The Last Gloaming

Mar 19, 2026

I thought I was more intense in yesterday’s editorial about Trump’s deconstruction than other conservative writers would likely be in their assessments, but it turns out I was not. I even thought I might lose one of the conservative publications that carries a lot of my writings; but, instead, they actually carried the article, rather than tossing me out on my head. It turns out that yesterday became a turning point or, at least, a climax for a number of conservative or alternative-press writers who have clearly had enough.

For all of the writers I came across who covered the collapse of Donald Trump and MAGA, it was not just Trump’s flip-flopping in his relationship with NATO or his tirade against NATO members that jarred them. It was not even just the Iran war, though that was certainly the catalyst. It was the raft of imperial, Quixotic, militaristic, and bombastic betrayals of anything and everything the MAGA folk thought they were getting in Trump.

This week, Trump entered what appears suddenly to be the twilight of his popularity, as the lights suddenly came on everywhere for nearly everyone. Even Nick Fuentes, one of his former supporters, whom Trump wined and dined at Mar-a-Lago, called for his impeachment yesterday:

He’s the problem. The buck stops with him. He’s the president. He’s the movement. And if there ever were principles or promises, he’s betrayed all of them….
He needs to go. Like, I really believe that he needs to be impeached under the Democrats. And I don’t even want him to be removed from office because I don’t want Vance to become president either. I want Vance to burn down with all of it. But it just needs to be shut down. This guy is totally insane.

Many people who had been big supporters of Trump started seeing who he is with clarity yesterday and writing about it. Others, who have been critical but balanced, took off their restraints. Still, Trump is far from finished. He has three years left unless Fuentes gets his kind-of wish, and he seems to become more deranged by the month; but I guess that is how those kinds of things go.

I’ve decide to briefly review two particularly excellent articles from the headlines below. I’m not saying these writers just now came to their realizations because I’m sure from what they’ve written, they’ve seen the light for some time. However, this past week became a climax for them in the same way it did for me, and they really laid it on the line.

A couple of other writers (who come right after these two in the headlines section that follows) also merit a look. I’m going to share all the headlines with everyone today in order to showcase and help advance these astute observations about how Trump has revealed his vacant inner core, hoping I can send some traffic their way; so, I hope you will read them:

John Whitehead (The Rutherford Institute):

Whitehead begins with a couple of quotes by Trump, past and present, that should have clued everyone in about his character, which Whitehead points out was easy to discern all along:

“When you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything... Grab ‘em by the pussy. You can do anything.”— Donald J. Trump on seizing women, Access Hollywood (2005)
“I think I can do anything I want with it. Whether I free it, take it, I think I can do anything I want with it.”—Donald Trump on seizing Cuba (2026)

From there, Whitehead goes on to say,

Despite the Access Hollywood recording—and everything it revealed about his character—Trump was elected to the White House twice. And ever since, he has governed exactly as he promised: as a man who believes he is unaccountable, entitled, and free to act without limits….
He can be accused of sexually assaulting young girls, and he won’t lose any voters. He can, as commander-in-chief, sanction the bombing of a girls’ school in Iran—killing young girls, their mothers and teachers—and he won’t lose any voters. He can torpedo a thriving economy, sending inflation and gas prices soaring, and he won’t lose any voters. He can dismantle a government structure that has been in place for over 200 years, and he won’t lose any voters. He can be a walking—talking—living contradiction of everything Christians claim to stand for, and he won’t lose any voters. He can send Americans servicemen and women to die in wars that the U.S. had no business starting, and he won’t lose any voters.

77,000,000 Americans made Trump president of America, and millions of MAGA supporters empowered Trump to emerge over the course of 2025 as the worst version of himself; yet, somehow he manages to keep hitting new lows in behavior that reveal more and more truth about how base his character, is as Whitehead describes:

… Trump’s acts of aggression against other nations—Venezuela. Iran. Greenland. Canada. Now Cuba—are expansions of the same worldview, only this time backed by the full force of the U.S. military and funded by American taxpayers.
It is the logic of the schoolyard bully: Take what you want. Dare others to stop you. Punish anyone who resists.

As a strong writer about constitutional issues and the writings and beliefs of our nation’s founding fathers, Whitehead says,

Trump wanted Venezuela’s oil, so he used the military to get it—and then bullied the country’s leaders into letting him keep it and its profits.
The tactics—swaggering, arrogant, and always prepared to browbeat and mow over anyone and anything in his way—have become all too familiar.

All exactly the opposite of any characteristics of Christ, whom Trump and his prophets claim appointed Trump to Make America Great Again.

Trump wants a new ballroom? Tear down the old one and build another.
Trump wants to be in charge of global peace? Seize the U.S. Institute of Peace and rename it.
Trump wants to prove his economic prowess? Levy tariffs against any nations who refuse to fall in line.
Trump wants to be seen as the one who solved Iran? Launch a preemptive war that kills civilians, destabilizes regions, and threatens the global economy—then turn to the same allies he once disparaged to bail him out.
The pattern is unmistakable: Power without restraint. Action without accountability. Force without principle.
And when the law stands in the way, it is bent—or ignored. Justice is weaponized. Congress is sidelined. The courts are defied, their rulings delayed or disregarded when inconvenient. Due process becomes conditional—a privilege for the favored few, optional for the disfavored.
This is not constitutional governance.

Whitehead has a lot to say quite lucidly about Trump’s character. I encourage you to think deeply about his article. That is why I led off with it.

Phil Butler (Writing on the pro-Trump Zero Hedge site):

Phil Butler, the former publisher at Russia Insider, analyst for Russia Today, and a contributor to the Huffington Post, The Epoch Times and Japan Today, writes another erudite article about the deep flaws that have broken out into the open as Donald Trump cracks:

I’ve written through enough upheaval to know when the ground has actually shifted beneath us. Today’s chaos isn’t the usual turbulence we’ve learned to absorb—the predictable cycles of crisis and recovery, or the familiar rhythms of things getting worse before they get better. Something structural has given way. We all feel it, even if we can’t quite name it, even if we’re still performing the motions of normalcy while the framework quietly collapses around us. I didn’t think I’d be writing this kind of story either….
On September 5, 2025, President Trump signed Executive Order 14347, authorizing the Department of Defense to use “Department of War” as a secondary title. Plaques at the Pentagon were quietly replaced. Secretary Pete Hegseth began appearing at press conferences as the Secretary of War. The White House framed it as “restoring the institution to its founding-era roots” and a signal of “peace through strength.” Critics sugar-coated it, calling it simply performative saber-rattling. However, the symbolic shift was deliberate: from defense to war as the default posture. Hegseth, a man with zero qualifications to hold the job, struts like a barnyard rooster crowing about the “No Quarter” Directive….
As a point of fact, Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions and the U.S. Law of War Manual explicitly prohibit “no quarter” declarations. They are considered war crimes because they remove the incentive for surrender and command the killing of those who can no longer fight….
President Trump is an even bigger barnyard caricature strutting and donkey honking about how “he’s” already won the war with Iraq [sic.], and how American fliers and sailors are blowing up shit just for fun. Meanwhile, Iran is anything but defeated.

Butler lays out the path from the precursors to chaos during Trump 1.0, through the swamp of Biden, and into the war-torn wasteland of Trump 2.0. He spells out how we got to a government over the United States that is unrecognizable, just as one of Trump’s longtime female fans, whom I quoted yesterday, said about the nation’s leader she once adored, claiming she no longer recognizes the man she sees.

Then Butler uses apocalyptic language very similar to what I used in my editorial about the deconstruction of Trump:

For many, the world is not sliding toward Armageddon because one man is uniquely evil. Donald Trump has gone from being a last chance for millions to being a dictatorial madman of a pariah state. Our nation is being redefined by the world at the moment, the presidency is remade. It’s important to note that almost no one is talking about the Epstein Files anymore. How could we focus on that societal carnage with the world coming to an end in front of our eyes?

Butler’s comments on the inevitable success of Iran’s embargo on oil going out of the Persian Gulf match my own at the start of the war when Trump was foolishly talking about US military escorts for tankers and US-government-provided insurance and later about tankers finding the guts to go through the strait on their own, encouraging them off to their own peril in order test Iran’s resolve.

All useless ideas, though some mainstream financial writers took up Trump’s lightheaded notions as if they might have some merit for consideration, which they certainly did not because the real truth about the simplicity of Iran’s blockade without a blockade is picked up by Butler in much the same way I described it on day one because the truth, looking past all of Trump’s bluster, was glaringly simple:

The world’s most vital energy artery has become a “Dead Zone.” No amount of “Peace through Strength” rhetoric can move a single tanker through a sea of asymmetric mines and autonomous drones that the 1% refused to acknowledge until the lights began to flicker in the West.

As one of the videos below lays out, Iran has deployed simple measures that are comparatively cheap to build, and with those cheap tricks has stalled the US navy from doing anything to prevent closure of the gulf. David’s little stone has struck Goliath between the eyes (not that I think of Iran as being in any way, the good guy here like the legendary David, but neither is tyrannical Trump. I’m just speaking of scale), and now Trump is collapsing into the withering void of his own soul:

Donald Trump at first requested help, then demanded it, threatened allies for it, and subsequently told the world that America does not need its former allies. It is the final, lonely posture of a Hegemony that has lost its connection to the Substrate and is now shouting into the void.

Strongly said.

Trump’s latest demand that the news media shift to reporting only the administration’s view of Trump’s War is a step back into much darker ages than many people alive today have known in their lifetimes:

This isn’t just a presidential tantrum; it is the institutionalization of silence. FCC Chairman Brendan Carr, following a meeting at Mar-a-Lago, has openly threatened to revoke the broadcast licenses of networks that air “news distortions,” effectively auditioning a state-mandated script for the American public. Secretary Hegseth has even provided the headlines he expects a “Patriotic Press” to run: “Iran Increasingly Desperate” instead of “Mideast War Intensifies.”
We are being prodded into a state where seeing the world as it actually exists—observing the smoke from the Saudi bases or the retreat of the Lincoln—is legally redefined as an act of betrayal. This pincer movement between the White House and the regulatory bodies is designed to pave over the “Substrate” of truth with a layer of digital concrete so thick that the actual human and hardware costs of the war become invisible.

This kind of robust censorship reeks of Nazism and Soviet Russia and Red China.

With these kinds of acts Trump has become the president of a pariah state, cast off by allies and increasingly hated by most of the world. Relationships with other nations will never be the same.

Again, I encourage you to read the article so that it can fully make its own points.

John Rubino

You might also want to read John Rubino’s brief encapsulation of the mega MAGA meltdown.

Relations between the major [MAGA] players have taken a darker turn. The MAGA (Make America Great Again) movement has descended into a civil war over its central issues, with old allies becoming, in some cases, mortal enemies….
This isn’t a frivolous debate. The differences between original MAGA and ascendant neoCons are stark, and what happens next — starting with the upcoming mid-term elections — will shape global politics and finance for years to come.

Man o’ wars

With all of Trump’s chaotic, warring moves, it is not surprising that the equally ludicrous stock market plummeted over 700 points on the Dow today to plumb out a new low for the year. It was easily foreseeable that crude oil raced back up to $111/bbl as Israel destroyed a major Iranian gas site. Both markets have become as manic as the president.

Oil soared because Israel launched a devastating attack on the biggest gas enterprise in Iran, and Iran immediately promised to mete out much broader retaliation in the oil fields in retaliation for that attack, stating, ““The enemy committed suicide, we have moved to a full economic war.” Then it started down the long road of carrying that threat out. It is not surprising that gasoline also soared to over $5/gal. in Washington State and California.

As I stated a few days ago, this oil crisis will last much longer than the one in the 70s because, oil is not simply under an embargo, but the ability to produce it and load it for shipment is being destroyed. By the time the ships can move again, there will be a lot less oil to ship out of that region for quite some time.

This war will bring a rise in inflation that keeps inflating for a long time. We won’t just be paying for the war by restocking all of our weapons. We’ll be paying for the inflation that comes from devastation in one of the world’s most oil-rich regions. Not that it is all gone by any means so far, but it has been hit badly, and we have no idea how much further that will go, while restoring production will take, at least, a couple of years after the bombing stops … whenever that day comes.

And that is only looking at the costs that come from oil and gas. We have no idea what new kinds of losses will come in the days ahead from things like cyberwar; but, so far, the hits have been enormous. That is why Trump wants to censor all reporting about them.

Apocalypse looming

Every day this war is widening as it spirals out of the Don’s control and as he spirals down, himself. This is what a nation gets when a major party covers for a supremely arrogant leader with no moral core values whose dementia is clearly as bad as Biden’s while the madman’s select courts give him immunity over every official act he makes, even as his party in congress and all the sycophants who drown him with praise in his cabinet meetings do nothing to rein in him (as if they could).

I would barely prefer the demented old fool the Dem’s covered for, who shook hands with curtains and talked to the dead and did faceplants on stages and fell off his bicycle because he should have been on a tricycle. I would prefer all of that clownishness to this loose cannon banging all over the world, creating what may, yet, turn into the most epic war of our time.

Don’t mistake me. It is not that I liked anything about Biden. I did not. His Covid policies did me a world of financial harm, and he took our nation into the pages of 1984 with his draconian enforcement of those policies, which was an absolutely horrible shift in our society. He also was divisive like Trump. Going from Donald McRonald 1.0 to Biden, we went from bad to worse; but now, in 2.0, we’ve gone to worst.

We are roaring into scenes that look like they are straight from The Apocalypse, otherwise known as the Book of Revelation, and the damage done to the world may be much worse than the damage recked by Trump’s vaccines, which he endlessly praised himself for (and which were forced on everyone by Biden because neither half of the uniparty serves the common man or woman).

We are definitely entering some kind of twilight epoch for Earth from which the world will never be anything like what any of us grew up in. Old alliances are shattered now. Trade partners have divorced from each other. The economy is rapidly sinking now. War is spreading like fire, and chaos is engulfing us like the smoke and debris of war. Disillusioned people are fleeing their floundering, ill-guided champion and tearing at each other’s flesh with their words. And I think that, because of the increase of wickedness, the love of many is growing cold.

The world is a fiercer place.

… and spread a little light in the darkness: