Well, the casualties mount with every passing day. I don’t think we really know yet how very successful DOGE has been in destroying government as we know it. How many imagined witches have they burned?
There is no end to the irony. I wonder how many of those who voted for MAGA believed he backed the blue, trying so hard now to ignore how he pardoned the very criminals who beat the blue to the pulp? How many of those vets who voted for MAGA believed he really cared for them?
Remember, according to a Washington Post analysis of exit polling, a majority of veterans voted for Donald Trump in 2024. They played a significant role in his victory:
I wonder how many of us—MAGA included—have really talked to someone we have sent off to war. According to Mission Roll Call, only slightly more than a third of all Americans know a veteran, and only 13 percent know someone currently serving. Not surprisingly, then, why many of us aren’t sufficiently aware of what many vets are facing or the impacts the arbitrary personnel cuts Donald Trump and Elon Musk are making at the Veterans Administration (VA) will have on them.
According to the 2020 U.S. Census, there are about 18 million American veterans, or about seven percent of the adult population. I often think of three friends in particular, one sadly gone now, who suffered and continue to suffer from what they saw, what they did, and what happened in combat. Eventually, my three friends shared with me their frustration that so few of those they knew, their family, friends, those they went to school with, or played ball with, drank with, had ever really asked them or had ever truly wanted to know what they had experienced in war. Not that those would ever have been easy conversations, but far too often they were left alone to remember and relive those times.
Because I was making a film about the Iraq War and because I didn’t really know what questions I should or shouldn’t ask or how best to ask them, I reached out to a friend who had served multiple tours in Iraq and Afghanistan. Again and again he had risked his life flying helicopters, ferrying wounded soldiers out of combat. And I am so very grateful he decided to help me. He sent me pictures and, when home on leave, told me stories. And he learned to trust me.
I will share two little snippets of what he told me about his life in war. In the helicopter, he had to stop wounded soldiers from sharing their names or telling him about their lives. He just couldn’t know any more than what he absolutely needed to know in the moment to get them all out of danger. He just didn’t have the emotional room in his being to get to know them, or feel too much about them, because there were just too many of them, and there was always going to be someone else and then someone else and someone else to try and save. He then shared that if and when he put his head down to rest, he had only seconds to jerk himself into wakefulness and run to the helicopter to do it all over again—always just seconds from yet another surge of adrenaline.
Mission Roll Call offers some insight into the lives of veterans:
Since the 9/11 terrorist attacks, more than 3.3 million veterans have served in uniform, with less than 1% of the American population serving during any given year. 200,000 service members transition to civilian life each year, but less than 50% of veterans are enrolled in VA healthcare, making it imperative for the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) to change their outreach strategy so veterans receive the health care and benefits they earned and deserve. An estimated 41% of veterans are in need of mental health care programs every year. [Emphasis added.]
Rand did a study noting:
Over 9 million veterans are enrolled in VA health care and receive care at hundreds of VA hospitals and thousands of outpatient clinics across the country. That demand has been growing for the last decade or so because of the aging veteran population and the influx of veterans who served after 9/11. This has put pressure on VA, sometimes leading to longer wait times for appointments. Congress expanded the use of private sector care with two significant bills in 2014 and 2018 to relieve the pressure on VA but also with the intention to provide veterans with more control over where they receive health care. As a result, nearly a quarter of VA health care is now provided in the private sector and paid for by VA. The costs of private sector care have increased dramatically, and there is little evidence to suggest that the care is any more timely or of better quality.
Yes, the VA is overstretched and veterans often have to wait to receive care. This chart prepared by Carrie Farmer from the Rand study compares the wait time for both VA and non-VA care in some selected urban areas:
Back to Mission Roll Call:
The most common mental health challenges for veterans are post-traumatic stress (PTS), traumatic brain injury (TBI), depression, anxiety and substance abuse … Traumatic brain injury (TBI) can also impact mental health among veterans. Military service members and veterans can experience brain injury from explosions during combat or training exercises. The Defense and Veterans Brain Injury Center (DVBIC) reported more than 400,000 TBIs among U.S. service members who served since 2000, and more than 185,000 veterans who use the VA for their health care have been diagnosed with at least one TBI …
Mental health issues can affect every aspect of a veteran’s life. In a 2022 study, 38% of veterans had a code on their medical record for a common mental health disorder. This number does not include undiagnosed mental health conditions, which means the actual number is likely much higher.
Post-traumatic stress (PTS) is a condition that can develop after witnessing or experiencing a tragic or traumatizing event. More than a million veterans have been deployed to combat zones since 2001, and according to the U.S. Department of Veteran Affairs, 15% of military personnel who served in Iraq or Afghanistan experience post-traumatic stress each year. 23% of veterans using VA care have had PTS at some point in their lives.
[Emphasis added.]
This chart was developed by the VA’s National Center for PTSD:
I learned firsthand from my friends about post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and about how impossible it is to leave war behind. The fact that many of us actually have no clue about where veterans have been and what they have endured only makes the problem worse. Because of that lack of knowledge and because many of us really don’t want to know, few of us reach out to help.
Here is a chart prepared in 2024 by the VA’s Office of Suicide Prevention:
As sad as these numbers are, a recent study conducted by America’s Warrior Partnership with statistics from eight states—Alabama, Florida, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Montana, and Oregon—revealed that the VA had significantly underestimated veteran suicides:
Mission Roll Call notes
… veterans also struggle with anxiety and depression. Veterans are five times more likely to experience major depression than civilians, and 3 in 10 veterans with TBI have depression. This can manifest in substance abuse disorders, including alcohol abuse. Some veterans use alcohol and drugs to self-medicate after trauma. Ten percent of Iraq and Afghanistan veterans treated by the VA have a problem with drugs or alcohol.
Additionally, VA statistics from 2023 revealed
… on a single night in January 2023, there were 35,574 Veterans who experienced homelessness in the U.S. This reflects a 7.4% increase in the number of Veterans experiencing homelessness from 2022 … 20,067 experienced sheltered homelessness—an increase of 502 Veterans, or 2.6% from 2022. 15,507 experienced unsheltered homelessness—an increase of 1,943 Veterans, or 14.3% from 2022 …
Veterans who experience sheltered homelessness often live in emergency shelters, transitional housing programs, or other supportive settings. In contrast, Veterans who experience unsheltered homelessness live in places not meant for human habitation, such as cars, parks, sidewalks, abandoned buildings and literally on the street.
The experience of homelessness alone is already harmful to Veterans’ whole health—mind, body and soul. However, unsheltered homelessness among Veterans is even worse, with research demonstrating that unsheltered individuals often report more significant negative health conditions than those who are sheltered.
I am telling you this because, along with all the other mean-spirited and fundamentally counterproductive Trump/Musk initiatives, I am absolutely ripshit that Donald Trump, whose father bribed a chiropractor to invent some Vietnam-sparing bone spurs for him, is now sabotaging the Veterans Administration, acting together with DOGE and the accommodation of Pete Hegseth, our newly minted secretary of defense who chose to treat his own war trauma by indulging in black-out drunkenness and cheating on his wives all while mismanaging and crippling two nonprofit veterans groups. Nowadays, Hegseth is obsessed with imagining his own Christian crusade and lecturing Europeans on how they ought to go easy on their home-grown pro-Nazi political opposition while giving Putin the benefit of the doubt as he levels Ukraine. Yes, Hegseth has agreed to screw his fellow vets as his Truskmumpian superiors move their wrecking balls from USAID, the Treasury, the EPA, the DOJ, and the NIH over to the Veterans Administration.
It was clear from the work of Project 2025 that the VA was in their crosshairs:
… the current VA leadership is focusing very publicly on ‘social equity and inclusion’ within departmental policy discussions toward ends that will affect only a small minority of the veterans who use the VA. For the first time, the VA is allowing access to abortion services, a medical procedure unrelated to military service that the VA lacks the legal authority and clinical proficiency to perform. In addition to continuing the grotesque culture of violence against the child in the womb, these sociopolitical initiatives and ideological indoctrinations distract from the department’s core missions … Rescind all departmental clinical policy directives that are contrary to principles of conservative governance starting with abortion services and gender reassignment surgery. Neither aligns with service-connected conditions that would warrant VA’s providing this type of clinical care, and both follow the Left’s pernicious trend of abusing the role of government to further its own agenda …
The Sergeant First Class Heath Robinson Honoring Our Promise to Address Comprehensive Toxics (PACT) Act of 20225 addressed adverse health outcomes presumed to be the result of veterans’ exposure to airborne toxins during the global war on terrorism and further expanded disability benefits to the most recent generation of veterans. These ambitious authorities, like the 1991 authorities, have the potential to overwhelm the VA’s ability to process new disability claims and adjudicate appeals. Currently, the VA is seeking to hire large numbers of personnel to process these claims while exploring the use of an automated process to accelerate claims reviews and decisions. The ever-present lag in the hiring and training of new employees could result in major problems with the timely adjudication of benefits well into the next Administration in 2025.”
[Emphasis added.]
Combine the MAGA suspicion that veterans are seeking treatment and disability payments for “presumed effects” from exposure to dioxin and Agent Orange with the numbers of staff required to administer these programs, and you get witches to burn:
Naturally, Trump and Musk will celebrate what they have saved in salaries. Clearly, they couldn’t care less about the good work those now-fired workers were doing. But make no mistake about it, whatever they save will quickly be swamped multiple times by what we will surely lose as Trump and Musk raid the U.S. Treasury. I am talking about the trillions of dollars in taxes we won’t collect as they reward themselves, their friends, and the one percent with yet another round of massive tax cuts they don’t deserve.
The cost to us? There will no longer be hundreds of thousands of workers to make sure we get Social Security, are protected from new epidemics, ensure that the planes we fly on are safe, or make sure our contaminated rivers are cleaned. Tragically, there will be a thousand fewer people to help provide advice and counseling to those veterans who risked their lives for us, those who now need proper medical care, suicide prevention, and housing.
But veterans aren’t the only ones betrayed. Many in the heartland who believed that President Joe Biden was wasting money on woke policies like foreign aid, and Green New Deal-like programs to combat an imaginary climate crisis might have cheered the election of Donald Trump. In the days, weeks, and months to come, however, they will be waking up to the reality that Trump is sabotaging them, making them victims of the DOGE assault on USAID and the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
Here is how Project 2025 foreshadowed the Trump’s administration’s campaign to restrict and remake the department’s previous strategy of combining humanitarian aid with significant and sensible economic support for American farmers:
A recent USDA-created program captures both the disrespect for American farmers and the Biden Administration’s effort to dictate agricultural practices. The USDA explained that it was concerned with farmers not transitioning to organic farming, and therefore announced that it will dedicate $300 million to induce farmers to adopt organic farming. There was no recognition that farmers know how to farm better than D.C. politicians or that organic food is expensive and land-intensive … From the outset, the next Administration should: Denounce efforts to place ancillary issues like climate change ahead of food productivity and affordability when it comes to agriculture … Remove the U.S. from any association with U.N. and other efforts to push sustainable-development schemes connected to food production …
Move the USDA food and nutrition programs to the Department of Health and Human Services. There are more than 89 current means-tested welfare programs, and total means-tested spending has been estimated to surpass $1.2 trillion between federal and state resources. Because means-tested federal programs are siloed and administered in separate agencies, the effectiveness and size of the welfare state remains largely hidden …
Reform SNAP. Ostensibly, SNAP sends money through electronic-benefit-transfer (EBT) cards to help ‘low-income’ individuals buy food. It is the largest of the federal nutrition programs. Food stamps are designed to be supplemented by other forms of income—whether through paid employment or nonprofit support. SNAP serves 41.1 million individuals—an increase of 4.3 million people during the Biden years. In 2020, the food stamp program cost $79.1 billion. That number continued to rise—by 2022, outlays hit $119.5 billion.
The next Administration should:
Re-implement work requirements. The statutory language covering food stamps allows states to waive work requirements that otherwise apply to work-capable individuals—that is, adult beneficiaries between the ages 18 and 50 who are not disabled and do not have any children or other dependents in the home …
Re-evaluate the Thrifty Food Plan. In a dramatic overreach, the Biden Administration unilaterally increased food stamp benefits by at least 23 percent in October 2021. Through an update to the Thrifty Food Plan, in which the USDA analyzes a basket of foods intended to provide a nutritious diet, the USDA increased food stamp outlays by between $250 billion and
$300 billion over 10 years …
Return to the Original Purpose of School Meals. Federal meal programs for K–12 students were created to provide food to children from low-income families while at school. Today, however, federal school meals increasingly resemble entitlement programs that have strayed far from their original objective and represent an example of the ever-expanding federal footprint in local school operations …
Despite the ongoing effort to expand school meals under CEP and the evidence of waste and inefficiency, left-of-center Members of Congress and President Biden’s Administration have nonetheless proposed further expansions to extend federal school meals to include every K–12 student—regardless of need. The Administration recently proposed expanding federal school meal programs offered during the summer as part of the ‘American Families Plan,’ and also proposed expanding CEP. Other federal officials, including Senator Bernie Sanders (I–VT), have, in recent years, proposed expanding the NSLP to all students. [Emphasis added.]
To serve students in need and prevent the misuse of taxpayer money, the next Administration should focus on students in need and reject efforts to transform federal school meals into an entitlement program. [Emphasis added.]
Remove Obstacles for Agricultural Biotechnology. Innovation is critical to agricultural production and the ability to meet future food needs. The next Administration should embrace innovation and technology, not hinder its use—especially because of scare tactics that ignore sound science. One of the key innovations in agriculture is genetic engineering. According to the USDA, ‘[C]urrently, over 90 percent of U.S. corn, upland cotton, and soybeans are produced using GE [genetically engineered] varieties.’ Despite the importance of agricultural biotechnology, in 2016, Congress passed a federal mandate to label genetically engineered food. This legislation was arguably just a means to try to provide a negative connotation to GE food. There are other challenges as well for agricultural biotechnology. For example, Mexico plans to ban the importation of U.S. genetically modified yellow corn.
The next Administration should:
Counter scare tactics and remove obstacles. The USDA should strongly counter scare tactics regarding agricultural biotechnology and adopt policies to remove unnecessary barriers to approvals and the adoption of biotechnology.
Repeal the federal labeling mandate. The USDA should work with Congress to repeal the federal labeling law, while maintaining federal preemption, and stress that voluntary labeling is allowed.
And so, as Reuters reported, DOGE went after the USDA:
Reuters also reported the following:
Not surprisingly, there was a cascading effect from these layoffs. On February 10, 2025, The Washington Post reported in “Farmers on the hook for millions after Trump freezes USDA funds”:
On his first day in office, President Donald Trump ordered the Agriculture Department to freeze funds for several programs designated by former president Joe Biden’s signature clean-energy and health-care law, the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act. The freeze paused some funding for the department’s Environmental Quality Incentives Program, which helps farmers address natural resource concerns, and the Rural Energy for America Program, which provides financial assistance for farmers to improve their infrastructure.
Farmers who signed contracts with the Agriculture Department under those programs paid up front to build fencing, plant new crops and install renewable energy systems with guarantees that the federal government would issue grants and loan guarantees to cover at least part of their costs. Now, with that money frozen, they’re on the hook.
Laura Beth Resnick, who runs a Maryland flower farm, said she signed a contract for the Agriculture Department to cover half of a $72,900 solar panel installation. In late January, she said, she was told her reimbursement payment was rejected due to Trump’s executive order.
‘I really don’t know what we would do,’ Resnick said. ‘It just feels like I can’t even really think about it.’
Then, on February 18, 2025, the Associated Press offered additional reporting on the consequences from the USAID firings:
There’s the executive in a U.S. supply-chain company whose voice breaks while facing the next round of calls telling employees they no longer have jobs. And a farmer in Missouri who grew up knowing that a world with more hungry people is a world that’s more dangerous. And a Maryland-based philanthropy, founded by Jews who fled pogroms in Eastern Europe, is shutting down much of its more than 120-year-old mission.
Beyond the impact of the Trump administration’s dismantling of the U.S. Agency for International Development, some 14,000 agency employees and foreign contractors as well as hundreds of thousands of people receiving aid abroad — many American businesses, farms and nonprofits— say the cutoff of U.S. money they are owed has left them struggling to pay workers and cover bills. Some face financial collapse. U.S. organizations do billions of dollars of business with USAID and the State Department, which oversee more than $60 billion in foreign assistance. More than 80% of companies that have contracts with USAID are American, according to aid data company Development Aid.
President Donald Trump stopped payment nearly overnight in a Jan. 20 executive order freezing foreign assistance. The Trump administration accused USAID’s programs of being wasteful and promoting a liberal agenda. USAID Stop-Work, a group tracking the impact, says USAID contractors have reported that they laid off nearly 13,000 American workers. The group estimates that the actual total is more than four times that.
The Bulwark offers a picture entirely different from that of right-wing politicians, like Rand Paul, who relentlessly mock USAID. Here, for example, they highlight the impact of USAID projects in the African nations of Malawi and Kenya:
John is old enough to remember the dark days when AIDS ravaged his country and his family. Living in Malawi, he has seen up close the difference made by the lifesaving work of PEPFAR, which is administered in large part through the U.S. Agency for International Development. For him, the American government has been a steady, sustaining presence for many years through a multiplicity of programs under the umbrella of USAID. He had believed it was a relationship of mutual benefit to Malawi and America.
Now, in the wake of the Trump administration’s dismantling of USAID, he wonders what will happen to his country. He worries the deadly past might revisit. ‘We are so scared we might see people dying like that again,’ he told me on the phone this week. John’s work brings him into contact with many USAID employees and projects in Malawi. In particular, he knows that USAID brings badly needed development and services to rural areas, which in Malawi, as in many other African countries, are chronically underserved by their governments. Wealth, power, and influence tend to be concentrated in cities.
Specifically, he describes to me the importance of USAID educational programming for rural children. The agency has built rural schools with science labs and libraries, both rare in those settings. John thinks support for rural girls’ education is especially vital in a country where many families don’t prioritize educating their daughters. He says USAID programming has ensured girls don’t miss school during their periods because they lack feminine products, a common problem for girls in Africa. ‘USAID had focused on the girl child,’ John says. ‘They focused on so many problems facing girls in the rural areas.’
But then, the cuts came. ‘The students in the villages may not know what is happening, but they are affected.’ Over the last few weeks, John has witnessed the sheer chaos of USAID’s dismantling in one of the world’s most aid-dependent countries. The U.S. government provided $350 million in aid across multiple sectors last year, equivalent to 13 percent of Malawi’s national budget. Its permanent cessation would be not only a humanitarian catastrophe but an economic one.
This, it turns out, is a multi-faceted tragedy and a clear example of what I mean by betrayal, because the suffering extends to many here at home. In their article titled “Are Trump and Musk ending a Kansas legacy by shuttering USAID’s Food for Peace?,” USAToday adds this perspective about how farmers in Kansas are impacted:
Farmers in the Wheat State have a proud history of supporting international food aid, but President Donald Trump and billionaire Elon Musk could be ending a piece of that Kansas legacy that took seven decades to build.
The Food for Peace program is part of the U.S. Agency for International Development, or USAID, which Trump and Musk are in the process of shutting down. The federal government’s webpage for the Food for Peace program appears to no longer exist, and neither does the rest of the USAID website.
I recently logged on to the Food for Peace webpage and found this last posting from 2011:
Based on Donald Trump’s newfound penchant for renaming things and his recent claim that Volodymyr Zelensky is responsible for Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, I wouldn’t be surprised if this program resurfaces as “No Food, No Peace.”
Here is what Elon Musk, or his adopted persona on X, thinks about USAID:
USAID is evil https://t.co/03PAhpJkU2
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 2, 2025
USAID is a criminal organization.
Time for it to die. https://t.co/sWYy6fyt1k
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 2, 2025
We spent the weekend feeding USAID into the wood chipper.
Could gone to some great parties.
Did that instead. https://t.co/0V35nacICW
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 3, 2025
Meanwhile, as the headline in the Minnesota Star Tribune reveals, the rest of the non-DOGE universe has a different perspective:
Frozen by Elon Musk’s DOGE personnel, the USAID program purchased $70 million in commodities in 2024 from Minnesota vendors. U.S. farmers and agribusinesses, including Minnesota ventures from ag giants to processors of yellow split peas, could lose money after President Donald Trump’s administration abruptly closed USAID.
Minnetonka-based Cargill, Inver Grove Heights-based CHS Inc. and Minneapolis trader Sinamco sold a total of $70 million in sorghum, wheat and peas to the agency’s Food for Peace program, according to records shared with the Minnesota Star Tribune on Thursday. In total, the U.S. Agency for International Development, or USAID, last year purchased $2 billion in U.S.-grown crops from corn and soybeans to wheat, sorghum, vegetable oil and peas. Minnesota, Iowa and Wisconsin farmers were among those selling their crops to the program.
USAID funds projects in some 120 countries aimed at fighting epidemics, educating children, providing clean water and supporting other areas of development. Nearly a week after federal officials dissolved USAID, anxieties are mounting about what a gap will be left in next year’s order sheets without the foreign food aid customer …
Half a billion dollars worth of food currently is at risk of spoilage in transit or at warehouses in the U.S., including a facility in Houston where many Midwestern crops sit awaiting ships, said former workers for USAID-related groups. ‘This stuff has a best-by date, and it’s not moving because of these executive orders. This is enough food to feed 36 million people,’ said one employee of USAID now placed, like the rest of the workers there, on leave. Current and former workers spoke on the condition for anonymity because they are concerned about retaliation.
The speed with which the Trump administration dismantled USAID initially spurred concerns for food-insecure regions, such as Somalia or Ukraine or Venezuela, where American food aid has been deployed to stave off starvation or malnutrition and health care programs help stem disease.
[Emphasis added.]
KCCI TV in Des Moines, Iowa, reported on the impact of the Trump decision on Iowan farmers:
‘USAID is important for farmers,’ Aaron Lehman, president of the Iowa Farmers Union, said. ‘It’s unfortunate that we would drop those relationships that we built over time.’
Lehman said Iowa plays an important role in providing foreign food aid through USAID. He said the agency works with the Department of Agriculture and with farmers to provide Iowa corn, soybeans and other commodities to countries overseas. ‘The grain goes all over the world with USAID,’ he said. ‘How much of that comes from Iowa specifically? It’s difficult to tell.’
KCCI wanted to find out exactly how much product from Iowa is being purchased to aid foreign countries through USAID. KCCI reached out to the White House and the Office of Management and Budget to ask exactly that. White House deputy press secretary Anna Kelly responded, but did not provide specific numbers. Instead, she wrote in a statement:
‘President Trump is ensuring that taxpayer-funded programs at USAID align with the national interests of the United States, including protecting America’s farmers. He will cut programs that do not align with the agenda that the American people gave him a mandate to implement and keep programs that put America First.’
KCCI reached out to the governor’s office as well as Iowa Secretary of Agriculture Mike Naig. Both declined to comment.
[Emphasis added.]
Elon Musk’s young DOGE enforcers haven’t yet purged this 2024 press release from the United States Department of Agriculture website touting USAID’s purchase of a massive amount of food from U.S. farmers:
If you are willing to look, you will see the damage these self-righteous witch hunters are doing—not only to so many others in the world but to so many here at home.
I want to return to something that was written by the folks at Project 2025 about the possible expansion of the federal school lunch program: They referred to it as the “efforts to transform federal school meals into an entitlement program.” The very notion of “entitlement” seems to enrage them. That the poor, the Black, the gay, the transgender, the immigrant, the hungry students of all shapes and sizes and backgrounds imagine themselves entitled to be here, to enjoy the rights bestowed on all Americans. The right to eat. Isn’t that what their shameless distortion of birthright citizenship is about, their need to re-write the Fourteenth Amendment?
Can’t the richest nation in the world entitle our citizens a decent life? How pathetic is Elon Musk and his billions upon billions that he has sicced his DOGES on food programs for the hungry? How despicable is it that Donald Trump and Elon Musk and their Republican sycophants would deny care for those who have risked their lives to enrich them?
Do Trump voters see that, this time, Donald Trump has surrounded himself with a small army of the greedy, the arrogant, and the incompetent all too willing to make life more difficult for them? Yes, these faux public servants are all marked by their mediocrity.
And you couldn’t ask for more convincing evidence of Donald Trump’s out-of-control grandiosity than his recent self-appointment to head the Kennedy Center for the Arts.
Have you seen his apartment at Trump Towers? Donald Trump, whose notion of art extends mostly to the nude photos of Melania, an appreciation of which he clearly shares with Vladimir Putin, who continues to post them on Russian social media.
But like mad kings before him, he really can’t help himself. Like them, he lacks even the slightest sense of self-awareness, of embarrassment. So, to prove he deserves the post to which he has appointed himself, he offers an imaginary image of himself conducting an imaginary orchestra:
So, we are left wondering: How many more witches will he burn?
