This Week and Next
The Year That Never Should Have Happened.
I knew it would be bad.
Anyone who lived through the first Trump administration and possessed functioning synapses knew the sequel would make the original look like a dress rehearsal. But even my darkest premonitions couldn’t conjure the systematic dismantling of American institutions that unfolded in 2025. This wasn’t just political theater or partisan warfare. This was something darker — the hollowing out of the republic itself, conducted in broad daylight while half the country cheered and the other half watched in mounting horror.
We got Trump Unbound. Trump Unleashed. Trump without even the threadbare guardrails that occasionally constrained him the first time around.
Walk through the West Wing colonnade now and you’ll see Trump’s “Presidential Walk of Fame” — inspired, he said, by a display at a Hilton hotel. Every president rendered in gold frames. Except Joe Biden, whose portrait Trump replaced with a photograph of an autopen. In December, Trump added bronze plaques beneath each…
