It’s late.
I’m tired.
We’re all tired.
Tired of flipping channels between two versions of reality – one where Donald J. Trump is the schoolyard bully of the century, and one where he’s the caped crusader battling a shadowy cabal. The existential exhaustion is real, folks.
Welcome to Executive Dysfunction Weekly, where even writing this feels like screaming into the void. And what a void it is: a grotesque reality-TV America that looks like Squid Game meets The Hunger Games meets The Truman Show, produced by billionaire “Human Dragons” perched atop hoards of gold.
They’re laughing at us from their VIP boxes, cheering on the chaos as we commoners claw at each other over the latest Trump Show plot twist.
The Bully on the Golden Throne
On Channel Blue, Trump is the villain – a brash, gold-plated brute. Literally gold-plated: the man redecorated the Oval Office like a gaudy palace, with “gold everywhere: new gold figurines on the mantle, gold eagles on the side tables… even the remote control… wrapped in gilt” .
Subtle, right?
Nothing says “man of the people” like 24-karat décor. He’s got a golden chair, golden drapes, probably a golden toilet somewhere. This is the self-styled billionaire populist who promised to “drain the swamp,” yet in office he lounged in a blinged-out Oval Office and even green-lit accepting a $400 million luxury jet from the Qatar royal family – a 747 dubbed a “palace in the sky” offered as a “gift” for Air Force One . (Yes, a foreign monarchy is literally gifting our leader a flying palace – nothing corrupt to see here, move along.)
Trump insists it’s all fine and not a bribe, because of course he does. The man follows consigliere Roger Stone’s rulebook: “Admit nothing. Deny everything. Launch counterattack.” It’s a strategy straight out of professional wrestling and Mafia flicks – never apologize, double down. If caught red-handed, call your accuser a liar. If you lose, claim you won and someone cheated (sound familiar?).
Is it any wonder many see Trump as a bully?
He bullies the truth itself.
Fact-checkers at The Washington Post logged 30,573 false or misleading claims from Trump in his first term alone, about 21 a day on average, like a morning multivitamin.
He mocked disabled reporters, called women “pigs,” urged rally-goers to “knock the crap” out of protesters and promised to pay their legal fees.
Empathy?
Decency?
Those must be on backorder. What Trump sells is dominance – a posture of perpetual aggression. To tens of millions, he’s the arrogant rich kid who never grew up, a presidential Biff Tannen in a gold-plated office yelling “Loser!” at anyone who disagrees.
The “Hero” Fighting Corruption (in His Own Reality)
Flip to Channel Red and you’ll see a completely different show. In that scripted universe, Trump is a folk hero – the only guy willing to punch the “corrupt elites” in the mouth.
Never mind that he is an elite with a gold-encrusted life; in the MAGA narrative he’s some kind of billionaire Robin Hood.
He rails against the “fake news” media, calls out the “deep state,” and his fans eat it up like nachos at a monster truck rally. Sure, he lies blatantly and often – but his supporters call it “telling it like it is.” The cognitive dissonance is off the charts: the man could say the sky is green and they’d nod along because at least he’s not “politically correct.”
About two-thirds of Republicans still believe Trump’s biggest whopper – that the 2020 election was stolen from him .
Why?
Because Trump said so, repeatedly, and he never admits defeat. In fact, a fabricated quote attributed to Trump’s Art of the Deal made the rounds on Facebook, encapsulating his ethos:
“Never admit defeat. You win. If you don’t win, claim they cheated… They stole it… You are the true winner always… keep the millions of chumps and losers, your base.”
It was fake – But, Trump does claim fraud whenever he loses, and his base does lap it up.
In this echo chamber, Trump isn’t corrupt – he’s fighting corruption. He’s the dragon-slayer (never mind that he’s actually riding a dragon, maybe even whispering to it). Every accusation against him – from sexual misconduct to abuse of power – is dismissed as a “witch hunt” or a conspiracy by the real corrupt ones.
His devotees have essentially given him a blank check for bad behavior, convinced that any evidence of wrongdoing is fake and that he’s heroically battling an evil cabal of socialists, globalists, or whatever boogeyman-of-the-week monologue is about. It’s a classic case of believing the lies you want to believe.
We all do it to some extent, but these folks have turned it into a sport.
One Nation, Two Screens (and Countless Lies)
How can the same man be seen as a tyrannical bully by some and a righteous savior by others? Because we’re watching two different movies on two different screens.
It’s the Truman Show effect: each side lives in its own artificially constructed reality.
On one channel, Trump’s every misdeed is excused or rationalized; on the other, even his incidental acts get cast as apocalyptic. We’re soaking in biased media and social feeds that confirm our biases. The result is a split-screen nation.
Call it America: Split Reality Edition.
• For Trump’s base: life is an episode of Drain the Swamp. They truly think he’s cleaning up Washington, heroically battling “the corrupt” in spite of all evidence. If a damning report comes out, they change the channel or cry “fake news!”
They’ll believe a meme over a mountain of evidence –
even a bogus Trump quote about lying, if it paints him as a genius outsmarting the system . Ironically, they see him as the honest one, even as he spins falsehoods with shameless abandon .
• For Trump’s fiercest critics: life is an endless season of The Handmaid’s Tale meets Veep. They see Trump as a fascist-in-waiting, every move a step toward dictatorship. Any rumor of scandal is believed instantly if it makes him look monstrous. Some cling to their own comforting fictions – They share doom-scrolling nuggets and sometimes fall for fake quotes or exaggerations that confirm their view of Trump as a comic-book villain.
• For the rest of us: we’re watching this absurd circus with horror and dark humor. We switch between channels in disbelief, or tune out entirely because our mental health can’t take it. We know both sides are locked in a hall of mirrors. But acknowledging the nuance doesn’t get us ratings or retweets, does it? It’s easier to pick a team in this reality show and boo the other side.
Meanwhile, the ultra-rich – those Human Dragons hoarding wealth and power – sit high above the arena, enjoying the spectacle. They’ve weaponized our media to keep us distracted and divided. This isn’t a conspiracy theory; it’s just good business. Outrage equals engagement, which equals profit. Every time we rage-tweet or share a divisive meme, some tech exec or cable news CEO gets a little richer. The country burns, they hold the marshmallows.
The Human Dragons’ Reality TV (Starring Us)
Make no mistake, this whole saga is reality TV for billionaires. Trump himself is one of them – a wannabe emperor with gaudy tastes – but he’s also the star gladiator in their arena. Consider the cast of puppet-masters and enablers: corporate media magnates, tech billionaires, party kingmakers. They don’t care if we see Trump as bully or hero, so long as we’re glued to the show and not looking up at who’s running the cameras.
This is bread-and-circuses on steroids, streamed in 4K.
Look at the recent plotlines: A tech oligarch literally bought himself a top government job by bankrolling Trump’s campaign . Foreign autocrats shower Trump with lavish gifts – like that Qatari “palace in the sky” jet – and in return get a friend in the Oval Office . Does the MAGA crowd notice or care? Nah, their hero “fights corruption” by tweeting in all caps about everyone else’s supposed corruption. Do the “resistance” liberals notice? They’re too busy sharing the latest hashtag outrage to follow the money.
The Human Dragons couldn’t be happier.
They sit atop their gold (some of which literally ended up gilding Trump’s office, by the way) and watch us joust in the mud.
It’s Squid Game: USA Edition, where we scramble and brawl over partisan scraps while the VIPs sip champagne, betting on the outcomes.
It’s The Hunger Games, but we’re all the District tributes and the clueless Capitol citizens at the same time, each thinking we’re the righteous rebels of this story.
It’s all a twisted game, and we’re too busy fighting one another to realize we’re the entertainment.
Even this rant you’re reading – yes, here in Executive Dysfunction Weekly of all places – is part of the spectacle. (The irony isn’t lost on me: a publication literally named after getting nothing done, furiously opining into the wee hours. We have zero chill and even less influence.) We publish our disgust and despair weekly, and nothing changes.
The gladiator match goes on regardless, because anger is easy, solutions are hard, and boy, do the emperors know it.
Gladiators vs. Emperors: The Final Lie
In the end, whether you see Trump as a bully or a hero, the ugly truth is that we’re all losing the larger game. We’ve been tricked into taking sides in a fake feud, arguing over our chosen gladiator while the emperors count the ad revenue.
The ultra-rich want us to stay enthralled by this loud, endless fight.
It keeps our attention on the arena floor, never upward.
We bitterly feud on social media, at family dinners, in the streets – red vs. blue, MAGA vs. anti-MAGA – convinced that if our side wins, justice will be served. Meanwhile the Human Dragons cash in their tax cuts, regulatory rollbacks, and massive profits, utterly indifferent to who “wins” the culture war down below.
So go ahead, pick your reality-TV champion: Bully Trump or Hero Trump. Cheer, boo, throw your popcorn. The grotesque reality show will continue next season and the season after that, as long as we keep tuning in. But maybe, just maybe, it’s time to change the channel.
Because right now, we’re all just spectators and pawns in their colosseum – arguing over gladiators while the emperors sit back, laughing and raking in the gold.
EDW•
