Up until inside the past decade or so, I always fancied myself a fairly affable guy. Growing up in New Jersey and working in newspapers as an adult demanded a certain degree of tolerance and a wicked sense of humor.

Everybody had their flaws, but we were all in this mess together, so I figured let’s go for the laughs and make the most of it. I was willing to give anybody a chance.

Not anymore.

These days, if I even whiff the foul scent of Republican on you, I’m either going the other way, or right through you.

Lately, I hate Republicans. I mean I really HATE them. I don’t necessarily like that I really hate Republicans, but there is nothing to recommend them. They are just flat mean, morally busted, and are actively trying to kill us. Worse, many of them are doing it with a smile on their face.

How many more hundreds of thousands of Americans would still be alive if we all simply listened to the science, wore masks and got vaccinated? How much more stable would our democracy be if a defeat at the polls was accepted through gritted teeth and graciousness, instead of threats and insurrection?

Instead, Republicans have doubled down on their heinousness and placed an anti-vax ghoul in charge of the Department of Health and Human Services. They have made scientists the enemy, instead of our friends tirelessly searching for answers.

Rather than defend and replenish the lifeblood of any democracy, our vote, Republicans are doing everything in their power to kill it. It’s not a matter of IF Trump deploys the Insurrection Act but WHEN, to put down people who don’t like him or disagree with him, which we know from last weekend alone is an astronomical number.

It really is hard to see how we survive this without an all-out war. More than 7 million patriots were in our streets last Saturday peacefully sending the message that they’ve had enough of this dangerous, abhorrent Republican fascism.

The grotesque, orange would-be king responded by posting an AI video of himself literally s------g on those protesters. Republicans, as always, were just fine with this. Completely normal. Nothing to see here.

The corporate press, which has gone out of its way to enable this madness, barely gave it a mention.

Like I said, this is not sustainable.

It was quite a surprise then, that when I rolled out of the rack today, I resolved to find a better way to talk to Republicans. I’m sure it had something to do with a recent epiphany, but more on that below.

Something has to change …

I didn’t always hate Republicans. Hell, I used to vote for ’em every now and then.

Are you still there …?

A number of my oldest friends are Republicans. We’ve been around several blocks together. These are the people I grew up with; got in trouble with; fought for; whose pockets were stuffed with my secrets … the people I loved.

I know where my old friends came from; how they were raised; whether their mother or father was an ass; where the skeletons were buried … Nobody knows more about you than an old, trusted friend.

Lately, I don’t much recognize too many of my old friends anymore. I reckon I look pretty hazy to them, too. I see the stuff they load up on their Facebook page, and wonder how it is we ended up living on different planets when we used to share the same bed.

This all started with Trump, of course. The guy brought out the worst in all of us. It’s his singular talent. Everybody around him is miserable and angry.

I realize I’m not splattering you with any big revelations here. We’ve all gone through this. Not a one of us hasn’t been touched by this negative, soul-crushing force.

Used to be we could trade political insults. Poke fun at each other. In the event it got too heated we could turn the flame down by simply agreeing too many of our politicians were full of crap. They were just going to screw us all in the end no matter what. There was money to be made.

Much better to believe in a friendship that had stood the test of time, than some political party that would test your patience.

Those were the days ...

Today was going to be different, though. Today, I was going to be the bigger man. I was going to reengage. Bridge the gap. Start anew. Find some reason amid the ashes of these torched relationships …

I blame Barack Obama for this.

I don’t know about you, but I do most of my above-average thinking while lying in bed. There’s not a more honest place than safely underneath the covers, head nestled in a pillow.

Just before I closed my eyes Sunday night, I remembered something the two-term, scandal-free president said on a campaign trail way back when while stumping for Joe Biden. I’ll paraphrase, and guarantee you it was even smarter than I’ll type it. But it stuck, and here it goes:

“Look,” Obama said in his ascending tone, “If I tell your Republican friends they should consider voting for something or doing something, they’ll look at me and laugh. They don’t like me! But if YOU tell your Republican friends they should consider voting for something or doing something, they’ll listen! And they’ll listen, because-they-like-you! They might even LOVE you! So sit down. Talk with them!”

See what I mean? If FDR deserved four terms, this guy should have got at least that many. Imagine how much better off we’d be for it.

Except we don’t allows kings in the country …

Now, here I was this morning, refreshed and ready to bring it. There were holes to patch and old friendships to cement. I would be the better man, and cautiously extend a hand. Maybe, just maybe … I could reconnect with a few of these lost souls.

I figured there was nothing to lose, because everything has already been lost. If nothing else it might add perspective, and make for a half-decent column.

I poured a cup of coffee, plugged into a comfy chair, cracked open the local paper, and said this out loud: “Awwwwwwwww fuuuuuuuck …”

HEADLINE: “GOP Tries to Weaken Law Shielding Whales, Seals and Polar Bears”

Whales, seals and polar bears????? Holy hell, are there three more lovable and majestic creatures on this earth?

Whales, seals and polar bears?????

Is there ANYTHING these detestable Republicans won’t put their filthy hands on and strangle to death?

Here’s the lede of this important story:

BOOTHBAY HARBOR, Maine (AP) — Republican lawmakers are targeting one of the U.S.’s longest standing pieces of environmental legislation, credited with helping save rare whales from extinction.Conservative leaders feel they now have the political will to remove key pieces of the Marine Mammal Protection Act, enacted in 1972 to protect whales, seals, polar bears and other sea animals.

Turns out this story was filed last week and got very little damn attention, because Republicans are coming at us with both barrels. They intend to end America as we’ve known it since the last Civil War.

It’s impossible to keep up with it all, and process this madness, which is all part of their destructive design.

The Republican Party is anti-life, anti-American, and anti-good.

The party that said boogeymen were coming for our cats and dogs, are literally coming after our whales, seals and polar bears.

How damn much more of this are we supposed to take?

So, hands shaking, I put the paper down, and raged to the point of tears.

I decided talking to my Republican friends could wait for a bit, and until I could do it without wanting ’em all dead.

D. Earl Stephens is the author of Toxic Tales: A Caustic Collection of Donald J. Trump’s Very Important Letters and finished up a 30-year career in journalism as the Managing Editor of Stars and Stripes. You can find all his work here.

A few days ago, Bobbie Coleman — the chairperson of the Hardin County Republican Party — shared an AI video on the county party’s Facebook page with former President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama portrayed as grinning apes.

Coleman took the video down and eventually posted an apology, which began, “Earlier today, I shared a video from social media that was intended to celebrate President Trump’s successful policy achievements by depicting him as a Lion King, triumphing over liberal Democrats.” She closed with, “I believe the Republican Party is the vehicle to save our country from the far-left and I look forward to continuing to support our Republican candidates and Make America Great Again.”

The Obamas left the White House almost nine years ago. Other than being Black, what do they have to do with Trump’s alleged “policy achievements?” With making America great again? With supporting Republican candidates? With their obsession to “save our country from the far-left?”

What’s odd about today’s latent obsession with Barack and Michelle Obama is how little their obsession has to do with policy. If anything, Obama as president is viewed by those on the “far-left” (Coleman’s word choice in her apology) as someone who was not all that liberal, as someone who played it too careful and too close to the center.

But realities like these do not matter in Trump’s Republican Party.

Obama, almost a decade post-presidency, is not a cartoon figure for today’s Make America Great Again crowd because he is influencing policy. Obama is a MAGA cartoon figure because he is Black.

Racism sells.

At the end of Kentucky’s 2024 General Assembly, I wrote a recap of what I’d witnessed over the course of those many weeks titled, “Undercurrent of racism fueled this legislative session.” This is not a title a writer chooses without a pretty long list of strong, supporting evidence.

There was Senate Bill 6 and House Bill 9 that year which aimed to eliminate diversity, equity, and inclusion — DEI — in our education system and would pass in the next session because, hey, who needs diversity?

There was Sen. Gerald Neal’s proposed Crown Act, a repeat bill that never gets anywhere, “which would have outlawed discrimination on the basis of a hairstyle historically associated with a person’s race.”

There was Rep. Jennifer Decker (who is white) telling an NAACP audience that her white father was a slave and then doubling down on the claim when asked to explain.

There was Rep. Jason Nemes (who is white) ranting in anger at Rep. Derrick Graham (who is Black) for daring to tell the truth on the House floor about how the Jefferson Davis statue was “taken out for a reason,” the reason being that he led the Confederacy, which was built on the backs of slaves, and the insurrection that kicked off the Civil War.

And later in 2024, a bunch of white university presidents prostrated themselves before the interim education committee in our state Capitol, assuring them that they were not, no-way-no-how, teaching diversity of thought or helping people of color in their education systems, even as one brave Black woman sat right there in the front row wearing a bright red t-shirt that read in bold white letters, “Make America Not Racist for the First Time.”

Racism is not a side item in today’s Republican Party, with its masked ICE agents profiling brown people on the streets; it’s a main menu selling point.

The president told a gaggle of reporters on Air Force One Monday that U.S. Rep. Jasmine Crockett is “a low-IQ person” which is the same derogatory statement he makes regularly about professional Black women, insisting they can’t be smart because they’re Black.

And speaking of women – because GOP misogyny runs in the same creek as their racism – a 35 year-old Louisville Republican named Calvin Leach is currently running for state Senate after once writing in an online article in that young women are “promiscuous skanks,” “coddled americunts,” “party whores” and “damn sloots” (internet slang for slut).

When asked about this in an interview with Kentucky Public Radio, Leach described his writing as dating advice, saying that diversity, equity and inclusion has gotten out of hand.

It is notable that I also wrote – during the same 2024 General Assembly that was fueled by racism – that our GOP supermajority is often nothing but a good old boy, misogynistic, frat-house-like romp masquerading as serious lawmaking. With Leach as a candidate, it appears they like it this way.

Apologies for the digression. There is so much rampant sexism and racism in the KY GOP, it’s hard to keep up.

If the Republican Party of Kentucky does not want to be viewed as racist — if they do not want their leaders out in the counties posting racist videos — they might start by not telling tall tales about how their white fathers were slaves, by passing bills *allowing* Black people to wear their natural hair at work, by not obsessing about how one whiff of diversity or Black history might dare appear on a college syllabus.

“Racism greeted Obama in both his primary and general election campaigns in 2008,” Ta-Nehisi Coates wrote in his book, “We Were Eight Years in Power.” “Photos were circulated of him in Somali garb. Rush Limbaugh dubbed him ‘Barack the Magic Negro.’” After “Obama won the presidency in defiance of these racial headwinds, traffic to the white-supremacist website Stormfront increased sixfold.”

We will soon approach two decades since Obama’s 2008 campaign, but overt racism is alive and well here in the commonwealth. Just last week the Frankfort Police Department advised the public that KKK propaganda was strewn around and that they were looking for ring-cam footage and any other evidence of the perpetrators.

I watched and rewatched the video posted on social media by the GOP chairperson in Hardin County, opening as it does with Barack and Michelle Obama portrayed as grinning apes, and I was not surprised.

I read and reread the article about KY GOP candidate Calvin Leach and his use of “promiscuous skanks”and worse to describe women, and I was not surprised.

Let’s face it, you aren’t either.

Donald Trump got a sharp rebuke from his Fox News on Friday as hosts decried the recent addition of insulting plaques about Democratic presidents at the White House as "trolling" and "repulsive."

While not the largest and eye-catching change Trump has made to the White House, his addition of a "Presidential Walk of Fame" has nonetheless made headlines for insulting jabs at his political opponents. When the feature was first introduced in September, former President Joe Biden was represented with a photo of an autopen instead of a portrait, referencing the tool for signatures which Trump has falsely claimed invalidates some of the executive orders and pardons that his predecessor issued.

More recently, reporters noticed the addition of new plaques beneath the photos of Biden, Barack Obama and Bill Clinton. Under Biden's photo, the new plaque reads "Sleepy Joe Biden was, by far, the worst President in American History. Taking office as a result of the most corrupt Election ever seen in the United States, Biden oversaw a series of unprecedented disasters that brought our Nation to the brink of destruction." It also added references to Trump's long-debunked claim that Biden's win in the 2020 election was the result of widespread voter fraud.

The new plaque for Obama refers to him as "divisive" and attacks him for the passage of the "Unaffordable Care Act" and joining the Paris Climate Accords. It also repeated Trump's unfounded claims that the Obama administration spied on his 2016 campaign and fabricated claims that it colluded with Russia. While less directly insulting, Clinton's plaque was given a new note about his wife, Hillary Clinton, losing the 2016 election to Trump.

During a Friday broadcast, Fox News anchor Brian Kilmeade said that he was not in favor of these changes and suggested that Trump's two plaques add bits of mockery to balance things out.“

No, I’m not for this at all,” Kilmeade said. “So they’ve got to mock President Trump or put something on his plaque... I am not for the autopen. If [Trump] is going to do it outdoors, just put the profiles up there. I am not for dispelling or saying anything bad. Plus, a lot of presidents that people think were bad, ended up being looked at as great. I don’t think it’s going to happen with Joe Biden. But I am not for the trolling."

One of Kilmeade's co-anchors, Jessica Tarlov, agreed with his sentiments, calling the new plaques "repulsive behavior."

President Donald Trump went on a bizarre Truth Social posting binge Monday night, as pointed out by many media experts, including Vaughn Sterling, executive producer of "The Source With Kaitlan Collins" on CNN, who wondered "what was going on last night?"

CNN political reporter Aaron Blake posted one of the president's unhinged posts, noting, "Trump last night promoted a post that guaranteed Barack Obama will face a military tribunal."

Meidas Touch co-founder Ben Meiselas posted screenshots of Trump's Truth Social, saying, "Trump has made approximately 400 posts in the past hour which include posts like this."

One of those posts included an interview Meiselas did with former Attorney General Eric Holder and Holder’s call for reforming the Supreme Court.

"Trump demanded that Republicans abolish the filibuster based on what Holder was telling me," Meiselas writes in a Tuesday morning article titled, "Trump Attacks MeidasTouch in Midnight Mental Breakdown."

"Shortly after Trump made the post about MeidasTouch, there was a brief pause, and then he began making new posts every 10 seconds for a full hour, totaling about 400 posts," Meiselas explains.

"His posts included deranged claims that Michelle Obama 'controlled Biden’s autopen' and that Biden’s executive orders were really done by Michelle Obama. Trump posted an AI video claiming Nicolás Maduro surrendered to him and that Trump was now controlling Venezuela, and that Maduro admitted Tren de Aragua confessed [former President Joe] Biden was the leader of their cartel. Trump made posts saying Canada was involved in election rigging. He made bizarre posts about Obama’s weekly 'kill list.' I can go on and on, but you get the point," he adds.

"Trump has posted hundreds of times in the past few hours. It’s a smorgasbord of propaganda e.g. 2020 election lies, blaming Pelosi for J6, calling Democrats seditionists, raging about illegals and Somalis, Biden and the autopen, the Obamas, Ilhan Omar [and] Tim Walz. Total insanity," wrote Andrew—#IAmTheResistance on X.

Liberal influencer Harry Sisson posted a few of Trump's rants on his X account, saying, "These are just some of the over 150 posts Trump put out on Truth Social last night in the span of an hour. Completely insane conspiracy theories. He was clearly having a mental decline episode and was posting whatever came to mind. It’s going to get worse."

President Barack Obama famously chided Donald Trump in April 2011 during the annual White House correspondents’ dinner. The reality show star had repeatedly and falsely claimed that Obama had not been born in the United States and was therefore ineligible to be president.

Trump’s demands that Obama release his birth certificate had, in part, made Trump a front-runner among Republican hopefuls for their party’s nomination in the following year’s presidential election.

Obama referred to Trump’s presidential ambitions by joking that, if elected, Trump would bring some changes to the White House.

Obama then called attention to a satirical photo the guests could see of a remodeled White House with the words “Trump” and “The White House” in large purple letters followed by the words “hotel,” “casino” and “golf course.”

Obama’s ridicule of Trump that evening has been credited with inspiring Trump to run for president in 2016.

My book, “The Art of the Political Putdown,” includes Obama’s chiding of Trump at the correspondents’ dinner to demonstrate how politicians use humor to establish superiority over a rival.

Obama’s ridicule humiliated Trump, who temporarily dropped the birther conspiracy before reviving it. But Trump may have gotten the last laugh by using the humiliation of that night, as some think, as motivation in his run for the president in 2016.

There is a further twist to Obama joking about Trump’s renovations to the White House if Trump became president. Trump has fulfilled Obama’s prediction, kind of.

The Trump administration has razed the East Wing, which sits adjacent to the White House, and will replace it with a 90,000-square-foot, gold-encrusted ballroom that appears to reflect the ostentatious tastes of the president.

The US$300 million ballroom will be twice the size of the White House.

It’s expected to be big enough to accommodate nearly a thousand people. Design renderings suggest that the ballroom will resemble the ballroom at Mar-a-Lago, the president’s private estate in Palm Beach, Florida.

“I don’t have any plan to call it after myself,” Trump said recently. “That was fake news. Probably going to call it the presidential ballroom or something like that. We haven’t really thought about a name yet.”

But senior administration officials told ABC News that they were already referring to the structure as “The President Donald J. Trump Ballroom.”

The renovation will have neither a hotel, casino nor golf course, as Obama mentioned in his light-hearted speech at the 2011 correspondents’ dinner.

A video is shown as President Barack Obama speaks about Donald Trump at the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner in Washington on April 30, 2011. AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta

Obama pokes fun at Trump

In the months before the 2011 correspondents’ dinner, Trump had repeatedly claimed that Obama had not been born in Hawaii but had instead been born outside the United States, perhaps in his father’s home country of Kenya.

The baseless conspiracy theory became such a distraction that Obama released his long-form birth certificate in April 2011.

Three days later, Obama delivered his speech at the correspondents’ dinner with Trump in the audience, where he said that Trump, having put the birther conspiracy behind him, could move to other conspiracy theories like claims the moon landing was staged, aliens landed in Roswell, New Mexico, or the unsolved murders of rappers Biggie Smalls and Tupac Shakur.

“Did we fake the moon landing?” Obama said. “What really happened at Roswell? And where are Biggie and Tupac?”

Obama then poked fun at Trump’s reality show, “The Apprentice,” and referred to how Trump, who owned hotels, casinos and golf courses, might renovate the White House.

When Obama was finished, Seth Meyers, the host of the dinner, made additional jokes at Trump’s expense.

“Donald Trump has been saying that he will run for president as a Republican – which is surprising, since I just assumed that he was running as a joke,” Meyers said.

Trump gets the last laugh

The New Yorker magazine writer Adam Gopnik remembered watching Trump as the jokes kept coming at his expense.

“Trump’s humiliation was as absolute, and as visible, as any I have ever seen: his head set in place, like a man on a pillory, he barely moved or altered his expression as wave after wave of laughter struck him,” Gopnik wrote. “There was not a trace of feigning good humor about him.”

Donald Trump and Melania Trump arrive for the White House correspondents’ dinner in Washington on April 30, 2011. AP Photo/Alex Brandon, File

Roger Stone, one of Trump’s top advisers, said Trump decided to run for president after he felt he had been publicly humiliated.

“I think that is the night he resolves to run for president,” Stone said in an interview with the PBS program “Frontline.” “I think that he is kind of motivated by it. ‘Maybe I’ll just run. Maybe I’ll show them all.‘”

Trump, if Stone and other political observers are correct, sought the presidency to avenge that humiliation.

“I thought, ‘Oh, Barack Obama is starting something that I don’t know if he’ll be able to finish,’” said Omarosa Manigault, a former “Apprentice” contestant who became Trump’s director of African American outreach during his first term.

“Every critic, every detractor, will have to bow down to President Trump,” she said. “It is everyone who’s ever doubted Donald, whoever disagreed, whoever challenged him – it is the ultimate revenge to become the most powerful man in the universe.”

The notoriously thin-skinned Trump did not attend the White House correspondents’ dinner during his first presidency. He also did not attend the dinner during the first year of his second presidency.

Although Trump has never publicly acknowledged the importance of that event in 2011, a number of people have noted how pivotal it was, demonstrating how the putdown can be a powerful weapon in politics – even, perhaps, extending to tearing down the White House’s East Wing.

Chris Lamb, Professor of Journalism, Indiana University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

During former President Barack Obama's eight years in the White House, Donald Trump repeatedly attacked him for spending too much time playing golf. Trump, in 2016, claimed that if he won the presidential election and defeated Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton, he would be too busy helping the American people to play golf.

But according to a 2020 fact-check from CNN, Trump spent a lot more time playing golf than Obama — 266 days playing golf by May 2020 compared to Obama playing 98 rounds by May 2012.

Now, ten months into Trump's second presidency, HuffPost and the Daily Beast are reporting that his passion for golf is costing taxpayers a fortune.

HuffPost's S.V. Date, in a late November article, reports, "Taxpayers have now shelled out nearly $71 million for President Donald Trump's golf hobby since he retook office in January, with his second-term total on pace to break $300 million, according to a HuffPost analysis.

His visit to his course adjacent to the Palm Beach County jail Wednesday was on his 16th trip to his Mar-a-Lago country club home four miles away. Each of those trips cost $3.4 million in travel and security expenses."

The Daily Beast's Jack Revell says of HuffPost's reporting, "If that figure turns out to be accurate, it would be nearly double the $151.5 million Trump spent on similar sporting outings while in office between 2017 and 2021."

The Lincoln Project's Rick Wilson, a Never Trump conservative and former GOP strategist, doesn't find HuffPost's figures surprising.

Wilson, one of Trump's most scathing critics on the right, told HuffPost, "I really wish I could tell you that it would make anyone in America change their mind about him, but the corruption is so baked in, so endemic, and so ludicrous that it feels like the collective reaction will be a shrug. It's one more example of Trump defining the presidency down. Way, way down."

According to Revell, the cost of Trump's golf obsession may be even worse than what HuffPost is reporting.

The Daily Beast reporter notes, "HuffPost's analysis is based on a Government Accountability Office report on the cost of four of Trump's golf trips in 2019 and has not been updated for inflation, indicating the true expense is likely far higher…. Most of Trump's golf trips have been made to the president's own private course in Palm Beach, Florida, near his Mar-a-Lago residence, and have also included visits to his courses in Bedminster, New Jersey, and Aberdeen, Scotland."

Revell adds, "Travel and security are the major expenses, with the challenges of securing Mar-a-Lago raising costs in particular. Trump's use of Air Force One for trips between Joint Base Andrews in Prince George's County, Maryland, near the White House, to Palm Beach International Airport in Florida cost $273,063 per hour. In total, a four-hour round trip will cost taxpayers $1.1 million."

Read the full HuffPost article at this link and the Daily Beast's reporting here.

President Donald Trump is scheduled to travel to North Carolina Friday to address the affordability crisis as his poll numbers in the state drop to record lows.

Newsweek reported Friday that the new survey by Elon University and YouGov from the second half of November shows his disapproval rate is at 51 percent. His approval rating dropped to just 35 percent.

North Carolina hasn't voted for a Democrat for president since the 2008 election for President Barack Obama, but there is an open U.S. Senate seat up for grabs in the 2026 midterms, as well as newly drawn congressional districts.

The report cited North Carolina State Board of Elections data showing that there are a little over 1,200 more Democratic voters in the state than Republicans.

The House and Senate have small Republican majorities, and if Democrats are able to win a minor number of seats it could sway the power balance to block the GOP agenda, effectively making Trump a "lame duck president" for his final two years in office.

One of Trump's strongest voting blocks in 2024 was men, but the new numbers show just 40 percent of men approve of his job while 48 percent disapprove.

"Separately, the poll also revealed that the overall approval rating of North Carolina's Democratic Governor Josh Stein stood at 44 percent, while 22 percent disapproved and 34 percent were unsure," Newsweek noted.

Read the report here.