The Rot Is Everywhere: From Trump’s Body to America’s Airwaves

As the president decays in public, Epstein files vanish, coups get U.S. cover, and late-night satire is axed, welcome to the kleptocracy, now with fewer jokes.

Good morning from the swirling vortex of political rot, authoritarian overreach, and corporate decay brought to you by a nation so broken we can’t even keep our satirists employed. Personally, I’ve been crawling through summer with a rotating plague of flu and colds, two doctor’s visits, one emergency room detour, and a weight loss regimen I wouldn’t recommend to anyone. But I’m alive, allegedly. America? Jury’s out.

Let’s begin with the world’s most decrepit dictator cosplayer, Donald J. Trump, who just treated the world to another round of pyrotechnics over Iran. Only, like everything else he touches, it turned out to be a glitzy fraud. We were told the strikes obliterated Iran’s nuclear program. The Pentagon practically threw itself a ticker-tape parade, except now U.S. intelligence admits: of three targeted sites, only one was properly vaporized. The other two? Damaged just enough to delay the next nuclear breakout by a couple months. This was supposed to be “total annihilation” and instead we got glorified drywall damage and a press release. Trump rejected a military plan that might’ve actually worked because, in his words, it wasn’t “instinctual.” Translation: he wanted a TikTok moment, not a long-term solution, and settled for sloppy one-night bombing that empowered Iran’s hardliners while endangering every American service member within missile range.

And speaking of rotting from the inside, our pumpkin-hued president is quite literally falling apart. After months of mystery bruises, discolored hands, and wobbly gait, the Trump camp finally admitted he’s suffering from “chronic venous insufficiency”, a condition where blood struggles to return from the legs to the heart. Stage-three or four, if you listen to actual doctors, though Caroline Levitt would like you to believe it’s just a handshake injury from too much patriotism. Meanwhile, the White House is busy pretending the president is “vigorous,” while his limbs swell like overcooked sausages and his speeches collapse into breathless gibberish. And naturally, when the body starts rotting, so too do the lies.

This week’s crown jewel of gaslighting comes via the Epstein files, which Trump desperately wants everyone to believe are a hoax invented by Democrats, Obama, James Comey, and possibly the Tooth Fairy. His regime has shut down all federal investigations into Epstein co-conspirators, and the MAGA brain trust immediately launched a campaign demanding Ghislaine Maxwell be pardoned or retried. It’s almost poetic, really, Trump trying to bury Epstein’s secrets, Ghislaine Maxwell leaking a little blackmail letter to the Wall Street Journal as a reminder that she knows exactly where the bodies are buried.

That letter, for those keeping score, featured a birthday doodle from Trump to Epstein of a naked woman, complete with Trump’s signature scrawled across the pubic region, alongside cryptic lines like “enigmas never age” and “another wonderful secret.” Trump’s defense? “I don’t doodle.” Which would be hilarious if it weren’t so horrifying, given there are literal auction records of Trump’s doodles, documented in his own books, and even Gavin Newsom joined the dunk-fest, reposting Trump’s Manhattan skyline sketches under the caption, “I never wrote a picture in my life.” Turns out, Trump can’t even lie about not lying properly anymore.

But the saga doesn’t stop at blackmail. It reaches across oceans. While Trump dismantles justice here at home, he’s also going full tinpot despot abroad. Exhibit A: Jair Bolsonaro, Brazil’s wannabe dictator who just earned himself a shiny ankle monitor, a nightly curfew, and a total social media ban while awaiting trial for his own attempted coup. Naturally, Trump threw a tantrum on Bolsonaro’s behalf, threatening Brazil with tariffs, blasting President Lula as a “censorship tyrant,” and parroting the same nonsense Bolsonaro’s defense team spits out daily. Bolsonaro’s son is even lobbying Trump to sanction Brazilian Supreme Court justices, because why settle for wrecking one democracy when you can undermine two?

And all of this rot bleeds into our media ecosystem too. CBS, once the proud home of David Letterman, is axing The Late Show with Stephen Colbert after a decade of biting political satire that skewered Trump’s corruption in real time. This isn’t about ratings, Colbert’s show consistently led its time-slot and racked up Emmy nominations, but about corporate greed. The bean-counters at Paramount have decided democracy is simply too expensive, especially with their shiny new Skydance merger partner licking Trump’s boots by settling defamation suits for millions.

Meanwhile, The Daily Show is standing on borrowed time, with Jon Stewart’s contract expiring in December 2025 and persistent rumors of cancellation swirling ever louder. Late Night with Seth Meyers is still limping along but has already been gutted, NBC axed his live 8G Band last year, slashing costs as they starve late night of resources. And over at ABC, Jimmy Kimmel’s contract technically runs through 2026, but by his own admission, it’s likely his last lap, with Kimmel openly musing he’s done after this run.

The lights are going out on satire, one host at a time, just as authoritarianism tightens its grip. Colbert will almost certainly land on his feet, like Stewart, probably with a podcast or streaming platform less beholden to Trump-fearing corporate overlords, but the systematic collapse of satire in traditional media isn’t an accident. It’s the cultural wing of a broader authoritarian project: bury the corruption, silence the critics, and leave the public laughing only at state-approved TikToks while the rest of the world burns.

This is where we are: a con man melting in public, a child sex trafficking scandal being buried in plain sight, a fascist coup plotter protected by U.S. trade policy, and now our last comedic lifelines are getting the corporate axe. America is being strip-mined for parts.

And yet, here we are. Alive. Kicking, sort of. And still calling out every last lie, every last scam, and every last fraud. The good news? Authoritarian kleptocrats age poorly, their crimes compound, and history has a habit of circling back. The bad news? We have to live through this mess, sinus infections and all.