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Retired Lt. Gen. Mark Hertling, a former U.S. Army Europe commander, is warning that President Donald Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth — by forcing seasoned military figures out of leadership roles — are promoting instability in the U.S. Armed Forces. But Hertling isn't the only veteran who is sounding the alarm. Retired U.S. Army Adm. William H. McRaven, writing in The Atlantic, emphasizes that the United States needs detailed "answers" about all the firings and resignations taking place at the Pentagon during Trump's second presidency.

"Every president and secretary of defense has the right and, moreover, the responsibility to remove officers who are failing to meet the high standards expected of senior leaders," McRaven argues in his Atlantic article. "But when crucial decisions regarding the professionalism, effectiveness, or morale of the military are made, the people and their duly elected representatives have a right to know why these decisions were made. In recent months, President Trump, upon advice from Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, has relieved or forced the retirement of some of the finest officers that have ever served this nation. I have personally worked with most of them in combat."

McRaven continues, "I can tell you from experience that Generals C. Q. Brown, Randy George, Jim Mingus, J. P. McGee, Dave Hodne, Jim Slife, and Joe Berger and Admirals Lisa Franchetti and Jamie Sands were war fighters through and through. And this week, in an egregious decision, the president forced Gen. Chris Donahue to step down from his position in command of U.S. Army Europe."

Hertling, on the conservative website The Bulwark, found the forced resignation of Donahue especially troubling — as Donahue, Hertling argued, brings a wealth of military expertise to the table.

McRaven, similarly, writes, "Donahue is without question one of the most brilliant officers I know. He is strategically focused, tactically aggressive, personally courageous, exceptionally thoughtful in his planning and execution, and compassionate with his troops…. What is particularly concerning about these firings is the effect the dismissals will have on the officer ranks."

The Trump/Hegseth firings at the Pentagon, according to McRaven, "raise a real risk that senior officers will be overly cautious about providing their best advice and, therefore, that the chance for military miscalculation will grow dramatically."

"If Secretary Hegseth is trying to 'revive the warrior ethos and restore trust in our military,' as he has said, then the unplanned departure of these senior leaders will do just the opposite and may leave the president and the secretary without the experienced voices they need to make the best military decisions," the retired U.S. Navy admiral says. "Members of Congress should demand answers. The American people should demand answers. The future of our national security depends on it."

The real way to read the immigration decisions the Supreme Court issued yesterday is not to see them solely as losses for immigrants to the United States or the rights of immigrants. They are much larger losses. They are losses for the authority of Congress to have its laws fully executed by a president who doesn’t agree with them.

Markwayne Mullin vs. Al Otro Lado concerns a 1917 law that requires immigration officers to inspect noncitizens who arrive at ports of entry to determine whether they may enter the United States. Congress amended the law in the Refugee Act of 1980 to allow noncitizens fleeing persecution in their home country to apply for asylum as part of this inspection process.

The Act lays out a required set of procedures to guide this process. It says that a noncitizen who seeks admission to the United States “may apply for asylum.” If the noncitizen lacks valid travel documents, the officer “shall order [her] removed” unless she conveys an intention to apply for asylum or a fear of persecution, which in turn requires the officer to “refer” her for further processing of her asylum application.

This system is designed to ensure that the U.S. government considers the application of each person seeking to come into the United States to determine who should be let in, who should be turned away, and who should be allowed to apply for asylum.

But yesterday, the Supreme Court’s majority held that a president may circumvent these requirements simply by having U. S. immigration officers stand at the border and physically block noncitizens from setting foot on U. S. soil — even if the asylum seeker is certain to be persecuted, or killed, if she is turned away.

What happened to the Refugee Act of 1980 and the specific procedures outlined in it? The Supreme Court ignored it.

The other decision released yesterday, Markwayne Mullin vs. Dahlia Doe, concerns another law, part of the Immigration Act of 1990 called Temporary Protected Status. For over a decade administrations have provided humanitarian Temporary Protected Status relief to Haitian and Syrian nationals coming to the United States.

Yesterday, the Supreme Court’s majority held that federal courts may not review the Secretary of Homeland Security’s compliance with that law. But in fact the Immigration Act of 1990 specifically allows judicial review of whether the Secretary adhered to the procedures the law requires — exactly what the plaintiffs disputed.

It would be easy to see these two cases solely through the lens of immigration — and conclude that the Supreme Court’s decisions yesterday simply backed Trump’s and his fanatical underling Stephen Miller’s commitment to block noncitizens from the United States or to force them out. And surely these are the consequences of both of of yesterday’s rulings.

But the decisions are even darker and more dangerous than this. Even in the face of two laws in which Congress instructed the executive branch to do certain things, a majority of the current Supreme Court — the abominable Roberts Court — has bent over backwards to ignore those laws.

This must be seen for what it really is — a systemic effort by the six Republican appointees on the court to shrink congressional authority and enlarge the authority of the executive branch.

If there was any doubt before, there should be none now: The Supreme Court is part of the anti-democracy movement led by Trump and the billionaires behind him.

Robert Reich is a professor of public policy at Berkeley and former secretary of labor. His writings can be found at https://robertreich.substack.com/.

President Donald Trump’s aides know that he is crazy, according to one of his most knowledgeable biographers, but they are afraid to say it.

On an episode of his podcast Inside Trump’s Head, Trump biographer Michael Wolff analyzed reports that the president entered a yelling match on Wednesday with the moderate Republican lawmaker, Sen. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana.

“Following the hostile meeting, a rare direct rebuke of the president from a Republican lawmaker, Cassidy explained to reporters that the 80-year-old president called him a ‘lunatic’ and used ‘language ‘that would be said on a school... playground,’ reported The Daily Beast on Thursday. “I stood and said, ‘You have not told the American people what’s going on. It was supposed to last four weeks, it’s lasted four months. Our original objectives have not been achieved, and I want to know what’s going on.’”

Yet Cassidy later felt compelled to perform an about-face later that same day after being confronted by Vice President JD Vance and special envoy Steve Witkoff. When The Daily Beast’s Joanna Coles asked Wolff why Republicans capitulate, the author broke it down.

“Well... some of them are gonna get voted out, some of them—they... continue to need... him," Wolff told Coles. “We’ve just gone through the primary season, and that was a threat to everyone. I mean... the Republicans—and we’re talking about Republicans now—are dealing with this very specific Trump ecology and they really don’t quite know how to deal with it.”

Because Trump has the power to destroy Republicans who oppose him in his party’s primaries, but then saddle them with baggage that potentially makes them unelectable in the general elections, they find themselves in a Catch-22.

“I mean... let’s accept this guy is crazy. Everybody knows that. But that doesn’t change the reality of having to deal with him unless you invoke the 25th Amendment, which is not going to happen,” Wolff said. “I mean, that’s another issue. How do you deal with a president who is crazy without a realistic mechanism to deal with that? I mean, this is what’s going on right now.”

Mental health and other medical professionals are also raising the alarm about Trump’s perceived craziness. In May, Dr. Bandy X. Lee, a psychiatrist formerly from Yale University, explained to AlterNet that Trump displays symptoms like “significant loss of self-control (disinhibition) and getting stuck on the same thoughts or actions, unable to let go or move on (perseveration), including seemingly compulsive, manic-like late-night communications—e.g., 150 social media posts in one night—fixation on perceived enemies, persecutory ideas, and prolonged, disproportionate attacks on specific individuals and institutions” and “escalating violence that threatens national and global stability. As Commander-in-Chief of our military—more than 5000 nuclear warheads in inter-continental missile silos, on submarines, and in bombers around the world, are ready for launch solely upon his order, and no one now has the authority to countermand his order.”

Lee has previously predicted crises that would emerge from Trump’s public mental state. Less than a week before the 2020 prediction election, she told this journalist for Salon that Trump would wage an insurrection if he lost to then-Vice President Joe Biden because of Trump’s narcissistic tendencies.

“Just as one once settled for adulation in lieu of love, one may settle for fear when adulation no longer seems attainable,” Lee said at the time. “Rage attacks are common, for people are bound to fall short of expectation for such a needy personality—and eventually everyone falls into this category. But when there is an all-encompassing loss, such as the loss of an election, it can trigger a rampage of destruction and reign of terror in revenge against an entire nation that has failed him.”

President Donald Trump’s attempt to burnish his legacy through propaganda is crumbling all around him, according to a prominent editor.

“... [C]compared with those of his predecessors, Donald Trump’s cultural campaign is perhaps the most overt and visually distinct,” wrote The Atlantic's assistant editor Isabel Ruehl on Thursday after comparing Trump to the Soviet Communist Party and previous presidents like Woodrow Wilson, Franklin Roosevelt and Richard Nixon. “Memes aside—his administration’s social media has its own aesthetic—Trump’s architectural and design taste maximizes size, gilt, and jingoism, asserting the superiority of his administration above all that came before and all that will come after.”

She also used examples like The Independence Arch, whose nickname, ‘Arc de Trump,’ complete with gold-lettered inscriptions and gilded statues.

"During his second term, he tacked his name onto the Kennedy Center and installed himself as chairman, declaring his ‘Vision for a Golden Age in Arts and Culture’; he razed the East Wing in favor of a ballroom, reportedly projected to cost about $600 million; he paved over the White House’s Rose Garden so that it would look like Mar-a-Lago’s beach club, featuring the same yellow-striped umbrellas; and his administration overhauled the selection process for the Venice Biennale, requiring American submissions to ‘showcase American excellence.’ (Trump’s name was recently removed from the Kennedy Center after a federal judge ordered it, and a legal battle continues over whether the president has the authority to build the ballroom without congressional approval.)”

All of these efforts, Ruehl writes, have been unsuccessful in solidifying Trump’s legacy, including Trump’s attempt to put his name on the Kennedy Center, which ultimately failed, and his censorship of museums by trying to remove “improper ideology” from its exhibits. Even though these efforts ultimately failed, they still display a desire to impose his personal philosophy on aesthetics and understanding history over the rest of the American public.

“Trump’s influence over American art and museums has its limits,” Ruehl explained. “Artists have canceled shows at the Smithsonian and elsewhere, and some exhibits are sidestepping the president’s war on DEI. In January, the National Museum of African Art opened a show by LGBTQ artists from Africa and the diaspora, and this month, an augmented-reality display on the National Mall tells the stories of five women who worked alongside the men monumented there.”

She added, “And as my colleague Clint Smith recently reported, the leadership at the Smithsonian is holding steady—for now. Lonnie Bunch, the 73-year-old secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, said in March that ‘there is not a thing that I’ve allowed to be changed at the Smithsonian.’ (But as Clint notes, Bunch also ‘appears to be inching closer’ to leaving.) Meanwhile, the administration’s threats linger, mostly in the form of withholding funding from museums and artists that do not obey its vision.”

Ultimately Ruehl refers back to the ideas of famous essayist George Orwell, who wrote that “the imagination, like certain wild animals, will not breed in captivity.” She argues that “free expression in America has not been snuffed out, even when faced with political opposition in the past. But the Trump era is the latest test of just how much it can endure, and how it might evolve in response.”

Ruehl is not alone in criticizing Trump’s taste and competence as a creative person. The New York Times revealed that Trump’s attempt to renovate the Reflecting Pool has failed because of his cronyistic approach and incompetence.

“President Trump says the peeling blue coating and algae blooms that mar his $16.4 million renovation of the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool are the fault of vandals working with ‘knives’ in the ‘dark of night,’” The New York Times’ wrote Maxine Joselow and David A. Fahrenthold on Tuesday. “But government documents obtained by Times show that while National Park Service workers found two cuts in sections of foam between the pool’s expansion joints, those were not directly related to the ‘American flag blue’ coating that is now peeling, or to the algae that has turned the pool a bright shade of green.”

In March, Trump’s destruction of the White House’s historic East Wing to build a ballroom also fell flat.

“The hurried reviews, with construction cranes already swiveling above the White House grounds, are an abrupt departure from how new monuments, museums and even modest renovations have been designed and refined in the capital for decades,” wrote Emily Badger, Junho Lee and Larry Buchanan of The New York Time Times. Many serious structural issues have emerged in the nascent structure because it is being rushed in the face of legal challenges.

“In the sprint to complete it before the end of his term, the addition appears to have compressed the normal design evolution for any project,” the Times wrote. “As recently as October, the president was still increasing the ballroom’s capacity, the kind of decision needed at the concept stage. And the White House has said it plans to begin building in the spring, a timeline that would mean construction documents would have to be prepared even as the design was still under review.”

Bulwark political reporter Joe Perticone says it doesn’t pay to be a former lawmaker minion for President Donald Trump.

Perticone and his associates have covered the high number of House Republicans retiring or seeking statewide positions back home after the “historically ineffective” speakership of Rep. Mike Johnson (R–La.) and Trump.

“Unfortunately for the candidates looking to move on up from the federal kiddie table, voters seem unimpressed by their claims to be ready for a seat among the adults,” Perticone reported. “Of the 21 House Republicans running for statewide office this cycle, eight have lost or abandoned their primaries. Just four have won their respective races — several of whom ran in non-competitive primaries or received a hefty assist from President Donald Trump.”

The future of more former GOP House members is still in question, but Perticone said at least one more loss is waiting because Reps. David Schweikert and Andy Biggs are competing against one another for the Republican nomination in Arizona governor.

“What gives? Well, for starters, the stench of currently being in office,” said Perticone, citing a recent interview with Sen. John Curtis (R-Utah), who made the leap from House to Senate in 2024.

“It’s a tough climate,” said Curtis describing this year’s election.

“… I think it always has been [toxic],” he added of Republican incumbency in primary races. “I mean, it has its advantages, obviously. But people love the new, shiny things.”

Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas), who just lost his primary to be Texas’s next attorney general, is another failed lawmaker still trying to figure out how he got here.

“I think people like to come up with all sorts of reasons for why individual campaigns work or don’t work,” Roy told Perticone. “I just ran a race, in Texas, against $30 million, and against a bunch of ads saying I’m ‘not Trump enough.’”

“I didn’t have to do it,” Roy added of his bid for Texas AG. “I could’ve stayed [in the House] and kept doing my thing and been here for a long time. I wanted to enter the fray to try to fight back in Texas.”

But Roy said candidates with all the on-paper credentials keep falling short this year, citing Ralph Norman’s failed bid to win the South Carolina Republican gubernatorial primary. In fact, two GOP U.S. House members with good credentials both failed to make the runoff.

“Nancy Mace had a whole bunch of name ID,” he added.

Trump endorsed both Lt. Gov. Pamela Evette and winner Alan Wilson.

“Every race is unique, but so far, the GOP candidates attempting to leave the House to pursue state-wide ambitions are frequently running into unexpected walls,” said Perticone, suggesting maybe “it’s because they’ve lost the ability to create real legislative results.”

President Donald Trump’s Wednesday night speech to commemorate America’s 250th anniversary was garbage, according to a former U.S. Naval War College professor.

“I mean, it was trashy,” Tom Nichols, retired professor from the U.S. Naval War College, told The Bulwark’ podcaster Tim Miller on Thursday. “The whole business was trashy. And I know that sounds — oh, that's snooty and elitist. But no, it was just trashy. And his speech was small. That's a thing. That's what I wrote about last night. He took this thing that could have been grandiose.”

Nichols then quoted George Washington, America’s first president, who in his last will and testament started by describing himself as a citizen first and a president second.

“For him, that was the most important thing to be — to be a citizen, and he understood that we were all sharers in this great adventure, this great experiment, and Trump just doesn't understand any of that,” Nichols said. “He made it all about me, me, me.” Quoting Trump’s bragging about ending taxes on tips, declaring war against Iran and renovating the Reflecting Pool, Nichols added that “the few times that Trump tried to be elevated, or tried to be presidential, he said things like — the one that jumped out at me — ‘from the storied alleys of Boston to the streets of Philadelphia.’”

“Okay, first of all, anybody who's lived in Boston knows there's no such thing as these storied alleys of Boston,” Nichols said. “They have some stories, and we won't tell them. But "to the streets of Philadelphia" — I'm sorry, wasn't that a Bruce Springsteen song about a movie about a guy with AIDS? I mean, it just went on and on — skyscrapers and railroads and Normandy and Saratoga. But then he would go right back to the really petty, small, you know, ‘look at me, look what I did.’”

He concluded, “And I'll finish with one serious comment, which is that it shows that Trump and his people don't understand the difference between patriotism and nationalism. Patriotism is love of one's country for itself — for what it is, for its eternal characteristics. Nationalism is ‘my tribe is better than all other tribes.’ And that's the only way Trump can conceive of this. He kept saying we're better than everybody else, we're the hottest, we're the biggest.”

Nichols is not the only one to draw attention to a “trashy” quality in Trump’s celebration of America’s 250th birthday. His Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy aroused controversy when he described Trump’s critics and the artists who cancelled appearing at his event as “libtards,” even though his daughter with Downs Syndrome was present. According to CNN senior political reporter Aaron Blake, “In one sentence, Duffy both complains about the musical acts who canceled and completely legitimizes their stated reason for doing so.”

More controversially, during a UFC event on the White House lawn intended to commemorate both America’s birthday and Trump’s own birthday, fighter Josh Hokit told pro-Trump podcaster Joe Rogan that “Michelle Obama is a man! Am I right, America?”

Similarly National Park Service employees have balked at being required to wear Freedom 250 pins under the threat of “professional reprimands,” with one employee telling Mother Jones “when I asked if I would receive any disciplinary action if I chose not to wear the pin, I was told, ‘Yes.’ I chose not to continue the conversation after that.”

MAGA is still very much a power player in Republican primaries, but Zeteo reports Trump’s culty foundation is crashing out with the rest of America, particularly voters.

The news comes as Fox News published stunning poll results for the Senate race in red-state Ohio with Democrat Sherrod Brown leading GOP incumbent Jon Husted, 53 percent to 45 percent.

“In an era of metronomic partisan polarization, that eight-point Democratic margin in Ohio almost defies belief,” said Zeteo writer John Harwood. “But an intra-Republican fracture explains it: Only 4 percent of those aligned with Donald Trump’s MAGA movement backed Brown, but 31 percent of ‘non-MAGA’ Republicans crossed party lines to support the Democratic candidate.”

“That snapshot reflects an emerging 2026 picture that does not resemble a familiar face-off between evenly-matched Republican and Democratic two parties,” said Harwood, a former White House correspondent for CNN. “Instead, the midterm elections increasingly pit the MAGA minority against the American majority of everyone else.”

Trump’s MAGA base is still solid, with polling measuring it as 36 percent of all voters months after his last re-election. But 36 percent is not enough to win an election, and it’s not getting any higher with Trump’s popularity crashing.

“The non-MAGA segment – currently about 40 percent of the GOP – had misgivings about Trump after his first term and its violent conclusion. But in the end, three of four backed him, finding Harris too far left and Trump more likely to help on inflation and immigration,” said Harwood.

“The difference in this cycle is their illusions have been shattered,” said pollster Geoff Garin.

“Instead of taming inflation … Trump’s tariffs and failed war against Iran have worsened it,” said Harwood. “Meanwhile, the president fattens his bank account, feeds his ego with vanity projects, fabricates prosecutions against enemies, and excuses or obscures the crimes of friends, including the late [sex-trafficker] Jeffrey Epstein.”

“Ominously for the GOP,” Harwood reports, “attitudes among non-MAGA Republicans keep edging closer to those of self-described independents – who have abandoned Trump in droves. On issues large and small, that produces lopsidedly negative national assessments of Trump’s priorities.”

Only 18 percent of Americans say Trump’s Iran war had been useful, in one poll, while 63 percent say Trump’s policies benefit the rich and corporations. And only 16 percent approved of Trump’s UFC fight on the White House lawn in a Reuters/Ipsos poll.

And while Trump disgust won’t turn non-MAGA Republicans into Democrats, but some will, as indicated by Brown’s lead in Ohio. Many other non-MAGA Republicans will simply not vote at all.

“MAGA appears loyal enough to keep Trump’s national job approval from dropping much below its current 36-39 percent range in the leading polling averages. [But] … given the alienation of other Republicans, Democrats may not need it to,” said Harwood.

US District Judge Emmet G. Sullivan may have opened the floodgates by siding with former MS NOW show host Katie Phang in her lawsuit demanding the Trump administration adhere to the word of the Epstein Transparency Act.

Politico writer Josh Gerstein reports Judge Sullivan issued a preliminary injunction against the DOJ for failing to comply with the letter of the Act by over-redacting released records and not explaining the reasons behind redacting the info.

The ruling means Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche now has explain why he shouldn't be forced to release names redacted from emails and documents that reference potentially damning videos and allegations of abuse of minors. Also included in redacted info includes the potential names of co-conspirators of convicted sex-trafficker Jeffrey Epstein, as well as potentially damaging FBI interview notes from a victim who claimed Epstein introduced her to President Donald Trump when she was only 13.

Trump has denied the allegation that he assaulted the minor.

Blanche, who was Trump’s personal attorney before Trump put him over the DOJ, did not defend the redactions of the information before the court but instead argued the court had no power to decide on the case.

However, “The Attorney General has conceded that he is in violation of the Act,” Judge Sullivan said. Additionally the judge refused the DOJ’s wish to be granted a stay, arguing that "There is no competing harm to the government with the issuance of preliminary relief that orders compliance with statutes.”

“Phang is not requesting the immediate production of documents, but rather that the Attorney General show cause if he declines to do so,” Sullivan wrote. “As to the requests to review of foreign language documents and publish the redaction log, the Act required the Attorney General to produce the documents and publish the log by December 19, 2025 — more than six months ago. … Conclusion: For the foregoing reasons, the Court grants Ms. Phang’s Motion for Preliminary Injunction.”

Prior to this judicial decision the Epstein Transparency Act had no enforcement, but Phang sued under the Administrative Procedure Act, which potentially lets courts overturn government agency decisions.

Sullivan’s decision could open the floodgates to a host of other journalists suing under the same argument.

Dispatch writer Kevin Williamson has little patience for conservative friends who “hurl themselves headlong at an opportunity to find something good to say" about President Donald Trump.

Recently the staff of the hyper conservative National Review even knocked together a recent staff editorial — premature, he says — on the subject of Trump’s reflecting pool beautification project before it went straight-up swampy.

Of course, the Trump administration awarded the no-bid contract to a firm linked to a Trump crony, so Williamson said of course the thing became a “fiasco” with algae and ducks “keeling over dead.”

But what should people who believe Trump expect if not another head dip in embarrassment? There’s a pattern here, after all.

“The president himself, and virtually every senior member of his administration, lies almost all the time about almost everything. J.D. Vance, out there flogging his book about becoming a Christian, uses the Eighth Commandment like it came out of a package that says ‘Charmin’ on it. Federal judges no longer accept as given that DOJ lawyers will not simply lie to them. A federal court has just thrown out a nakedly political and legally laughable attempt to prosecute Trump’s political opponents in Minnesota,” said Williamson.

“Given a choice between the word of the president, the vice president, the secretary of state, the attorney general, the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, the Republican leader in the Senate, the speaker of the House, Sen. Ted Cruz, Sen. Lindsey Graham, et al., and the word of some utterly unknown party, the only rational assumption is that the unknown party starts from a higher degree of presumptive credibility, inasmuch as one does not know for a fact that he has already lied repeatedly about important public matters or served as an active collaborator with such lies,” Williamson added. “Maybe there has been [Reflecting Pool] vandalism. But whose word can we take on that? Trump’s? Vance’s? Jeanine Pirro’s? Are you kidding me?”

Williamson made a reference to another historical cad with an administration that had great talent at building highways.

“’It cannot be the case that literally everything the man did is wrong,’” Williamson quoted the National Review, speaking of Trump’s beautification efforts. “I suppose those words might have occurred to contented motorists speeding down Germany’s magnificent autobahn from time to time. But, at some point, one might legitimately ask why anybody would grasp at such a straw.”

“Half the problem with Trumpism is Trumpism. And the other half of the problem with Trumpism is Trump,” Williamson argued. “Trump will always betray those who trust him. And he will always force his underlings to go out in public and defend indefensibly stupid things. Ask Larry Kudlow or Kevin Hassett. And, contra National Review’s social-media intern, Trump will reliably make everything he gets his hands on ugly: His Caligula-by-way-of-Liberace aesthetic is not only — or even mainly — the result of bad taste but the result of bad character. There is a reason vanity is numbered among the seven deadly sins.

“To assume that the reflecting pool work would be done incompetently and corruptly is far from absurd. If you happen to be among those who believe that character is destiny, then it is, at the very least, a reasonable assumption even if it is something short of an existential certainty,” Williamson concluded.

RADAR Online confirmed source information from a new book that President Donald Trump likes to wander around the White House gluing goldish bits and gewgaws onto walls — but it doesn’t sound much better the way anonymous White House sources frame it.

Regime Change: Inside the Imperial Presidency of Donald Trump, a book by New York Times reporters Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan, claims Trump has been personally decorating the White House by using a tube of super glue to jam gold ornamentation over the historic building. But RADAR’s sources say Trump’s little glue pen is nothing new.

"A source familiar with the White House told Radar the episode reflected Trump's highly personal approach to the presidency rather than an isolated incident,” reports reporter Aaron Tinney.

"People around him understand that if he has an idea about how something should look, he's likely to carry it out himself. It has become part of the way the White House operates under this administration,” said one source. "But it comes across as the behavior of a demented old man with tacky tastes."

"The president likes to oversee every detail of his surroundings. Whether it's a major construction proposal or a decorative flourish inside the Oval Office, he wants the final result to reflect his own taste and vision,” said another source, speaking of Trump’s arty tidbit additions.

Another insider said Trump's involvement in the décor had become well known among staff members.

The book has already unleashed several revelations about Trump's second term and it “portrays a president driven by grievances, instinct and an intense desire to reshape Washington in his own image,” according to Radar.

Revelations include just how impenetrable Trump’s “hermetically-sealed bubble,” of misinformation and flatter is in his second administration.

“His aides are not eager to bring criticisms to him — in fact, mostly they keep them away from him, because they know there's a limited amount of capital that they're willing to spend by being the one to say, ‘Hey, here's some bad news,’” Swan told an MS NOW anchor on Wednesday.

Other disclosures include Trump’s habit of letting trash collect around his living quarters, his isolation from the First Lady and his habit of throwing out expensive silver White House cutlery and utensils.

Trump is a compulsive all-night social media crawler, as indicated by his outlandish, hours-long chain posts and his perpetual narcolepsy during meetings and press engagements. But Haberman and Swan say all that overnight online raging comes complete with a long string of fast food and the resulting trash and wrappers.

President Donald Trump and his supporters have a habit of claiming he was chosen by God. Yet one book that took this argument to a literal conclusion is receiving angry reviews — because, as it turns out, the evangelical-raised author intended it as a joke.

Titled “Scriptual Evidence That Trump Is Set Apart by God: Biblical Proof That Trump Will Save America,” author Rihanna Teixeira included 73 pages but left them all blank. At least one angry Amazon customer did not seem to have actually opened the book.

“It was barely usable as toilet paper,” complained one user on Amazon. “I love a good fiction book but this was AI slop.” Similarly a reviewer posted on Amazon that the book is “Blasphemy!!” and “an absolute insult to God.”

Another Amazon poster did actually open the book and wrote, “Blank book don’t fall for the ‘joke.’” Still another said that “it’s a joke. The book is blank. It’s been done before save your money it’s a money grab.”

Other comments included “be so for real right now” and “not what I learned in Sunday School.”

Intriguingly, there are also many Amazon reviews that praise the book for its supposed glowing commentary about Trump. It is unclear whether these are jokes or come from Trump supporters who sincerely want others to believe they actually read a book.

With a five star review and under the title "Honestly, this is top tier research!", a user called DCDoc4200 posted “I'm a doctoral student, and I know firsthand how intense, difficult, and, honestly, grueling quality research and writing can be. Yet, this book centers such rigor. The author meticulously combs the pages of the ancient text, and thoughtfully synthesizes the all of the evidence proving why our dear leader is truly anointed for such a time as this. And to her credit, when the evidence isn't robust enough, it's clear that she refused to include it. This is true scholarship. This is sound science. This is what real faith looks like. Kudos!”

Two five star reviews, one by “Leticia” and another by “amazonbuyer19866,” labeled it as a “must read.”

“One of the more thorough and factual books about scripture as it applies to modern times I have ever read (especially in reference to our God appointed president, Trump),” Leticia wrote. “So wonderful I insisted my coworkers also read it. They loved it too. Even the one that never reads thought it was a great and accurate book. Proud to own a copy of this historically accurate book. Thank you for taking the time to write this!”

The other wrote, “What a profound and moving read that is so inspiring! Highly recommend to those that might be wavering in their faith and beliefs.”

Meanwhile a five star review by an Amazon customer named John Schoenstein called it “a thorough investigation into Scripture,” gushing that “this is a wonderful book! It goes into detail, giving each book of the Bible its own section to show exactly where it is told that DJT is the Chosen One. Although it's kind of fast to read, it's going in the reading room (aka the crapper) for all to enjoy.”

While this book is a joke, there are people who sincerely believe Trump was chosen by God. The 2018 film “The Trump Prophecy” makes this argument, as has Trump’s personal spiritual adviser Pastor Paula White-Cain. Trump sold self-proclaimed “Trump Bibles” to many of his followers, and former Trump supporter ex-Rep. Joe Walsh (R-IL) has bluntly stated Trumpism operates as a cult of personality. Walsh doubled down on this claim when Trump supporters continued to back him after he waged wars against Venezuela and Iran despite promising during the 2024 campaign that he would wage no new wars.

“I thought you wanted him to end wars all over the world,” Walsh said. “You said you wanted him to end American entanglement in conflicts and wars around the world. America shouldn’t be involved in these wars, you said. That’s why you’re voting for Trump, you said.” Then, despite Trump’s actions against Denmark, Venezuela and Iran, they still support him.

He added, “And you don’t like when people call you a cult, Trump voters? What else are people to think when you voted for Trump to get us the hell out of wars around the world, and instead he gets us involved in wars around the world and starts new wars, and you still sing his praises and support him? What are we to think, MAGA, but that you are a cult?”

Walsh concluded, “You’ve got no argument against people calling you a cult. And if he takes us to war against Iran, and you clap and applaud and throw him flowers, Trump supporters, I will be at the front of the parade calling you a cult.”