Fat Men Don't Starve - Well Trump Won't.
While judges forced Trump to feed 42 million hungry Americans, the President was busy demolishing the White House for his $250 million ballroom - and other things!
A judge had to force King Donald to feed his people.
In the United States of America, in the year 2025, it took two federal judges issuing emergency orders on Friday to compel the President to do what any halfway decent government does automatically: ensure that 42 million Americans don’t starve.
This wasn’t a theoretical crisis. SNAP benefits were scheduled to be distributed on November 1st—tomorrow. Families had already planned their grocery budgets around that date. Single mothers had calculated down to the dollar how to stretch $250 through the month. Elderly people on fixed incomes had counted on that money to afford their medications and their meals. Parents had promised their children there would be food.
And then the Trump administration said: No.
The arithmetic of hunger is brutal and immediate. SNAP isn’t a luxury program for people who’d like a little extra. It’s survival money for families already living on the edge. Two-thirds of recipients are households with children. Many recipients are working—they have jobs, sometimes two or three, but the jobs don’t pay enough. They’re nursing home aides and restaurant workers and retail clerks, the people who were “essential” during the pandemic and invisible the rest of the time.
When SNAP benefits disappear, families don’t just tighten their belts. They skip meals. They water down baby formula. They choose between electricity and food, between medicine and groceries. Food banks get overwhelmed within days. Schools see children coming to class hungry, unable to concentrate. Emergency rooms see upticks in malnutrition cases.
This is what the Trump administration was willing to let happen. Not eventually. Not theoretically. Starting tomorrow.
Just ten days earlier, there was Donald Trump hosting his “Rose Garden Club” on the concrete patio he’d poured over what used to be an actual garden. Yellow umbrellas shading Republican senators. Cheeseburgers and “Rose Garden chocolates” all around. “YMCA” blaring from the sound system. And behind them, jackhammers demolishing the White House’s East Wing—which Trump purred was “music to my ears.”
Marie Antoinette probably thought the same thing about rustling silk gowns at Versailles while peasants rioted over bread. At least she had the decency to keep her let-them-eat-cake moment apocryphal. Trump served his on a concrete platter, with a side of demolition.
The legal sophistry might have been impressive, but they are not that smart and that is beside the point: cruelty is always the point. Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins insisted that a $5 billion emergency contingency fund couldn’t be used during an actual emergency. Judge Indira Talwani cut through the nonsense: “You are not going to make everyone drop dead because it’s a political game someplace.”
But making people drop dead is exactly what modern Republicans do when those people are poor. When they’re the “takers.” When they’re—let’s be honest about what Trump and his party really think—just Black and Brown people who don’t deserve help anyway.
Trump doesn’t see 42 million Americans going hungry. He sees statistics he can ignore, people who didn’t vote for him, people who live in cities he’s never visited except to hold rallies. The kind of people who, in his gilded worldview, should simply work harder, pull themselves up, stop being so needy. The kind of people who aren’t invited to Mar-a-Lago.
The senators under those umbrellas weren’t wringing their hands over hungry families. They were celebrating their commitment to Trump’s vision of greatness, which requires demolishing historic landmarks to build a 90,000-square-foot ballroom—because apparently hosting kings and queens in tents is beneath him.
The obscenity isn’t just the ballroom itself. It’s the timing. It’s the priorities. It’s the spectacular tone-deafness of razing the People’s House to build a pleasure palace while Americans line up at food banks. But tone-deaf implies they might care if they only understood. They understand perfectly. They just don’t care.
The funding model makes it worse: Alphabet kicked in $22 million. Apple, Amazon, Lockheed Martin, Microsoft, and Comcast all ponied up. Pay-to-play with bulletproof glass walls, while Trump’s government argues it’s legally impossible to feed children.
Kevin Hassett, Trump’s economic adviser, whined on Fox News that using emergency funds for food stamps meant “we don’t have our emergency funds in case we have a hurricane.” Forty-two million Americans facing hunger isn’t an emergency. But a shortage of money for the next disaster at a Trump property? Now that’s a crisis.
This is the Republican Party in 2025, stripped of pretense. Trump paved over the Rose Garden where presidents announced peace treaties. He’s razing the wing where Eleanor Roosevelt and Michelle Obama worked. The symbolism is perfect: The People’s House is becoming the President’s Palace, and the people—especially poor people, especially Black and Brown people—can fend for themselves.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune shook Trump’s hand under those umbrellas. Lindsey Graham smiled. Josh Hawley tucked into his burger. They know who relies on SNAP—65% of recipients are families with children, disproportionately people of color. They know who’s hurting. They’re fine with it.
Meanwhile, federal workers aren’t getting paid. Head Start programs are closing. WIC assistance for pregnant women is running dry. But Trump has his sound system and his growing pile of rubble where American history used to stand.
When Trump announced the ballroom in July, he promised it wouldn’t interfere with the existing building. By October, the entire East Wing was demolished. “Plans changed,” a White House official shrugged. Plans always change when you’re dealing with someone who thinks the White House is a dump and the poor are invisible.
The White House dismissed criticism as “manufactured outrage” from “unhinged leftists.” Because wanting to preserve history and feed hungry children is unhinged. Suggesting a President shouldn’t spend a quarter-billion dollars on a party venue during a government shutdown is leftist lunacy.
The Oval Office now has gold trim on every doorway, gold trophies on every surface. Trump doesn’t govern by polls—53% of Americans disapprove of the demolition. He governs by gilt, by ego, by the conviction that if you’re rich enough, you don’t have to care about anyone else.
And if you’re poor enough, especially if you’re Black or Brown enough, you don’t matter at all.
Judge Talwani’s ruling was scathing: The administration’s argument was “unlawful.” The government was violating its own laws while hosting lunch parties for senators. She gave them until Monday to come up with a plan—not whether to help, but how much.
Here’s what we’ve learned: Republicans will spend $250 million on a ballroom before they’ll spend $5 billion feeding the hungry. They’ll demolish historic buildings before they’ll reconsider their priorities. They’ll host senators for cheeseburgers before they’ll ensure poor kids—the ones they assume are Black and Brown, the ones they’ve already written off—can get breakfast.
The coalition of 25 states that sued said it best: “No administration can use hunger as a political weapon.”
But this one tried. It took lawsuits and emergency hearings to force the executive branch to do what any decent government would do automatically. And even then, millions may face delays in their November benefits.
The costs aren’t borne by senators dining under yellow umbrellas or donors writing million-dollar checks. They’re borne by single mothers trying to feed three kids on $250 a month. By elderly veterans stretching every dollar. By working families one emergency away from hunger. By the people Trump doesn’t see because he’s never wanted to.
Marie Antoinette had the excuse of ignorance - it’s not like she had an iPhone. She didn’t know (so she claimed) the peasants had no bread. Trump knows. He just thinks they’re not his problem. Not his people. Not his responsibility.
They’re too Black, too Brown, too poor, too far beneath the golden tower he’s been building his entire life.
And Republicans are perfectly fine with that. They’re busy too, but no this: they’re sending “thoughts and prayers.”
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There’s enough bad news coming out of the war-torn White House — and everywhere else across the Republican landscape — to swamp a pod of blue whales. And as you remind us, DUMP doesn’t give two sh—- about anybody but his gilded friends. At least, though, we have a couple of federal judges ruling today that those grand bozos at Department of Agriculture had better get their asses in gear and hand out that $5.5 billion in contingency funds beginning on Monday 11/3/2025. Oh what a wonder those Agricultural assholes didn’t decide for themselves that they could use these EMERGENCY funds for a real goddamn emergency ie feeding 42 million desperately needy people who are never likely to see even a photo of the gold lined ballroom THE DUMP is adding to the wrecked east side of the White House! Am I ANGRY!? 😡 oh, I am more than angry. As we say in italiano — SONO ARRABBIATTA! 😡😡😡😡😡😡🙏🙏
Trump does not have money towards helping the people of the nation, be it SNAP or healthcare but he does have for example, $40 billion, that he has sent to help his good pal and dictator of Argentina, how is that putting America first, it's not!