ArcaMax

WASHINGTON -- Only three weeks old, the new Trump presidential power in town knows the price of everything (except eggs) and the value of nothing, as Oscar Wilde observed of fools and cynics.

Let's add "shameless." Shame has left the stately building at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. The city on the hill feels occupied.

Donald Trump, president, and his right-hand maniac, billionaire Elon Musk, are on a mission to tear apart federal agencies as Congress, the courts and the press sip their morning coffee.

Musk, an unelected henchman, practiced his role as the kiss of death in undermining Twitter, which he renamed X.

Most Americans don't know the sheer joy of creating wide swaths of suffering for public servants, dedicated to their jobs. Better yet for Trump is the big, beautiful chance to retaliate against all slights. That's the sweet fruit of victory, though a narrow one.

(At least Richard Nixon kept his enemies list private, right?)

Trump and Musk don't know the value of good neighbors and long alliances.

You could not find a finer neighbor than Canada if you searched the world over. Yet Justin Trudeau, Canada's prime minister, warns that Trump's blather about taking it over is not just talk. He says Trump is serious. Trump's new, steep tariffs on steel and aluminum are a hostile signal to friendly Canada.

Greenland and Gaza, watch out.

Trump and Musk don't know the value of an expert federal workforce that keeps the nation safe -- at the Treasury, Justice and National Institutes of Health, to name a few places. Musk's young rascals are breaking into Treasury records of our financial data and acting as agents of destruction, over protests and resignations of high officials.

At the "Justice" Department, Trump and Musk are threatening thousands of career prosecutors and FBI agents who worked on Jan. 6 violence cases. They don't even know FBI agents tend to lean Republican.

At the premier NIH, Trump and Musk are freezing funds for medical research at universities across the nation. Billions of dollars are at stake. That draconian action is challenged in court by state attorneys general.

Trump and Musk don't know the value of consumer protection and have daggers drawn for a small agency that acts as a watchdog on junk corporate charges and fees.

Trump and Musk don't get the irony of the world's richest man (Musk) cutting food and humanitarian relief to the world's poorest people. That is the cruelest cut of all: shutting down the U.S. Agency for International Development and laying off 10,000 workers in a foreign policy stroke.

Only one Republican senator, Jerry Moran of Kansas, broke the party silence when he figured his farm state has a lot to lose if USAID closes. Sorry, Jerry.

England had a Civil War in the 1600s that gives us a bloody blueprint for Trump's brain. The arrogant king, Charles I, stepped beyond his bounds. Parliament jailed Charles I and put him on trial.

That resembles Trump's Senate trials after the House impeached him -- twice. The second offense was inciting the 2021 insurrection at the Capitol.

In 1649, Charles I was publicly executed, beheaded before a huge crowd at the Palace of Whitehall in London. A groan and tremor went through the masses.

Mighty Oliver Cromwell, a Puritan member of Parliament and lieutenant-general, claimed the mantle as lord protector.

After Cromwell died in 1658 came the Restoration.

The son in exile, Charles II, washed ashore at Dover and took the throne in 1660. He made a gruesome point of digging up Cromwell's head and displaying it on a spike on high for all to see. Among the 59 signers of his father's death warrant, he chose several "regicides," political opponents, to be hanged, drawn and quartered. Others were imprisoned in the Tower.

Not to give Trump any ideas, but now that he's returned, this is our rough equivalent of Restoration revenge.

Seeking escape, I fled to the symphony at the Kennedy Center. "Pictures at an Exhibition" made a great getaway.

The next day, Trump announced he'd take over the Kennedy Center as the new board chairman. He never went to a single symphony, opera or dance concert while president.

And now this -- he's coming for the Lincoln penny. For what it's worth.

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The author may be reached at JamieStiehm.com. To find out more about Jamie Stiehm and other Creators Syndicate columnists and cartoonists, please visit creators.com.

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