By now, it’s clear to anyone paying attention that Donald Trump and elements of the Republican Party have been plotting what seems like a coup, much more than an election. They planned shock assaults on our democracy without asking us, and are now working on evident ways to scare people from voting or cancel the votes of many who do.

They have formed the cruelest and most vicious government in American history. They have abandoned our allies and traumatized the world.

It won’t work.

Seizing our democracy is just the most visible dumb idea of the moment. The real fascists don’t announce it every night on TV several times. They do it.

This now obvious plot – insurrection if there ever was one – has driven our birthplace Patriots to fury, but modern Americans were so stunned they are only now beginning to get it.

Suggested Reading: This is the formula that defeated Orban. It would defeat Trump, too.)

I’ve said before that President Trump is not the creator of this assault on our system; he is the only one smart enough to see it coming and to exploit it.

It has done an enormous amount of harm. But it can’t work.

What people forget about Mr. Trump is that he is a genius when it comes to fooling people and imagery and promoting hatred of openents.

 He is our first Performance President, all show and no substance.

Still, he is a disaster at governing and executing all these assaults on our freedom. He is becoming a sad clown, drowning in his AI imagery.

When people compare Hitler to Trump, it’s a ridiculous comparison in every way.

Hitler was also a genius,  not in showmanship, but in execution and drama. If he was ever obsessed with a ballroom, he never let on.

He was successful at everything he attempted, and we see already that Mr. Trump is failing at almost every dumb, illegal, and narcissistic thing he does.

He even fails online. Hungry people don’t care about gold statues.

Hitler knew that, if nothing else. Hitler never put his name on big dollar bills or on opera houses.

If there is one thing Trump ought to be successful at, it is ranting and lying online and making money. The parent company of Truth Social, Truth Media & Technology Group, lost $713 million ($400.9 million in 2024). Except for the fact that the media is addicted to it, it is a failure.

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Trump’s war on Iran is a disaster, exactly the kind of war he promised never to engage us in. His daily fake press conferences excite the media, but few people – including him – have any idea what he is talking about. The Iranians have his number. The whole world sees it.

“Trump Hits the Stalemate Phase of His Global Interventions, and it Stings,” said the New York Times on Sunday. His early declarations of success in Ukraine, Gaza, and now Iran have given way to a harsher reality. Reality is not his strong point.

An ongoing disaster is his fabulous Ballroom, which has already run out of money and needs our taxes, something he promised would not happen. The Rose Garden is gone, and the Ballroom is out of cash.

And there is his plan to turn the water around the Lincoln Monument, “American Blue,” which is three times over budget (a crony was hired).

I live in a small town in upstate New York crammed with his loyal followers. I cannot find one human who cares what color the water is at the Lincoln Memorial. Everyone is talking about the cost of things.

And there, his plan to take over the Kennedy Center (which sent gifted artists running for their lives) has collapsed, and his plan to launch a partisan arts festival that is falling apart once artists learn it was just more politics.

He is whining like a baby without his bottle. If he can’t control it, then it need not exist.

And don’t forget his plan to reward each one of the traitors who attacked the Capital is drawing outrage and condemnation, his plans to punish political opponents are failing, running into a wall of trouble from judges and conservative and progressive politicians. His creation of a secret and masked private army, ICE, has aroused the hatred of tens of millions of Americans outraged by the cruel and brutal way it was created. He woke the country with those masks.

How foolish it was to make them all wear masks, making them look like a Gestapo from the outset. Just what are they hiding, one 10-year-old demanded to know as her parents languished in jail, leaving her an orphan?

Or his insane insistence that the attack on the Capitol, which we all saw on TV, was a hoax by Democrats.

Are we supposed to be blind? Do we really want to use our taxes to support people who savagely beat police officers trying to defend us?

His appointments are marked by dishonesty, corruption, and utter incompetence. They all share one value – they hate our Constitution.

His endorsement of gross dishonesty, slobbering, rudeness, and corrupt people to run for office is eroding his efforts to stay in power; he is handling Democrats’ gift after gift.

His health department is plotting against the vaccines that have saved children from disease for centuries. Parents are finally noticing.

While income drops, measles spreads and kills.

Trump has already dumped three appointees in major positions, and I could go on and on. His strategy for dealing with Congress is to call people names and sing his praise.

He frees convicted predators and thieves without explanation. He’s managed a score to turn his Congressional slaves into enemies by removing them from office, and forget they will live for months to do him harm.

His insistence on listening only to himself and hiring only bootlicking flunkies has made him a laughingstock and our most incompetent President; few have any real experience, and many are bumbling and coming up short in their efforts to do only what he says.

But what he says is turning out to be ridiculous, as well as often vicious, troubling, and alarming. The things Mr. Trump cannot handle are criticism, truth, and ridicule. He is up to his neck in all three. Remember Venezuela? He captured the bad gay but forgot to make the people free.

The poor man has only himself to listen to, and that is a fast ride to doom. Everywhere he goes, he makes it a point to make new enemies. The Democrats don’t really have to do anything but wait, and many of them are doing so.

His biggest blunder to me is the corruption he and his family have unleashed on a nation and moral system that never imagined a President would be so greedy and arrogant while so many of his “subjects” are struggling to pay for their food.

His new 78-million-dollar gold statue in Washington is not helping his popularity. Did I forget his threatened takeover of Canada and Greenland, and his threat to attack other nations for disagreeing with him?

I can’t imagine Hitler accusing the Pope of being “weak on crime.”

The MAGA movement is not stupid or unaware. I don’t care what the polls say or what Trump can do with his endorsements. He has failed them just as deeply as he failed us. And I know a lot of MAGA people.

They are angry. They are not blind.

Black Americans were moving towards Trump in recent elections. Today, they are flooding to register as Democrats as Trump asked several governments to take away their few voices in Congress by gerrymandering black districts off the Southern maps.

He has managed to turn one of the world’s most admired legal institutions into a bunch of fumbling slugs, butt kissers,  and gofers.

Trump is a disaster, and the whole world knows it. That is seeping into the toughest MAGA head; even some Democrats are getting it.

But the key to victory is not calling Trump names; that is his specialty, he’s good at it. It’s really all he does.

And at least a dozen MAGA founders and leaders have turned on him. So, have senators been enraged at his turning on his colleagues for following their consciences.

He insisted the flap over the horrific Epstein crimes was a “hoax and ridiculed the victims. But the Epstein story is not going away; he was mentioned in those papers 5,000 times.

His many new opponents and old supporters have been brought together, thanks to him. They will not let it go away. The truth wants to come out.

The key to change is not whining about the President, but recognizing that we have a broken country that does not care for its own people. It cares for its many billionaires. That is the true warning, the true danger.

That is why there is a Trump and why there will be more if the system doesn’t change. The good news is that it is changing already. Our media is too corporatized and traumatized to report this. But we can see it with our own eyes and a burgeoning online Independent Journalism. Truth can be blotted, but not bent.

The forces that brought Trump to power had, and have, a good case to make.

Our system is broken; too many people have too much money, and too many people have too little. Rural America has been screwed and robbed by everybody for decades. Yes, they are angry and fed up. In Trump, they saw salvation.

In lost health care and soaring food costs, they see another abandonment.

The two parties have been drowning in greed, dishonesty, and abandonment of their obligation to preserve the Constitution and help their constituents. In our system, they are not expected to deposit the wishes and bribes of billionaires while the people they are supposed to serve struggle more and more.

If ever there were a cause for rebellion, it is that 10 percent of Americans control 90 percent of the money. They are buying candidates all over the nation and getting tax breaks while no one else does.

Several Democratic candidates – the young ones – have figured out that the Democrats are not the solution in this form; they are part of the problem. In New York, AOC, Mandami, and Talacoro in Texas, and in Maine, Granhan Platner are acknowledging that the main problem is the broken system, not one aging Presidential failure.

I’m sure they have their flaws. Who, reading this, doesn’t?

I believe that if these young people (I don’t care what they said in elementary school or did online) get elected, there is a chance the country can begin repairing a system that is failing everyone, blue and red. It is not just about blaming Trump. It is about changing the country, not destroying it.

And this may be his biggest blunder: Donald Trump is too messed up to stop attacking, punishing, threatening, and defaming the cities of America and the people who live there. As of the last census, 265 million Americans are living in cities.

To demean them again and again is not only cruel and un-American, but it is also dumb by any measure. I sometimes think it doesn’t matter to him because he believes himself to be immortal and unstoppable. If you read your history, you know how that ends for them. It’s the wrong job for someone who can’t take criticism.

A man who can’t get himself to take a shower by himself, or leave his hair alone, or acknowledge his own age, or appoint competent people who might save him from his own incompetence, is not about to take over a country as big and outspoken as ours.

Being angry or afraid is pointless. Getting a move on feels better and is smarter.

He blew it, and the country will not allow this blundering coup d’etat to take away our freedom.