It feels like we stepped into a cursed alternate reality in 2016, and the years since have been a hazy nightmare occupied by warped caricatures of politicians and horror scenarios straight out of a George Orwell novel.
Alternate or not, it’s our reality, and grim as it may seem, it’s all we have. We don’t get a re-do on the 2016 election, the four years that followed, or Donald Trump‘s second presidential victory in 2024. Those are just facts of this new, unprecedented life, and we’ve got no choice but to accept them or slip into the sweet bliss of madness.
For those of us looking to hang onto our sanity for a few more years, we’re eyeing Donald Trump’s second term with a mixture of despair, terror, and resignation. As we watch him stack his cabinet with morally bankrupt millionaires and hopelessly incompetent potatoes, we have nothing but apathy — or, in some cases, a truly violent distaste — for the president-elect, but he seems to think we’re feeling the exact opposite.
Trump has never been known for having a grasp on reality, but his already tenuous relationship with the real world has been slipping of late. It seems he’s fully made the move to crazy town, now that his term is weeks away, and Trump is taking to Truth Social to scream about how popular he is among the fantasy people he’s dreamed up in his empty head.
Shrieking like an incoherent toddler on a sugar high, Trump posted, without a lick of context, that “EVERYBODY WANTS TO BE MY FRIEND!!!” It’s unclear what prompted him to blast such an apparent lie for the world to see, but it comes across like a jilted child trying to gaslight themselves into feeling better.
News flash, Donny boy, but all those people rushing to kiss your ring aren’t doing so because they like you. They’re also not doing it because they think you’ll be a good leader — they’re doing it because they’ve seen how cranially inept you are, and they’re lining up to be the next puppet master.
After years of witnessing how easy it is to buy Trump’s favor and manipulate his actions, high-powered people across the world are rushing to support the president-elect. They’re hoping to join the lineup of Trump loyalists who, through nothing more than high praise and a nice buy-in, are granted high-level positions, massive paychecks, and broad power. It takes little more than a nice word to turn Trump into putty, easily shapeable by the first person to string words together in a way that the brainless president enjoys.
So that’s what they’re doing. They want to be your friend, Don, because they know how unimaginably vacant you are. All those “friends” are here to manipulate you into doing their will, and you’re prepped and ready to give them exactly what they want. There’s a reason all these new friends only showed up once you won the election, bud. All that bootlicking they’re engaging in isn’t because you’re such a great guy, it’s because you’re such a powerful guy. They’re here to shave some of that influence off, wherever they can get it, but you can bet they won’t stick around once the chickens come home to roost.