This Week and Next

The Grifting Class Chronicles: A Two Day Necessary Pause and Next Week's Excavation

A day late but not a dollar short – sometimes the news cycle demands we step back from the precipice

Well, friends, I confess: I played hooky. While the world spiraled in its familiar Trump-adjacent chaos, I took what I'm now calling a "sanity sabbatical" – because watching democracy's death rattle has become a blood sport, and even the most seasoned gladiators need to tend their wounds.

Last week's hiatus wasn't writer's block; it was writer's preservation. When you're chronicling the apocalypse daily, sometimes you need to step away from the typewriter before you start typing your own obituary. The current political climate has become so toxically absurd that taking breaks isn't indulgence – it's survival strategy. I mean this quite literally, and that should terrify us all.

My public health coverage trudged on, naturally, but watching RFK Jr. practically salivate over the CDC's dismantling gave me what I can only describe as existential vertigo. His gleeful anticipation of destroying a public health institution felt like watching someone burn down a library. We're not just skating close to the edge anymore – we're doing triple axels over the abyss.

The Trumpettes: Why We Can't Look Away

Last week's columns on Ivanka and Tiffany Trump struck a nerve – judging by the response, we're all apparently mesmerized by what I've dubbed "the Trumpettes." And we should be. These aren't just Trump's offspring; they're the living, breathing products of his toxic patriarchy, walking case studies in what happens when privilege meets pathology.

The story isn't Trump himself anymore – that tale has been told, retold, and beaten to death with a golden golf club (like a Skakel - Google RFK Jr. and that tale of horror). He's a known quantity: a carnival barker with the emotional range of a toddler and the moral compass of a broken weathervane. The man is walking political roadkill, kept animated only by grievance and McDonald's.

No, the real story lies in his support network – what I call the "grifting class." These enablers, these accomplices in his democratic demolition derby, are the ones we need to understand. Because if we don't learn how they operate, how they justify the unjustifiable, we'll be doomed to repeat this nightmare. And let's be clear: a third Trump act won't just be democracy's death blow – it'll be the environment's funeral and possibly civilization's final curtain call.

Next Week's Deep Dive: The Skull Collector's Cabinet

This week, I'm turning my anthropological lens on Andrew Acosta. Now, I don't believe in phrenology – but if I did, Acosta's cranium would fascinate me. There's something about his physiognomy that screams "damaged goods." But more importantly than his questionable bone structure is his questionable judgment.

How does a U.S. Attorney look at a mountain of evidence about Jeffrey Epstein and decide, "You know what this pedophile needs? A sweetheart deal!" It's like watching someone hand a pyromaniac a box of matches and a gas can. What dark alchemy transformed this nobody into Trump's Secretary of Labor? Was it incompetence, corruption, or just garden-variety moral blindness?

Then there are the Trump boys – Don Jr. and Eric – those towering monuments to nepotism and genetic mediocrity. They're everywhere in Trump's orbit yet somehow remain as unexplored as the dark side of the moon. Perhaps there's nothing there to explore – just hollow men stuffed with inherited rage and daddy issues.

What we do know is chilling enough: these two have accomplished precisely nothing on their own merits, unless you count prolific breeding as an achievement. And given the Trump gene pool's track record, that's hardly cause for celebration. The Trump DNA has all the appeal of Queen Victoria's lineage, minus the crown jewels and plus a hefty dose of Queens borough tackiness.

Their reproductive enthusiasm should worry us all – not because of any eugenic nonsense, but because they're essentially franchising dysfunction, creating more little Trumps to carry on the family tradition of democratic vandalism.

The Reckoning Approaches

So yes, I took a breather. But I'm back now, caffeinated and ready to continue cataloging the criminally complicit. Because someone has to keep score of who enabled what, who knew when, and who chose power over principle.

The grifting class thinks they can outlast scrutiny, that they can fade into lucrative obscurity once their orange emperor finally shuffles off this mortal coil. They're wrong. History has a long memory and an excellent filing system.

Next week, we excavate more graves in democracy's cemetery. There's always something to look forward to – if only the sweet satisfaction of holding a mirror to power's ugliest faces.

Check the AED. We're going back in.

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