what a functioning system looks like. That’s what we should have had here, a real trial, real evidence, a full public reckoning for what happened on January 6th. But even though it didn’t happen here, this still matters. The world is still holding the line. Other countries still recognize how dangerous insurrection is. They’re doing what America used to do, what we were once the gold standard for. And we can be that country again.

So here is what we do. We keep the pressure on the Epstein files. This is the catalyst. This is the thing that, when it finally breaks open, changes everything. We demand the release of every remaining document. We demand justice for the victims and accountability for the people who harmed them. We demand the truth. All of it. No matter how powerful the names it implicates.

It starts and stops with the Epstein trafficking ring. And we cannot stop digging until every last piece of it is exposed.

We support the independent voices doing the work our institutions are refusing to do. Journalists who have spent months combing through millions of pages to bring us the names, the dates, the connections hiding in plain sight. They are the reason we know what we know. Without them, the story stays buried. Read their work. Subscribe to them. Share their reporting. Amplify every piece of truth they uncover, because they are holding the line our government abandoned.

They are risking their livelihoods, their safety, and their peace of mind to make sure the truth is louder than the propaganda. And instead of bowing to the threats, they, and many others, are using their voices to spread facts and fight disinformation.

Every day, I see more and more content creators stepping into the anti-dictator space. People who never talked about politics before, who now understand this isn’t politics, it’s the survival of our country. And seeing them share the truth anyway, even when it’s risky, even when it’s hard, that’s 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.