As terrible as things are right now, there is one reason for optimism: Donald Trump is so bad that Republicans are expected to underperform even their existing low expectations in the upcoming midterms. Even if Democrats can’t take the Senate — which is probably still a long shot — controlling the House means everything from congressional hearings on the Epstein files to, quite possibly, ending the White House ballroom project. 

The bad news is that Democrats will probably win despite themselves. A new NBC poll shows that only 30% of Americans approve of the Democratic Party. That’s compared to 37% approval for the GOP, 41% for Trump and 38% for ICE. Only Iran and AI polled worse. Those low ratings are because so many people, especially on the left, see the Democrats as feckless and useless. Democratic gains this year won’t be sustainable if they can’t start convincing people otherwise. 

Last week, Justice Clarence Thomas once again reminded us why lifetime judicial appointments are a bad idea. Decades of zero accountability, even after accepting expensive gifts from right-wing billionaires, have convinced Thomas that he can believe, and also say, anything he wants, no matter how delusional. So he rambled on recently about how it was actually the left, not the right, that led to the fascist regime of Nazi Germany. 

That shouldn’t require debunking, any more than if Thomas made the claim that it’s cats rather than dogs who bark and lift their legs to pee. But you can see why he’d like to believe this. Thomas is a slobbering apologist for MAGA and his wife, Ginni Thomas, was deeply involved in the plot to overthrow democracy and install a literal fascist leader, namely Donald Trump, in the presidency by fair means or foul. It’s about as classic a case of psychological projection as you’ll ever find. 

Does Thomas actually believe this stuff? Or is he just so far up his own ass that he thinks no one will call out this laughable lie? Either way, it’s a scandal that someone so disconnected from basic reality sits on the Supreme Court. In a sane society, he’d have been impeached and banished long ago, just from the corruption scandal. But this certainly should be disqualifying. 

Thomas doesn’t have the intellectual honesty to run a Dairy Queen, for heaven’s sake. If that sounds extreme, think about how terrible it would be to serve ice cream while listening to your manager denying basic facts about the literal Holocaust. Which is exactly what he was doing in making up arguments that the left was responsible for the genocidal regime of a far-right movement.

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I know most people don’t read articles anymore, and it’s a real shame: The Atlantic’s deep dive on FBI director Kash Patel wasn’t just important but highly entertaining. I can personally attest that I was reading details from it out loud to a friend on Friday night. We were cackling with the pleasure you can only get from seeing a truly awful person humiliated in public. Patel deserves that and so much more. 

But, of course, being the worst is why he got that job to begin with. He has responded in the Trump-approved way, by lashing out at innocent people and trying to bully journalists into silence. He’s suing the Atlantic for $250 million, but I suspect he’s only doing that because he knows it will get thrown out of court quickly. I doubt very much that he wants the Atlantic’s reporters to put the evidence they collected into court documents, where other outlets can cover it freely, pushing even more embarrassing details out there. In the meantime, unfortunately, it will cost the magazine a lot of money to fight back. 

Patel is also trying to make good with his boss by promising that he’ll start arresting people for allegedly stealing the 2020 election from Trump. The Atlantic article gives us plenty of reason to think he’s just spouting that nonsense in order to survive long enough for the next news cycle to wipe this story from the headlines. There is zero reason to think he can produce enough evidence to get a single arrest for this imaginary crime, let alone an indictment.

Still, if Patel gets desperate enough, he may well direct more taxpayer dollars toward so-called investigations of people Trump hates. Those will eventually fall apart too, but it could mean a lot of pain and suffering for the victims along the way. His reaction to the Atlantic story only underlines the point: This guy has no business being anywhere near power. 

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