"I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody, and I wouldn't lose any voters, OK?"
— Donald Trump in January 2016 during the 2016 Presidential campaign
This post starts with what must feel like an impossible premise: Trump is gone. What does this look like? I don’t know. Nobody does. But that doesn’t stop me from trying to guess.
Gone, really? You’re crazy, you mad Jacobin!
No matter how hard the DOJ tries to hide his obvious guilt (see the top graphic), it’s simply not possible. The conclusions that have been unleashed and are still waiting, redacted, are the Kraken that will strangle what’s left of his emasculated body.
Will he be arrested? If so, by whom? Will he finally have such a complete mental breakdown that his cabinet will need to take action? Will the streets fill up with so many people outraged over more than 4,500 references to him in the latest Trump-Epstein file drop that they finally bring out the pitchforks? Will the pressure in his blood, rising out of the fear of finally being caught for stuff he’s gotten away with for several decades, kill him at long last?
We know it won’t be guilt that does him in, but fear might.
Keep in mind, my friends, that the DOJ, which is facing a congressional contempt citation1 for noncompliance with the House Oversight Committee’s subpoena to release the Trump-Epstein files, has another tranche of files about the same size as the last one.
It seems fair to guess that, given Attorney General Pam Bondi’s craven attitudes toward American law and jurisprudence, this next batch, the one she’s working hardest to conceal, is quite a doozy. As if this last one wasn’t. She’s expending every resource she has available to hide his guilt. She’s exhausted the world’s supply of black magic marker. Her cover-up makes Watergate look like a bunch of kids who got caught stealing Ticonderoga pencils from the teacher’s desk.
The regime didn’t want to release this latest batch. When one of the most destructive groups of files went viral, the DOJ, in a cover-up,2 temporarily deleted them from its servers. Now, another file is gone again (see graphic at the top of the page).
Americans should have the pleasure of meeting whoever is fighting the DOJ internally on this. As the fate of the most foul political figure since World War Two reaches its blisteringly overdue finale, we should meet this person.
Will that person please step forward? A nation awaits.
Will some of the DOJ lawyers who were said to have sobbed when reading these files step forward? A nation demands your loyalty and service.
The stuff the latest file dump revealed is worse than anyone expected. According to these horrific reams of evidence, charges of child rape and murder were leveled against Trump before he was a political figure. If there was just one such charge, we could, maybe, just maybe, wonder about financial blackmail. But the survivors’ first instinct was to go directly to the FBI. They didn’t file a civil lawsuit right away.
Why George W Bush’s FBI didn’t take any significant action on these charges will need an explanation from everyone involved, all the way up to Dubya. But that’s another story for another time, although the survivors who have suffered this monstrous cabal surely don’t feel like it is. Perhaps it’s more accurate to say that it’s a story for now, but just a different story, a different Substack, a different legal forum.
Sascha Riley, who has made the most explosive charges we know of against Trump, cannot be dismissed when another survivor is recorded by the FBI as having said she bit Trump’s penis. I’ve read some of Sascha Riley’s stuff, and I’ve read those who debunk them (mostly based on questions about the timeline).
It isn’t uncommon for survivors to get dates mixed up. Hell, I can barely remember my own birthdate. I sure as hell couldn’t tell you what company I was working for in 2007 without looking at my resume.
Survivor memories are often foggy.
Penis chomping is not as uncommon as you might think. When one of my favorite people in the world was raped, that was how she got away. I’d argue that resorting to this defense tactic is much worse for the survivor than the person who deserves it, but it’s a legit tool of the arsenal if you think there’s an escape route.3
Unfortunately, for Trump’s alleged victims, there was not. Often, they were stuck on an island or an airplane with these freaks.
It’s impossible to consider this latest file dump and not come to the conclusion that Trump is somehow even worse than we thought. This almost seems impossible. We witness his vile behavior every day. How can he be worse than that?
It looks like he found a way. He found a way to do things that are, I hope, far beyond the norm of human behavior. For this, he will be asked to leave. When he doesn’t, he will be forced to leave.
Ten years ago, campaign volunteer Brandon Fokkema responded to an ABC News question about the “I could shoot someone” speech by saying, “He probably could’ve worded it a little bit better.” But dammit, Brandon supported Trump, and that was that.
I wonder where Brandon stands today. If Trump were caught raping a child, would Brandon just say he probably has gone too far, but that he is still good for the country?4
Is he still on Team Predator? These days, he appears to be a real estate agent whose Instagram says your realtor should be someone you trust. Sorry, Brandon, I don’t trust anyone who voted for or supported Trump. Trustworthy or not, you sure as hell better redeem yourself now by joining the effort to end this.
People make mistakes, of course, and I do believe we need to welcome ex-Trumpers who are willing and able to repent, but I have doubts about how many of those people exist. Trust will be an issue for many years. It may take several decades for this nation to lick its wounds and heal from this madness.
Wait, Charles, you dumb ass optimist. You’ve been fooled before. Why are you saying this regime is finally cooked?
I know, I know. I said Kamala would win by a landslide. I understand. Grain of salt.
But hear me out.
Let’s look at the January 31 Texas special election for a state legislative seat. This election was an embarrassment for Team Predator.
This Texas special election was for a Texas state senate seat, which have terms of four years in Texas. Team Predator took an unexpected shellacking in a district that voted heavily for Trump in 2024.
Prez Diddy’s most recent special election loss (there have been a lot of them!) was not just a small, random sample of voters who are slightly upset with the rising cost of feed for their Texas Longhorns.
The district includes the kind of ranchland (and increasingly suburbanized converted ranchland) surrounding Fort Worth that typically votes for the Predator in Chief in massive waves. This time, his handpicked candidate, Wambsganss, experienced her own Texas slaughter. She didn’t even win precincts that have voted heavily for Prez Diddy in the past.
For example, Precinct 4113, with only 60-some people voting, went 32 votes for Democrat Taylor Rehmet versus 30 for the Republican, Leigh Wambsganss. This is the kind of voting district that has been voting heavily in favor of Trump since 2016.
In 2024, 135 people voted for the Chief Predator in Precinct 4113, and 89 for Kamala, or 60% to 40%.
Not this time. More than half the voters said no to Team Predator:
Much smaller sample size, but if nothing else, it demonstrates that even Texans are growing weary.
Another district, 1111, had a similar tale:
And now this:
The numbers in special elections are low. That’s the only caveat Team Predator can reach for, but numbers don’t lie. The people who voted rejected Team Predator. It’s not like Democrats have a history of romping in Texas special elections in demographics like rural Tarrant County.
You expect Democrats to do better as you inch your way from the outside of this map into Fort Worth. But this is an unusually blue map for rural Texas (the areas outside of Fort Worth).
Even the few districts that went red were close, instead of the standard Republican slaughter.
You can see for yourself here.5
Wambsganss is a hardcore MAGAt. Prez Diddy pretty much handpicked her. Probably because she looks like this (apologies to blond progressive women):
Texas voters said, “We’re done with this shit. The dude is a serial child predator. Don’t mess with Texas children.”
This brings me back to the original question.
What next?
I’ve been watching politics for a long time. I’ve never been paid to do so, but I don’t think that disqualifies me from my opinions, considering that most political pundits are idiots. The pundit class is one reason we are in this mess. So fuck the pundits.
That might sound dangerously like the Trumpanzee urge to dismiss experts, but punditry “expertise” is observational, not scientific, and the collective result of punditry was Trump. Case closed.
Anyone who wants to reopen the case should consider the presidential aspirations of California Governor Gavin Newsom. The punditry class has declared him the frontrunner in the 2028 election, even though nobody has yet declared their candidacy. Case closed and sealed.
As many of my readers know, I also love history. But none of this informs me about what might lie ahead.
The obvious immediate result of all this is that JD Vance will be the next president of the United States within a year or so. Hell, it could happen tomorrow. Get ready.
Much of what happens after that will depend on who he chooses as his vice president and which Trumpanzees he retains in his cabinet.
Everyone, and in this case, I truly mean everyone, assumes Vance will stay on the authoritarian road that has been paved by Trump’s madness.
Vance is a simpleton who can’t command a donut shop, which is not a great pair of attributes for a president. He’ll be the butt of a lot more jokes than of Vance-headlined news events, but he’s also young and ambitious. He may want to survive all this, and he might be smart enough to know how stupid he is, and search for intelligent life in what is left of the Republican Party.
If he does, he might try to turn around the fortunes of the party, which, as currently constructed, is doomed to destruction after Trump is gone. The party will erupt into an epic civil war no matter what he tries, but he will try to manage the outcome.
Hardcore Magats will be furious at Republicans who help fuel Trump’s demise. Old-style Republicans, like Substack’s own Adam Kinzinger, may try to wrestle the party away from the maniacs. Vance’s entire term may be an internecine fight between many different factions.
The oligarchs who fund the party could decide to lower the boom and demand some accountability while they consolidate power. American voters aren’t the sharpest tools in democracy’s shed. If they sense a movement afoot to impose some minor penalties on a few of the most egregious Trump actors, Republican poll numbers will rise.
This kind of scenario is more likely if they get slaughtered in the midterms, which now appears likely (see Tarrant County).
The consensus in the anti-Predator echosphere is that Vance is a stooge. A puppet for ringmasters like Peter Thiel.
There’s a problem with this consensus: Thiel is also a lunatic.6
As we’ve discovered, lunacy is not a disqualifier for obtaining vast power, but human nature is such that everyone might just want to take a nice long break from it.
It’s possible that Vance will do everything in his power to present an aura of normalcy. It’s not like he hasn’t changed positions before. Chameleons are jealous of his lone superpower.
This makes his upcoming presidency more dangerous than it would be if he followed the lunatic tract. By tricking low-information voters into thinking the Republican Party has learned its lesson, he could gain a significant electoral advantage in a re-election campaign.
Such a trick would be hard for someone with his intellect to pull off. It doesn’t help that he has the charisma of wilted chard. He lies as often as Prez Diddy, but doesn’t get away with it. He will have difficulty commanding a catering staff, much less a pile of narcissistic American Taliban commandos.
That temptation to take a break I mentioned will be especially strong among those of us who have been fighting Team Predator for ten years. We’re not simply exhausted. Many of us feel mentally scarred for life. We all want to return to normalcy. Many of us would like to put politics in the rearview mirror forever. Once Prez Diddy is gone, it will seem possible to do so.
The knowledge of this makes Team Predator rejoice. They’ve been hammering away at women’s rights for 40 years. They reacted to the election of a brown man as president with a fury that is not yet spent. They are relentless. They hate Black people. Truth. It’s not the 21st century to them. It’s 1860.
This doesn’t mean you’re stuck inside the world of politics forever. Just for another election or two, so that a class of normal politicians can resume their traditional arguments.
That is why there should only be one litmus test for political candidates in upcoming elections: Will you push for an administration that demands accountability? Will you focus on destroying executive power? Will you establish term limits for Supreme Court justices? Will you do the things we need to do so that this never happens again? Will you delete ICE completely instead of calling for reforms? How about the Department of Homeland Security, whose very name reeks of authoritarianism?
Politically, I’m left of Bernie, but all I really want is a return to a normal level of politics that makes it possible to achieve change if the people who want it badly enough can muster the forces to make it so.
I’m used to not seeing my preferred presidential candidate win. America is a centrist nation. But if centrism means acceptance of anyone involved with Team Predator, or a “unity” government that avoids accountability, that’s not centrism. It’s moving the Overton window into the realm of endless moral decay that will result in a final reckoning that will destroy what is left of us.
Thanks for reading!
Footnotes
Congresswoman Summer Lee. “Rep. Summer Lee Moves to Hold Pam Bondi in Contempt for Failing to Comply with Subpoena to Release Epstein Files,” January 21, 2026. https://summerlee.house.gov/newsroom/press-releases/rep-summer-lee-moves-to-hold-pam-bondi-in-contempt-for-failing-to-comply-with-subpoena-to-release-epstein-files.
Professional memo writer Chuck Schumer released this statement, then promptly fell asleep:
“The Justice Department needs to get its story straight. It announced collecting 6 million pages of Epstein files. But then yesterday said it was only releasing 3 million pages. I looked, and even that number is inflated. All told, across four new datasets released throughout the day yesterday, the Justice Department only released less than 2.7 million pages.
The law required all the Epstein files to be released on December 19, 2025. For forty-three days, the Justice Department delayed release, cherry-picked documents—many were heavily redacted—all to obscure the truth and delay justice for the survivors.
Until yesterday, the Justice Department admitted to having released less than 1 percent of all documents. Now it’s saying the work is done. Americans are very dubious.
The American people want the complete truth on the Epstein files, not puffed-up statistics. AG Bondi thinks she can dupe the American people. But we see right through her lies. Stop the cover-up and follow the law.”
My doctor tells me that men who hunch over the way Prez Diddy does are often known to have been subjected to a round or two of dick chomping, but she hates Trump, so she may have some bias.
Dwyer, Colin. “Donald Trump: ‘I Could ... Shoot Somebody, and I Wouldn’t Lose Any Voters.’” NPR, January 23, 2016. https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/01/23/464129029/donald-trump-i-could-shoot-somebody-and-i-wouldnt-lose-any-voters.
Clarityelections.com. “Election Night Reporting,” 2026. https://results.enr.clarityelections.com/TX/Tarrant/125768/web.345435/#/detail/1?linklocation=Graphical%20Election%20Night%20Reporting&linkname=January%2031,%202026%20-%20State%20Senate%20District%209%20Runoff%C2%A0%3C%2F.
Lesnes, Corine. “‘According to Peter Thiel, the 21st-Century Antichrist Uses Fear of Climate Change.’” Le Monde.fr. Le Monde, October 30, 2025. https://www.lemonde.fr/en/opinion/article/2025/10/30/according-to-peter-thiel-the-21st-century-antichrist-uses-fear-of-climate-change_6746932_23.html.
"... the charisma of wilted chard". "Team Predator!" 😂😂😂 Another great column.
I agree ...we ARE all scarred for life. My faith in my fellow citizenry is at an all time low. I know many are ignorant, as evidenced by their voting to make Peter Theil and his pals even richer... (WTF??) but I always hoped they would understand the difference between right and wrong. Child rape and abuse should be in the "wrong" column. Keeping my fingers crossed for a more civilized society.
If the felon leaves office, for any reason, a certain portion of the electorate will be “on the loose”. They won’t have a leader any longer, and they will probably stay home from the polls and feel sorry for themselves. They can go climb back under their rocks, and that will make all of us happier and less stressed.