Face-Eating Leopard Begins Eating Faces

Donald Trump's Meet The Press interview confirmed that a plurality of American voters chose to be abused, conned, & destroyed for 4 years by a MAGA movement that will eat their lunch and their face.

For the past 9 years, MAGA and establishment hacks have told the rest of us to not take Donald Trump literally and seriously as a means of sanewashing his hateful, cruel, and destructive policies. I tend to believe grown, 78-year-old men with a rich history of fraud, racism, and hate when their repeated behavior matches their rhetoric. I also lean in and pay extra attention when these septuagenarians have a four-year track record as the President of the United States and are about to ascend to the most powerful position on Earth.

I know, call me silly.

I have no desire or appetite in my Honda Odyssey-driving, Costco-buying middle age to spend whatever time I have left on Earth to document the growing CVS list of Donald Trump’s numerous scandals, ethical violations, and lies. I lack the stamina and patience of my adventurous youth. However, as a dad of three young children who will inherit this absurd country, I feel compelled to keep my antenna up when Trump reveals his Bond villain plan to remake our flawed democracy into a right-wing authoritarian paradise for a white Christian broligarchy.

If you weren’t a masochist like me, you might have completely missed Trump’s sit-down interview with Meet the Press that aired on Sunday. The conversation revealed that Trump remains a vindictive bullshit artist who lied to the American public and has not become serene or “changed” after a failed assassination attempt.

Shocking! A face-eating leopard hasn’t turned vegan but still enjoys eating faces! Surely, this is a surprise to anyone who has decided to seal themselves in a cocoon secured by disinformation, delusions, “both sides” reporting, and the world’s lowest bar for the only President who is a convicted criminal and incited a violent insurrection against our free and fair election. As of Sunday, Trump still promotes the big lie that he won the 2020 election and that he lost bigly to President Biden by 4.4% points. He gloated about his popular win that is one of the most narrow wins in election history.

After MAGA, corporate media, and some spineless Democrats spent a week clutching their lily-white pearls about President Biden’s pardon of his son, Trump promised he’ll pardon the criminal traitors who were convicted for attacking the U.S. Capitol. Even though he promised not to seek retribution, he doesn’t regret appointing Kash Patel, his thoroughly unqualified Luca Brazi, as the head of the FBI, a position from which he has promised to attack Trump’s critics, including the media and politicians. Speaking of elected officials, Trump referred to the House Committee that investigated the January 6th attacks he incited as “political thugs” and “creeps.” Recall that in the final month of his political campaign, he also referred to his critics as “enemies from within” upon whom he’d unleash the military and national guard. No such unsavory words or threats were used for, you know, the criminal MAGA insurrectionists themselves, whom he believes are innocent “hostages” that must be freed.

Trump promised his pledge to put tariffs on imports, which are inherently inflationary and increase prices by passing on the costs to American consumers. When asked if he could guarantee American families wouldn’t pay more, Trump replied, “I can’t guarantee anything.” Sorry, Trump voters who were worried about the price of their eggs, but you got played, again, by a conman. Whoopsie! He also said he won’t impose restrictions on abortion pills or increase the age to be eligible for Social Security. Even though House Leader Mike Johnson echoed Trump’s plan to eliminate Obamacare, Trump was still unable to expand on his “concept of a plan” that would replace a plan that exists as the only viable healthcare plan for millions of vulnerable Americans.

Regarding immigration, Trump said he would try to protect Dreamers and allow them to stay in the country. I mean, if he said it, we should believe him, right? After all, it’s not like Trump has a history of flip-flopping or lying. Trump maintained he would go ahead with his plan to mass deport undocumented immigrants, starting with criminals. His border czar, Tom Homan, has already declared in a 60 Miinute interview that they will deport citizen children along with their undocumented parents because I guess separating families would be cruel even though Trump did exactly that in his first term. He didn’t include Elon Musk, who was able to make a fortune in America by allegedly overstaying on his expired student visa. If you give $250 million to help Trump get elected, you get to play by a different set of rules.

Going a step further, Trump said he would fulfill budget Goebbel Stephen Miller’s lifelong dream of ending birthright citizenship, one of the most beautiful facets of America protected by the 14th Amendment of the US Constitution, which says all persons born here are citizens of the United States. After spending months distancing himself from the wildly unpopular and extremist Project 2025 initiative, he admitted he agreed with a lot of it. Laws, norms, and democratic values mean nothing to a man who promised he’d terminate the Constitution and be a dictator for a day, but again, why would anyone think a face-eating leopard would eat faces?

Fool me once, twice, thrice, and I’m a gullible rube who should be mocked and ridiculed for falling for a cheap conman. Thankfully, I still have my eyes wide open. Unfortunately, his voters are going to get screwed to benefit the one percent, who by the way will enjoy their massive tax cuts. Unfortunately, the rest of us will also suffer.

Apathy, rage, and cynicism might seem like the appropriate responses, but the goal of fascists is to overwhelm and distract you to the point of exhaustion. After all, a majority that remains ignorant and numb can easily be exploited and ruled. If Biden or Kamala Harris had said half of these statements during a major interview, it would be leading news coverage for a week, but since it’s Trump, we grade him on a curve.

That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be vigilant, or, dare I say, woke, that a face-eating leopard has entered the den and has neither changed his spots nor his voracious appetite.

Bon appetit, America.