America’s descent into chaos and madness continues apace under the increasingly irrational, vindictive, narcissistic cretin, Donald J Trump. It’s difficult to believe that the world’s most powerful nation isn’t undergoing a collective nervous breakdown. It will take decades to recover from, even if it’s possible. If anyone, a decade ago, had written a fictional account of what’s happening right now, it would have been laughed at. I picked out a few things, just from the past few days, each of which would have been enough to get someone sacked, impeached or even jailed, but have barely caused a ripple. The extraordinary in the US had become normalised.
Robert F Kennedy
Health Secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr, perhaps even more demented than Trump, appeared on a talk show recently to attack Anthony Fauci, Trump’s chief medical adviser during the COVID pandemic. Kennedy seemed to suffer a complete meltdown and denied that hospital ICUs were inundated when the pandemic struck in 2020. He said they were empty!
Faucci has been relentlessly attacked by Trump supporters who accuse him of killing ‘millions’ of Americans by social distancing and organising mass vaccinations. The renowned immunologist actually saved millions. Among the many who died in the pandemic are MAGA supporters who refused the vaccine because of men like Kennedy.
Republicans forced Dr Fauci to release his covid diaries in which he once recorded a call from Barack Obama. The former president called Trump a “hopeless idiot” and his son Donald Jr a “f*****g moron.” He apologised for the profanities - but let's be honest, he was right.
Trump is denying funds to states that didn’t vote for him
In court filings, government officials acknowledged that they had terminated funding of more than $7.5 billion in Biden-era grants for clean energy projects, “based solely” on political criteria, targeting projects in states that were represented by Democrats and had voted for Kamala Harris, the Democratic party’s presidential nominee, in the 2024 election.
They are doing these things quite openly. It's the reverse of pork-barrel politics where you spend to buy votes from your own supporters.
New tariffs
After introducing trade tariffs illegally in 2025 under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, Trump was forced to refund billions of dollars to US companies that coughed up the money, which Trump thought other countries would pay. He has now introduced a new blanket tariff of 10% under some obscure 1970s legislation to prevent goods being imported from countries that used forced labour.
Twenty-five US states have now launched legal proceedings to get those tariffs declared illegal. They will probably succeed. Look out for more refunds in 2027.
The Reflecting Pool
Trump still insists that damage to the reflecting pool at the Lincoln Memorial was caused by vandals, even though there is zero evidence, and his recently appointed Attorney General for Washington, Jeanine Pirro, was forced to drop charges against a former US Olympian and admit the ‘damage’ was in fact the result of contractor “error.”
Trump appointed the contractor, but can’t accept that he made a big mistake. More defendants have now seen charges dropped. Instead of accepting he was wrong, it looks like Pirro will soon be replaced.
Todd Blanche
Trump’s newly confirmed US Attorney General, Todd Blanche, is his own former personal lawyer and the man who has proposed the $1.776 billion ‘slush fund’ to compensate those who stormed the Capitol building on 6 January 2021. Not the victims note, but the perpetrators who were doing Trump’s bidding. He has also proposed granting Trump, his family and his companies from ever having their accounts audited by the IRS.
Blanche is also the person who is covering up the Epstein scandal and moved Ghislaine Maxwell, still the only person convicted of any crimes linked to Epstein’s, to a nice, comfortable open prison.
Venezuelan Oil
There is the question about what’s happened to $13 billion dollars raised by the US from selling Venezuelan oil. Nobody, including the Venezuelans, seems to know where it’s gone. This was originally reported by the FT, so it's certainly not fake news.
Privileged early access to his Truth Social Posts
Trump is selling privileged early access to his own Truth Social (a double misnomer if ever there was one) posts that tend to move financial markets. Pay him £100,000 per month and that’s what you get.
Banks and hedge funds are queuing up to sign on the dotted line.
Capital One and Trump "money laundering"
In an attempt to prove that US bank Capital One closed 385 of his companies' accounts in 2021 for political reasons, Trump launched legal proceedings. The bank now say, in court filings, it actually closed bank accounts associated with President Trump and his businesses in 2021 "for anti-money laundering reasons” in another self-inflicted humiliation for the felon in the White House.
JUST IN: Capital One says it closed hundreds of bank accounts associated with President Trump and his businesses in 2021 "for anti-money laundering reasons," according to a recent court filing from the financial institution.— ABC News (@ABC) August 3, 2026
Polling
Trump's polling numbers hit a new low with just 33% approving of his policies:
New polling shows challenges for President Trump as Americans debate the economy and foreign policy. #Trump #Polling #America
FBI agents sue Trump
FBI agents who were fired because they were ordered to investigate Trump for his efforts to undermine the result of the 2020 election have formed an association and launched legal action against the bureau for what they call a “retribution campaign” targeting them for their work.
“Putting aside the resulting violation of Plaintiffs’ rights, the inevitable impact of this ‘purge’ will be to chill the independence of remaining and future career agents, attorneys, analysts, and other staff at the FBI, DOJ and other law enforcement agencies who must now act with the understanding that their investigative and law enforcement judgments can, for the first time in their careers, be assessed through a partisan political lens,” the brief states.
The economy
In the midst of all this, the US budget deficit continues to grow. It’s expected to reach $1.9 trillion this year, a record outside the pandemic years of 2020 and 2021. The increase is due to interest payments and Trump’s tax cuts. Don’t forget that in August 2024, Trump promised to get rid of the deficit by appointing DOGE.
The national debt
The US national debt reached its highest-ever level of $39.5 trillion in June, a 37% increase from its pre-pandemic levels, and many put the blame squarely on President Donald Trump.
In 2016, Trump said he would eliminate the country's debt entirely, which at the time stood at $19 trillion, "over a period of eight years." It has more than doubled instead. Last year, he supported the idea of using 20% of the savings from the Elon Musk–led budget slashing initiative to pay down the debt.
DOGE
In fact, savings from DOGE have been nothing like the trillions of dollars that Trump and Republicans seemed to think were being lost due to waste and fraud. The department of government efficiency (DOGE) created by Trump and headed up by Elon Musk was a total failure, according to a new report issued by the US Government Accountability Office (GAO).
Trump said Musk would save taxpayers “trillions of dollars” and implement “an action plan to totally eliminate fraud and improper payments within six months.”
Total savings claimed as of July this year stood at $110 billion, but even that figure is highly doubtful. According to the Washington Post, DOGE consistently overstated its savings in online posts, took credit for lease cancellations initiated before the group existed and claimed contracts were terminated that had not been. The database contained ‘savings’ that could not be verified.
The so-called savings were often contentious, illusory or misleading if they existed at all.
Seeking voter data to manipulate the midterm elections
To try and save his presidency and avoid the Democrats taking control of both houses in the November midterm elections, Trump is desperately seeking states' electoral rolls. Colorado recently became the 20th state to deny him.
His White House Ballroom
An appeal court has upheld a lower court’s block on Trump building his ballroom where the old East Wing stood until he demolished it. In the 132 page ruling the justices said:
"We are aware of no instance in American history in which a President unilaterally and using privately collected funds demolished substantial portions of the White House that Congress authorized to be built and American taxpayers paid for. Until now."
This was a 2:1 majority by the way. One Trump-appointed judge thought it was OK. As the majority say, “Each President is a temporary tenant, not the owner, of the White House and its Executive Residence." It doesn't give a tenant the right to demolish part of the building he's occupying.
New Mexico sues Trump's DoJ
New Mexico are suing Trump’s Attorney General, Todd Blanche, to obtain information that the Department of Justice is withholding about Jeffrey Epstein. Imagine that. The nation’s most senior law officer has to be sued to get him to release potential evidence of serious crimes that may have taken place at Epstein’s remote ranch in NM. Why would he do that?
As someone has remarked, if you were not a paedophile and you had the power to release clear evidence that you weren’t, why wouldn’t you?
Trump a Russian asset?
The FBI opened an investigation in 2017 into suggestions that Trump was, wittingly or not, a Russian asset. This was after he fired James Comey, head of the FBI. This story was revealed last week by The White House, presumably to show there was no evidence for the claim, or none that investigators could find. The investigation was closed in April 2019 after the Mueller report was published.
Mueller didn’t conclude Trump was a Kremlin stooge but it did detail multiple contacts between the Trump campaign and senior Russian officials. And we know now that Trump has bent over backwards to help Putin in Ukraine. If he isn’t a Russian asset, he at least behaves as if he is.
US Employment disappoints
American employers unexpectedly lost 23,000 jobs in July, and gains for the previous two months were revised down sharply by a combined 103,000 jobs, painting a weaker picture of the labour market than past data indicated.
The latest data from the Bureau of Labour Statistics shows the economy continues to struggle.
Trump pays to cut renewable energy projects
Incredibly, Trump is paying German energy conglomerate RWE, $1.22 billion NOT to build three offshore windfarms because he thinks they’re ugly. RWE have been persuaded to invest in gas fired power plants instead. In total he’s spending $4 billion to stop renewable energy projects going ahead. This is as wild fires destroy thousands of acres of forests in North America, caused in part by climate change which is happening much quicker than we thought.
The Trump administration has agreed to roughly $4 billion in settlements this year to cancel planned offshore wind projects, including a $1.22 billion deal with German utility RWE announced Thursday, with billions more in projects still at risk— Bloomberg News (@bloomberg.com) 7 August 2026 at 12:00
This is just a small selection of what's happening right now in the USA under Trump.
