More on yesterday’s news. Which, as some have pointed out, might have been deliberately intended as a diversion away from… everything else. But especially ICE and Epstein.
NY Times, opinion by Maureen Dowd, 7 Feb 2026: Trump’s Obama Derangement Syndrome
It seems etymologically, metaphysically, geologically and ethically impossible that President Trump could reach a new low. But he has.
Every Friday, when I’m planning my column, I find fresh evidence that the president is unfit for his office. He taunts his foes in crude, creepy ways and tries to tattoo his name on everything.
Then about the video and Karoline Leavitt’s defense of it. Later:
Trump had a Dostoyevsky-esque moment on Thursday at the National Prayer Breakfast in Washington, when he confessed that his ego would not let him lose the 2020 race.
“You know, they rigged the second election,” he said. “I had to win it, had to win it. I needed it for my own ego. I would have had a bad ego for the rest of my life. Now I really have a big ego, though.”
He was admitting that our ginned-up election integrity crisis was simply an exercise in bending the truth to his bottomless vanity. “His ego could not handle the fact that he lost, so he had to pretend there was a voting crisis,” David Axelrod told me. “The world is still paying for that.”
And so on.
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NY Times, opinion by Jamelle Bouie, 7 Feb 2026: This Is Just Who Trump Is
What motivates President Trump?
Then discussing the video. Then:
Let’s walk back to where we started. What motivates Trump? The answer is simple: racism. You might also say ego and raw self-interest, but the two are connected. Racism, among other things, is a kind of chauvinism, a belief in one’s inherent superiority, based on nothing other than a meaningless accident of birth. It’s an ideology that papers over feelings of inadequacy, that tells you that — no matter what you have or have not accomplished in your life — you’re still better than someone, some group.
Recalling his history as “the spoiled son of a self-made man.” And his seething resentment of Obama:
You’re the laughingstock of polite society, a punchline for the privileged. You think you’re superior enough to be the president of the United States — the highest honor in your country — but the actual president is a man of humble origins, a minority of the kind your family didn’t even rent to when you were in the landlord business. And he is claiming power that rightfully belongs to you. He’s even mocking you, ridiculing you for all the world to see.
For years, a cottage industry of political observers has contorted itself to obscure and occlude the obvious. That regardless of what others see in him, Trump’s entire political career — from his embrace of birtherism to his hatred of birthright citizenship — cannot be understood outside the context of his bitter, deep-seated racism.
And so are those who support him, apparently.
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So how to make sense of *this*? (Setting aside for now the incoherent idea of “heaven”.)
The Bulwark, Andrew Egger, 6 Feb 2026: Trump at the Pearly Gates, subtitled “Why the president thinks he’s going to Heaven.”
Referring to the National Prayer Breakfast the other day.
Unsurprisingly, at his age, Trump has the afterlife on his mind a lot. It pops up at odd times: He’ll be mid-rant about criminal illegals, or the dastardly fake news, or America’s Dawning Golden Age, and suddenly he’ll be giving himself a spiritual scorecard: “I want to try and get to heaven, if possible,” he’ll muse; or “I don’t think there’s anything that’s going to get me into heaven. I think I’m not maybe heaven-bound.”
But yesterday, surrounded by spiritual leaders, political sycophants, and the spiritual leaders who are his biggest political sycophants, Trump offered the clearest formulation yet of his own bespoke soteriology. Don’t worry, he reassured the audience: He’d been mostly kidding when he said he wasn’t heaven-bound. “I really think I probably should make it,” he said. “I mean, I’m not a perfect candidate, but I did a hell of a lot of good for perfect people.”
He really thinks this?? Later:
This is part of what makes Trump-brand Christianity as a cultural and political force so dangerous. Trump’s political project is seen by the MAGA faithful as utterly righteous, the work of God on earth against the forces of Satan. But he has broad license to transgress all moral boundaries as he does that work. When he does so, it doesn’t cause MAGA Christians to reevaluate whether he’s actually on the side of the angels. Instead, it makes them perversely grateful that he’s doing it so their hands can be clean.
This is a simple-minded take. Of course.
None of this, it should probably go without saying, is compatible in the slightest with the teachings of actual Christianity. Sin is sin, the faith teaches, no matter whom it’s directed against: “Whatever you do to the least of these,” Jesus taught, “you do to me.” The world isn’t divided into “perfect people” on one (political) side and agents of Satan on the other: “All have sinned,” Paul wrote, “and fall short of the glory of God.” Everyone, presidents included, is called to see their own sin with an unsparing eye, feel it in their bones, fall to their knees for forgiveness, spend their lives struggling to turn from it.
Trump doesn’t do this. He doesn’t think he’s obliged to. And why would he? None of the “spiritual leaders” that surround him seem particularly uncomfortable with their arrangement. The loudest Christians in his life have nothing but praise for the way he conducts his business: “the greatest champion of faith that we have ever had.”
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Short takes.
- Salon, Mike Lofgren, 7 Feb 2026: Trump abolishes the Second Amendment, subtitled “MAGA’s duplicity leads to a total reversal on gun rights — along with a dizzying 360 on foreign policy”
- Comment: Because you can’t let people who are opposed to MAGA and Trump have guns!
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Examples of dishonesty and shamelessness and egotism and moronic behavior; from aggregate site JMG:
- (From Politico) Cultists Are Tricking People To Sign Utah Petition On Gerrymandering Ban By Claiming It Bans ICE Agents;
- (From CNN) Trump Takes Credit For Prisoner Released Under Obama;
- (Via press release, since deleted) Boebert Takes Credit For Projects She Voted Against;
- (From Politico) Trump Offered To Fund Hudson River Tunnel In Return For Renaming Penn Station And Dulles Airport For Him;
- (from Facebook) Starnes: LGBTQ Employees Are Destroying Wendy’s
