The horror of Donald Trump’s America

Happy Halloween. The government shutdown is now about to enter its second month. 

For many Americans this Halloween season, we are merely characters in “It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown.”

Some of us are Snoopy, but not in a fun way. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth comes to mind. He believes he’s the Red Baron, the World War I flying ace, but he’s just Trump’s dog.

Many of us are Linus, sitting in the pumpkin patch, confident that President Donald Trump —  I mean the Great Pumpkin — will visit and sprinkle us with good cheer and presents. “Each year, the Great Pumpkin rises out of the pumpkin patch that he thinks is the most sincere,” Linus said. “He’s gotta pick this one. He’s got to. I don’t see how a pumpkin patch can be more sincere than this one. You can look around and there’s not a sign of hypocrisy. Nothing but sincerity as far as the eye can see.” 

No matter how sincere we are, Trump has no plans to help anyone but himself. On Saturday, for the first time, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) will begin withholding payments under the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), blaming the ongoing government shutdown.

Some 42 million Americans — roughly 12% of the population — could go hungry. As a result, 25 states and the District of Columbia have filed suit, accusing the Trump administration of acting unlawfully in withholding food benefits. The White House has responded by saying that it can’t legally help hungry people. But it can certainly get private donations to build a $300 million ballroom. 

Trump is weaponizing hunger, which means that all of us are ultimately Charlie Brown. Attorney General Pam Bondi is Lucy Van Pelt, who pulls the football away when we want to kick it. And when we go trick or treating, the Trump administration is giving most of us rocks. 

I remember when the “Great Pumpkin” first aired. Millions of people were so upset that they sent mail and candy to the fictional Charlie Brown because he got screwed. Who will help the needy today?

The president is apparently unconcerned about any of that. He’s spent a week abroad — meeting with world leaders, content to have the government shuttered and the House out of session — while he has no intention of rising out of the pumpkin patch and making anyone happy.

On a Thursday flight out of South Korea riddled with air turbulence, Trump gaggled with reporters on Air Force One and talked about Ukraine, soy beans, fentanyl, tariffs, shipping fees, nuclear weapons testing and computer chips. 

Not one word was said about the government shutdown. Not one question was asked about SNAP benefits. He said more about the air turbulence than about the issues confronting most Americans. “The skies are a little rough up here,” he remarked with a wry smile, before mentioning that people will think he’s not in good health — but it was really the turbulence causing the problem.

It’s always about him. And that’s fine with Donald — as long as you don’t criticize him. He posted on his Truth Social platform, “Worked really hard, 24/7, took in Trillions of Dollars, and Chuck Schumer said trip was ‘a total dud,’ even though he knows it was a spectacular success. Words like that are almost treasonous!!!” I guess the three exclamation points drive home the drivel.

What the president did talk about on Air Force One was dialing back the trade war with China and his “great meeting” with Chinese President Xi Jinping, which essentially mitigated the damage from the self-inflicted wounds Trump caused, when he instigated the trade war by introducing the tariffs. Once again, he is both arsonist and fireman. His meeting with Xi, he said, was a “12” on a scale of 10 — showing that he either never saw “This is Spinal Tap,” or he thought it was a documentary instead of a mockumentary.

Trump also didn’t talk about the new annual limit for incoming refugees to the U.S. who will mostly be white South Africans. Thank you, Elon Musk.

There was no discussion about the four Republicans who backed a Senate resolution to undo Trump’s tariffs against Brazil. There was no mention of his recent dementia tests. No talk of his East Wing demolition, which was blocked from view at the White House’s annual Halloween event. 

And there was no mention of the big international news of the day: That King Charles III stripped his disgraced brother, the former Prince Andrew, of his remaining titles and evicted him from his royal residence following weeks of pressure to act over Andrew’s relationship with sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. No longer a prince, the king’s brother will now be known as Andrew Mountbatten Windsor. 

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It is almost unprecedented for a British prince or princess to be stripped of that title. It last happened in 1917 when Prince Ernest Augustus of Hanover (a German state), who was also recognized as a British prince and peer, had his peerages and titles removed for siding with Germany during World War I.

Andrew’s humiliation makes it clear that, six years after Epstein’s death, the scandal continues to create seismic waves of social and political destruction. So far, Trump has avoided the wave of political destruction, and his supporters continue to bully anyone who criticizes the president or his behavior.

Meanwhile, Trump continues his own brand of seismic political activity. On Wednesday, the Justice Department placed two prosecutors on leave hours after they referred to Trump supporters who stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, as “a mob of rioters” in a sentencing memo. And it isn’t enough to push back against the narrative of fact. The department is also currently investigating the Black Lives Matter movement. Some call it hypocrisy. Trump calls it business as usual.

I was a first-hand witness to Jan. 6. “A mob of rioters” is the most accurate term you can apply to who showed up that day — and to what they did.

There is a growing fear on the left that Trump has passed the point of no-return. That moment, as some of us know, came and went during the first Trump administration. But now you hear Democrats contemplating a horrifying scenario after the 2026 midterm elections. They fear that MAGA will completely obliterate the last vestiges of the old republic — apologies to “Star Wars: A New Hope” — in the 2026 midterms. They worry that National Guard troops will lock down blue cities and states to suppress the vote, and that Trump will fight to abolish early voting. Gerrymandering of congressional districts could help the GOP retain control and will lead to a faux Republican landslide. Large numbers of masked Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents could round up voters, many of them citizens who “look suspicious.” Martial law could become a way of life, with due process an historic footnote.

The far-right fears something they believe is just as dire: That Democrats will regain control of the House and nullify Trump’s victories. He could be impeached, tried and convicted in the Senate, and most of his Cabinet will face criminal charges and spend time in prison like John Mitchell, G. Gordon Liddy, H.R. Haldeman, John Ehrlichman, Chuck Colson and E. Howard Hunt of the Nixon administration did. Oddly enough, most MAGA supporters believe the one Cabinet member most likely to escape prosecution is Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. “You can’t convict someone of being a moron,” a GOP Senate staffer explained to me.

Many of the MAGA members left in the somnambulant Congress also fear that Trump will become so happy with a napping legislative branch that he’ll never make a move to reopen the government. Instead, they speculate he could govern by executive order and find patchwork ways of funding those portions of the government he favors, while making sure that anything he views as “Democratic” programs are left unfunded — “like SNAP benefits,” one person told me.

The sad part? Red states like Kentucky may suffer the most in the event of such a decision. “Time for him to step up,” Kentucky’s Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear said this week on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.” Meanwhile, Kentucky and other states are exploring options to feed the hungry. 

So much for national unity. Under Trump, the federal government is becoming weaker by the day. 

In the mid-1980s, I worked in Laredo, Texas, as a reporter on the Mexican border. I vividly remember young children with their parents who crossed over from Mexico, hoping to supplement their food supply with what Americans gave away on Halloween as tricks or treats.

It opened my eyes to the bounty we have in the United States — a lifestyle that was once the envy of the world. Today, it is we who have slit our own political throats by electing an obviously mentally unstable president who appears content to burn it all to the ground, just to rule over the rubble.

Donald Trump is killing people in the Caribbean Sea and the Pacific Ocean without due process. He is rounding up American citizens and immigrants who have not committed violent crimes. He has effectively eliminated the legislative branch of government. He calls critics “traitors” and threatens those who would even question him. He is not only destroying the foundations of liberty, but in his mental state, he has also destroyed a reality we’ve all shared for the last 250 years.

To top it all off, he wants to renew nuclear weapons testing — further poisoning the earth and bringing us back to nuclear brinkmanship.

This Halloween we’re all Charlie Brown — and the rocks we’ve been served are indigestible.