MAY 21, 2026 – To those of us who’ve been on the anti-Trump train since he’s been in the public eye, his multiple disorders have never been a mystery or a surprise. As we’ve seen for 11 years, with Trump, what you see is exactly what you get, which is appalling. For me personally, this has been the case since 30 years ago, when I was connected to others in the real estate “loan workout” business and heard from reliable sources about Trump’s antics and tactics toward his creditors. Later, skimming The Art of the Deal and watching 30 seconds of The Apprentice told me all the rest that I needed to know about Trump.
What’s baffled my fellow anti-Trump travelers and me is how so many people could be snookered by him; moreover, how they could roll the dice with him not just once, not twice, but three times and how it can be—given events, behavior and irrefutable evidence over the past 16 months—that tens of millions of Americans can still be in his corner.
But then without warning comes a flaming meteor that diverts our attention from other hazards of our time. This flying fire isn’t from the Asteroid Belt but from beyond the solar system altogether; from some alien corner of the cosmos where up is down and down is up, black is white and white is black and black and white are red and orange; where good is bad and bad is good; where love is a liability and cruelty is a creature comfort; and above all, where the worth of everything, tangible and intangible, is priced according to its pyrite content.
With the threat of the meteor becoming a meteorite, a crack appears in the Great Wall of Republican cowardice. Except, the sad reality is that it isn’t so much cowardice as it is really horrible judgment on the part of all too many voters. Republican office-holders aren’t cowards as much as they are Pavlov canines: if Fox News and Trust Social ring the bells of red meat prejudices, misinformation, and disinformation, Republican Senators and House members respond accordingly. That’s not cowardice. It’s simply knowing who butters your bread—and keeps you in office. But either way—by cowardice or buttered bread—the fissures are real, especially among Republicans from purple states and districts. They can comprehend the writing on the wall of their constituents’ economic pain, and it reads, “Run, don’t walk from this soon-to-be meteorite.”
The meteor/meteorite, of course, is Trump’s plan to create a $1.776 billion fund out of taxpayer pockets (either by cash lifted from the tax till or proceeds from bond sales, because debt financing is the only way to raise such a sum, adding to the deficit—and interest burden on the federal budget) for . . .
. . . for . . . What?
For a payout to Jan 6 rioters charged with . . . well, we’ve all seen the images of their crimes. By Trump’s inauguration in January 2025, 1,575 rioters (out of an estimated 2,000) had been charged. Fifteen hundred had been convicted or pled guilty.
Here’s the space-walking, gravity-defying math: If you divide the figure $1.776 billion by 1,575, the quotient works out to . . . are you sitting down? . . . It works out to $1.127 million . . . let me repeat that with emphasis . . . $1.127 MILLION per rioter.
If the federal minimum wage were $100/hour; if the average annual household (family of four) take-home pay in every county in America were $250,000; if health insurance were free; if the national average price of unleaded were $2.39/gallon, a Big Mac cost a buck and the rate of inflation were below 1.776%; if there were a brand-spanking new Ford F-150 in every garage and an LG OLED TV in every room . . . well, then fine, maybe voters could ignore Trump’s “Payout of Patriot Dollars” to all the wrong people, not to mention Trump’s other grift and corruption on a Jovian scale.
But none of the fairyland just described is real. Tens of millions of voters in this country are hurting, struggling, worrying financially—so much so, that by November, most of them will be in a “I can’t take it anymore!” frame of mind. That frame of mind, in turn, will frame their votes. And whether the meteor is deflected before it turns into a meteorite or not, it’s the best of good omens, a shooting star for Democratic Congressional campaigns and the advertising firms they hire.
Or in the jargon of political strategists, it’s the ultimate case of “political malpractice.” It will create a “class action” of political backlash the likes of which the Republican Party has never seen.
The “Payout of Patriot Dollars” idea reveals nothing new about the mad man who’s occupied our minds since he rode down the Trump Towers escalator in 2015. He’s long been defined by non-strategic gimmicks and vindictive impulsivity coupled with a complete lack of empathy for other human beings. He cares no more for the rioters than he does for Democrats. He cares even less for those who struggle financially. His record of tone-deafness and wholesale insensitivity to the needs of the nation suggests that his sole motivation behind his latest case of irresponsibility is to rub the noses of his political opponents into political manure. Only a person consumed by an obsessive need for retribution would concoct something so offensive and with such open disregard for the financial and political costs.
But this time his revenge doesn’t simply offend his critics. Against the backdrop of up-ending global oil and fertilizer markets without any offsetting gain, Trump has flung the ugly truth about himself into the faces—and finances—of millions who voted for him and his cult-party in 2024. For the pleasure that cruel impulses bring Trump, they will soon prove to be his undoing. The question is whether Republicans in Congress will jump ship fast enough before they get sucked into the whirlpool created by the sinking ship.
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© 2026 by Eric Nilsson
