Tisdall points out:

"The Trump conundrum is ultimately one for the American people to resolve. They elected him. They saddled the world with this dangerous monster."

It's they who may ultimately pay the highest price for his depredations. Like Thomas Jefferson and the founding fathers back in 1776, we, the people of the world, hold these truths to be self-evident: far from making America great again, Trump makes it smaller, meaner, unhappier, more divided, isolated and unloved. Urgently needed now: a 2026 declaration of independence from Trump.

In the fetid swamps where MAGAdreams are born and from which they emerge as nightmares into the world of normals - only to be discarded as artifacts of a comic book "ideology" - one hears the phrase "Taco Bell ... Montezuma's Revenge." Those words arrive at one's ears as a whimper, a single MAGAt cowering out there, somewhere in the dark wetlands, out behind the fog.

Silence.

Then, as with the frogs, the words are picked up as another MAGAt replies: "Taco Bell ... Montezuma's Revenge ... Taco Bell ... Montezuma's Revenge ... "Soon, the swamp is ablaze with a roar: "TACO BELL ... MONTEZUMA'S REVENGE ... TACO BELL ... MONTEZUMA'S REVENGE!!!"

There's more, the story goes on of course but now maybe you'll have a better idea of how one might go about answering the question: "How did Trump get the US into a war with Mexico that ended up with him surrendering by signing that MoU at the repatriated Alamo, huh?"

No one, anywhere, has ever managed to inflict anything even close to the kind of profound damage Trump and his Republican enablers have wrought upon this nation and its institutions.

Trump's I-really-won-the-election mantra started out as JMB (Just More B#llsheet). But as those words swirled around in his head the lie became an "alternative truth" for him. Until, finally, JMB joined all those other idiotic fantasies he believes are actually part of our shared reality but are really just reflective of a deeply disordered mind. Three factors, I think, came into play here: (1) JMB was an easy lie and Trump easily lies; (2) Trump ain't really all that intelligent and he doesn't seem to know much about much, other than lying and stealing, so he is highly susceptible to believing his own JMB, especially when hired lickspittles feed and flatter his fragile ego ("Daddy!?!"): and (3) Trump is experiencing a disorderly physical and mental decline in which a factor known as "The Stupid" will play an ever larger role.

This should be obvious to most folks, although clearly not the members of the Cowards' Caucus, formerly known as the Republican Party.

"The pilot programme near Rafah is a far cry from the initial aspirations of the BoP. Launching that scheme with a wildly optimistic slideshow in January, Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner promised that the gates to aid would be thrown open and basic infrastructure " including water, sewage and electric systems, hospitals and bakeries " would be restored across the strip within 100 days."

Jared "A Little Child Shall Lead Them" Kushner - more of the arrogance of the terminal mediocrity you have come to expect from this particular.y overweening scion of the kleptocracy.

Interesting number, 36%. There's no connection, but it's a fun numbers nonsense game: Trump's popularity just about matches the highest share of a free election garnered by Hitler's Nazi Party (37% in 1932).

Florida - especially southern FL, which really is pretty tropical-ish and northern Caribbean - boasts an abundance of gators, crocs, and caimans. Personally, when it comes to swimming I stick to a pool - and only after giving it a look. (That look is also for any swimming snakes and lizards.) These are reptilians and not in the least bit cuddly. The woeful, repetitious summertime AZ kid-left-in-car-died tales have a sort of reptilian counterpart in FL: touch-gator-lose-part-or-die and swim-in-gator-habitat-get-eaten.