No one will be insulated from the ravages of a second Trump term.

From The Bulwark, by Mona Charen:

IN DECEMBER 2022, DONALD TRUMP said something that, in a healthy political culture, would have spelled his doom. Referring to his lie that the 2020 election was stolen, he wrote, “A Massive Fraud of this type and magnitude allows for the termination of all rules, regulations, and articles, even those found in the Constitution. Our great ‘Founders’ did not want, and would not condone, False & Fraudulent Elections!”

All rules, regulations, and articles must be terminated for his sake. That is not the language of populism, that is aspiring despotism. The Constitution itself must be cashiered if it stands in the way of his ego and his power. There it is, in black and white, Trump’s direct assault on the foundation of the republic.

And how many Republicans announced after this that they could no longer in good conscience support Trump? How many went on record promising, as Liz Cheney did a year later, that they would do everything in their power to ensure that he never came near the Oval Office again? I counted one. John Bolton, Trump’s former national security advisor, said the post was “disqualifying” and that all GOP candidates should issue “Shermanesque” statements to that effect. A few other Republicans mildly disagreed, but didn’t go so far as to say that trashing the Constitution was beyond the pale

We are staring down the possibility of putting someone back in power who has demonstrated that he is willing to use informal violence to achieve his anti-democratic ends. He attempted a coup with a mob of enraged zealots. How tragically foolish must you be to give him the power to wield formal, state-sanctioned violence? Think the president hasn’t the power? Read the Insurrection Act.

Those who are soothing themselves that a second Trump presidency wouldn’t be so bad are recalling the first term incorrectly. The reason Trump was unable to order that border crossers be shot in the legs, or that the IRS conduct audits of his foes, or that the United States withdraw from NATO, or that the military shoot rioters after George Floyd’s murder, or that the Justice Department lie about election results, or any of the myriad other crimes, outrages, or stupidities the former president contemplated was that his own hires talked him out of things or slow-walked them until Trump’s goldfish attention turned elsewhere.

In a second term, those officials would be gone. As his former chief of staff John Kelly put it, “The lesson the former president learned from his first term is don’t put guys like me . . . in those jobs. The lesson he learned was to find sycophants.”

Those sycophants are lining up. Applicants to work at the Republican National Committee right now must aver that the 2020 election was stolen. The whole party must be a cult. How much worse will it be if the cult leader is crowned with success by the voters? The Republicans who were brave enough to resist Trump’s illegal, immoral, and unconstitutional demands the first time around will be loath to reprise their acts if perceived “enemies of the state” are being audited by the IRS, harassed by the FBI, indicted by a Trumpified DOJ, or worse.

The foreign policy implications of electing Trump are just as frightening. He disrupted key American alliances in NATO and East Asia in his first term, but would destroy them in a second term. Without the U.S. security guarantee, nations around the globe would rush to acquire their own nuclear stockpiles. Trump would reward Putin’s aggression by abandoning Ukraine, which would whet Putin’s appetite for the Baltics, Xi’s appetite for Taiwan, and God only knows what other aggressors’ plans.

Those are the stakes. It is tragic and shameful that so many fail to see it.

Satire from Andy Borowitz:

NEW YORK (The Borowitz Report) – In the latest setback for Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s presidential bid, a worm who dined in the candidate’s brain wrote a brutal Yelp review shortly before dying, the reviewing site confirmed on Monday.

The worm’s review began on a discouraging note, claiming that Kennedy’s brain was “almost impossible to find.”

“Once I managed to get there, I couldn’t believe how cramped it was,” the worm continued. “I’m all for intimate dining but this place was ridiculously tiny.”

The worm also slammed the noise level in the candidate’s brain, complaining, “I couldn’t hear myself think with all the different voices in there.”

With one star, Kennedy’s brain ranks last in Yelp’s “Worm Dining” category, tied with Kristi Noem’s brain.

I am brave enough to say: I am a parasite, and I don’t understand what is best for the country!

Satire from The Washington Post, by Alexandra Petri:

Good afternoon, fellow Americans, from the interior of Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s brain. I am a parasitic worm. You might be wondering how I got here, or perhaps not! Most people who learned that a piece of Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s brain was missing because a worm ate it responded with what I would characterize as “disappointment but not exactly surprise.”

Maybe you heard about me from the New York Times. Or possibly you got the news directly from the Kennedy campaign announcing that the worm that ate part of the candidate’s brain and then died in there would not affect his ability to serve as president. You know what they say: no such thing as bad publicity! Indeed, RFK Jr. has gone so far as to offer to eat five more brain worms. This is not the first time one of his statements have given me pause.

When I first arrived here, I was so excited to discover all the knowledge that the human brain must hold. But when I looked around, all I saw were conspiracy theories and mercury poisoning. Candidly, if you had said, “What do you recommended the holder of this brain do next?” I would not have said, “Run for president.” I would have said, “Get somebody else to do that. This person should go sit down.”

That is why, today, I have an announcement to make. I am eliminating the middle man and running for president myself. Yes, I am the worm that ate part of RFK Jr.’s brain, and I’m asking for your vote. I am the only candidate brave enough to say: I am a parasitic worm, and I don’t understand what is best for the country.

To those who ask, “Why should I vote for you? You are a worm somewhere around one-third of an inch in length with a knob-like attachment at one end called a scolex that sometimes is mistakenly referred to as its head!” I say: That is more medical transparency than you are going to get from any of the other candidates! I bet they have not even disclosed whether they have body cavities. (I don’t! I’m an acoelomate!)

To those who reply, “We don’t actually know that! That’s just what the symptoms are consistent with! We haven’t done a complete examination of the exact type of worm that died in Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s brain after eating part of it,” I say: That is fair, and I am worm enough to grant it to you. Thank you, and I hope to receive your vote in November. Please just write in “Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s WORM, NOT THE MAN, THE WORM” on your ballot. As long as you are throwing away your vote, throw it away on a worm. That’s also my slogan.

There are many issues on which people are basing their votes in this election. Bodily autonomy. Keeping our democracy a democracy. Do you want to know my stance on the issues? I will tell you: I have no stance! I am a worm who died no later than 2012. I do not possess higher brain functions, although I have attended several, at which I feasted.

And that is exactly the sort of plenty I promise you will enjoy under rule by worm. Just look at life under Leto II, God Emperor of Dune! Jabba the Hutt (an honorary worm) ran Tatooine with very few problems for a very long time until the intervention of a rude woman in a metal bikini.

If there are worms in the brains of the other candidates, I hope they will join me in issuing statements of their own. Perhaps a simple statement covering whether they exist and whether they consider what they may or may not have eaten to be mission critical.

RFK Jr. has justified his candidacy by saying that people are overwhelmingly frustrated with the options presented to them and need a third choice. Well, I see that third choice and raise you a fourth choice: a candidate you can trust not to have any brain worms because that candidate is a brain worm. I am also not currently under indictment for any reason.

So, good people of these United States, I exhort you: Ask not what this parasite can do for you. Ask what you can do for your parasite!

Tip of the hat to TheRealThelmaJohnson:

Holy god, this poor bastard has a medical history that makes him sound like one of Magellan’s sailors.

From Esquire, by Charles P. Pierce:

The New York Times took a deep dive on Tuesday into the medical history of Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., whose raison d’etre as a presidential candidate is primarily based on crazy-assed Do Your Own Research vaccine denialism and the fact that the two major candidates are older than he is and, therefore, not up to the job, cognitively. Judging from the Times story, RFKJ needs to find himself some new raisons d’etre tout suite.

Several doctors noticed a dark spot on the younger Mr. Kennedy’s brain scans and concluded that he had a tumor, he said in a 2012 deposition reviewed by The New York Times. Mr. Kennedy was immediately scheduled for a procedure at Duke University Medical Center by the same surgeon who had operated on his uncle, he said. While packing for the trip, he said, he received a call from a doctor at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital who had a different opinion: Mr. Kennedy, he believed, had a dead parasite in his head. The doctor believed that the abnormality seen on his scans “was caused by a worm that got into my brain and ate a portion of it and then died,” Mr. Kennedy said in the deposition.

Well, that sounds awful.

For decades, Mr. Kennedy suffered from atrial fibrillation, a common heartbeat abnormality that increases the risk of stroke or heart failure. He has been hospitalized at least four times for episodes, although in an interview with The Times this winter, he said he had not had an incident in more than a decade and believed the condition had disappeared. About the same time he learned of the parasite, he said, he was also diagnosed with mercury poisoning, most likely from ingesting too much fish containing the dangerous heavy metal, which can cause serious neurological issues. “I have cognitive problems, clearly,” he said in the 2012 deposition. “I have short-term memory loss, and I have longer-term memory loss that affects me.”

Mr. Kennedy said he was then subsisting on a diet heavy on predatory fish, notably tuna and perch, both known to have elevated mercury levels. In the interview with The Times, he said that he had experienced “severe brain fog” and had trouble retrieving words. Mr. Kennedy, an environmental lawyer who has railed against the dangers of mercury contamination in fish from coal-fired power plants, had his blood tested. He said the tests showed his mercury levels were 10 times what the Environmental Protection Agency considers safe.

Brainworms? Poisoned fish? Holy Lord, this poor bastard has a medical history that makes him sound like one of Magellan’s sailors. How did he avoid scurvy?

It’s easy to assume that the latter condition has played a serious role in his entire public life. His effort to clean up the country’s rivers concentrated heavily on the threat posed by mercury byproducts from coal-fired power plants. And, of course, his vaccine denialism began as a crusade against the mercury-based vaccine preservative Thiomersal, which was in fact removed from use by the Food and Drug Administration. Kennedy attached himself to the phantom threat of the preservative as a causal agent for autism, which discredited his warnings about mercury in vaccines generally.

His medical history is now a legitimate topic for political discussion because he chose to engage in long-distance diagnoses of the president. Every one of his verbal stumbles and every moment of public forgetfulness is going to be counted against his fitness for office because that’s the field on which he’s chosen to compete. Personally now, I think he should stop with the YouTube calisthenics and the TikTok iron-pumping and accept the fact that he’s not that much younger than the president is.

From Civil Discourse, by Joyce Vance:

An interesting side note: It was Jeffrey McConney’s son Justin, fresh out of film school, who was Trump’s first social media manager. Before he arrived on the scene, Trump didn’t know how to use social media. In 2013, Trump posted his first tweet, an innocuous thank-you to someone who complimented him publicly.

After leaving the company in 2017, Justin McConney said, “The moment I found out Trump could tweet himself was comparable to the moment in ‘Jurassic Park’ when Dr. Grant realized that velociraptors could open doors. I was like, ‘Oh no.’”

Conspiratorial Templates @mynamehear

Elise Stefanik, frustrated by lack of media attention, announces plans to murder kitten.