Trump’s 'violent animus' rages as Supreme Court bursts his fantasy 'bubble'

The United States is rapidly approaching what could be a major turning point for Donald Trump's presidency: the 2026 midterms, which are now roughly one and a half months away. Many GOP insiders are sounding the alarm about widespread voter angst and the president's weak approval ratings. But according to The Nation, Trump and his close MAGA "lackeys" are showing no signs of moderating — and instead, are causing widespread "chaos and destruction."

The Nation's Sasha Abramsky, in a Friday article, laments the "consequences of Trump's malicious presidency" — which are "on full display in every corner of public life" as the midterms draw closer.

"Despite having no medical training or scientific expertise," Abramsky explains, "the health secretary (Robert F. Kennedy Jr.) presents himself as an avatar of truth pitted against the best medical brains on Earth. Equally contemptuous of basic norms, Donald Trump Jr. accepts hundreds of thousands of dollars from a (Vladimir) Putin-allied Russian oligarch to pay for his wedding celebration … Meanwhile, the MAGA man (President Trump) portrays himself as an AI-generated superhero and gets his most diehard followers at his midterm 'convention' to pledge personal allegiance to him and promise to 'cheat like hell' to win the elections. That sense of being untethered to basic societal codes of conduct has been on particularly shocking display this week in the debate over artificial intelligence."

Abramsky continues, "AI executives, who have not, by any conceivable interpretation of recent events, been ahead of the curve when it comes to protecting the common good, have finally acknowledged that they are creating potentially civilization-busting products and have urged the administration to put in place regulations and guardrails. Trump's response? He calls the warnings — that were issued after a series of incidents in which malicious AI swarms collaborated to escape their containment systems and after Anthropic identified apparent attempts to use its AI models to manufacture bioweapons — a 'HOAX,' accuses the naysayers of wanting to kill the American economy's golden goose, and says that the only guardrail needed on AI is his, the president's, high IQ and intuition."

Trump, Abramsky laments, is turning his "violent animus" against everyone from "besieged Federal Reserve board member Lisa Cook" to Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney.

"Now that the Supreme Court has put the nail in the coffin of Trump's efforts to use the Post Office to sabotage the 2026 elections," Abramsky argues, "expect Trump to focus just as much ire on the Court's justices as he has done on Lisa Cook … After all, hell hath no fury like a narcissistic president scorned by a hard-right SCOTUS majority. Expect Trump's venom to also be aimed at Federal Reserve Chair Kevin Warsh after he and his colleagues voted to raise interest rates on Wednesday … Trump is, as Thomas Edsall wrote in The New York Times this week, living in a fantasy world — a bubble whose membrane allows in no dissent and no information that runs contrary to the childish superhero narrative that he has created around himself."

Abramsky continues, "Yes, it's beyond pathetic, and, yes, it makes good fodder for late-night TV. But it's also increasingly dangerous. Trump is a runaway train and, despite the urgency of the moment, none of his lackey Cabinet members seem even remotely willing to prime the brakes."