Donald Trump's gaslighting has gone on long enough

As I was typing a piece on Saturday morning, endeavoring to stitch together Flag Day, our army’s birthday, and the peaceful marches against tyranny that were going off all over the United States of America, I got a chilling news bulletin — that two Minnesota lawmakers and their spouses had been shot in their homes by a madman impersonating a police officer.

This is what I knew as my fingers hit the keyboard:

State Representative Melissa Hortman and husband, Mark, have died in the attack at their home in the Minneapolis suburbs. State Senator John A. Hoffman and his wife, Yvette, were also shot multiple times at their house in a nearby suburb, but remain alive.

Minnesota Gov.Tim Walz has called this a “political assassination.”

This will be a developing, gruesome, and very American story for some time to come. I want to be careful to honor the victims while channeling my sadness and rage at the state of things in my country in as precise a manner as possible.

So let me start here:

What happened in Minnesota can surprise ABSOLUTELY NOBODY who has been paying even the slightest amount of attention to the sickly state of America in 2025.

It is perhaps the most predictable thing I have seen coming in the roiling wake of a week in which we have seen a U.S. senator — a son of Los Angeles — tackled and handcuffed for simply asking a puppy-shooting, ineffectual wax figure to explain herself, and to stop lying about the reason for her agency’s invasion of the city he grew up in. There were no apologies for this disgusting incident.

We have watched helplessly while human beings, one after another, have been swept off our streets by masked monsters, who may or may not be impersonating government law enforcement officers.

We have watched as this grotesque president whipped young, impressionable soldiers into a frenzy and made sure to empty their pockets and fill his by selling them his warped MAGA memorabilia on one of our army bases.

We have gone so far past the unimaginable, it is impossible to know where to begin to connect with the normal.

But let me be crystal clear on this: ALL OF IT lies at the fat little feet of the convicted felon, who attacked this country on January 6, 2021, did nothing to stop that attack for hours and instead rooted for its success, and has continued to intentionally throw gasoline on the raging fires he has so eagerly stoked, starting in the vicinity of 2010 when he questioned President Obama’s citizenship.

THAT was the catalyst for everything that has followed, and has lead us to lawmakers and their families now being slaughtered in their homes.

IT IS ALL ON HIM.

Perhaps I am not helping right now, but like so many of you I have grown weary and disgusted waiting for people with heft and alleged status to say what we all know to be true.

The gaslighting has gone on long enough.

My God, this mess of a man stood in our nation’s capital in that odd way he does … ample a-- out, jutted, orange chin forward … and did his best Mussolini impression by keeping the tanks running on time on their way down our streets.

Are you reading this????????

TANKS.

All this to honor himself on his 79th birthday. If there is any good news here, and you have to squint hard to see it, he has climbed another notch on the actuarial life table.

I have said enough for now, my friends. Like you I am aching inside. My fury wringing out tears …

I took part in our march here in Madison, Wisconsin, joining tens of thousands of other hearty souls who love their country enough to assemble peacefully on her behalf.

We are still the lucky ones. Nobody has turned their guns on us — yet.

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(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.)