’Twas the Week Before Christmas and the Cover-Up Was Ongoing

Last night, Trump gave a rally speech in North Carolina on his way to Mar-a-Lago for two weeks of Christmas vacation. As he walked onto the stage, the mouth breathing, where he puckers his lips and gasps between words, was still apparent, but he seemed to walk better than he has in recent days. The speech was part of his kickoff tour ahead of the midterms, and it was supposed to be about the economy. They even had attendees standing behind him holding signs that said “Lower Prices” and “Bigger Paychecks.” Exactly the type of gaslighting propaganda you’d expect from Trump World. There were young people strategically placed directly behind the podium, and from what I could see, there were no people of color visible, even though the area is racially diverse.

As the music blared “God Bless the USA” by Lee Greenwood, my mind wandered to two different times in my life. First, when that song really took root for so many of us, right after September 11. I know I speak for many when I say that song gave us both pride and strength back then. We were proud to be American. And when so many of us were hurting and under attack, what stood out most was the unity and community we shared. That’s why it stings when I hear it now. Trump uses that same song to open most, if not all, of his events, and it’s hard not to feel like something that once meant so much has been turned into something uglier. It doesn’t feel like a song about unity anymore. It feels like a signal of division. And knowing that Lee Greenwood has become a close friend and supporter of Trump only makes it more disappointing. Something that once symbolized collective strength now feels like a soundtrack for authoritarian branding.

Then my mind drifted further back to when I was a teenager, and was one of those same people standing behind a Republican at a rally as a body in the background. The memories are blurry, but I’m pretty sure it was for President George H.W. Bush’s reelection campaign, and looking back now at my own experience, I can see how indoctrination takes root. This isn’t to say I was ever a full “Republican” who voted strictly along party lines. Because I never was and always aligned more with liberal values. But I was also led to believe that Republicans were the “common sense” ones, the party of the Constitution and democratic norms. It took me way too long to sit down and actually look at the facts, and to realize that much of what I believed about the GOP was never really true and certainly was not this past decade or so. But it wasn’t until Trump that I officially left the Republican Party. And now, when I see these new young people standing behind him, older than I was but still impressionable, I think about how many of them believe the same things I once did.

And maybe this isn’t even about party lines, because up until Trump commandeered the Republican Party, I could see an argument that both parties had flaws but operated within a shared reality. There were still disagreements, but the lines between facts and lies hadn’t been fully erased. I wasn’t naive; I knew politics could be ugly, but I believed most elected leaders still felt some obligation to truth, governance, and public service. That idea doesn’t hold anymore. Trump didn’t just break the system. He made loyalty to him the only ideology that matters. And watching those young people behind him now, I don’t just see blind support. I see what it looks like when propaganda works.

Back to the rally. Instead of sticking to the topic, very little of the economy was discussed at all. Trump struggled to maintain a clear train of thought and repeatedly drifted off script. At one point, he launched into a rambling story about the 2022 FBI raid at Mar-a-Lago, veering into a strange, uncomfortable reference to his wife’s underwear, suggesting that agents might have disturbed Melania Trump’s “panties” and how she steams them. I listened more than once because it was genuinely hard to follow what he was trying to say. But what struck with me wasn’t just how inappropriate or incoherent it was. It was what it revealed.

This wasn’t a speech about policy. It was about grievance and retribution. And it should be a wake-up call to the GOP: Trump doesn’t care about the midterms. He only cares about himself.

His pattern is becoming harder for even his own followers to ignore. He spends most of his time attacking anyone he sees as a threat or believes has wronged him. With every pardon he issues, he sees the recipient as a stand-in for himself. In his mind, the people investigated, charged, or convicted during the Biden administration aren’t just political allies, they are versions of him. And by pardoning them, he’s trying to reshape how the public views crime itself.

He wants crime to feel normal. Then acceptable. He wants people to doubt any investigation before it even starts, because he knows what he’s still hiding.

He wants us to see not only others’ convictions, but his own, as illegitimate. If their crimes weren’t really crimes, then neither were his. That’s why he keeps going back to the raid, telling the same story again and again with growing strangeness. He needs the public to believe he was mistreated, because once that belief takes hold, everything else becomes easier to erase as political revenge.

And that brings us to what’s happening right now. This morning, the day after a small percentage of the Epstein Files were finally released by the Department of Justice, at least sixteen files were completely removed from the public index. One of them, labeled EFTA00000468, was a photo of Donald Trump standing next to Jeffrey Epstein, Melania Trump, and Ghislaine Maxwell. The image was shown inside an open drawer filled with personal photos, some framed, some loose, all appearing to be tossed in casually. There was also another image in the drawer of Trump with multiple, unnamed women, suggesting these weren’t just random snapshots but photos that were saved, and likely meant to be kept private. That file was available when the release first went live. Then it disappeared. What we are seeing is a continued cover-up of the President of the United States’ connection to a known trafficking ring. And the question bears asking again: if he is innocent of any wrongdoing, why delete the image? We already know they were close, and at least one of these images was already made public in the past. It would be expected to have photos together. And if, like Trump claims, he cut ties because he found out what Epstein was doing, then why erase the proof that they knew each other at all? Why not let the evidence speak for itself? And why does he not want justice for the survivors?

It’s not just about the deleted files. It’s about how the system behaves when it thinks it is above the law, or when it believes people are too exhausted to care. Survivors and their attorneys immediately raised concerns. Gloria Allred and Spencer Kuvin both called the release insulting. They pointed to the extreme redactions, the full blackout pages, and the selective inclusion of certain names over others. They made it clear that these documents are being filtered, not released in full. And it’s hard not to notice which names remain front and center, and which names were removed. Bill Clinton appears dozens of times. Trump appears almost nowhere, especially after the images that did feature him were deleted. This wasn’t transparency, as the Trump Administration likes to call everything they do, and it certainly wasn’t what the law required them to do. It was all performance. Lawmakers on the House Oversight Committee flagged the missing Trump image and demanded answers from the DOJ, while Ro Khanna, D-Calif., and Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., began exploring impeachment or contempt proceedings. But at this point, the damage is already done. The public was given just enough to believe something real was happening, and then the rest was quietly buried. Again.

At the exact same time this was happening, the U.S. Coast Guard, under orders from the Trump administration, seized its second oil tanker near Venezuela. This wasn’t a routine enforcement action. It was a military-style operation involving helicopters, tactical boarding teams, and an undeclared blockade that has now grounded multiple sanctioned vessels in Venezuelan waters. The administration says it’s about drug smuggling and sanctions enforcement. But international observers are warning that this blockade could destabilize the oil market and raise prices globally, and we already know that for Trump, it’s about the oil, power, and control. All the other mayhem is just gravy to him. Trump is using military power in foreign waters without congressional oversight while he stands on stage and complains about the cost of groceries.

Inside the military, the consequences are already showing. Yesterday, CNN reported that Brigadier General Eric Widmar, the top lawyer for the Joint Chiefs of Staff, advised officers back in November that if they are given an unlawful order, they should consider requesting retirement, and avoid resigning in protest, which could be viewed as a political act, or picking a fight in hopes of being fired. In other words, rather than refusing or pushing back, they should quietly walk away. The message was simple: protect yourself. Don’t resist. Just get out of the way. It was framed as a legal safety measure, but it’s really a quiet surrender. And if the people in the room with the power to say no are being told to disappear silently instead, then who is left to draw the line? How do institutions protect democracy if the people inside them are being told to choose self-preservation over duty?

Today, we also learned more about how some of Trump’s attacks take shape. Trump’s Federal Housing Finance Agency director, William Pulte, referred mortgage fraud allegations against Democratic Representative and California gubernatorial runner Eric Swalwell to the DOJ, based on an article from Gateway Pundit, a far-right conspiracy site. There was no investigation first. Just a forwarded link. Pulte, a Trump appointee, sent the article directly to the FHFA Inspector General with a note recommending DOJ involvement. Days later, Swalwell filed a lawsuit accusing Pulte of retaliation and privacy violations. The article at the base of this whole allegation had no documented evidence and appeared to just be an opinion piece. That was enough for the Trump Regime to initiate a mortgage fraud probe against a sitting member of Congress. That’s how the machinery works now. The far-right media creates the allegation, the Trump-aligned bureaucracy opens the door, and the legal system is used to harass and punish opposition.

But not everyone is staying quiet. We are learning that on Thursday, former Special Counsel Jack Smith, the man who brought two federal cases against Trump, one for election interference and one for mishandling classified documents, sent a letter to Congress asking to testify again. This time, he wants to do it in “an open and public hearing”. In the letter to House Judiciary Chair Jim Jordan, Smith made clear that he stood by every decision he made during the investigation, and he welcomed the chance to correct what he called “mischaracterizations” about his work. The cases he built were grounded in fact and law. Grand juries returned the indictments. The trials never happened because Trump took back the presidency, and because the justice system was frozen in place the moment it became politically dangerous to hold him accountable. Now the same House Republicans who tried to discredit Smith in private are being asked to let him speak in public. It shouldn’t take courage to tell the truth. But in this moment, it does. And Jack Smith is doing it anyway. In an ideal world, this request will be immediately granted, but that is not the world we are living in. We will have to see how this plays out, most likely in the new year.

But Jack is showing what this moment requires. A willingness to name what’s happening clearly and out loud. Because people are starting to listen. Every day, people are sharing real-world stories of friends, family members, and neighbors who were under Trump’s spell and are finally beginning to snap out of it. As much as we may wish, there could be some kind of extinction event where the ties are instantly and completely broken, that’s not how it works. We have to find hope in the individuals who are starting to question and push back. The ones who are looking at their own wallets and then looking at Trump’s rally signs and calling it what it is, a lie. Because there are no “bigger paychecks,” and nobody is seeing “lower prices.” And as much as I hate the thought of people suffering, in this case, that might be the only way some of them truly wake up. Let’s just hope it doesn’t have to get too much worse before it finally does.

I’ll see you tomorrow,
Heather

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