Trump's "American Hell" is everywhere

Trump’s “American Hell” is everywhere
His declining reality show mentality is destroying the fabric of our nation — and the press is complicit

By Brian Karem
White House columnist
Published August 15, 2025 9:00AM (EDT)


(Salon) There is shocking entertainment news out of Hollywood today.

The reality show powerhouse American Hell is now the highest-rated network across every platform. In a press conference from the White House Brady Briefing Room, producers attributed the network’s rising popularity to its virtues of fear, anger, greed, consumption, corruption and dysentery, which are favorably preached at “thousands of the right kind of churches across the country.”

....(snip)....

POTUS loves to dance to that theme. He shakes his fists and jerks his legs in a manner suggesting a rare uncontrollable muscle spasm induced by a live electric wire arbitrarily applied to the spinal column. As he dances, he sings in his best Kid Rock voice, “mandate,” “landslide,” and “this war never would have begun if I had been here,” almost as often as he tells us how much he knows about real estate, while explaining things that have never been heard or “seen before.” POTUS is the ultimate front man — a convicted felon who still looks like a star but is really out on parole. He dictates his demands and desires to the world via Truth Social, ending each edition of his personal newsletter with “Thank you for your attention to this matter,” as if he’s a bill collector or a repo man. Well, he was allegedly a slumlord. Any fact he doesn’t agree with is “wrong” and anybody who doesn’t agree with him is his enemy until they agree to work for him.

....(snip)....

It’s been less than four years since the Democrats and Republicans reached a consensus on a major piece of legislation: The Bipartisan Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, which was signed into law on November 15, 2021. That was the last time we saw the bare minimum the government could do when people work together. Today, this act of good government stewardship is disparaged, forgotten or ignored so Congress can stage low-brow comedy. The entire GOP has relegated itself to a walk-on role in their own show, and they are too busy trying to pick their own voters to actually care. After all, they got to make their nut. They need a sizable guaranteed income, great health care and a comfortable living until they freeze in a blank stare and drool from a podium in the Dirksen Senate Office Building.

....(snip)....

The United States in which I was born would never settle for this. Republicans, led by party elder GOP Sen. Barry Goldwater of Arizona, ran Richard Nixon out of office after he lied to cover up the Watergate break-in. You know, when Republicans tried to bug Democratic National Committee Headquarters. How quaint such a notion seems today. Donald Trump is a convicted felon whose list of criminal accomplishments would make your average Mafia Don blush in envy. But Republicans in Congress worship him. There is no Goldwater among them. The best they can muster is a catatonic Kentucky Sen. Mitch McConnell. ..........(more)

https://www.salon.com/2025/08/15/trumps-american-hell-is-everywhere/