Maybe you haven’t noticed? Sure, it makes sense to not watch the train wreck that is Trump 2.0 and the “DOGE boys” like “Big Balls.” Trump has “succeeded” in surrounding himself with sucking-up sycophants, people who try to outdo each other in flattering Mad King Donald. And he’s soooo easily flattered. The photo that accompanies this blog shows FCC Chairman Brendan Carr wearing a gold-colored pin showing Trump in profile. (You can get these on Amazon for $6.99 if you like.)(I don’t.)
As the New York Times reported yesterday, earlier this month Brendan Carr, the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, “decided to swap out his usual American flag lapel pin. Instead of the stars and stripes, he pinned a gold medallion in the shape of President Trump’s profile, about the size of a quarter, to his blue suit and wore it to meet with a Georgia congressman, Buddy Carter, and later to a meeting at the Justice Department. He then memorialized the meetings on X.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/22/style/trump-lapel-pins-gold-card.html
Right now in D.C., the path to ‘power’ and ‘influence’ is proving your love and loyalty to Trump; that is far more important to the Trumpian status seekers than being competent or actually trying to do good things for the American people. From Andrea Hitchins in the New Yorker –– How Trump Worship Took Hold in Washington
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2025/04/28/how-trump-worship-took-hold-in-washington
Here are some of the absurdly sycophantic statements by the folks angling to curry maximum favor from The Donald: When Trump first displayed an interest in Greenland, Rep. Ogles of Tennessee proposed the Make Greenland Great Again Act, a bill authorizing the president to try to acquire it from Denmark. The U.S. is a “dominant predator,” Ogles said. Ten days later, just after Trump was sworn in, Ogles announced his bid to allow the president to serve a third term, by changing the 22nd amendment to the Constitution. “If the man who created the disastrous “ New Deal” gets more than two terms, then the man who created the Art of the Deal should get the same,” he said.
Archbishop Elpidophoros of the Greek Orthodox Church told Trump at a recent celebration in the East Room of the White House, “You remind me of the great Roman emperor Constantine the Great.” The crowd cheered. He presented Trump with a gold cross –– the symbol he said that led Constantine to victory. “Wow” Trump replied as he cradled the cross. “I didn’t know what that was going to happen, but I’ll take it.”
Htichens’ article in the New Yorker notes that the gestures of servility come from all over. At a cabinet meeting not long-ago Trump’s secretaries took turns: “Your vision is a turning point and inflection point in American history.” That was Brooke Rollins, Department of Agriculture. Marco Rubio, Secretary of State, said “What you’re doing now is a great service to our country, but ultimately to the world.” A week after Trump was inaugurated Anna Paulina Luna, a Republican congresswoman from Florida, proposed legislation that would direct the secretary of the interior “to arrange for the carving of the figure of president Donald J trump on Mount Rushmore National Memorial.” “Let’s get carving!” she tweeted.
The freshman congressman Brandon Gill sponsored new legislation, the Golden Age Act of 2025, which would require all $100 bills to feature an image of Trump. Of course, this violates an 1866 law that forbids the Treasury to put the likeness of a living person on currency, but who cares about stupid laws anymore? Trump can fix it!
Not to be outdone by Rep. Gill, Claudia Tenney of New York introduced a bill to make Trump’s birthday on June 14th a federal holiday. “Just as George Washington’s birthday is codified as a federal holiday, President Trump’s birthday should also be celebrated to recognize him as the founder of America’s Golden Age.”
Along with this kind of obvious silliness, sycophantic Republicans are clamoring to join Trump in asking for–– no, demanding –– the impeachment of judges that would slow down Trump’s agenda. In the first three months of his term, federal district judges have issued 17 nationwide injunctions, attempting to block executive orders that among other things sought to end birthright citizenship, defund the Department of Education, and ban transgender people from serving in the military. Darrell Issa of California introduced the No Rogue Rulings Act which would bar district judges from issuing such universal injunctions. When Trump posted about Judge James Boasberg (who had ordered the government to stop deportation flights carrying Venezuelan migrants to El Salvador) he said that Boasberg should be impeached. Soon many House members were scrambling to do just that. “All options are on the table;” House Speaker Mike Johnson said. Pam Bondi, the U.S. Attorney General, accused Boasberg of “meddling in our government.” A growing number of Republicans were now calling judges quote insurrectionists.” Representative Ogles hung a wanted poster displaying photographs of various judges outside his office and “issued impeach-athon updates on social media.” The updates got retweeted by (who else?) Elon Musk, who has donated the maximum amount to Ogle’s reelection campaign.
If I still bothered to go to my old Twitter account, now on X, I might just have to leave Elon and Ogle and the other sycophants a “poop emoji,” something Musk has done repeatedly. That’s “perfectly legal,” of course, but like all the b.s. you just read about –– putting forth a poop emoji as a response is more wrong than right, as it accomplishes nothing of value for our nation.
And, speaking of no value added, the sycophants surrounding Emperor Donald do not dare to tell him that he is nakedly pursuing his own interests, and should be far more thoughtful (if indeed that is possible) about trashing the rule of law, judges, and revising (with the help of a too-compliant Supreme Court) the Constitution itself, which was, among other things, a rejection of total executive power by balancing Presidential power with two other branches of government.