Donald J. Trump

The 2018 Florida governor’s race will go down as one of the great sliding-doors moments in American politics. Ron DeSantis, after “begging” for Donald Trump’s endorsement, eked out a 0.4 percent win over the Democratic mayor of Tallahassee, Andrew Gillum. In the years since, DeSantis became an anti-lockdown Covid champion, a very expensive failed presidential candidate and is now hotly tipped to fill a Trump cabinet vacancy once he leaves the governor’s mansion in November. Gillum has had a… different trajectory. Police officers found him in a hotel room with a male escort, suffering from a suspected crystal meth overdose in 2020. The married father-of-three checked himself into rehab and came out as bisexual later that year.

The Washington Post recently published two op-eds by Scott Greer, "a writer who years ago expressed racist and antisemitic views for an online white-supremacist publication," according to Politico. For context: Greer wrote for Richard Spencer's "Radix Journal" under a pseudonym. After Politico reached out for comment, WaPo removed the articles.That move might come across as a squirrelly act of insecurity in the middle of a turbulent time for Post Opinions.

Since Donald Trump retook office in January 2025, Washington has experienced significant upheaval in its institutions. The United States Institute of Peace underwent a DoGE takeover that involved federal police occupying the building, taking over its board of directors and seizing control of its assets and operations. The majority of people who had worked there prior was fired or nudged toward resignation – with their severance conditional on a promise not to sue their old employer. It was renamed the Donald J. Trump Institute of Peace. In May 2025, the District Court ruled the takeover unlawful, which was appealed, pausing the decision’s impacts until further proceedings.

President Trump sent off another flurry of Truth Social posts this morning, featuring Iranian fighter jets being zapped by lasers, mock-ups of a new Trump $100 bill and a morbidly obese Governor J.B. Pritzker of Illinois, chowing down. The AI-generated picture shows Pritzker sitting down to a vast buffet of nachos, fried chicken, pizza, hamburgers, a chocolate milkshake and – somewhat incongruously – spaghetti and meatballs. “J.B. is too busy to keep Chicago safe!” reads the caption. Cockburn notes how AI is changing Trump’s comedic style, which increasingly leans towards the pictorial rather than text. Unlike previous adversaries, the President has yet to give Pritzker a nickname à la “Sloppy” Steve Bannon or “Cryin’” Chuck Schumer.