John Kay (caricaturist)
Mr. OBrien the Irish giant the tallest man in the known world being near nine feet high.
(1803)

"Maybe that means that he secretly wants to be sent there, too?"

Our incumbent’s Comeuppance seems inevitable because he possesses a single defense, or perhaps that defense possesses him. When faced with even a minor conflict, he always escalates. I do not mean to suggest, by mentioning this fact, that he has not amply lived up to his newly minted reputation as also always ultimately chickening out, but on his way to the henhouse, he tends to escalate whatever tempest he’s stumbled into this time. He seems especially blessed in his ability to attract tempests, so he’s forever producing headlines and sparking provocative commentary. “What’s he up to now?” Nobody seems the least bit surprised when (never if) another controversy emerges, for he spawns them as reliably as a low-pressure ridge produces tornadoes. He might go into business as Calamity, Incorporated if he weren’t already so damnably busy perverting the sacred office of our presidency.

I speak today of his Escalating nature, for his cure for whatever even distantly threatens him always involves escalation. He embodies the reason we need to maintain prisons, because some felons like him just can’t seem to keep themselves from becoming repeat offenders. It’s as if their prescription for curing any shortcoming naturally involves simply committing another crime. He usually manages to squeeze in a couple of high crimes and an odd misdemeanor or two before most breakfasts. It’s also not uncommon for him to spend at least the early parts of most evenings threatening worse. He reliably commits plenty, but he’s always promising much, much worse, though he rarely actually commits those, at least as far as we know, which isn’t far because he views reliable reporting as Fake News, a term he apparently holds the copyright registration to, since he uses it continuously. The most reliable way we’ve found to distinguish real Fake News from the counterfeit kind remains that when he insists it’s Fake News, it isn’t. (That’s a definitive indicator, never once proven wrong!)

So he inhabits a backward world, where the cure always involves injecting more of the poison. If a judge concludes that his immigration actions are definitively unconstitutional, for instance, his response won’t be contrition, which he appears incapable of offering. No, he reliably orders his minions—he’s absolutely drowning in minions—to repeat that forbidden action with an odd additional insult or two thrown in for extra good measure. He contempts more courts than William Kunsler at the peak of his performative power. As is, his reputation as a scofflaw far predates his first inauguration. Back when he was still a lowly “businessman” innocently refusing to rent properties to African-Americans, back when he was barely his father’s errand boy, he routinely ignored subpoenas, even from the Feds. He never received anything more than a distant threat of a potential slap on the wrist that nobody ultimately ever delivered. He came to understand that the law was intended to rein in others, and that his best defense was always, always, always a more offensive offense, so he became overwhelmingly offensive. Other than cash, he still hasn’t suffered much in the way of consequences.

If I could measure the potential of an imminent Comeuppance, I could hardly do better than consider him among the most likely, simply because he already has the most accumulated baggage, if I define baggage as the sheer volume of infractions gone unpunished. If that moral universe I was chirping about in the first Comeuppance installment actually arcs toward justice, he’s the guy with perhaps the longest streak of justice denied. This situation has been unfair to our incumbent, who might have become a productive member of civil society had he been subjected to a little tough love through actual inflicted jurisprudence. There’s nothing like a lengthy prison sentence to at least inhibit the ability of a habitual criminal from continuing his recidivist ways than throwing him behind bars for a few hundred days. We robbed him of the solitude he could have used to pen his own Mein Kampf. As it was, he had to achieve contempt by randomly escalating otherwise unprincipled acts unsupported by a unifying manifesto. He could have been such a better fascist if he’d had some prison time to refine his grudges into more concrete principles. (I’m just saying: we failed him.)

He presents as unprincipled. He refuses to follow anybody’s rules, even, especially, his own. His promises aren’t worth the breath he invests in threatening them. His track record seems especially abysmal. He starts by proclaiming that some obvious falsehood is true, and promising to correct the situation, a sure sign that whatever he’s targeting must already be working fine, much better than he expected, which is why he considers it to be so threatening. Then he takes actions he has no authority to command, often undermining the very justification he previously emphatically stated. An injured party, of which legions are surrounding his administration that make special points never actually to administer anything, as a matter of perverse principle, files a lawsuit seeking a quick cease and desist, which is almost always immediately granted, though a little less often if our incumbent appointed the judge because he made it a point only to nominate incompetent people for judgeships. Our incumbent then escalates, encouraging even more of the same thing he’s been enjoined from doing before, ultimately, chickening out again. He has laid more eggs than a generation of chickens. I predict he’ll keep escalating until he’s securely locked up and held absolutely incommunicado. There’s a place in El Salvador that might suit him, since he’s been illegally sending citizens there since before a judge ordered him to stop. Maybe that means that he secretly wants to be sent there, too?

©2026 by David A. Schmaltz - all rights reserved

Tags: #Comeuppance, #PureSchmaltz