At 3:02 p.m. this afternoon, the President of the United States hobbled into the Roosevelt Room 32 minutes late for his meeting with tech leaders. While they waited for his arrival, they had each stood in their assigned places, fidgeting and trying not to let the heat of the room get to them. One of the crypto executives had been heard saying to the press standing behind a rope on the other side of the room, “Are you guys hot over there?” while SEC Chairman Paul Atkins added his own remarks, asking the room if anyone could dance.
With Trump finally in the room, he took his place at the podium. Using his right hand that was discolored and bruised, he turned the pages to read his remarks, and it was hard not to see just how much makeup had been applied to the decaying skin across the back of his hand.
Then he started talking. For the next 41 minutes, in a room named after Theodore and Franklin Roosevelt, two presidents who broke up monopolies, created Social Security, built national parks, and led this country through the Great Depression and a world war, Donald Trump held court with the men and women who are making him rich. He opened his remarks by introducing each executive by name as if he were introducing contestants at a pageant. Brian Armstrong, CEO of Coinbase. “He’s one of the greats,” Trump said. “You look much younger. You look good.” The CEO of the New York Stock Exchange. “He owns a thing called the New York Stock Exchange, a quite nice asset, right?” The CEO of Robinhood. The CEO of Kraken. The Winklevoss twins. And then, turning to the room with a grin, he called them “my male models who happen to be genius, they’re brilliant and they look good, right?”
These are the people the President of the United States has bet the future of the American financial system on.
And then, one by one, they returned the favor. The CFTC chairman called this “a golden age of American innovation.” The SEC chairman thanked Trump for “making IPOs great again.” Brian Armstrong called his campaign strategy “astute.” Every single one of them stood at that podium and praised him while the country falls apart around them. Not one of them mentioned the war in Iran that has no exit strategy, or the bond market crisis that saw long-term borrowing costs hit their highest levels this week. They were only there to praise him and play his game because they all knew that if they didn’t play it, someone else would.
Because this wasn’t really a meeting about the future of American finance. It was a meeting between people who have figured out how profitable it can be to keep each other in power. According to Reuters, Donald Trump has personally earned more than $1.4 billion from the cryptocurrency industry. That includes hundreds of millions from a $TRUMP meme coin and from selling tokens through World Liberty Financial, a company he co-founded with Steve Witkoff, who now serves as his special envoy. Donald Trump wasn’t in that room as the president. He was there as the man who is profiting with them. He is the regulator and the beneficiary. He is writing the rules for the industry that is making him a billionaire, and the men in that room know it, and they praise him for it. Someone has to pay for all of that wealth, and it is the American people. We are the ones carrying the risk, absorbing the losses, and living with the consequences while they walk away richer. What we saw in that room was a business transaction at the expense of the American people.
At one point during his remarks, Trump said, “One year ago this summer, I signed landmark legislation known as the GENIUS Act. I named it after myself.” The room laughed. He laughed. And moments later, while trying to describe the future of financial technology, he said, “We’re also on the very beginning of a revolution in fictional and financial.” He meant to say something else. But fictional may be the single most honest word he has spoken in months. Because everything about this presidency is fiction. The booming economy is fiction. The successful foreign policy is fiction. The “golden age” is fiction. And the only people who say it are not doing so because they believe it. They are saying it because they are being paid to repeat it.
Then he left crypto behind entirely and drifted to North Korea. “I do have a good relationship with Kim Jong-un, as you know, you’ve seen,” he said. “He didn’t like Biden, he didn’t like Obama, he didn’t like anybody, but he likes me.” He confirmed he plans to meet with Kim later this year, and he called the dictator who runs concentration camps, starves his own people, and has built an arsenal that Trump himself says includes 57 nuclear weapons, “very well-behaved.” And then he explained why he had just gutted joint military exercises with South Korea, one of our most important democratic allies, a country that has stood beside the United States for 70 years. “I was not happy when South Korea said, no, they’re not interested in helping us with the Hormuz Strait,” Trump said. “I felt that to do a massive war exercise, I thought that was very insulting to somebody that frankly has been, during my term at least, very well-behaved.”
That is Trump actually telling the truth about how he leads our country. He explained his entire foreign policy. The dictators who manipulate him get rewarded with flattery and favors. The democracies that have stood by us for generations get punished the moment they decline to do what he demands. Kim Jong Un gets praised as “well-behaved” because he figured out long ago that all you have to do is flatter Donald Trump and he will give you whatever you want. South Korea, which hosts tens of thousands of American service members and has a mutual defense treaty with the United States, gets its military exercises slashed because its president said no to joining Trump’s war. Kim Jong Un’s own sister responded publicly and said she was unaware of any communication between the two countries and had “no interest” in the reduced exercises. A retired South Korean special forces commander said, “North Korea and China would be the ones most pleased by this.” Trump does not even understand or care what he has just done.
Then came the interest rates. He told a room full of cameras, “I almost like to hear bad numbers; I’m saying I hope we have bad numbers today, interest rates will go down.” The President of the United States said he hopes for bad economic numbers. He then added, “Every time I hear a country is doing well, I say, oh, it’s too bad because they lift up interest rates.” The president just said that good news for the country is bad news for him. He is rooting against us and would rather see the numbers go down so his scoreboard looks better. And when a reporter asked directly whether Americans should be concerned about volatility in the bond market, Trump said, “No, I don’t think so.” He then explained his theory of economics: “When our country is strong, interest rates should go down. When our country is weak, frankly, they should go up.” That is the opposite of how any of this works, and the president of the United States should know this. He does not understand the most basic economic forces governing the lives of over 330 million people, because he has never bothered to learn.
Then he went into last night’s elections. “The public’s pretty smart, you see that last night. We had some great success last night; the Republican Party had tremendous success last night.” That was another lie. The night before, three of his endorsed candidates lost their primaries. Cory Mills, whom Trump endorsed in February and called “an America First Patriot,” lost by 13 points and is facing a DOJ investigation and a House Ethics Committee probe over allegations of assault, campaign finance violations, and threats to distribute sexually explicit images. Catalina Lauf got just 22 percent of the vote. Megan Degenfelder lost the Wyoming governor’s race by more than 15 points. Trump’s primary losses just keep piling up, and yet he stood in the Roosevelt Room and told a room of billionaires it was a tremendous success.
Shortly after he turned the microphone over to others, he almost immediately struggled to stay awake, appearing to fall asleep as he stood there. Multiple times during the event, his eyes closed, and his body began to sway before he caught himself. And not one person in that room acknowledged it or showed any real concern. And that is what complicity looks like in 2026 so as not to interfere with their profitability.
Maybe the most disturbing part was that they all just stood there as Trump used this event to once again attack Democrats, to call the Biden era “weaponization,” to spread lies, and to deepen the divide in this country. They stood there and let him do it. They nodded along. They waited for their turn at the microphone. Because none of it mattered enough to interrupt an arrangement that was making them richer.
Each one of them chose to be there and chose to stand beside him. They chose to praise him. These are the rats coming out of the gutters, and we need to remember that. Every name and all of their companies.
When this chapter of American history is finally over, when the investigations begin, and the consequences come, we cannot just go back to life as normal. We cannot pretend this was a passing storm, or that they were simply following the regulatory process, or that they somehow didn’t understand who they were standing beside and what he was doing to this country. They knew. They could see exactly what the rest of us could see, and they made their choice anyway.
And we need to remember that choice. We need to hold every single one of them accountable, so that the next time someone like Donald Trump tries to take this country, the people deciding whether to help him know there will be a price for doing it. Because if there is no consequence for standing in the Roosevelt Room and praising a man while he dismantles our democracy, then we are not just allowing this group of enablers to escape accountability. We are teaching the next group that enabling authoritarianism is profitable, and that when it is all over, they can simply walk away with the money and pretend they had nothing to do with it.
What worries me most about where we are right now, in the year 2026, is that we have law enforcement officials and constitutional legal scholars running scenarios to protect the Constitution from the President of the United States. I’m thankful they are doing this, but I’m deeply concerned that they have to. We have a president who constantly threatens to run again in 2028 and serve a third term, who talks openly about overriding the constitutional limits on his power, who pulls out a “Trump 2028” hat and treats the whole thing like a joke. We have a Speaker of the House being discussed openly as someone who could refuse to seat duly elected and certified members of Congress simply because they are not Republicans. And we have a President of the United States actively working to rig the outcome of the midterm elections before a single vote has been cast because he knows losing control of Congress could mean losing the protection that comes with it.
That is what is happening, and it is happening while he falls asleep in meetings and calls dictators “well-behaved.” That spectacle is not separate from what is happening behind the scenes. It is helping to provide the cover for it. While the country watches him struggle to stay awake and make it through his remarks, the people surrounding him are testing how much of our constitutional system they can dismantle before enough of us realize what they are doing. He performs the presidency while they dismantle the democracy that makes the presidency possible.
The midterms are 11 weeks away. Nothing matters more right now. The primaries are finishing up across the country, and once our candidates are set, we go. We donate. We volunteer. We send postcards. We make calls. We knock on doors. We talk to our friends and our neighbors. We do every single thing within our power to make sure people understand what is at stake. Everyone’s part in this is going to look different, but every one of us has a part. And for the next 11 weeks, we go all in.
We also have to keep the pressure on to make sure every voter in this country sees the failure sitting in the Oval Office. We cannot let him distract us long enough for us to forget what he has done and still plans to do. He has 11 weeks to try. Eleven weeks to throw rallies and tantrums, manufacture distractions, sign rocks, attack his enemies, and tell us everything is wonderful while the country can see with its own eyes that it isn’t. Let him try. We’re not moving on. We’re showing up every single day, and we’re not stopping until the balance of power in this country shifts back to where it belongs: with the people.
I am more hopeful than I have ever been that we will come out of this on the other side and that these midterms are going to be the point in which everything shifts. Donald Trump is failing, the people enabling him are vulnerable, and the American people have had enough. That is why I still have hope for America. And you should, too.
I’ll see you tomorrow,
Heather
PS. You can make a significant difference right now by subscribing to my Substack. Your support helps me cover more ground and keep telling the truth about the lies and destruction unfolding in this country.
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: I can't remember the last time I had an ice cream, let alone in a cone, and it reminded me of the simple things in life that spark joy.
Sources used in the writing of this post:
President Trump Delivers Remarks with Technology Leaders: YouTube video
https://www.ms.now/news/trump-plans-to-meet-kim-jong-un-north-korea
https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/6039728-trump-calls-lower-rates-bond-market/
https://www.cnn.com/2026/08/18/politics/live-news/florida-primary-election-results
https://www.npr.org/2026/08/17/g-s1-138969/trump-exercises-south-korea
It never ceases to amaze me that grown men (,not a woman in sight although we all know what the orange Hitler thinks about women) can stand in the Oval Office and listen to the utter rubbish and childish vocabulary their leader spouts and then watch him fall asleep afterwards. The man is incapable of telling the truth about anything. I'm still very apprehensive about the mid term elections in November and what the Donald may plan to do to interfere with the democratic process. As for his plan to stand for the Presidency again in 2028 he'll be totally doolally by that time.
Incidentally what has happened to Melania?,
Based on my 25-year career in hospice, although not as a nurse but as a chaplain, my sense is that Trump has not looked well since a couple of years before the last election.