By MIKE KING
July 28, 2025

Okay, while it is fun to watch his sphincter tighten so much that he can shit a diamond, it’s important to remember that as we fixate on the Epstein scandal, he has carried out damn near every bullet point in the Project 2025 agenda. And it has taken just six months to get there. We all know he is buttocks-deep in Epstein’s horror show. Will anyone be surprised about that if the case file is ever released?

Meanwhile, he’s sent gestapo officers out to the streets trampling the due-process rights of thousands of people living in the country, putting them in concentration camps, defying court orders for their release, installing a man who just weeks ago told Department of Justice attorneys to fuck the courts, to a lifetime appointment on a U.S. District Court of Appeals, rescinding Clean Air standards so the fossil fuel industry and automakers no longer have to worry about regulation, dismantling FEMA as climate change worsens and causes more severe weather every year, threatening a former POTUS with treason based on a fact-free report his Director of National Security concocted to get back in his good graces, cowering the nation’s prestigious universities, law firms and media organizations to bend the knee or lose federal funding and defend themselves against lawsuits, demanding that he gets to interview nominees for high positions in the country’s armed forces, failed to negotiate an end to the two wars he promised he could stop, and in so doing emboldened more war crimes, ruined the CDC, the FDA and the nation’s public health and medical science infrastructure, and (I could go on) but let’s stop the litany with this: rendered the Legislative and Judicial branches of government subservient to him.

So while we all revel in the Epstein story, he’s already put Democracy in the rear view mirror. In just six months. That doesn’t mean we can’t get it back. But we have to start by understanding he has all the levers at his disposal now, save one — us. Buckle up.

Mike King is a retired Atlanta journalist and author of “A Spirit of Charity: Restoring the Bond between America and Its Public Hospitals.” He previously worked at the AJC as a science and medicine reporter, executive metro editor and editorial board member.