{"id":116209,"date":"2026-01-01T12:37:09","date_gmt":"2026-01-01T12:37:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/116209\/"},"modified":"2026-01-01T12:37:09","modified_gmt":"2026-01-01T12:37:09","slug":"column-trumps-motto-in-2025-me-myself-and-i","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/116209\/","title":{"rendered":"Column: Trump’s motto in 2025? ‘Me, myself and I’"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The most potent attack ad<\/a> of Donald Trump\u2019s comeback campaign seemingly ran on a loop during the final weeks before the 2024 election. Assailing rights for transgender people, its punch line indeed delivered a punch: \u201cKamala Harris is for they\/them. President Trump is for you.\u201d<\/p>\n

2025: Promise broken. Back in office, the president has shown that the only pronouns he really recognizes are the first-person kind: me, myself and I.<\/p>\n

A year into Trump 2.0, those self-regarding pronouns are now firmly affixed as the bywords of his presidency, on matters major and mundane. They might as well be mounted in gold in the Oval Office, in fonts so large as to not get lost amid all the bling he\u2019s installed there. Asked in October just who was to be honored by Trump\u2019s planned Arc de Triomph-like monument near Arlington Cemetery, the president was quick: \u201cMe.\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n

To an extent that\u2019s shocked even critics long convinced of his sociopathic narcissism, Trump has fashioned a government that\u2019s of Trump, by Trump and for Trump. \u201cI run the country and the world,\u201d he boasted<\/a> in April. Trump thinks \u201cthere\u2019s nothing he can\u2019t do. Nothing, zero, nothing,\u201d his White House chief of staff, Susie Wiles, told Vanity Fair, as reported in two<\/a> articles<\/a> last month that signaled her own unease with Trump\u2019s ongoing vengeance against his political enemies; his clemency for even the most violent rioters of Jan. 6, 2021; the pain of his erratic tariffs, too-cruel migrant roundups and tragic shutdown of USAID\u2019s humanitarian aid; his stonewalling of the Jeffrey Epstein files that candidate Trump promised to release; and the foibles of his slavish Cabinet. <\/p>\n

If Trump strutted as the center of the universe in 2025 \u2014 unchecked by advisors like Wiles or by a cowed Republican-controlled Congress, the Supreme Court and corporate chieftains \u2014 buckle up for 2026. It marks the 250th birthday of America\u2019s independence, and our self-appointed master of ceremonies is focused on the festivities that he\u2019ll star in not only on July 4th but all year long. One of his first acts as president was to create a White House task force<\/a> with himself as chair, of course, to plan semiquincentennial events, ignoring an eight-year-old commission created by Congress for that purpose. Coming soon: A (possibly illegal) commemorative $1 coin<\/a> with Trump\u2019s image from the U.S. Mint.<\/p>\n

Never mind that 2026 starts with a big spike in health insurance costs<\/a> for tens of millions of Americans, including many Trump voters. The president who campaigned on bringing down the costs of living has stood in the way of a legislative remedy to the Dec. 31 expiration of healthcare premium subsidies, repeatedly mouthing his years-old promise that he\u2019ll propose a cheaper alternative within weeks.<\/p>\n

But here\u2019s how 2026 will end: with midterm elections in November that loom as a referendum on whether the Trump Republican Party should keep control of Congress. The early betting is that no, it won\u2019t. Especially after another year of Trump grandstanding, and his party\u2019s genuflecting.<\/p>\n

In good times, Trump\u2019s garish self-regard might be tolerable to voters, even comical. But these aren\u2019t good times, hardly the \u201cgolden age\u201d Trump announced in his inaugural address last January \u2014 except for him and the wealthy hangers-on at his seemingly endless round of parties in the White House and at Mar-a-Lago. The Gatsby-themed Halloween party<\/a> at Trump\u2019s Florida resort was especially rich, pun intended, coming as it did hours before federal food aid for 42 million Americans expired amid a government shutdown he\u2019d done nothing to avert.<\/p>\n

Days later, voters gave a shellacking to Republicans in various states\u2019 2025 off-year elections, which is a good omen for the same result nationwide in 2026. There are other signs. On Tuesday, a new Gallup poll<\/a> showed three out of four Americans were dissatisfied with \u201cthe way things are going in the United States.\u201d Trump\u2019s approval rating was just 36% in Gallup\u2019s poll<\/a> in early December, his lowest reading of the past year, and nearly equal to his all-time low after the Jan. 6 insurrection. Averages of various polls<\/a> show Trump with negative ratings on his handling of immigration, the economy, trade and tariffs, and inflation \u2014 all issues that helped get him reelected.<\/p>\n

But go ahead, Mr. President. Keep talking about how great you are. You\u2019re a legend in your own time and mind.<\/p>\n

Trump\u2019s tone-deafness has become the great mystery of U.S. politics, for both parties, especially considering that he slammed President Biden for bragging about the economy\u2019s post-pandemic recovery when Americans weren\u2019t feeling it.<\/p>\n

As Americans struggle to buy a home or to afford its upkeep, Trump has gilded the People\u2019s House (see the New York Times\u2019 recent 3-D recreation<\/a> of the Oval Office for full, nauseating effect) and transformed the bathroom<\/a> adjoining the Lincoln Bedroom in marble and gold. Having demolished the East Wing to make way for a gargantuan ballroom where Marie Antoinette would be at home, financed by favor-seeking billionaires and corporations, Trump told<\/a> reporters on Tuesday that it would have to be bigger than he\u2019d first planned because \u201cwe\u2019re gonna do the inauguration\u201d there.<\/p>\n

What? The man who\u2019s supposed to be leaving office on Jan. 20, 2029, is picking the new location for the next presidential inauguration? Hmmm.<\/p>\n

Even before he\u2019s been in office a year, Trump has put his brand on two Washington buildings, including the nation\u2019s 60-year-old cultural center named by law as a memorial to an assassinated president. The Kennedy Center (no, I will not call it by Trump\u2019s name) will have marble armrests; Trump took to social media on the day after Christmas to show off<\/a> samples. Meanwhile, he\u2019s refurbishing a royal jet from Qatar, a \u201cpalace in the sky.\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n

Trading on his power in unprecedented ways, Trump was a \u201ccrypto billionaire\u201d<\/a> by May, the Wall Street Journal reported, and in August the New Yorker estimated<\/a> that he\u2019d profited in office by at least $3.4 billion through crypto and licensing deals.<\/p>\n

No, Trump is not for you. He\u2019s for he\/him.<\/p>\n

Bluesky: @jackiecalmes<\/a>
Threads: @jkcalmes<\/a>
X: @jackiekcalmes<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The most potent attack ad of Donald Trump\u2019s comeback campaign seemingly ran on a loop during the final…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":116210,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[11432,383,61888,7217,48,52,51,47,50,49,55565,346,24696,8111,6283,61887,1519,61889,8843,61890,72],"class_list":["post-116209","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-los-angeles","tag-americans","tag-economy","tag-erratic-tariff","tag-jan","tag-la","tag-la-headlines","tag-la-news","tag-los-angeles","tag-los-angeles-headlines","tag-los-angeles-news","tag-marble","tag-office","tag-party","tag-poll","tag-president","tag-republican-controlled-congress","tag-trump","tag-u-s-mint","tag-way","tag-white-house-chief","tag-year"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/116209","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=116209"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/116209\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/116210"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=116209"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=116209"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=116209"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}