Dear Everybody:
Trump started out the New Year even before it got here by posting, "The polls are rigged even more than the writers. The real number is 64%, and why not, our Country is ‘hotter’ than ever before. Isn’t it nice to have a STRONG BORDER, No Inflation, a powerful Military, and great Economy??? Happy New Year!"
--AirForceSP: "Trump isn’t even popular among 64% of his family!"
--Yavo: "No inflation. Great economy. You could have fooled me."
--Trump also ranted about George Clooney and other perceived foes.
--And he posted an epic rant about Tina Peters: "God Bless Tina Peters, who is now, for two years out of nice, sitting in a Colorado Maximum Security Prison, at the age of 73, and sick, for the ‘crime’ of trying to stop the massive voter fraud that goes on her State (where people are leaving in record numbers! Hard to wish her a Happy New Year, but to the Scumbag Governor, and the disgusting Republican (RINO!) DA who did this two her (nothing happens to the Dems and their phony Mail In Ballot System that makes it impossible for a Republican to win an otherwise very winnable State!) I wish them only the worst. May they rot in Hell. FREE TINA PETERS!" (Note: Tina Peters is actually in a medium security facility for women, and she is in prison because she committed four felonies and three misdemeanors involving her being the County Clerk and giving unauthorized access to voting machines--influencing a public servant, conspiracy to impersonate, official misconduct, violation of duty, and failing to follow Colorado’s Secretary of State regulations. Translation: She gave Trump cronies who were trying to steal the election access to voting machines and their data.)
--He also posted about his foreign policy wins--"2925 MAGA wins: Foreign Affairs, accompanied by a photo touting his winning of eight wars--but it was greeted with derision from MAGA followers:
--Patriot911: "I love Trump, but is this a serious post?"]
--Charlie Hargrave: "That’s nice. But none of those wars being stopped helped America First."
--Kyle: "You focused on foreigners and foreign countries the first year...We’ll see how much you mean about ‘America First’ you fucking corrupt pieces of shit. It should have always been America First and only."
--FleaFlyFlippin’: "When someone says, ‘I love you, but...’ they don’t love you. They’re just trying to distract you from the fact that they’re searching for the nearest exit. And hoping they can be gone before somebody hands them a Dixie cup of grape Kool-Aid."
Then at his fancy New Year’s Eve party, he opened the festivities with a wild rant about Somalis committing fraud in Minnesota. (It’s the new "They’re eating the cats, they’re eating the dogs" thing.)
--He (and Netanyahu and Rudy Giuliani) then watched reverently while a "speed painter" painted a massive portrait of Jesus Christ right there on stage. "I want to just do something very special," he said. "This is very different." (That’s certainly true.)
--Trump then auctioned off a painting of Jesus Christ, describing a bid of $2 million dollars as "peanuts," which tells you everything about the people at his party--and about Trump--though if you didn’t get the point, he then said, "These people are loaded with cash, just so you know."
--The painting eventually went for $2,750,000 dollars."
--Dana Johnson: "The biggest and most wasteful of all the New Year’s Eve parties in the entire world, including those in the poor to poorest nations everywhere. Never has a more wasteful and useless expression of wealth, waste of time, and excess rich Privilege been conducted than a president knowingly having a party to give a speech against others at New Year’s. A very, very bad human."
But he also posted something really revealing in his New Year marathon of posts, something that was good news for the rest of us and a good way to start off the new year:
--Trump: "We are removing the National Guard from Chicago, Los Angeles, and Portland despite the fact that CRIME has been greatly reduced by having these great Patriots in their cities, and ONLY by that fact. Those cities would be gone if it weren’t for the Federal Government stepping in."
--This was a case of Trump’s quitting before he got fired. Last week the Supreme Court ruled that the president did not have the authority to send troops into Chicago.
--Governor Newsom: "This admission by Trump and his occult cabinet members means this illegal intimidation tactic will finally come to an end."
--Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson praised the Supreme Court ruling last week, saying now "there is at least another branch of government that recognizes that the overreach by the president is a real threat to our democracy."
--Trump finished up his tweet with "It is hard to believe that these Democrat Mayors and Governors, all of whom are greatly incompetent, would want us to leave, especially considering the great progress that has been made??? President DJT."
--Trump of course had to include a threat with his announcement--"We will come back, perhaps in a much different and stronger form, when crime begins to soar again. Only a matter of time!"--but the truth is he’s in retreat and we know it. Better still, he knows it, too.
--And just in case he thought we were fooled, Governor Newsom responded to his tweet with: "We won in court and forced him to. Trump’s rambling here is the political version of ‘you can’t fire me, I quit.’"
The rest of the news can wait till tomorrow. Instead, here, for New Year’s Day, are a bunch of New Year’s wishes, predictions, and suggestions from an assortment of people:
--Mark Hamill: "On behalf of everyone in The Resistance movement following the massive EPSTEIN coverup, I want to wish all my fellow Radical Left Scum the happiest of holidays!"
--Shamballajones: "From mad king to mad king via a 249-year detour."
--GOP 2025: "Come for the lack of morals. Stay for the fascism."
--Heather Cox Richardson: "As we reach the end of 2025, it appears the law is catching up to an administration that began the year by acting as if the law and the Constitution didn’t exist. More than that, though, over the course of 2025, the administration’s refusal to recognize the tenets of American democracy has roused the American people to defend that democracy. It appears that as we approach the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, when British colonists on the North American continent took the radical step of rejecting the idea not just of King George III but of all kings, and launched the experiment of government based on the rule of law created by the people themselves, the American people are reclaiming that history."
--learn: "May the new year be better and far less tacky."
--arhpdx: "I’m betting that our growing pushback against the weakening administration will make 2026 a much happier year than 2025!...standing up to bullies always works, and rolling over always falls. So what are we going to do more of in 2026??"
lemay50: "My hope and best guess for 2026 is that we’ll continue kicking ass, resisting, and building our many hundreds of collaborating/resisting organizations such as Indivisible. We need to build a virtually invincible voter base to wipe that ugly smirk off the faces of all GOP quislings for a long time. Let’s make ‘26 highly memorable for democracy and the US Constitution!"
--Eleanor Roosevelt: "Freedom makes a huge requirement of every human being. With freedom comes responsibility. For the person who is unwilling to grow up, the person who does not want to carry his own weight, this is a frightening prospect."
--Mimer: "We won’t let the world’s oldest democracy die on our watch."
--Marjorie Taylor Greene: "His overall behavior in recent months...was that of a president who would stop at nothing to remain in office even after his second term expires. In my opinion, we’re going to see more war because what do you do when you really lose power, when you become a lame duck? How do you cling to power? You go to war."
--worldwidewebster: "Never in the history of humankind have so many people had the exact same New Year wish."
--JP Williams: "Trump will likely become the first president to have a national holiday declared in celebration of his demise."
--Robert Reich: "About a year ago, at the start of the Trump regime, a woman was about to pass me on the sidewalk and then stopped, turned toward me, and almost shouted, ‘It’s a fucking nightmare!’ It has been a ‘fucking nightmare.’ The fucking nightmare is not over by any stretch. It’s likely to get worse in 2026 as Trump and his sycophants, and many of America’s leaders, realize 2026 may be their last unrestrained year to inflict damage and siphon off the spoils. But the nightmare has awakened much of America to the truth about what has happened to this country--and what we must do to get it back on the track toward social justice, democracy, and widespread prosperity. I’d like to believe that the horrific darkness of this past year is a necessary prelude to a brighter and saner future. Be well. Be safe. We will prevail."
--Palmer Report: "Today the outlook is not so bleak. I think the tide really could be turning."
--Ian Bassin: "I think it’s going to be a rocky period, but I no longer think that Trump is going to pull an Orban and fundamentally consolidate authoritarian control of this country the way that it looked like he was going to do in March and April."
--Simon Tisdall: "Tyrants like Trump always fall--we can already predict how he will be dethroned. The US constitution protects incompetence. But don’t underestimate the self-destructive power of the President’s own hubris...as his failures, frustrations, and fantasies multiply, he will grow even more dangerously unstable. Trump’s biggest enemy is Trump. Those who would save the United States and themselves--at home and abroad--must employ all democratic means to contain, deter, defang, and depose him. But right now, the best, brightest hope is that, drowning in hubris, Trump will destroy himself."
--Shalonabena: "It’s a numbers game. The regime just doesn’t have the bodies to implement the massive amounts of labor needed to kidnap people, hold them in prison, and/or send them away. But they are working on it. The mass protests against the regime and the election-flips, to a point, are also preventing the regime from going full Stasi. This year’s election, may it come to fruition, can be the start of a return to democracy."
--Sarah Longwell: "(The world left after Trump) will reflect whether we stood up to Trump or rolled over for him. And I think history will look poorly on those who rolled over."
--Pete Buttigieg: "(There are) things happening in our politics that you wouldn’t have thought possible just months ago. Even in the Republican Party, we saw evidence that the president’s grip on power was beginning to end. We saw it on everything from the vote to release the Epstein files to what happened in Indiana redistricting. Then we saw election results happening not just on the East Coast, but in places like the South, with Democrats performing better than most optimistic scenarios had considered...We have an opening right now for 2026 to be a year of dramatic and positive change in this country."
--Aaron Rupar: "Trump will live forever, but only as a cautionary tale, one we tell successive generations to demonstrate that sustaining a democracy against the corrupt and the malevolent requires vigilance and determination."
--Taylor Swift: "This is a new year. A new beginning. And things will change."
--Songwriter Alec Thompson: "Now all around is cold and chill, but take good heart, fear no ill, for through the frost of winter comes a bright new year."
--The film NEW YEAR’S EVE: "Some people swear there’s no beauty left in the world, no magic. Then, how do you explain the entire world coming together on one night to celebrate the hope of a new year?"
And finally, from President Abraham Lincoln: "The best way to predict the future is to create it."
Welcome to 2026! We’re going to do great things!
Keep calm and carry on,
Connie Willis