Subject: Trump Derangement Syndrome- A Prophecy
Charlie Sykes on a rampage this morning.

TDS

Today seems like a good day to (once again) re-up something I wrote several years ago:

Near the end of the miniseries Band of Brothers, the guys from Easy Company are shown riding in a convoy of trucks past a bedraggled column of German prisoners, some of whom are riding in carts drawn by horses.

Private David Webster is appalled by the scene and shouts at them:

“Hey, you! That's right, you stupid Kraut bastards! That's right! Say hello to Ford, and General fuckin’ Motors! You stupid fascist pigs! Look at you! You have horses! What were you thinking? Dragging our asses halfway around the world, interrupting our lives. . . For what, you ignorant, servile scum! What the fuck are we doing here?”

I woke up this morning thinking about him.

Admittedly, the parallels are hardly exact, but as I’m looking over the clusterfuck of American conservatism, I feel a kinship with Webster.

What were you thinking? You cowardly, ignorant, servile scum?

It’s not like you were not warned. Again and again.

It’s not as if it wasn’t obvious from the very beginning who Donald Trump was. You had to know it would come to something like this.

Now look at you. You have Trump.

**

As far back as August 2015, I wrote that Trump was “a cartoon version of every left-wing media stereotype of the reactionary, nativist, misogynist right.”

Back then there was still time to say no. Some of us desperately made the case that he was a disaster. In May 2016, on the last appearance I will ever make on Fox News, I said:

Donald Trump is a serial liar, a con man who mocks the disabled and women. He’s a narcissist and a bully, a man with no fixed principles who has the vocabulary of an emotionally insecure nine-year-old.

So no, I don’t want to give him control of the IRS, the FBI, and the nuclear codes. That’s just me.

We were, of course, dismissed; accused of suffering from TDS — Trump Derangement Syndrome.

Yes, we were told, he was crude and rude, but if you squint hard enough — and ignore the “mean tweets” — he looked like a more or less conventional conservative: he cut taxes and regulations; he came around to supporting NATO. Character was overrated, anyway. Our 401Ks were fat and happy.

So, one after another, Republicans fell back from one red line to another. Instead of taking one of the many off-ramps offered to them, they returned him to power. And have now transformed the GOP into a Trump rubber-stamp-cum-cult.

Trump, of course, is who he always was; except angrier, more bitter, and still unburdened by either principles or guardrails.

So, I have to ask what remains of the GOP:

You elected a convicted felon to the most powerful office in the world — broadly immune from accountability, and literally above the law in his official duties. WTF did you think would happen?

Now look at you, with the chaos bubbling all around you. On again, off again, pointless trade wars with our allies; endless graft; a slash and burn through the government that endangers everything from air travel to Social Security; pardons for rioters and crooked politicians; assaults on the rule of law and free speech; the abandonment of allies; and now a crumbling stock market.

What you called Trump Derangement Syndrome turns out to have been a warning — and a prophecy. And you ignored it, you cowardly, ignorant, servile scum.

**

So we got scenes like this from the White House: As Americans lost trillions of dollars in the markets, the president was hawking cars for the world’s richest man.

US President Donald Trump and Tesla CEO Elon Musk speak to the press as they stand next to a Tesla vehicle on the South Portico of the White House on March 11, 2025 in Washington, DC.

<Photo by Mandel NGAN / AFP) (Photo by MANDEL NGAN/AFP via Getty Images>

<Photo: MANDEL NGAN via Getty Images>

Photographers noted that Trump was carrying notes from a Tesla sales pitch.

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