I have clearly been struggling to find the proper response to my new life in what my friend Peter calls “Truskmumpia.” I vacillate between surrender and resistance. Sadly, I have known several mad people, some so afflicted they resorted to violence or so depressed they have ended their own lives prematurely. But that is different from the collective, almost Shakespearian, madness so clearly visible in The Court at Mar-a-Lago. Two megalomaniacs now seem in charge of the most powerful nation on Earth: One, Elon Musk, a certified multi-multi-multi-billionaire, and the other, Donald Trump, is a faux billionaire convicted of multiple financial irregularities who now resorts to peddling knock-off “No Surrender” sneakers, his holy American bible, and Trump presidential golf shoes. Elon spent hundreds of millions to solidify his place closest to the center of power where he can simultaneously boost his fortune while urging MAGA-led Congress to cut pretty much every government program that helps the rest of us.
As you may have noticed, I have recently been taking deep dives into the lives and times of those folks Donald Trump somehow imagines are competent enough to head some of the most important agencies in our government. These are positions critical to us and, in fact, the rest of the world because we happen to be the proprietor of one of the two largest repositories of the most lethal nuclear weapons known to humankind. And you would think, considering the horrifying reality that Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin control the world’s fate, that at a minimum we ought to require the most competent, experienced, smart people to stand guard over our defense and national security departments. But in Truskmumpia, that seems not to be the case.
I was about to launch into researching those, along with Robert F. Kennedy Jr., whom Trump nominated to protect our public health (at the National Institute of Health and the Centers for Disease Control) when I began a review of our past and continuing response to the COVID-19 pandemic. There is no denying that it is one of the great tragedies of the last several decades that the voices of the unreasonable and the superstitious have drowned out the rational and the scientific. This has been most noticeable in our response to COVID-19. So many are deluded into thinking RFK Jr. and Joe Rogan are the heroes and Anthony Fauci is the villain.
Americans are so used to believing we are the best at everything. But, when it comes to our COVID response, from the very beginning, and sadly to this day, misinformation has ruled. Sadly, the American people don’t really know the true story of COVID-19, our enormous casualties, and the devastating impact it had on the lives of so many. And that ignorance continues. How else can you explain the deafening silence as Donald Trump tries to appoint people without significant expertise or competence to critical positions in those very agencies charged with protecting the public health. He seemingly lacks the desire to adequately prepare us to deal with the next pandemic surely to come our way.
Anyway, as I began my research, it dawned on me to see how experts not only look back on and critically evaluate our efforts to respond to COVID, but to compare how other nations had fared, especially the Canadians, our friends and neighbors to the north. Well, it didn’t take long before I was sent tumbling backwards into the renewed madness that is pretty much everywhere in Truskmumpia. A single misplaced Google found me in the midst of Donald Trump’s latest attack on Canada, and, unsurprisingly, none of this had anything to do with COVID.
Such is life in the age of search engines and the multiple digital roads they uncover, leading us everywhere all at once. Obviously, the gods and goddesses of opinion writing had something else in mind for me. There I was, right smack in the midst of The Incomprehensible. Quite clearly, it was later for COVID. In Truskmumpia, the agenda is set by Donald Trump. Or maybe the agenda is set by Elon Musk. In any event, Donald Trump was clearly furious with and focused on what he was convinced was Canada’s alleged failure to adequately address illegal immigration. Such is the mind of the mad that these grievous failures somehow morphed into Donald Trump’s desire for vengeance, for retribution, for Truskmumpian justice. So it made perfect sense for Trump to absorb Canada. And one megalomaniacal thought led to another. How about we seize the Panama Canal? Which led to buying Greenland from Denmark. Forget that the Danes are adamant the island is not for sale. As the Merriam-Webster Dictionary will attest, while this all seems to make perfect sense to Donald Trump, I confess it appears to me incomprehensible in every respect:
Incomprehensible (adj.) — impossible to comprehend : unintelligible
Since you haven’t been focusing on COVID, you have probably seen once again President Donald Trump working overtime to maintain the fervor of his campaign. Maybe you even watched coverage of AmericaFest, the event hosted in Phoenix by Turning Point. The Washington Post reports that the crowd heard him flit from one claim more crazed than the other:
Speaking for 75 minutes, he lavished praise on his Cabinet picks, boasted a ‘Trump effect’ was already improving the state of the country, reiterated his vow to end the war in Ukraine and said that Russian President Vladimir Putin conveyed ‘he wants to meet with me as soon as possible.’
The Post continues:
Trump dwelled at length on his complaints that the Central American country of Panama is charging too much for passage through the Panama Canal — amplifying an issue he raised a day earlier on social media. He noted that the United States built the canal in the early 1900s and called Panama’s fees ‘ridiculous,’ a ‘complete rip-off’ and a ‘disgrace.’ If the situation didn’t change, Trump said, ‘we will demand that the Panama Canal be returned to the United States of America in full, quickly and without question. … So to the officials of Panama, please be guided accordingly.’
Trump then praised President William McKinley, who helped make early plans for a passage through Central America. Trump lamented that the highest mountain in North America, once known as Mount McKinley, was renamed Denali in a nod to Alaska Native heritage. ‘We’re going to bring back the name of Mount McKinley because I think he deserves it,’ Trump said.
It seemed to escape the soon-to-be president that we had signed a treaty in 1977 returning control of the canal to Panama. If you have been confused up to now, it should be clear why Donald Trump is so very anxious to put into place his own director of the CIA: because the non-Truskmumpian and their CIA Factbook—as is the case with Panama—seem too often to forego the black-and-white mythology of Donald Trump, opting instead to recognize the complex reality on the ground:
In the been-there-done-that category, a previous Republican president went into Panama. The CIA remembers what I am guessing most Americans don’t. The U.S. sent troops to Panama to arrest Manual Noreiga and protect our interests in the Panama Canal. In 1991, the BBC looked back:
The invasion came by sea, air and land. Thousands of US troops descended on Panama, seeking to unseat its de facto leader and bring him to Miami to face drug charges. It was 20 December 1989, and the once close relationship between General Manuel Noriega and the US had deteriorated to the point of no return. In an address to the nation, then President George H W Bush said he had ordered military forces to Panama to ‘protect the lives of American citizens’ and bring Noriega ‘to justice’. The announcement came days after Panamanian forces killed an American serviceman. At the time, Noriega was also facing a US indictment for drug-trafficking, as well as claims he had rigged a 1989 election. Operation Just Cause, as it was dubbed by the US, saw more than 20,000 US troops invade the country and seize control of key military installations. Officially, 514 Panamanian soldiers and civilians were killed in the invasion but some local groups say the real number is closer to 1,000. Twenty-three US military personnel died. The invasion turned Panama City into a battleground.
Here is how the U.S. Army reported on the operation:
In the early morning hours of December 20, 1989, the United States Army spearheaded a carefully planned and well-executed attack that overwhelmed the Panamanian Defense Forces (PDF) of dictator Manuel Noriega. The goal was to restore the democratically elected government of Guillermo Endara and arrest Noriega on drug trafficking charges. At the time, Operation Just Cause was the largest and most complex combat operation since the Vietnam War. Nearly 26,000 combat troops deployed, with just under half being from bases in the United States. Two dozen targets were attacked throughout the country, using a wide spectrum of tactical operations including Military Operations on Urbanized Terrain (MOUT), Air-Assault, Airborne, and Special Forces.
The General Accounting Office (GAO) of the U.S. Congress issued a slightly more balanced report in April 1991 titled “PANAMA: Issues Relating to the U.S. Invasion.” They noted:
In a summary of the U.S. position provided to foreign embassies, the State Department justified the U.S. intervention first as an exercise of the right of self-defense, invoking article 51 of the UN Charter and article 21 of the OAS Charter. Article 51 of the UN Charter recognizes the right of self-defense if an armed attack occurs against a country. Article 21 of the OAS Charter prohibits the use of force against another country except in the case of self-defense in accordance with existing treaties. The State Department interpreted these clauses as allowing U.S. forces to take measures to deal with the threat or use of force against the territory of a state, its armed forces, or its nationals … Almost all Latin American nations either publicly condemned or expressed concern about the U.S. action … On December 29,1989, the UN General Assembly adopted a resolution (by a vote of 75 in favor, 20 against, and 40 abstentions) that protested the intervention as a violation of international law and demanded the withdrawal of U.S. forces.
Donald Trump, because he doesn’t read and because he treated his previous military advisors with such overwhelming disrespect, even contempt, never learned the lessons of our disastrous interventions in Iran, Vietnam, Cambodia, Chile, El Salvador, Honduras, and Nicaragua, for example. He did, of course, witness the mess we created in Afghanistan and Iraq, but he was too busy trying to blame Biden to understand what terrible mistakes we made. His bravado and increasing attempts to bully other nations like Canada and Panama and Denmark will only serve to alienate us all over again in the world community.
As CNN notes, it would be smart but completely unlikely for Trump to appoint someone less prone to pleasing him than John Ratcliffe as CIA director:
Ratcliffe, a former representative from Texas, served as the director of national intelligence from 2020 to 2021 during Trump’s first term – and his appointment served as a key argument for critics who believed that Trump was using the intelligence community to serve his political needs.
During his tenure as spy chief, Ratcliffe publicly released unverified information about Russia’s influence in the 2016 presidential election over the objection of members of the intelligence community. Critics claimed at the time that Ratcliffe was using intelligence to help Trump politically as the 2020 presidential election approached. Trump touted Ratcliffe’s loyalty Tuesday, saying in his announcement: ‘From exposing fake Russian collusion to be a Clinton campaign operation, to catching the FBI’s abuse of Civil Liberties at the FISA Court, John Ratcliffe has always been a warrior for Truth and Honesty with the American Public.’
Back to The New York Times’ report on Trump’s AmericaFest speech:
As he often does, Mr. Trump spent the most time on immigration and the border. He repeated his claim, without evidence, that other countries were emptying their ‘insane asylums’ and prisons into the United States. And he vowed to purge the country of people who have entered illegally ‘On my first day, I will sign a historic slate of executive orders to close our border,’ he said to huge applause from the audience. ‘On that same day, we will begin the largest deportation operation in American history.’
As with many of Mr. Trump’s speeches, it was light on details. He did not say who would be deported or when. But he promised to designate Mexican drug cartels as terror organizations and said that every cartel ‘operating on American soil will be dismantled, deported and destroyed.’
[Emphasis added.]
If you missed AmericaFest, you have probably seen him connect illegal immigration to his threats to impose a bunch of tariffs (read taxes) on the goods Canada exports to the U.S. to force Canada to better prevent illegal immigrants from crossing southward into the U.S.
Rather than engage in quiet, even confidential, negotiations with Justin Trudeau, Donald Trump has resorted to public threats. Canada’s Global News offered this headline:
Of course, Trump couldn’t help but make matters worse by mocking Prime Minister Trudeau and disdainfully denying the rightful pride Canadians take as an independent, self-sufficient nation. Global News writes:
U.S. president-elect Donald Trump is taking another shot at Canada about becoming part of the United States. In a post on Truth Social, Trump says many Canadians want Canada to become the 51st state. He says it would save on taxes and military protection and that he thinks it’s a ‘great idea.’ Trump has made repeated digs at Canada and the suggestion that it could become the 51st state in recent days, referring to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau as governor …Trump has threatened that when he becomes president next month he will impose massive tariffs on all goods from Canada unless it stops the flow of migrants and illegal drugs into the U.S.
Canadian Broadcast Corporation (CBC) News reported that the Canadian government was evaluating the very serious possible ramifications of Trump’s statements:
Trump’s tariff threat could force Canada to face tough decisions on sovereignty …Trump’s demands could squeeze Canada’s sovereignty in many ways … It’s hard to imagine President Emmanuel Macron of France joking about annexing Belgium. Donald Trump’s posts and memes about turning Canada into the 51st state are almost without parallel among western democracies, said Carlo Dade, director of trade at the Canada West Foundation. ‘This isn’t “Lower Lukistan” and “Upper Lukistan” calling each other names again. That’s something we expect, and we might expect it at that level of elected retail politicians running off at the mouth,’ he said. ‘Where you don’t expect it is from the most senior leadership. You don’t expect that with countries that have had historic friendly relations and that are mature democracies.’
Trump has threatened not only Canada, the country to the north of us, but Mexico to the south. The New York Times continues:
Trump’s comments, which he and his allies have downplayed as mere trolling, pale in comparison to the rhetoric about missile strikes and special forces incursions that his supporters have deployed against Mexico. But they are a sure sign that Canada is dealing with an administration that cares little for the niceties of sovereignty. Both Canada and Mexico will have to balance their need to maintain cross-border trade with protecting their ability to make decisions and control what happens within their own borders.
I must admit I had either forgotten about Trump’s threat to bomb Mexico or missed reading about it. But if anyone would know about it, it is Trump’s former Secretary of Defense Mark Esper. And so I turned to his “A Sacred Oath.” Esper writes about how obsessed Donald Trump was with Mexico:
On at least two occasions in the summer of 2020 — once in the Oval Office and a second time in his private room just off the Oval — the president approached me about a sensitive issue. Slightly hunched over, with his hands motioning in front of him like a quarterback gesturing for a long snap, he asked me if the military could ‘shoot missiles into Mexico to destroy the drug labs’ and take out the cartels. Standing close to me as he spoke, the president complained that the Mexican government ‘isn’t doing enough,’ getting irritated as he spoke and adding, ‘They don’t have control of their own country … If we could just knock them [the drug labs] out,’ he said, this would do the trick. ‘What do you think?’ he asked.
These conversations were quite troubling, to say the least. On one hand, I shared his concern about illicit drugs being trafficked into our country and respected his passion for wanting to stop this dangerous trade, but asking the U.S. military to shoot missiles into a sovereign country and worse yet, our friend and neighbor, definitely wasn’t the way to go about it. Working hard to conceal my shock at this idea, I said, ‘Mr. President, we could do that, and as much as I want to stop these drugs too, shooting missiles into Mexico would be illegal. It would also be an act of war.’ I recommended that ‘we look for more ways to help the Mexican government deal with the problem, such as increasing the training, intelligence, and equipment we are providing them.’ We should also take another look at ideas that were tabled in the past. But to simply launch air or missile strikes into Mexico ‘would not only violate international law, it would also destroy our relationship with Mexico and damage our global standing,’ I said.
Trump took these objections in, pursing his lips as he listened. He then suggested, ‘We could just shoot some Patriot missiles, and take out the labs, quietly, adding preposterously that ‘no one would know it was us.’ He would simply deny we had launched them. I had seen Trump spin his own reality before, so I had no doubt he was confident in his ability to persuade people we had not launched the attacks. However, we didn’t live in a world where the United States could strike another country and no one would believe the missiles weren’t ours. I also couldn’t imagine the president would resist taking credit for the attack anyway. It was nonsense, plain and simple.
If I hadn’t seen the look on the president’s face, I would have thought it was all a joke. He wanted to get this planned and done by Labor Day — ‘around then,’ he said — just a few months away. I was speechless. Trump thought this was the only way we would really stop this terrible trade.
I took a long pause, and then said, again, ‘This would be an act of war, Mr. President, and there would be no way to keep it quiet.’ I quickly added, ‘We can’t keep our discussions in this room from finding their way into the press.’ He nodded in silent agreement, not looking at me but into the air as he thought. I further parried by offering to raise this issue with Haspel and Pompeo, who I knew would agree with me, adding, — ‘I’ll speak with Mike and Gina, and see if they have any good ideas.’ That seemed to satisfy him and, as would happen so predictably, he bounced to another topic, and I immediately made my way to the door.
How about we shift from Trump’s resentful rhetoric to a look at some of the hard realities when it comes to Canada. First, according to Trading Economics, exports from Canada to the States amount to a significant amount of money:
Now how about we consider the consequences to both large businesses and American shoppers if Trump adds a 20 percent tariff on the price of everything that comes from Canada. Because while Donald Trump and his MAGA adherents never honestly address this issue, every middle man, every wholesaler, and every retailer will invariably increase what they charge to cover the Trump tariff costs, carrying over the price increase to their customers. I don’t know why the news media allows them to ignore this reality and then repeats without critical analysis Trump’s contention that this money from tariffs will go directly into the U.S. Treasury, but… Anyway, here are some of the materials we import from Canada and the amount we spend in billions:
Perhaps you think these tariffs are a justified last resort, the only way to force the Canadians to crack down on what Trump claims is a massive illegal immigration problem. But have you actually looked at the statistics? Again, I blame the media for allowing Donald Trump—and you can now add Elon Musk to the mix—for convincing the American people that we are on the receiving end of an apocalyptic influx of “criminal” illegal immigrants. Akin to a zombie invasion. Time and time and time again, Donald Trump has made it seem like Joe Biden and Kamala Harris and their Democratic cohorts were prying open the gates at our southern and northern borders and waving in the psychotic criminals. Oh yeah, and all the while showering them with free healthcare, retirement benefits, welfare checks, and food stamps. As if illegal immigration were a new problem unique to and deliberately made worse by the Biden/Harris administration.
In reality, our extraordinarily large and extended borders make this is an exceedingly complex problem, far more complicated than exaggerated rhetoric would lead you to believe. It might be helpful to take a look at how Customs and Border Protection describes their mission:
U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) is the nation’s largest federal law enforcement agency charged with securing the nation’s borders and facilitating international travel and trade. Our top priority is to keep terrorists and their weapons from entering the United States.
At the nation’s more than 300 ports of entry, Office of Field Operations (OFO) officers have a complex mission with broad law enforcement authorities tied to inspecting all foreign visitors, returning U.S. citizens and imported cargo that enters the United States. Along the nation’s borders, the United States Border Patrol (USBP) and Air and Marine Operations (AMO) are the uniformed law enforcement components of CBP responsible for securing U.S. borders between ports of entry.
Let’s take a look at the immigrant reality since 1980. This chart shows the number of incidents where our border patrol encountered immigrants over a nearly 45-year period:
Here is a look at the figures for unauthorized immigrants living in the United States in 2007, 2019, and 2024. In fact, the incredibly frightening reality that Donald Trump has harped upon for years—and you can add the recent rendition of the Haitians eating the cats and dogs of their small-town American neighbors—well, we’ve been living with numbers like these and surviving easily for decades now:
And here is an interesting look at the numbers of immigrants who made up the workforce in America in 2022, showing the percentage of documented workers versus undocumented:
Yes, Donald Trump’s rhetoric about the threat of illegal immigrants steadily increased over recent years, but as the statistics reveal, a larger proportion of those crossing the border were members of families, not single men:
Here are the CBC’s statistics for the number of northern border crossings each month in 2021, 2022, 2023, and the first part of 2024:
From Donald Trump’s near-hysterical rhetoric, you might imagine that millions of illegal immigrants were crossing from Canada into the States. Instead, there were encounters at the northern border with less than 20,000 immigrants in 2024.
What isn’t talked about enough is the large numbers of illegal immigrants who are deported each year:
Now allow me a moment to talk about Donald Trump’s renewed obsession with Greenland. Greenland is owned by Denmark. Yes, they are far from each other. But then again, Hawaii isn’t that close to Massachusetts.
Here is what the CIA has to say about Greenland, that is until John Ratcliffe rewrites it:
And, on Denmark’s website, they make crystal clear their feelings about Greenland:
Now there is no denying that Greenland is placed strategically in areas both the United States and Russia would love to control, but I suspect there are other reasons that have convinced Donald Trump that Denmark just doesn’t deserve Greenland the way we do. I am guessing that he is often incensed by how thoroughly Denmark has surrendered to the evils of wokeness. In fact, they just can’t help but brag about how woke they really are. Trumpeting their virtue, right there for all to see on their website. While they were once warriors like Pete Hegseth, Trump’s pick for secretary of defense, now they are as soft as cotton candy:
Then, there is this:
And, even worse:
But have no fear, Donald J. Trump, soon to be our president once again, offered a Christmas answer to all who wondered just how great he would make America again:
As for me, I imagine the gods and goddesses of opinion writing have a year coming filled with even more of The Incomprehensible.
