Braggadocio refers to empty, arrogant boasting or proud, exaggerated talk about one’s achievements, courage, or importance, often masking insecurity. It’s characterized by showboating, swagger, and self-importance. Sounds like a perfect description of Trump on a good day.

His thing with Marilyn Monroe aside, John F Kennedy was an inspirational President for America and, as such, Congress voted after his assassination that the Performing Art Center, completed in 1958, be named in his honour – The John F Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts. In any case, just being assassinated while in office normally ensures immortality, but he deserved it. As opposed to Trump, he actually fought in a vicious war, WWII, and did not use fictitious bone spurs to get out of it. He commanded a small motor torpedo boat in the ‘slot’ of the Solomon Islands and was awarded the Navy and Marine Corps Medal for his heroic actions over a period of six days in saving his crew when his boat was rammed and sunk by a Japanese destroyer.

Fast forward to his presidency. His impact on geopolitics and American self-belief was significant. On January 20, 1961, he delivered his inaugural address with the conclusion that inspired a generation with the words, “And so, my fellow Americans: ask not what your country can do for you — ask what you can do for your country. …” He never boasted about his crowd size nor did he insult his predecessors or talk about himself. Rather he was unifying and focussed on the future of America and its leadership role in the world.

After the erection of the infamous Berlin Wall, he visited West Berlin to reassure them of US support by declaring “Ich bin ein Berliner” (I am a Berliner). Although lagging behind the USSR in the space race, in 1963 he committed America to landing a man on the moon by the end of the decade which they did with five months to spare.

But his biggest achievement was staring down the Soviet Union. The nuclear arms race was becoming deadly serious when US intelligence picked up in late October 1962 that Russia intended placing nuclear missiles close offshore in Cuba. Kennedy decided on a naval blockade of Cuba and although nuclear tensions ratcheted up, he stood firm until Russia backed down. This is diametrically opposite to Trump’s craven sucking up to Russia for personal enrichment in the post-war reconstruction.

Compared to Trump, JFK was a giant yet Trump had the temerity to have his tacky name tacked onto the Memorial Center’s existing name. The only thing he has in common with JFK is the name of John. When asked about the change, he feigned surprise and pretended he had nothing to do with it. Pull the other one.

Shortly after taking office, Trump fired all the Center’s board members, and replaced them with stooges, who then voted to make him chairman of the board. He teased the name change and, although superficially nothing was happening, a lot was obviously going on behind the scenes. This is witnessed by the fact that after the Board voted for the change, the extra signage was immediately installed on 18 December 2025.

It remains to be seen whether it will remain so. The original name was conferred by an Act of Congress, hence a change to it would also need Congressional approval. In typical Trump style, thinking he is master of the universe, he acts faster than the system and then dares Congress or the legal system to overcome their inherent inertia to thwart him. Perhaps it is appropriate that Trump’s name has been attached to the Center for the Performing Arts after all, since both of Trump’s presidencies have been a gigantic over-the-top metaphorical cosplay dedicated to himself.

It is said that there are five stages of grief, but it seems as if one only needs three stages of shaming to reach the depths of one’s depravity if one is a narcissist.  This is the level Trump has reached in his latest bout of childish pettiness.  I’m talking about the Trump Arab chic touch to the colonnaded walkway that connects the White House proper to the West Wing.  It is a pleasant walk along the front face of the White House complex with Lafayette Square and the city beyond as a backdrop.  Many heads of State and other dignitaries walk along this connection.

Stage 1:  A brain fart in the ‘wee’ hours of the morning kicked off the process.  While ruminating on the state of the presidential prostate, Trump conceives a brilliant idea.  Since his brain is like a child’s that can’t abide a blank wall without scribbling on it, he decides that he will line the wall with portraits of every president mounted in his go to gold baroque frames.  Not a bad idea except that in his pathetically childish and churlish way he could not resist sticking up a picture of Biden’s autopen instead of his face.

Stage 2:  He stood back and admired his work, particularly those of himself, and felt like God after he had created Adam.  But there was something missing.  Hmm, some décor touches maybe?  This thought nagged at his wizened little brain.  In another early morning brain fart between rants on Truth Social while on the toilet waiting for his prostate to behave, it came to him.  Eureka, I have it he shrieked as he rushed into Melania’s room with his robe flapping around the Royal white bum, but Melania was hiding in her cupboard.  Undaunted, he woke up his staff and explained what was needed.  Just like the Oval Office when all the portraits had been put up, he had added his chintzy gold applique tat on spare wall space to complete his personal Garden of Eden. And so it was to be for the walkway particularly since he had some spare tat leftover from the Oval Office décor upgrade.

Stage 3:  He still was not satisfied.  Just like God who demanded that he be routinely praised and his foes demonized, He wasn’t going to wait for his MAGA flock.  He was going to take that onerous job on Himself.  He conceived putting gold lettered plaques below each portrait describing the respective Presidents.  He doubled up plaques for himself and the two that give him irritable bowel syndrome – Biden and Obama.  Naturally his eulogy of himself was straight out of some book of fables (actually his Truth Social posts of self praises and false claims).  For Biden, in particular, he hauled out all his campaign slurs like, “nicknamed ‘Sleepy’ and ‘Crooked’ Joe Biden …”  Of course, the only person who used that nickname was the petty petulant President Himself.  Amongst other false claims, he reiterated his claim that Biden was, “by far, the worst President in American History,” as well as the comprehensively debunked claims of the 2020 stolen election.

Most of us at one time or another have had an earworm apart from RFKjr, of course, who had a brain worm which soon died of indigestion.  For many this takes the form of a song.  Abba produced many ear worms which catch people of a certain age unawares.  Some even have to resort to therapy or psychedelics to get rid of them.  Mine tend to be The End by The Doors or something by Neil Young – but that’s me.  Trump’s musical ear worm is obviously YMCA (You Make Crap Again) which he dances to with gay abandon.  But he has another, more sinister ear worm.

It’s one he’s had since the early 2000s when Western banks started seeing the charlatan as a bad risk and he broke bread with Russian money men.  His peak interaction with them and probably their honey trap came in 2013 when he staged his Miss Universe contest in Moscow.  He’s had their back ever since then and they seem to have his balls in a jar in the Kremlin.  They probably term it Kremlin Brûlée, the ultimate honey trap.

Normally, Americans celebrate Thanksgiving by serving turkey to be ritually carved up by the head of the house for his guests.  This year, it is not Turkey but but that tough old bird, the Ukraine, that the head of the world, if not the universe, wishes to serve up to Russia with his demand that Zelensky surrenders by Thursday, 27 November – Thanksgiving Day.  On top of it all Trump demands that the turkey prostrates itself in gratitude for being carved up which he says they have never done.  Poor hard-done-by bully-boy Trump.

As usual, the gap between Trump’s statements of fact and the truth is wider than the Gulf of America (formerly known as Mexico).  Since the war began, Zelensky has expressed his gratitude to America and its leaders no less than 78 times.  40 of those have been on X (formerly known as Twitter) and many addressed to Trump (formerly known as accused number 1).

What transpired roughly a week ago was a unilateral announcement of a 28-point peace plan for the 3½ year Ukraine-Russian war with the simultaneous demand of the immediate surrender by Thanksgiving.  This shocked the world because this was ‘negotiated’ between Russia and Steven Witkoff, Trump’s real estate developer buddy, without input from NATO, the EU or the main victim of Russia’s aggression, the Ukraine!

However, it transpired that Witkoff was not acting as an unbiased intermediatory but actually an interlocuter for Putin as all the 28 points were just Putin’s talking points.  The deep concern expressed by the unconsulted Ukraine and EU led Trump to have to pivot.  Soon he was saying this was just the beginning of a consultative process, blah, blah, blah.  Bullshit, bullshit, bullshit.

Trump doesn’t give a damn about the security guarantees that America signed or for the Ukrainian soldiers and citizens who have been brutalised and murdered by Russian soldiers.  He wants a deal on Putin’s terms because then Putin will welcome Trump Inc with all their ‘beautiful’ real estate developments and other deals into Russia. 

One must factor in Trump’s motivations into all his words and actions.  He does not have a scintilla of morality, conscience or sense of justice.  It’s like he was lobotomised at birth.   It’s all about ME.

Trump has brought his unique bully-boy, manchild character to Washington.  Along with this came his barely formed aesthetic – white and gold – and he is steadily changing the White House into a Washington version of his Mar-a-Laager private club crossed with his bankrupt Taj Mahal casino. Given his immature sense of style, he is probably somewhere on the autistic spectrum and suffers from ADADHD – Arrested Development, Attention Deficit, Hype-ing Disorder.

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Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly, and applying the wrong remedies. – Groucho Marx.

Along with all his other factory defects, this saying describes Trump as a politician pretty well.  What it does not say about him is the insulting and threatening way he applies his wayward policies via executive orders, ‘Truth’ Social posts or demands on the stump.

Then of course, there is the reversal of his position, sometimes multiple times.  In a recent example, earlier in this term he stated that he would “aggressively revoke” Chinese student visas because they were stealing America’s technology.  This Monday, he did a complete volte-face, or is it a volte-farce, when he welcomed Chinese students but was ambivalent about the French just because he dislikes President Micron.  In fact, every time they meet, he gets into a pissing contest with an endless who-has-the-manliest handshake.

Throughout his life Trump has used his wealth and thick skin to exaggerate, lie and bully everyone he has had business dealings with.  In 2016 he suddenly found himself CEO of the biggest corporation in the world, USA Inc.  He created a shambles then but he still had his training wheels on.  After he lost to Biden, he spent four years having a pity party while marinating in his grievances and applying Mac sauce on his bone spurs.  All the while he was building up a head of steam and had the support of Project 2025 with their 1000-page manifesto of how to govern America outside of the legal system and every rule, regulation and norm that has restrained every President before him.  Basically his approach is, “I don’t give a F%$K!”  After all, his toadies in the Supreme Court had his back when they ruled that he had immunity as long as his actions had something vaguely to do with being President.

Having created a cabinet of unqualified dingleberries[1] prepared to do anything, he has attacked his political enemies, real or imaginary, bombed Iran’s nuclear program into oblivion, made enemies of America’s strongest ally, Canada,  alienated most western democracies, ignited a tariff war, sometimes for non-technical reasons, which is not his right under American or international law, pardoned Jan 6 insurrectionists and election officials trying to carry out his illegal wishes, gutted just about every Federal agency responsible for keeping America sane and safe – medically, environmentally, educationally, flying safely, predicting the weather correctly – and has sicced the Justice Department on everyone and everything he does not like, particularly immigrants.  All the while he dares all the courts up to the Supreme Court to rein him in.  He has halted all programs to provide clean energy while China adds more solar annually than what exists in America.  He has withheld grants from top universities which he dislikes and opines that he knows better than engineers that old-tech steam catapults are best.

He is a President without precedent.  All around him is chaos, dysfunction and mayhem. Yet he continues to live his King Midas dream while everything he touches proves to be fool’s gold.    

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[1] Dingleberry – a small piece of dried faeces clinging to the hair around the anus of an animal or person.

Trump relies on Fox News for all his security and foreign policy briefings and, since they are an integral part of his echosphere, he’s actually listening to his narcissistic self.  It’s a symbiotic relationship – Trump wouldn’t survive without Fox News and vice versa.  They are embedded deeper up Trump’s bum than a proctologist is prepared to venture.  Their morning conservative news and talk program, Fox and Friends, serves up such a daily diet of sludge that it should be renamed Fox and Enemas.

In their latest sycophantic move, their streaming service, Fox Nation, has granted Melania Trump the laughable award of Patriot of the Year – 2025, this for a woman who, in Trump’s first term, wore a green jacket emblazoned with “I REALLY DON’T CARE, DO U?”  during a visit to child detention camps.  This was not a jacket by some avant-garde  designer, but a $39 common or garden jacket on which she had daubed the letters using what looked like the white liquid that we applied with a sponge to our canvas Slazenger tennis shoes in the days before Nike.

(It was also written in all-caps, something which Donald has picked up on with his ‘Truth’ Social posts.)

She was MIA for most of Trump’s first term and just about completely absent during his campaign for re-election. In his second term so far, she attended his inauguration, the Pope’s funeral and a state visit to Britain and that’s about it. She has not made any stirring patriotic speeches, rallying Americans. On the contrary, every time she appears in public it’s under duress and she looks like she’s passing a large kidney stone or thinking about Donald trying to get his leg over the previous night.

On learning about this cringeworthy sycophantic award, SUMAC could not resist mocking the picture they posted by replacing an uncharacteristically smiling Melania with her image from Donald’s inauguration. Her choice of look for the occasion was unfathomable. She looked like she was auditioning for a female Darth Varder, the Grim Reaper or the Plague Doctor. Whatever! Her message to the American People (and Donald) is clear – don’t f%$k with me – a non-verbal version of her previous “I really don’t care” statement.

America rightfully protested in the No Kings rally that they did not wish their country to be governed by a kinglike leader.   But maybe they should have protested as well about his King Midas touch.  We know he likes to touch nice things and now nothing in the White House is safe from his cold gold touch.  His décor sense along with the rest of his brain suffers from arrested development and can be summed up as Arab Chic.  It’s a pity the rest of him wasn’t arrested at the same time.

The latest to feel King Midas’ unwelcome grope is the Lincoln bathroom in the White House.  Maybe the green tiling isn’t to everyone’s taste, but he traded in old style warmth for a sterile marble wasteland with gold highlights.  If it wasn’t for his fake face tan, he could play hide-and-seek with Melania and she would never find him in there. His pallid old man’s body and veinous legs would blend right in with the veined marble.  Then again, she probably wouldn’t look very hard, if at all.

Who knows how Trump’s worm’s eye view of the world perceives the Russian invasion (oops, Special Operation) of Ukraine?  His stance has undergone more changes than a chameleon wading through Smarties, but in Trump’s case, not so smarties.  He has flipped flopped from threats against Russia only to change a week or two later.  In this opinion piece SMAC has undertaken to lay bare Trump’s motivations and for that SMAC deserves a Nobel Prize of some sorts. 

To start off, one must understand the basic inner workings of Trump.  He’s not clever, but he’s smart in a reptilian brain sort of way.  And just like his primordial ancestors, he has an incredibly thick skin and an inability to be embarrassed.  In fact, he has nil self-awareness.

First point to consider is whether Putin has anything compromising on the fat frat boy.  Undoubtedly he has.  Putin is an old-school apparatchik and ex-KGB officer.  This is spycraft 101 for the Russians – get or engineer kompromat (compromising material) through a honeytrap or bribe.  One must factor in that Moscow hosted his Miss Universe pageant in 2013.  The Steele dossier is a 35-page report that contains hectic, but unsubstantiated allegations.  Nevertheless, one of the most salacious ones was that, while he was in Moscow, he hired prostitutes to perform a ‘golden shower’ on a bed that Obama had used on a state visit as president in order to defile it.  Sounds just like the petty Don.

But ultimately Trump is amoral.  First and foremost, the world revolves around himself and as a businessman, he does not let any morals cloud the deal.  While he was in Russia back then, he was feeling out real estate opportunities, but all that took a backseat after Russia annexed Crimea and provided paramilitary support to rebels in Donbas and Luhansk on Ukraine’s eastern border in 2014. 

But that desire has never left Trump and he knows that if he can force an advantageous peace deal on Ukraine, Russia will richly reward him with great opportunities and he might wangle a Peace Prize.  Just contrast his approaches to dealing with Putin and Zelensky.  Immediately after Putin’s 2022 invasion he praised Putin as being brilliant while his European and Nato allies were aghast.  Since then, he has never had a constant position regarding Russia.   One day he takes a hard line and then after a meeting with Putin or a phone call, Trump does a 180 degree turn and insists Ukraine accept a ceasefire on Putin’s terms.

Who will ever forget that reality TV farce that Trump and his cabinet engineered with Zelensky in the White House on 28 February.  With the cameras rolling, Zelensky was humiliated by a Trump tag team who created an embarrassing spat by insisting that his trademark attire (no tie) was disrespectful to Trump.  Trump wrapped up the distasteful display by saying to Zelensky that “(y)ou don’t have the cards (to play)” so you had better give up right now.  Putin must have been so chuffed that he probably ordered himself another Dacha on the Crimean coast.  Contrast that with Trump’s obsequious behaviour when he met with Putin in Alaska in mid-August.

Also just a week or two ago, Trump started publicly threatening to give long range Tomahawk cruise missiles to Ukraine because of Putin’s unrelenting missile/drone reign of terror on civilian targets.  A 20^th October meeting was arranged between Trump and Zelensky at the White House ostensibly to finalise the deal.  Two days before it, Putin phoned Trump and whispered endearments in his ear.  Zelensky’s trip was rendered meaningless as Trump refused the Tomahawks and apparently a very heated meeting ensued.  Then a few days later Trump u-turned again and announced crushing oil sanctions against Russia. 

I wonder what Putin will have to do now to bring his pet to heel?

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Trump’s décor sense is a reflection of himself: gross, cheap, tacky – choose your personal descriptor.  The overblown gold embellishments in the Oval Orifice, and any of his developments for that matter, make it look like an Arab souk.

In 2016, he surprised even himself by winning the elections, but he was like the dog that chased the car and caught it.  Now what!  He did minor redecorating to his taste as all presidents have done, but nothing overly dramatic.  However, in between playing golf, getting briefed by his cabinet at Fox News, and stumbling and bumbling through his presidency, he did unleash Melania on the historic Rose Garden.  She acquitted herself well and reduced the slightly wild but colourful space to one that was a reflection of herself – “sterile, bland and devoid of any joy”.   Still, it could have been verse (her guttural Slavic pronunciation).  In fact, worse was to befall when Trump conquered the White House during his second coming.  This time he was prepared.

In his second term he started off by paving over Melania’s carefully coiffed lawn with limestone slabs to create an even more sterile place reflective of their marriage and then boastfully erected two over-hyped flagpoles.  (Note, the minor provincial town of Port Elizabeth has a flagpole twice their height).  On a roll he tackled the Oval Office.  He has gone over the top on the signature Trump-style décor, probably salvaged from his bankrupted Taj Mahal casino.  After turning it into a gold leaf tinsel town, his childish petulance could not resist his next move.  He created a walk of fame on a wall of the West Wing colonnade by hanging baroque gilded framed photos of all the past presidents in order.  Bracketed by snarling portraits of himself was Biden – a photograph only of his signature and the Autopen used to create it – phew, way to go big boy.  

But all the gold touches and photos glorifying himself didn’t satisfy his itch.  There was something missing.  Deep down amidst all the froth of his reality shows, his transactional marriages and transactional affairs, his various presidencies, and his serial bankruptcies (6), he was a property developer at heart.  It wasn’t good enough being a temporary tenant, he wanted to play God and remake the White House in his own image, his personal shrine.

In a flash of inspiration after inhaling a Big Mac, he knew what he didn’t like about the White House.  It reminded him of skinny jeans which he hates (because amongst other things, he could never wear them and Obama could) – NO BALLROOM.  Now this was a development project he could get his veneered teeth into to take his mind off his unrequited dream of a Nobel Prize now in peaces and his tariff war blowing up in his face.

At the end of July he announced the project to build a 90,000ft² (8370m² or 2.1 acres) ballroom with a capacity of 650 people to replace the current ballroom of 200 people capacity in the East Wing.  He stated that it “won’t interfere with the current building.  …   It will be near it but not touching it, and pays total respect to the existing building, which I’m the biggest fan of.”  It should be noted that the two floors and basement of the central core of the White House have an area of 45000ft.  The model showed a rectangular structure of about 88x48m (a rugby field is 100x50m) dwarfing the seat of America power.  He is determined to finish it before the end of his term and, as usual, has bulldozed or ignored just about every authority mandated to deal with a program such as this.  As always, Trump cannot be taken at his word.  The capacity is now 990 and when the demolition started it looks as though the whole corridor up to the core will also be demolished, so who knows how the plans have changed. 

Republicans have cravenly defended Trump by saying that even Obama made drastic changes – yes, he changed a tennis court into a basketball court! 

God help the White House if he wangles a turd term.

The madcap red cap maggots think Trump’s policies are to DEI for on the back of Trump advocating for no queens (and hating Queens along with the rest of New York).  Meanwhile America is shouting back, “No Kings”.  Republicans answer that the No Kings movement consists of people who hate America and are actually members of that most dangerous of all terrorist organisations – Antifa. 

For people who don’t follow US politics, antifa merely means anti-fascist to describe people who reject fascism – an honourable standard to uphold.  It is not an organization in any shape or form, but is used as a slur much like branding a person a communist during the McCarthy era.  Why it is so gleefully used by Republicans against people who refuse to go along with their diktats is that, I believe, it conjures up the word Intifada in people’s minds.  This resonates with MAGA because Intifada is an Arabic word for a rebellion or uprising and was specifically used to describe Palestinian resistance to Israel in the First Intifada (1987–1993) and the Second Intifada (2000–2005).

The rash of popular ‘No Kings’ protests against the indiscriminate use of presumptive Presidential executive orders, that have little or no legal basis, harkens back 250 years to the American war of Independence against a distant monarchy that existed in a gilded bubble.  (Alright, Britain was a sort of democracy but there was no universal franchise and the King held enormous sway.)  Trump’s unique approach to the Presidency along with a compliant Supreme court threatens to hollow out all the underpinnings of America’s democracy and turn it into a horrible tribute show for the Orange Jesus.

Contrary to Trump’s vain boasts which, as usual, are light on facts, he is proving to be an unpopular President.  He and all his toadies and the ‘Voice of America’, Fox News, repeatedly state that his resounding victory gave him a mandate.  Really?  A mandate to do what – to upend the whole well balanced American democracy with a machine gun blast of vile executive orders like a demented rapper high on his tanning spray? 

It is true that the Republicans also won both houses and control the Supreme court 6 – 3, but let’s look at his personal mandate.  Yes, he did beat Harris by 2.28m votes but this was after she replaced the doddery Biden on the slate with only 107 days to go.  It should be noted that he did not actually receive more than 50% of all the votes cast.  Also, “Slo Joe, I call him Slo Joe, you know” had actually beaten Trump by 7m votes previously.  So much for his popularity.

As the 47^th President, he is the most unpopular President ever at this stage of his incumbency with a 37% approval rating.  To achieve this high honour, he had to beat that other most unpoular President, Donald J Trump Jr, in his previous incarnation as the 45^th President which he has done handsomely.

Back to the No Kings rallies.  While the tacky King Midas with his golden décor touch skulked and sulked in his personal shrine at Mar-a-Lago complete with fake Times magazine covers about himself, 7 million Americans turned out in all 50 states in 2700 protests to express their displeasure.  With crowds seething with cartoon figures, narco blow up frog costumes, out of control horny unicorns, protesting grannies and sarcastic posters, not one shot was fired, no tear gas or smoke had to be deployed and everyone was happy without having to get high first.  It was remarkably unifying. 

As the US motto fittingly states, “E pluribus unum” (out of many, one).