Most Read / Must Read: The PREVAIL Year in Review

A look back at the ten most popular pieces from 2024. Plus: some thoughts on the consequences of having a POTUS who is a serial liar.

Since my last dispatch on Tuesday morning, the calendar has flipped to 2025, and there have been two terrorist attacks in the United States—one in each of the two “fun” American cities, Las Vegas and New Orleans.

Other than to extend my condolences to the families who lost loved ones and my sympathies to those injured, I don’t have much to say about the attacks themselves. What worries me more, and what is almost certainly a preview of what’s to come in 17 days, is the response by the President-Elect. Here is what Trump wrote on Truth Social, the social media platform he owns (as opposed to the one his work-wife Elon Musk owns), a few minutes after midnight on January 2, 2025:

Our Country is a disaster, a laughing stock all over the World! This is what happens when you have OPEN BORDERS, with weak, ineffective, and virtually nonexistent leadership. The DOJ, FBI, and Democrat state and local prosecutors have not done their job. They are incompetent and corrupt, having spent all of their waking hours unlawfully attacking their political opponent, ME, rather than focusing on protecting Americans from the outside and inside violent SCUM that has infiltrated all aspects of our government, and our Nation itself. Democrats should be ashamed of themselves for allowing this to happen to our Country. The CIA must get involved, NOW, before it is too late. The USA is breaking down - A violent erosion of Safety, National Security, and Democracy is taking place all across our Nation. Only strength and powerful leadership will stop it. See you on January 20th. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!

That was Trump’s public response to a terrorist attack. Four more years of this hateful, heartless, stupid insipidity we have to look forward to.

The first chapter of Rough Beast, my book about Trump and the danger he poses to democracy, is called “Dishonest Abe: Lies, Damned Lies, and Stuff Donald Says,” in which I make the argument that Orange Grover Cleveland is a serial liar. (No reasonable human, I think, would disagree. ) It is worth repeating the beginning of that chapter:

The Trump presidency began with an assault on the truth.

The first time that Sean Spicer, the newly-minted press secretary, addressed the White House press corps, he lied about the size of the crowd at the Inauguration—and he did so at the new president’s stubborn insistence. Spicer may as well have been standing next to Shaquille O’Neal, indignantly insisting he was taller. We knew he was lying, he knew he was lying, the press corps knew he was lying, Saturday Night Live certainly knew he was lying. Even Chuck Todd, no journalistic paragon, took exception to it, in what turned out to be a historic episode of Meet the Press, on which Trump advisor Kellyanne Conway coined the term “alternative facts.” There was uneasiness, certainly, and plenty of jokes made at Spicer’s expense. But few imagined that this pathetic spectacle was merely the opening salvo in a four-year onslaught against reality. . . The annihilation of truth is Trump’s greatest achievement as president—his lone success.

One aspect of Trump Redux that I have not much considered on these pages, and that the mainstream media has scarcely considered at all, is that there will inevitably be grave consequences when, in a moment of national crisis—such as a terrorist attack—the leader of the country is a liar who cannot ever be believed. We saw this firsthand in the first Trump Administration, when Donald’s deliberate negligence during the pandemic caused hundreds of thousands of Americans to die needlessly—not that anyone seems to want to so much as recall that horror, let alone re-litigate it.

Remember when the George W. Bush administration claimed that Saddam Hussein had acquired yellowcake and was making nuclear weapons, even though Saddam Hussein had not acquired yellowcake and was not making nuclear weapons, and also, by the way, had zero to do with 9/11? And how we all knew they were full of shit but we went to war anyway? Yeah, well Trump makes Bush and Cheney look like Jim Carrey in Liar, Liar. Like, Dick Cheney’s kid, whose politics are not much different from her old man’s, is now an avatar of truth and justice and a staunch defender of democracy. That’s how far we’ve fallen.

What happens if there’s another 9/11 on Donald’s watch? We know he will not tell the truth. And even if he does…how could we believe him?

I will talk more about this on The Five 8 this evening:

In the meantime, to put a bow on the year just ended, here are 2024’s ten most-read pieces on PREVAIL—nine by me, one by my friend, the intrepid and inspiring Zarina Zabrisky.

Thanks so much for your support, which I always appreciate.

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#10

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#9

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#8

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#7

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#6

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#5

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#4

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#3

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#2

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#1

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Photo credit: Screen shot from Blade Runner (1982). Holden administers the Voight-Kampff test.