NEWSOM'S PARODIES: MAGA World Is So Close to Getting It...

   

Gavin Newsom’s parodies are riling people up—and they don’t quite seem to understand why. (photo: Sean Rayford/Getty)

...that a politician should not conduct himself in public like a dim, insufferable child.

Tom Nichols / The Atlantic

Aug 24 2025 

 

The Fox News commentator Dana Perino has finally had enough. “You have to stop it with the Twitter thing,” she told the chief executive. “I don’t know where his wife is,” she fumed. “If I were his wife, I would say, ’You are making a fool of yourself! Stop it!’” She went on to note that he has a big job, and that he has to be “a little more serious.”

What a relief to see someone from Fox, the flagship MAGA network, getting completely fed up with juvenile social-media behavior from a national politician. Except the chief executive in this case was not Donald Trump, the president of the United States, but Gavin Newsom, the governor of California.

Newsom has taken to trolling Trump on social media by imitating his bizarre rants, odd capitalizations, and affection for exclamation points. He has also posted several memes that are on-the-nose parodies of things Trump has fed to his followers for years.  

Politico recently summarized some of Newsom’s activities on social media:

There’s Newsom on Mount Rushmore. There’s Newsom getting prayed over by Tucker Carlson, Kid Rock and an angelic, winged Hulk Hogan. There’s Newsom posting in all caps, saying his mid-cycle redistricting proposal has led “MANY” people to call him “GAVIN CHRISTOPHER ’COLUMBUS’ NEWSOM (BECAUSE OF THE MAPS!). THANK YOU FOR YOUR ATTENTION TO THIS MATTER.”

Newsom got even closer to Trumpian perfection with a post yesterday that is almost impossible to tell apart from an actual outburst from the president:

WHAT IS WRONG WITH CRACKER BARREL?? KEEP YOUR BEAUTIFUL LOGO!!! THE NEW ONE LOOKS LIKE CHEAP VELVEETA “CHEESE” FROM WALMART, THE PLACE FOR “GROCERIES” (AN OLD FASHIONED TERM)!!!

Some of these jibes are clumsy, but many are well crafted and even funny, despite the unsettling fact that the person whom the governor is parodying is the commander in chief.

And the proof that Newsom is onto something is that his supporters are reacting with genuine rage. Perhaps Newsom has hit a nerve because satire is always more effective than name-calling. 

Mango Mussolini or Cheeto Jesus (both of which refer to the president’s unusual bronzed skin tone) appeal only to Trump’s opponents. But a post that perfectly mimics Trump’s antics is a mirror—one that prompts people to consider how Trump looks to everyone else in the world.

At the least, Newsom has scored a direct hit on the double standard both in the national press and among the public that excuses Trump’s deeply concerning behavior as merely part of Trump’s shtick, some facet of his personality that cannot be held to account.

Too many reporters have resorted to sane-washing Trump, forcing his bizarre statements somehow to make sense by cherry-picking the occasional phrase or sentence related to policy while ignoring his kooky rants about sharks and his Stalinist threats against his political enemies.

Newsom’s parodies sidestep all the hand-wringing criticism about how presidents should act: Instead they show, rather than explain, what it should feel like when anyone but Trump acts the way Trump acts.

Perino is just one of many who is in high dudgeon. And Newsom responded to Perino with a dead-on Trump-like response: “DANA ’DING DONG’ PERINO (NEVER HEARD OF HER UNTIL TODAY!)”

Vice President J. D. Vance has lashed out at Newsom, telling Fox that the Californian’s attacks aren’t landing, because his trolling “ignores the fundamental genius of President Trump’s political success, which is that he’s authentic”; in other words, everyone knows that Newsom’s crackpot hijinks are fake but Trump’s are real—a rather odd defense.

And of course, the MAGA posters on social media and Facebook have flown off the handle with rage. (Newsom is having a “mental breakdown,” said one MAGA influencer, without a trace of irony.) As it turns out, the people who pioneered the slogan “Fuck your feelings” are impossibly delicate souls.

Others have adopted a pose of criticizing Newsom more in sorrow than anger. “I’m all for appreciating crass humor,” said Harmeet Dhillon, a lawyer and MAGA social-media stalwart who is now assistant attorney general for civil rights in the Trump Justice Department. “I love South Park. It’s hilarious.” (One wonders if she’s been watching the show recently.) “But don’t just be a loser copying the most powerful person in the world’s style.”

Trump’s majordomo at Fox, Sean Hannity, summed up this New Seriousness among the president’s supporters when he tut-tutted Newsom’s “performative confrontational style,” adding that “maybe it wins you points with the loony radical base in your party,” but it won’t win elections.

How refreshing: Fox commentators and leading figures in the Trump administration all agreeing that a politician should not conduct himself in public like a dim, insufferable child.

They’re all so close to getting it.

I admit that I am conflicted about Newsom’s approach. Some years ago, I wrote that Trump’s opponents, especially the ones addicted to terms such as Drumpf, the Orange Menace, Cadet Bone Spurs, and others needed to act like adults, and convey the gravity of their concerns about Trump instead of treating him like either an inconsequential boob or a towering werewolf whose name must not be invoked. The same goes for the too-online liberals who refer to “Rethuglicans” and “RepubliKKKans”—uncomfortably similar to the media-addicted right-wingers who use infantile slams such as DemonRats and Killary.

One aspect of Newsom’s parodies have genuinely made me laugh: his posting of pictures done in the style of the artist and Trump admirer Jon McNaughton, who is a competent illustrator but whose paintings are strange. They’re a kind of hallucinatory mash-up of Grant Wood and medieval iconography, in which Trump carries the world like Atlas, or is blessed by dead presidents, or rescues the Constitution from glowering liberals. (The Newsom image with the deceased Hulk Hogan was so perfectly rendered that at first I thought it was created by McNaughton himself.) Trump supporters seem to love these pictures. Newsom has shown just how weird they are.

Newsom has made his point and should move on. But his lasting accomplishment has been to reveal that Trump’s supporters are not as impervious to reality as the president’s opponents might believe.

I suspect—as I have since the day Trump announced his first run for president a decade ago—that the MAGA faithful are hypersensitive to criticisms of Trump because, in their hearts, many of them know. They know that many of Trump’s statements are offensive and alarmingly detached from reality. They know that Trump has a disordered personality. They know that the president is a daily embarrassment to his party and to his nation.

For years, these MAGA partisans have employed various tactics to prevent the imminent pain of cognitive dissonance. They resort to “what about” arguments aimed at other politicians; they claim that Trump actually knows what he’s doing or that they understand the message underneath all the broken thoughts, garbled words, and dead-end sentences.

Now Newsom is forcing them to see what Trump looks like without the distorting force field created by Trump’s showmanship and his aggressive delivery of incoherent statements.

Come to think of it, maybe MAGA world isn’t close to getting it; maybe they do get it, and maybe that’s why, this time, they’re especially angry.

Newsom's paodies of the clown show are striking a collective MAGA nerve.

 

Poor Kristi Noem doesn't like 'South Park' highlighting her awfulness

A still from Wednesday night's episode of "South Park" depicts Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem as she pulls her firearm to shoot a service dog in the audience of a live "Dora the Explorer" stage show.

Trump bootlicker incredulously says president would never make fun of how women look

 

By Emily Singer 

Daily Kos Staff

Monday, August 11, 2025 at 10:30:08a MDT

 

REPUBLISHED BY: 

Blue Country Gazette Blog 

Rim Country Gazette Blog 

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem is trying to play the victim after the satirical animated show "South Park" mercilessly mocked her on Wednesday night’s episode.

"It’s so lazy to just constantly make fun of women for how they look. It’s only the liberals and the extremists who do that," Noem told right-wing podcaster Glenn Beck on Thursday night, referring to how “South Park” made fun of her obviously Botox- and filler-filled face. "If they wanted to criticize my job, go ahead and do that, but clearly, they can’t. They just pick something petty like that."

Of course, the show made fun of more than just Noem's looks. It also ridiculed her cringeworthy cosplaying, the fact that she shot and killed her own puppy, and that she's one of the biggest cheerleaders for President Donald Trump's evil immigration plan. 

But more than that, Noem claiming that only "liberals" make fun of how women look is insane, given that she works for Trump, the king of making crude and disgusting comments about how women look.

Over the years, he’s made fun of pop icon Cher's plastic surgery, called actor Bette Midler "ugly," said Angelina Jolie is "not a beauty," said Rosie O'Donnell has a "fat, ugly face," and accused MSNBC host Mika Brzezinski of "bleeding badly from a face-lift," just to name a few.

In 2018, The New York Times published an article laying out some of the other times Trump made fun of women's appearances: 

Mr. Trump has accused women of having “fat, ugly” faces and of repelling voters because of their looks. He called one woman a “crazed, crying lowlife” and said another was a “dog” who had the “face of a pig.” He said Hillary Clinton’s bathroom break during a 2015 presidential debate was “too disgusting” to talk about. He has repeatedly mocked women for being overweight.

During the 2016 presidential campaign, he also made fun of then-Fox News host Megyn Kelly for having “blood coming out of her wherever." (Kelly now debases herself daily to lick Dear Leader's boots because she can make more money in the right-wing grift-o-sphere by doing that.)

But leave it to Noem to play the victim amid authentic criticism of her horrific behavior.

“Imagine working for Donald Trump and saying ‘it’s only the liberals’ who make fun of women’s looks,” journalist Mehdi Hasan wrote in a post on X. “They have no shame whatsoever.”

Two Takes on South Park Episode Skewering Trump

A still from South Park. (photo: Comedy Central/Everett Collection) 

TAKE 1: The White House says the show is “fourth-rate” after it showed Trump with “tiny” genitals. 

Manisha Krishnan / WIRED

July 27, 2025   

 

In an interview with Vanity Fair in September, South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone all but swore off satirizing Donald Trump, with Parker noting, “I don’t know what more we could possibly say.”

We found out what more they could say on Friday, in brutal fashion. The same day Paramount announced a five-year streaming deal with South Park, including 50 new episodes, the show’s 27th season premiere mercilessly mocked both President Trump and the network for capitulating to his demands, settling with him over the 60 Minutes lawsuit, and canceling The Late Show With Stephen Colbert. 

The episode, called “Sermon on the ’Mount,” did not hold back on crass jokes aimed at Trump, showing him with a “teeny tiny” penis both in animation and as a deepfake and portraying him as Satan’s lover in a style reminiscent of the gay Saddam Hussein character from the 1999 movie South Park: Bigger, Longer … Uncut.

The episode aired as Paramount is set to merge with media company Skydance. Politicians and media personalities alike are speculating that the company’s eagerness to keep Trump happy is motivated by gaining the US Federal Communications Commission’s approval of the deal, which was made official Thursday evening. 

Before being fired, Colbert, a late-night ratings leader, described Paramount’s $16-million settlement with Trump as a “big fat bribe” and on Monday’s show he said “the gloves are off” while telling the president “go fuck yourself.” Between Colbert’s remaining season, network colleague Jon Stewart’s scathing indictment of both Paramount and CBS, the new South Park deal, and a transformative merger, the company appears to be looking at a period where some of its biggest stars are openly hostile to both it and the president.

“I welcome Skydance’s commitment to make significant changes at the once storied CBS broadcast network,” FCC chairman Brendan Carr—who wrote Project 2025’s chapter on the telecommunications agency—reportedly said in a statement Thursday supporting the merger. “Today’s decision also marks another step forward in the FCC’s efforts to eliminate invidious forms of DEI.”

Paramount did not respond to WIRED’s requests for comment. In a statement emailed to WIRED, White House spokesperson Taylor Rogers derided South Park as irrelevant and derided “left” fans who liked the season opener.

“The Left’s hypocrisy truly has no end—for years they have come after South Park for what they labeled as ’offense’ [sic] content, but suddenly they are praising the show. Just like the creators of South Park, the Left has no authentic or original content, which is why their popularity continues to hit record lows,” she wrote.

“This show hasn’t been relevant for over 20 years and is hanging on by a thread with uninspired ideas in a desperate attempt for attention. President Trump has delivered on more promises in just six months than any other president in our country’s history—and no fourth-rate show can derail President Trump’s hot streak.”

Paramount’s press release announcing the South Park deal—reported to be worth $1.5 billion—describes the show as “one of the most valuable TV franchises in the world.” It also praises Parker and Stone as “fearless” and “boundary-pushing.”

But the roasting of Trump in “Sermon on the ’Mount” was also something else: mean. Deeply, devastatingly mean.

After being accused by the Canadian prime minister of being akin to a “dictator from the Middle East,” Trump lashes out at a White House artist for painting him with a small penis. 

The small dick theme is repeated throughout the episode, with numerous portraits of him humping things and animals and Satan telling him, “I can’t even see anything, it’s so small.” 

Trump petulantly threatens to sue him, and the artist, and Jesus, and the entire town—basically anyone who pisses him off. It’s also implied that he’s on the Epstein list.

“Do you really want to end up like Colbert?” Jesus asks the townspeople, who are pushing back against forced Christianity in their kids’ school. He calls out Paramount by name, saying, “We’re going to get canceled, you idiots.”

The town strikes a deal with the president, forcing them to do pro-Trump messaging—a nod to Trump’s claim on Truth Social that Paramount’s “new owners” have agreed to give him $20 million in advertising and public service announcements in addition to the settlement. (Paramount told Deadline the settlement doesn’t include PSAs and said it “has no knowledge of any promises or commitments made to President Trump other than those set forth in the settlement proposed by the mediator and accepted by the parties.”) 

The show is then interrupted by a PSA, where a deepfake Trump stumbles around naked through the desert; this time, his genitals have a pair of googly eyes attached. “Trump: His penis is teeny-tiny, but his love for us is large,” a narrator says. The ad ends with text on a black backround: “He Gets Us. All Of Us.” “He Gets Us” is also the slogan used for an actual Christian ad campaign.

You can argue that portraying Trump as a narcissistic man-child and focusing so heavily on his appearance is lowbrow. But Nick Marx, an associate professor of film and media studies at Colorado State University, says it’s also a refreshing change from the defiant messaging of Colbert and others.

“It’s fucking funny as hell that they seek to sexually humiliate Trump,” he claims, saying it’s an effective troll of what he believes to be the president’s “vanity and insecurity.”

“I think that is the card to play … and I am frustrated that more of the comedians that I love on the left haven't leaned into that really harsh attack of him.”

Critics of the episode on X issued complaints that “the left took over south park” and “this show is for libtards” while others outright expressed fear that Trump will get the show canceled, saying, “South Park was good while it lasted.”

But making small-dick jokes isn’t woke—it’s exactly that type of humor, along with an affinity for saying the r-word and racial and homophobic slurs that helped cultivate South Park’s right-wing audience. Marx thinks that’s a good thing for liberals.

“Right-wing humorists, the Joe Rogans and Andrew Schulzes of the world, they're the ones occupying this offensive free-speech space. And so anything that the left can do to reclaim artists like Parker and Stone would be a benefit to them.”

In a meeting Thursday, the FCC’s Carr said he’s “not a ’South Park’ watcher,” NBC News reports. He also said Trump is against “a handful of national programmers” who “control and dictate to the American what the narrative is, what they can say, what they can think.” 

But, while many of his attacks have focused on news organizations themselves—ABC, CBS, NPR, even The Wall Street Journal—censoring cherished entertainers could rile up members of the public who frankly may not care that much about the plight of journalists.

That’s something that Paramount, too, has to contend with now.

“They just inked this $1.5 billion deal that, to me, is a gesture of full and unequivocal support from Paramount,” Marx says. “The syndication and streaming licenses that South Park draws are worth much, much more than they've been paying Parker and Stone over the years.” He says he wouldn’t be surprised if Parker and Stone got away with nothing more than a slap on the wrist.

But, as the episode itself indicated, Trump has been relentless with his lawsuit targets and openly bragged about getting Colbert fired and keeping the media in line.

Michael Sozan, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, says he could absolutely see Paramount trying to tone down South Park’s content, considering that the company settled on “the flimsiest of lawsuits,” predicated on the claim that 60 Minutes edited an interview with Kamala Harris to make it more flattering to her. But he said doing so could “wake up a sleeping giant”: the public. The streamer has also promised Trump it will cancel its DEI initiatives.

“A lot of American people are starting to be more and more aware of how Trump is trying to censor reporters, but now also just entertainment shows that he disagrees with. That is something that authoritarians do,” he says. People could respond with outrage or boycotts.

But he cautions that’s not Paramount’s only problem as it clinches the $8 billion Skydance merger.

Already, senators Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren have written a letter to Skydance CEO David Ellison seeking answers about the “secret side deal with President Trump” that allegedly offered him future PSAs. Trump has called Ellison’s father, Oracle cofounder Larry Ellison, a “friend.” California officials are also looking into whether the company engaged in bribery related to the deal, as Semafor reported.

“If there's a Democratic administration and a Democratic Department of Justice starting three years from now, or Democratic House or Senate, Paramount also has opened itself up to the possibility of lots of investigations,” Sozan says.

It’s fascinating that South Park and late-night comics are issuing some of the harshest rebukes of Trump, though Sozan says satire—and joy—are considered by scholars to be an effective tool against authoritarians who “want to keep people depressed and in line.”

He thinks the backlash over Paramount’s mounting controversies could be a genuine “cultural flash point.”

So far, there’s no indication that Paramount plans to censor South Park. Then again, the Skydance merger has only just been greenlit.

At the end of the premiere episode, Cartman and Butters, seemingly stand-ins for Parker and Stone, try to kill themselves because Cartman is depressed that “woke is dead” and he has nothing to make fun of anymore.

“I think I might be going,” Butters says. “Yep, sweet death is about to come. I love you man,” Cartman replies.

For fans of the show—and free speech in general—let’s hope that’s not true. But just in case, you should probably watch that episode now.

 

 Take 2: Trump White House Rages Over ‘South Park’ Episode

 

Satan (left) and Donald Trump (right) appear in 'South Park.' (photo: Comedy Central)

Andrew Perez and Asawin Suebsaeng / Rolling Stone

25 July 25 

 

Donald Trump’s White House is melting down over Wednesday night’s South Park premiere, which just so happened to attack the president’s “teeny tiny” manhood and depict him as literally in bed with the devil, effectively taking over the role held on the show for years by the late genocidal dictator Saddam Hussein.

“The Left’s hypocrisy truly has no end — for years they have come after South Park for what they labeled as ’offense’ [sic] content, but suddenly they are praising the show,” Trump White House spokesperson Taylor Rogers told Rolling Stone in a statement this morning. “Just like the creators of South Park, the Left has no authentic or original content, which is why their popularity continues to hit record lows. This show hasn’t been relevant for over 20 years and is hanging on by a thread with uninspired ideas in a desperate attempt for attention. President Trump has delivered on more promises in just six months than any other president in our country’s history — and no fourth-rate show can derail President Trump’s hot streak.”

The episode came just hours after it was reported that Paramount had agreed to buy the global streaming rights for South Park in a five-year deal worth $1.5 billion.

The twice-impeached, repeatedly indicted president has for decades harbored intense, mean-spirited pop-culture fixations, and that personality trait has not changed six months into his second administration. It would be easier to shrug off his celebrity obsessions as mere cattiness, if waging war on late-night television and its corporate owners weren’t an actual facet of his administration’s sprawling project of authoritarianism and fear.

Prior to the White House’s statement, Rolling Stone had asked several Trump advisers if clips of the latest South Park episode had been circulating among Trump’s staff. One senior administration official replied, “Of course,” noting how much their phone had lit up about it. A Trump adviser also said they’d seen it, and that as a longtime fan of the series, they found it “disappointing.”

Trump recently secured a hefty payout from Paramount to settle his meritless lawsuit against CBS News’ 60 Minutes, based on his claims that the show selectively edited an interview with former Vice President Kamala Harris, his 2024 opponent, to “make her look better.” The agreement is part of a broader pattern of major corporations settling Trump’s baseless lawsuits, agreeing to shovel millions of dollars into his presidential library fund to accommodate the president.

The Paramount settlement comes as the outfit seeks regulatory approval for its merger with Skydance — and appears to contain more than just a payout to Trump’s library fund. According to Trump, the deal includes a $16 million settlement as well as $20 million “from the new Owners, in Advertising, PSAs, or similar Programming.”

South Park specifically skewered the reported PSA arrangement on Wednesday. The episode concluded with an AI-generated PSA showing a fully nude Trump wandering the desert with a “teeny tiny” penis.

Paramount has faced mounting criticism over its efforts to cozy up to Trump. The executive producer of 60 Minutes quit in April, saying he was no longer allowed “to make independent decisions” running the show. The company’s move to part ways with host Stephen Colbert and permanently end The Late Show has created an uproar, too.

Earlier this week, Colbert responded to a Truth Social post from Trump in which the president said he hoped he was the reason Colbert had been fired.

“Go fuck yourself,” Colbert said.

 

COLBERT AXED: Billionaire Class Buying Up All the Media So We Can’t Laugh at Them Anymore

  

Trump world is run by thin-skinned losers who have swapped patronage for censorship

Opheli Garcia Lawler / Cracked

20 July 25   

Yesterday, it was announced that Late Night with Stephen Colbert would be coming to an end in 2026. Not only would the host be out of a job, but the decades-long Late Night would be ending in its entirety. This isn’t entirely a surprise; for weeks, rumors have been circulating that the merger between Skydance and Paramount would result in both Colbert and Jon Stewart getting axed from the corporation.

Skydance owners, Larry and David Ellison, were reportedly already planning to cozy up to Donald Trump, by giving him free political ads on their network worth up to $20 million. So, when Trump called for the firing of Colbert, there was plenty of speculation that the Ellisons would capitulate there as well. And look, they did.  While Jon Stewart still has his job, Colbert and his staff of 200 people will be out of one by next year.

It’s pathetic and scary. Paramount and the Ellisons have bowed so low to Trump that they have a perfect view of our president’s ridiculously swollen ankles. The President of the United States is now silencing his TV critics, unable to stomach the fact that even while he doles out unfathomable cruelty to us we’re still laughing at him. 

I’ll never be the first one to say that anything Colbert was doing was the smartest, bravest or even most entertaining comedy. But he made my mother laugh.

What’s really terrifying is that there wasn’t a great attempt by Paramount and CBS to give a convincing alternative reason for pulling Colbert from the air. Late Night is consistently the highest rated, most viewed show in its slot. If you can’t convert 2.4 million nightly viewers into something profitable, you’re bad at your job. This was about censorship and punishment.

There will be hemming and hawing about the motives, despite the obvious reality of the situation. Why? Because billionaires are always getting the benefit of the doubt. They go around the world stealing, committing environmental crimes and making the internet worse, and yet, there’s a large segment of the population that oohs and ahhs at their entrepreneurship.

Billionaires aren’t sociopaths surrounded by sycophants; they’re leaders, businessmen. We live in a world where poor people get prosecuted for stealing meat and diapers from Walmart while Walmart CEO Don McMillon carries on the company’s decades’ long practice of egregious wage theft to applause. 

It’s not just that rich people are habitually pilfering our shit, either. They aren’t patrons of anything anymore, either. We’ve left the era of benevolent philanthropy and are now fully ensconced in the era of thin-skinned malevolent avarice.

Not only are these greedy bastards not patrons of art, theater or science (bombs and vanity space field trips don’t count), the billionaire class is sabotaging the forms of free-expression that existed despite them. The sometimes-brilliant, often-mean, undeniably-essential website Gawker? Pummeled out of existence by B-plot supervillain Peter Thiel. The endlessly-useful, sometimes-revolutionary platform formerly known as Twitter? Elon Musk bought it because everyone was (rightfully) making fun of him. Jeff Bezos owns the Washington Post, which is in a state of constant turmoil because of his nonstop editorial interference.

None of these men — Trump, Bezos, Musk, Thiel, the Ellisons — can stomach being the punchline. So they’re stealing our laughter too.

 

Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison and his son David Ellison, who own Skydance have been reportedly planning to provide Trump with free political ads. Aren't you glad these thugs don't live next door? (photo: Getty)

  

From massive protests to a puny parade, America really let Donald Trump down | Opinion

 

All he wanted was to celebrate his birthday with a massive military parade that made him look powerful and beloved. Instead he got a derpy, dull parade overshadowed by massive nationwide protests.

(Gazette Blog editor's note: Thanks to USA Today for publishing this column and in doing so reminding us of the importance of a free press.) 

Rex Huppke

USA TODAY

 

Well, Americans, I hope you’re happy with yourselves. You really let President Donald Trump down June 14.

All he wanted was to celebrate his 79th birthday with a massive military parade that made him look powerful, scary and beloved. Instead, thanks to millions of Americans and their stupid First Amendment rights, he got a derpy, dull parade overshadowed by massive nationwide protests denouncing him.

People from Virginia to California and everywhere in between were hoisting signs that said mean things about President Trump like “IF MELANIA DOESN’T HAVE TO LIVE WITH HIM…WHY DO WE?” and “You sucked in Home Alone 2,” referring to the 1992 movie in which Trump had a cameo.

The American Civil Liberties Union, one of the organizers of the "No Kings" protests, said in a statement, “More than five million people nationwide rallied at over 2,100 events across the country, condemning President Trump’s escalating abuses of power.”

Way to go, America. You ruined Trump's parade and made him sad

Nice job, guys. Do you know how hurtful that was for a man who just wanted to have a cool birthday parade that would make him feel like a powerful dictator?

Need a break? Play the USA TODAY Daily Crossword Puzzle.

While those protests were massive and made a clear and peaceful point that Americans, only six months into the Trump administration, are fed up, they completely took the shine off the parade in Washington, DC.

Opinion: Trump's military show of force in LA and DC camouflage his failing presidency

The weather there was cloudy with a little rain, the crowd was thin and, while an announcer gave an interesting history of the U.S. Army on its 250th anniversary, the dull pace of tanks and other military vehicles made the event drag.

Troops marched past the VIP section where Trump and administration officials were seated, but they weren’t marching in carefully choreographed lockstep like troops have done in past military parades for notorious authoritarians.

Trump was bored and angry during the parade, while protesters had fun

 

It all felt a bit phoned in and drab. A New York Times reporter noted: “The energy level at the military parade here is a bit desultory.”

And Trump? He looked like a kid who wanted a Nintendo Switch 2 for his birthday and instead got a desultory military parade.

He sulked. He slouched. At one point, the band played an instrumental version of Creedence Clearwater Revival’s “Fortunate Son,” a famous anti-war song that decried wealthy families able to keep their kids out of the draft during the Vietnam War. That probably made Trump’s bone spurs hurt.

How dare Americans protest instead of bolstering the president's ego

Through it all, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth sat next to the president, looking like a guy about to be held accountable for not making the parade “strong” and “huge” enough.

But it wasn’t all Hegseth’s fault. This was the fault of all the Americans who chose to take our president’s special day and make it about America. You meanies decided that standing up against government-sponsored cruelty against immigrants and vast federal overreach was more important than letting the guy behind the government-sponsored cruelty and the overreaching have a glorious parade that would make everyone think he’s awesome.

For shame, Americans. President Trump has been working tirelessly to enrich himself and not do any of the things he said he would do, other than the be-cruel-to-immigrants thing, and this is how you repay him? By making his parade seem puny and sad while making your own grievances seem widespread and legitimate?

A bad weekend led to Trump going off on liberal cities

Trump was so mad about how the weekend went that on the night of June 15 he announced on social media that “we must expand efforts to detain and deport Illegal Aliens in America’s largest Cities, such as Los Angeles, Chicago, and New York, where Millions upon Millions of Illegal Aliens reside. These, and other such Cities, are the core of the Democrat Power Center, where they use Illegal Aliens to expand their Voter Base, cheat in Elections, and grow the Welfare State, robbing good-paying Jobs and Benefits from Hardworking American Citizens. These Radical Left Democrats are sick of mind, hate our Country, and actually want to destroy our Inner Cities.”

Look what you all did! You made the poor man completely lose his mind and start babbling like a maniac who capitalizes words For No reason!

I hope you’re happy with yourselves.

I certainly am. 😈

Follow USA TODAY columnist Rex Huppke on Bluesky at @rexhuppke.bsky.social and on Facebook at facebook.com/RexIsAJerk

Things Worth Remembering: Nora Ephron on Being a Mom

 

Sunday, 05.11.2025

By Hadley Freeman

When debating with a 4-year-old about what color of plate is acceptable for his dinner, you may realize: Motherhood is absurd, and very funny.

(David Turnley/Corbis/VCG via Getty Images)

When I was asked to write an article for Mother’s Day I thought, Sure. I thought, How hard can that be? I thought, I have three kids under 10, which absolutely makes me a mother. Even if all of my kids have informed me at various points that I’m the worst mother in the world because I wouldn’t let one of them eat a piece of old chewing gum he found on the bus; or I declined the 5-year-old’s request to have her own smartphone; or I forgot to buy an emperor costume for Roman Day at school, which all good mothers know is the most important holiday of the year.

Well, at the risk of pulling the curtain back on the magic-making here, I have been trying to write this article for three hours and failing, and here is an incomplete list of reasons why:

1. An email arrived informing me that two of my children will go on a field trip tomorrow and therefore need a packed lunch, necessitating a run out to Pret A Manger to spend about $37.19 on sandwiches and dried mango that the children will definitely not eat;

2. An argument erupted in the school parents’ WhatsApp about children and screen time, and let me tell you, those parents could teach Sun Tzu a thing or two about the art of war;

3. Another email arrived reminding me I had to buy a costume for Viking Day at the 5-year-old’s school, which even bad mothers know is the second most important holiday of the year.

Like a fish can’t describe water, parents can’t really describe parenting, mainly because they don’t have the time. And it’s very difficult for mothers who have got through the brunt of the experience to describe it in retrospect, because—like childbirth—they’ll have blocked a lot of it from their memory. Which is why I love the essay “Parenting in Three Stages,” by the late, great Nora Ephron, from her 2006 collection, I Feel Bad About My Neck.

Ephron wrote about parenting exactly the way she wrote about heartbreak, aging, friendship, and food: hilariously, wisely, originally, and honestly. Ephron’s sons were adults by the time this was published, but she remembers in teeth-clenching detail what it’s like to deal with, first, small children, who you’re constantly terrified of breaking, physically or emotionally, and then large adolescents who suddenly hate you for no obvious reason.

“Adolescence comes as a gigantic shock to the modern parent, in large part because it seems so much like the adolescence you yourself went through,” she writes:

Your adolescent is embarrassed by you and walks 10 steps ahead of you so that no one thinks you are remotely acquainted with each other. Your adolescent is ungrateful. You have a vague memory of having been accused by your parents of being ungrateful, but what did you have to be grateful for? Almost nothing. . .You’ve devoted years to making your children feel that you care about every single emotion they’ve ever felt. You’ve filled every waking second of their lives with cultural activities. The words “I’m bored” have never crossed their lips, because they haven’t had time to be bored. Your children have everything you could give—everything and more, if you count the sneakers. You love them wildly, way more than your parents loved you. And yet they seem to have turned out exactly the way adolescents have always turned out. Only worse. How did this happen? What did you do wrong?

Just as Ephron knew that no amount of expensive face cream can head off the aging process (not that it stopped her from buying lots of expensive face creams, a paradox she wrote about often), no amount of parenting can prevent your child from becoming a teenager.

This essay captures two more truths that I think have been forgotten in a lot of more recent writing about parenting: First, kids are changing all the time. And second, parenting is worth it.

When did people stop understanding that kids are not adults, and therefore subject to change on a daily basis? I noticed it during the rise of the gender debate, when parents were suddenly writing articles saying—and I swear I’m not even making this example up—that they always knew their daughter should have been a boy, because she told them she was a boy when she was “almost 2.” Let’s not get distracted with that craziness. The point is, whatever lunacy your child comes out with, whether they’re 2 or 12, don’t sweat it too much, because they’re programmed to try on things for size and then mutate, just as kids have always done. It’s hard not to catastrophize when your kid is wildly unhappy at age 14, as I was. But the worst thing you can do is affirm your child’s belief that they are uniquely, hopelessly doomed. Instead, reassure them—and yourself—that pretty much everything in childhood is a phase. Or just give them Ephron’s essay, which at least might make them laugh.

Secondly, parenting is worth it. I appreciate that a lot of parents fear coming across as smug, or making the child-free feel left out, but I think we’ve had enough of this tedious trend in which every article about parenting focuses on how stressful and horrible it is. Is it any wonder young women increasingly say they don’t want kids? By all means, don’t have kids when you’re young—I waited until pretty much the last chimes before midnight—but parenting is not miserable. Yes, it can be stressful, but the stress is often hilarious. Not even Larry David could write the kind of absurdist comedy scenes that parenting brings, such as when you’re debating with a 4-year-old about what color of plate is acceptable for his dinner.

Then one day, according to Ephron, you realize your children are delightful adults. It’s a miracle, all of it, in the truest sense of the word. Happy Roman or Viking or Mother’s Day.

White House spin reaches new level of stupid

White House press secretary and chief prevaricator Karoline Leavitt

 Trump takes credit for getting quarterback Sanders drafted (in the fifth round, no less)

 

By Walter Einenkel 

Daily Kos Staff 

Monday, April 28, 2025 at 2:30:07p MDT  

 

REPUBLISHED BY: 

Blue Country Gazette Blog 

Rim Country Gazette Blog

The White House press briefings continue to be a cloud of misinformation and distraction as Fox News’ Steve Doocy and White House press secretary and chief prevaricator Karoline Leavitt ran some interference on Monday for President Donald Trump and his dismal first 100 days. 

As Trump publicly melted down over his abysmal approval ratings, Leavitt and Doocy decided to spin Trump’s supposed influence over last week’s National Football League draft. 

On Friday, Trump attacked NFL owners in a Truth Social post for failing to draft Shedeur Sanders, the college quarterback and son of Hall of Fame football player Deion Sanders, in the first round.  

Trump’s Friday rant was filled with racist 1980s buzzwords about Sanders, who is Black, as being “streetwise” and having “PHENOMENAL GENES.” 

“After the President's Truth Social post, the Browns finally took Shedeur Sanders. Does the president think he deserves credit for Sanders getting picked?” Doocy asked Leavitt. 

“All I will say is the president put out a statement and a few rounds later he was drafted,” professional liar Leavitt said. “So I think the facts speak for themselves on that one, Peter.” 

While some experts predicted Sanders’ would be drafted in the first round, the real surprise came when he wasn’t picked until the fifth round, days after Trump’s rant.

Try as they might, this distraction only goes to show what a mockery these press conferences have become, with right-wing podcasters and MAGA media getting to ask useless questions. Meanwhile, the outrage of the public has made it clear how unhappy Americans are with Trump and those who do his bidding.

Good lord, is there nothing this wondrous man cannot do.  We are so lucky to have him for our sovereign monarch.

Website For MAGA-Friendly Businesses Backfires As People Use It For Boycotts

  

Michael Seifert, founder and CEO of PublicSquare, speaks at the Republican Party of Florida Freedom Summit.

ONE USER'S TAKE: “It’s like you’re helping the trash take itself out.”

 

Story by Jennifer Bendery

Huff Post 

April 27, 2025

WASHINGTON – A few years ago, Jeff was working for a California bank that asked him to look into getting the business listed on a website called PublicSquare.

The bank’s leaders were big supporters of Donald Trump, and PublicSquare was an ideal place to advertise it: Its website, which bills itself as “the anti-woke online marketplace,” is a hub of tens of thousands of businesses nationwide that want people to know they align with MAGA views and oppose so-called “progressive priorities” like women’s reproductive rights and diversity initiatives. 

In order to list your business on the website, you first have to confirm that you will “respect the core values of PublicSquare” and agree not to “support causes that are in direct conflict with our core values.”

“For far too long, American consumers and business owners who cherish family values and God-given liberty have been overlooked by mainstream businesses,” the company’s website states. “It’s time to embrace this community of customers and merchants by providing platforms, products, and services that enrich the way of life they hold dear.”

The company also acknowledges its purpose of letting people use their dollars as political and cultural leverage. “PublicSquare is on a mission to restore the culture through the power of commerce,” its website says under a section called “Purpose with every purchase.” “This isn’t about boycotts, it’s about helping you switch to something better.”

As a consumer, PublicSquare’s website is easy to use. You just enter your ZIP code and it pulls up businesses near you that want to be publicly associated with Trump and his values. The company, which launched in 2022, has direct connections to Trump, too: Its board of directors includes Donald Trump Jr., who also is an investor.

Kelly Loeffler, President Trump’s administrator of the Small Business Administration, also was on the board until she was confirmed to her current post in February.

Jeff, who requested using a pseudonym for this story out of concerns of being targeted by Trump supporters in his community, doesn’t know if that bank joined PublicSquare. He soon left that job and went on to launch a communications firm. 

Fast-forward to February 2025, when Trump is back in the White House and destroying virtually everything he touches. He’s tanking the global economy. He’s hollowingout the federalgovernment. It is not hyperbole to say he’s pushing American democracy to its breaking point.

Jeff, a regular user of the social media platform Reddit, started noticing people in his San Diego community posting messages desperate for ways to fight back against Trump’s recklessness. Some called for boycotting MAGA-friendly businesses but didn’t know how to identify companies that support Trump’s views. So Jeff, who had extensively researched PublicSquare at his previous bank job, tossed in a note about it.

“MAGA has made it easy for all of us to avoid their businesses,” he wrote under his Reddit name, Hour-Abbreviations18. “A couple years ago, they introduced a website – publicsq.com — to promote MAGA businesses. We can use that same tool to make informed purchasing decisions.”

“If a business is listed on the site, it’s not a fluke,” he wrote. “It’s on purpose.”

He got several responses to his post, so out of curiosity, Jeff searched Reddit for instances of people outside of his local community who were looking for ways to avoid pro-Trump businesses. He cut and pasted his spiel about PublicSquare into those threads, too.

His message took off, spreading to Reddit threads all over the country by people eager to do something — anything — to reject Trump. Ironically, people began finding solace in the very thing PublicSquare offers its supporters: a chance to align your spending with your values. Except in this case, people are using PublicSquare to decide where not to spend.

“Is there a list for 2025 so we can pass around to the worthy peace loving humans?” one Reddit user in Oregon asked in a February thread, “MAGA Businesses in Oregon to BOYCOTT.” Jeff tossed in his description of PublicSquare, and his post got “upvoted” 263 times, meaning it got pushed to the top of the thread for more people to see.

Jeff pasted his post into another Reddit thread based in Long Beach, California, titled, “MAGA Businesses to Avoid.” It was upvoted 65 times.

“My god I just found out my dog’s vet is on there,” one user wrote in response. 

“THANK YOU FOR THIS LIST,” wrote another user.

Jeff’s posts about PublicSquare, or offshoots of them, have popped up on Reddit in cities and towns inIllinois, Colorado, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Minnesota, Maine, North Carolina and in general Reddit forums. The idea of using PublicSquare for boycotts has gainedattention in local news stories. 

Last month, a TikTok user with 19,000 followers filmed himself describing PublicSquare and directing people to its website to find MAGA-friendly businesses to cut off. His video has gotten more than 348,000 “likes.”

“PublicSquare is basically the Green Book, but for conservatives,” this TikTok user, who goes by dapper.delinquent, says in his video. “The Green Book was a book passed around Black communities that was a list of stores and businesses that were safe for Black People to use. PublicSquare is the same thing for conservatives.”

“It is a website that conservatives will register their business on to show they are anti-woke, pro-conservative and especially pro-life,” he says.

Another TikTok user posted a similar message last month, calling PublicSquare the “anti-woke business finder” and saying he’s glad it exists so he knows where not to shop. “It just means that they do not care about our rights and they stand with Trump,” this user says in his video. His post got 32,000 “likes” and was shared 11,000 times.

Trump critics also have been talking about PublicSquare on other platforms like Threads and on Facebook, where a group called The 50501 Movement organizes people around Trump protests, rallies and boycotts. The group, which has 164,000 members, flagged PublicSquare for its followers last month.

“Helpful for deciding which small businesses to avoid!” reads a post within the group.

Some people have sought out PublicSquare’s own Facebook page to let them know their site has been a huge help to people eager to do something to protest Trump’s policies.

“After a local article was published, our community is using PublicSquare to see which businesses to avoid,” one user wrote in a comment on a PublicSquare post earlier this month. “It’s like you’re helping the trash take itself out.”

“Vulgar INSURRECTIONISTS, Fascists and those who despise anything non-white, male and straight,” another user posted this month on the company’s Facebook page. “You are the very same as the German Christians who worshipped Hitler.”

It’s not clear what financial impact, if any, people’s boycotts are having on the businesses listed on PublicSquare, or on PublicSquare itself. The publicly traded company, which is led by founder, CEO and president Michael Seifert, has seen its stock value plummet by more than 50% since the start of the year. Even before Trump announced his tariffs earlier this month, which have hurt economies globally, PublicSquare was down by 12%.

The company appears to make its revenue through fees paid out by businesses on its website, along with “a commission per transaction.”Still, there’s no way to directly link the company’s finances to people actively using the site to find businesses to stop supporting.

A PublicSquare spokesperson did not respond to requests for comment about people using their website to find businesses not to patronize or about the company’s financial woes.

Jeff doesn’t presume he’s the only anti-Trump person who knew about this website before this year, but said he’s been blown away by how many people told him they’d never heard of it — and how happy they are to know about it. Most people he’s engaged with said they plan to use PublicSquare to make sure they don’t give money to Trump-aligned businesses, but a few said they wanted to use the site as intended, to support such companies.

“The vast majority of people said, ‘I had no idea. I can’t believe this or that business is on there. I’m never going there again,’” Jeff said. “I’d say 90% of responses are of that ilk.”

He emphasized his efforts to spread the word about PublicSquare aren’t about punishing businesses but about helping people make informed decisions.

“Right now, so many decisions are being made that affect our lives that are outside of our control, and many people feel helpless,” Jeff said. “The ability to make purchasing decisions that align with our values is one thing we can do.”

That’s definitely how Janet Koenig feels. The 62-year-old California resident recently came across one of Jeff’s posts on Reddit, so she went to PublicSquare’s website and entered her ZIP code. To her dismay, one of her favorite coffee shops came up. She was horrified.

“I was like, you’ve got to be kidding me,” Koenig said. “I just assumed they were one of the good guys. I’ll be sure to tell all my friends not to go.”

Now she regularly checks PublicSquare before buying products. She’s also been sharing a link to its website with as many people as she can, most of whom, like her, had no idea this company existed and at least some of whom plan to use it to make sure they don’t inadvertently give money to Trump-aligned businesses. She said she feels like her efforts may not be having much of an impact, but she feels a new sense of empowerment.

“I just feel like I have to do something. Because businesses now control our votes, you know?” Koenig said. “I feel like, you know what, if they control our votes, I’ll do whatever I can do to only support the ones that vote the way I want. It’s about disgust, honestly. I’m disgusted by the way our votes can be bought by business.”

“I sleep well at night knowing I’m not accidentally donating to the bad guys,” she said.

What would Nancy do?  Diss the whole lot of them.