A Long Fall From Grace

: Jamie Stiehm on Dec 24, 2025

"Cry me a river." I gave a party with this theme on Jan. 20, 2025, the day Donald Trump was sworn in as president.

Little did we know that 2025 would be an ocean of tears, the worst since 1968. The tragic assassinations of Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr. broke hearts everywhere.

And now, what a long fall from grace.

Let's do a year in review, lest we forget Trump's rampage over the rules -- written and unwritten -- of the presidential code.

On his first day, Trump pardoned 1,500 Capitol rioters. Some harmed police officers on Jan. 6, 2021. How sweet the smell of revenge, freeing the armed mob that tried to overturn the 2020 election at his behest.

That same day, Trump shuttered the U.S. Agency for International Development to turn our open hand into a clenched fist toward the world.

That was the first page of a playbook prepared by one Russell Vought behind the curtain of the Heritage Foundation.

Next order of business, to eviscerate the federal government, especially the departments of Justice and Health and Human Services. Career government lawyers and medical researchers got tossed overboard, by the hundreds.

Smaller jewels, such as Institute of Peace and the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, lost in the war Trump waged against human rights and progress. The Smithsonian Institution's telling of our past -- warts, slavery and all -- is up next.

Antisemitism was just another word for suing and harassing elite universities. All part of Trump's populist jazz and long list of grievances.

Trump got every Cabinet pick confirmed, even a hawk and a quack: Pete Hegseth at the Pentagon, and Bobby Kennedy at HHS. He told Kennedy to "go wild" on his crusade against vaccines and the medical establishment.

Real doctors are seeing the pillars of their field crumble. Just as real economists fear the tariffs, tax cuts for billionaires and cryptocurrency bets Trump's placed on the economy.

But the chilling crux is the violence Trump sets on civilians at home. Federal masked agents wrestling residents to the ground in neighborhoods, workplaces and child care centers recall how Nazi Germany began its social control and terror.

We the people must organize and peacefully resist these scenes in cities Trump hates, like Chicago. That does not mean being meek. In fact, active nonviolence is the best way to bring social change.

Migrants, legal or not, disappear off the streets and are detained or deported in flagrant abuses of presidential power.

We can't just watch anymore, powerless in the face of a lawless president. Many Americans know that.

Likewise, the National Guard should not be on Washington's streets and Metro stops. It's a cardinal rule of the military that they are trained for foreign wars, not policing the population at home.

But remember the rules: There are no rules in Trump's cunning and criminal mind. The country is his own real estate to do "whatever I want."

The rogue Supreme Court and Republican Congress are accomplices in Trump's rampage, while he strips powers the Constitution gives to Congress. "Checks and balances" are now just pretty words on parchment.

Trump fired two women cultural leaders overnight: Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden and Deborah Rutter, president of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.

The Center honors the slain president, noted for his eloquence, wit and belief that an epoch's greatness shines in the arts. Trump believes in brazenly usurping that legend and slapping his name on its walls.

Treating Ukrainian war President Volodymyr Zelensky poorly and fawning over the cruel Saudi Arabian leader "MBS" leaves blood and oil stains on U.S. foreign policy. Shunning NATO and destroying a wing of the White House are parts of a piece -- defying beloved institutions.

Trump's daily damage done to presidential utterances cannot be counted. Richard Nixon was mean, vulgar and offensive on private Watergate tapes.

But Trump's "dis-coarse" is mean, vulgar and offensive at all times and places.

The shocking post on the Rob and Michele Reiner double murder made no bones about his bitter, vengeful state of mind.

After affordability, that may be Trump's political knell in 2026. Let's go down to the river to pray.

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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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