Donald Trump, in September 2025, increasingly plays the role of the sick, mad king in rapid decline. He is increasingly inarticulate and sometimes incoherent.

He loses and forgets words. His legs are swollen, as are his hands, which are now also black and covered with makeup. From time to time, his face is twisted and distorted, and it appears that he is a victim of repeated mini strokes.

In September, Trump attempted to drive comedian Jimmy Kimmel off the air using the power of his administration to threaten media empires with ruin at the expense of U.S.freedom of speech. The Kimmel banishment lasted one week. Millions of late-night TV watchers were aggressively canceling their Disney accounts, and even right-wing politicians like Ted Cruse warned that for the U.S. government to control speech would inevitably be used against conservatives. Apparently, Trump, the wannabe dictator, can not stand up to the fans of Jimmy Kimmel.

Messages about Kimmel for President are appearing on social media. He may become the next Volodymyr Zelenskyy, a comedian who became the President of Ukraine in 2019. From 2015 to 2019, Zelenskyy starred in the satiric TV series, Servant of the People. In 2019, Zelenskyy announced his candidacy for president and won in a landslide. Of course, Zelenskyy surprised the world, leading his nation in response to the Russian invasion. He became more of a Churchill than a comedian to almost everyone’s surprise. Perhaps Kimmel will follow Zelenskyy’s path.

The great American crisis of the moment was the murder of a right-wing pundit. He was shot dead by a high-powered long-range rifle from a rooftop hundreds of feet away. That’s the American way. Long-range killing of a right-wing propagandist who opined that the right to use guns for killing was one of the hallmarks of a democracy.

Maybe he changed his mind at the last minute as the bullet pierced his neck. Maybe not. He also agreed with a line in Biblical Leviticus that gays (among others) should be executed. Trump made it clear when he realized that he could successfully blame the left and the Democratic Party for gun violence in the killing of one Charlie Kirk.

And the predicate, of course, expanding mad political violence was Trump’s attempt to remain in power by sacking the Capitol on January 6, 2021. The rioters threatened to hang Mike Pence, Trump’s Vice President, because he believed in obeying the Constitution. Trump, at the start of his second term in 2025, pardoned all January 6th “Patriots,” including their brutal assaults upon police.

Kirk was a modern version of Ernest Rohm, the leader of the “Brown Shirts”, the Nazi paramilitary wing. Rohm was murdered by the Nazi in the “Night of the Long Knives” for being too independent of Hitler’s and German capitalist desires. Horst Wessel was another thug killed in a fight with communists became a Nazi hero.

The real Trump’s overriding concern is preventing the release of the extensive data of sex criminal Jeffrey Epstein, which, if released to Congress and the public, is likely to force Trump out of office if the evidence includes the rape of young children or the knowledge of the sexual abuse of children.

Trump in action

Trump, at the same time, is both a bully and a coward. He celebrates his ability to strong-arm TV networks to ban Jimmy Kimmel from appearing on TV. And yet a few days later, when public sentiment turned toward Kimmel, the Donald lied that he had nothing to do with Kimmel in support of Free speech.

In the same week, a real dictator like Putin put on trial in absentia five members of the band Pussy Riot. They were sentenced to prison for 8 to 13 years. Kimmel, in contrast, is celebrated.

The destruction of free speech and the firing of performers is a serious matter that periodically stains American politics. For example, the Palmer Raids in 1919 and 1920 of the First Red Scare after the Communist led Revolution. Senator JosephMcCarthy led the next Red Scare from 1950 to 1954. Thousands of Americans accused of communist sympathies lost their jobs, and hundreds were imprisoned. The precise number is unclear since, for example, black lists of actors, performers, screenwriters, and directors were not published. But 300 could not find work for years under their stage names.

At the same time McCarthy was active, there was a similar "Lavender Scare," targeting gay government employees, which led to thousands being fired or forced to resign. And the anti-communist spirit of the times, Ethel and Julius Rosenberg were convicted of conspiracy to commit espionage and were executed in 1953. The Soviet archives from the Venona Project 1995 indicated that Julius was a soviet spy of little importance in developing the Soviet atomic bomb. As a spy, his role was military and industrial espionage, not atomic secrets. He should have been sent to prison and perhaps become one of many trades between US and Soviet spies. Ethel was not a spy.

Decades later, David Greenglass admitted he lied on the stand about Ethel's involvement to protect his own wife, Ruth. Ethel certainly did not deserve execution and was a victim of the Cold War.

I had a personal connection with my father, who was a U.S. Customs Inspector. He had a partner whose brother’s name was on a list of those harboring Communist sympathies.

He suddenly found it very hard to get the kind of NY high-level acting jobs he was used to. This went on for several years until about 1960, and then suddenly, some talented men and women could find work. McCarthy was long gone, but the influence of the House Un-American Activities Committee persisted until it was abolished in 1975

Trump is sick and rapidly declining

It’s important to understand that Donald Trump is not a healthy man. Trump’s performance during his meeting at Chequers, the country home of Kier Starmer British Prime Minister, was extraordinary. As was Trump’s New York United Nations rant.

President Donald Trump used his Thursday news conference with Keir Starmer to present a series of lies. He claimed yet again that he won the 2020 election over Joe Biden. He clearly did not. Trump proclaimed: “We’ve already solved inflation; we solved prices.” American consumers clearly disagree as prices continue to accelerate. Trump continues to insist that foreign countries, and not American companies and consumers, pay trump tariffs. Trump still asserts that “China is paying a very large tariff right now to the United States”. In reality, China has substantially reduced its trade with the U.S. In 2024, it was down to 14.8 percent of Chinese exports, dropping from 502 billion to 750 billion in 2022.

Some of the most important parts of China trade are not subject to Trump tariffs. The administration has exemptions for many electronic products, such as smartphones, computers, and semiconductors, helping Apple and other electronic giants. Meanwhile, and most importantly globally, both nations and corporations make new trade deals with foreign partners to avoid Trump tariffs as the U.S. loses markets.

Migration, according to Trump, was 25 million people a year under Biden. This is a wild overestimation. The last full month, in December 2024, under Biden, the feds recorded under 11 million nationwide “encounters” with migrants, including millions rapidly expelled from the country; even adding those who evaded detection, estimated by House Republicans as being roughly 2.2 million. Trump also claimed without evidence that prisons were releasing convicts into the U.S. from countries such as Venezuela and the Republic of Congo. There is no coherent data confirming such claims, according to CNN and an expert on global prison population.

Another Trump exaggeration was the claim that the U.S.gave Ukraine 350 billion dollars in aid. The US government inspector general overseeing Ukraine says the US disbursed about $94 billion for the response as of the end of June 2025.

A complete lie was Trump’s assertion that Nancy Pelosi rejected Trump’s offer of 10,000 National Guardsmen on January 6th, 2021. The House Speaker has no control over the DC National Guard.

Trump, the peacemaker, claimed to have resolved seven wars. That would have been great. But Trump’s role was much more limited. For example, Ethiopia and Egypt were never at war during the Trump presidency. They did dispute Ethiopia’s 4 billion Grand Renaissance Dam as Egypt raised concerns about the Nile water share. Talks collapsed in June 2025.

In September 2025, Trump was at his peak of insults, accompanied by lies. Of note on the lie front by President Trump was this: "Renewables are a joke. Wind turbines don't work, cost too much, and are built in China, which hardly uses them." In reality, renewables are among the cheapest new energy resources. A 2024 report by Lazard, a global financial advisory firm, found that unsubsidized solar and wind were frequently cheaper than polluting fossil fuels. China is the world's leading manufacturer of wind turbines. China produced over 500 gigawatts in 2024, almost half of global capacity.

Conclusion

Trump wields a global threat that is increasingly affecting the United States as the world moves on in building an increasingly American-free world order. China and Canada are good examples of countries moving away from the U.S. In 2024, the U.S. was the largest exporter of soybeans to China. The latest amount of US soybeans sold to China was zero. Brazil has become the least soybean supplier. Canada is establishing good trade relations with the European Union, Asia, and Mexico. In September 2025, Canada canceled tariffs on American goods and is negotiating new fair trade rules. Canada has also post ecological laws that control fishing in Canadian waters, which will be a severe blow for U.S. fishing. There has been an enormous drop in US tourism. Many nations around the world are developing new trade partners and rules, leaving the USA behind.

The Trump administration is apparently focused on war with the American People and the United States. Bring in the Marines and deport foreigners.

The economic consequences of Trump's tariffs that help the rich and punish the poor leave Trump with the poorest levels of popular support, now in the 30% range. The economy, according to economists and pundits, will be worsening to various degrees. Trump wants to fire the economists.

Ordinary Americans are increasingly fed up with Trumpism. Happy days for DJT will not be heard again until Trump is removed by JD, the vice president, and the Cabinet invoking the 25th Amendment.

Meanwhile, Trump is working diligently on the arrest of his political enemies. He is not hiding his intent to pervert justice. The Trump-driven arrest of the former FBI Director is even too much for Fox News. James Comey’s crime was apparently that he was not aggressive enough in punishing Hillary Clinton. But in fact, Comey’s strange actions against Clinton before election day most likely led to the first Trump presidency.

There is some strange, perverted justice in the Comey case. The man, apparently inTrump’s mind, was not sufficiently supine.

There is a growing and common sentiment that Trump has reached the point of a mad king who cannot be bothered to care what happens. But millions do care, and that is not just sentiments shared by Democratic politicians. State governments, both Blue and Red, too, are standing up surprisingly to Trump, who is increasingly weaker politically and practically.

The second Trump Regime features a rogue's gallery of incompetents who are loyal to Trump, mixed in with Religious fanatics dreaming of an ultra-conservative Christian America, and crypto-fascist enthusiasts who want to wage war against democracy.

It’s not hard to predict that a mad king who has lost or is losing his mind and who is responsible for a bad economy is not presenting a winning case, and not one that will easily be able to abolish democracy, just because everyone either loves or fears the mad king. Americans prefer a Jimmy Kimmel and a South Park to a Mad King who is not funny and lets prices keep rising.