commentary
The administration is out to destroy critical thinking, humor and the media
Published
September 19, 2025 6:45AM (EDT)
President Donald Trump walks to Air Force One at Morristown Airport on Sept. 14, 2025. (Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images))
The demons are loose.
White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller, Attorney General Pam Bondi and Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. have cut their final ties to the Constitution and have mounted up to spread destruction. These demons gallop through the country on horseback, eagerly waging war with sanity, facts and anyone who scares them — which is pretty much the whole world.
Vice President JD Vance is pulling up the rear on Air Force II, flying into venues across the country yelling “Da Plane. Da Plane,” in his best Tattoo voice.
Each of President Donald Trump’s apocalyptic demons have their own expertise. Miller, astride his white-nationalist steed, spreads fear and hatred. He is conquest. Kennedy rides bareback and shirtless aboard a black death horse. He is the master of pestilence and disease; famine. Bondi, riding on top of the red steed of blood, is lawlessness and anger; she is war. Behold the pale horse leading them: Trump. He is death, and hell follows with him.
Our world is haunted by such demons, as Bondi proved on Monday when she moved to squelch those who would criticize recently slain MAGA activist Charlie Kirk. “For far too long, we’ve watched the radical left normalize threats, call for assassinations, and cheer on political violence. That era is over,” she said. “We will absolutely target you, go after you, if you are targeting anyone with hate speech.”
Then on Wednesday, ABC indefinitely suspended late-night talk show host Jimmy Kimmel after he made a joke about Trump and Kirk.
So much for free speech.
We made these demons. We have encouraged them and we have fed them.
Each side in this demon-haunted world blames the other for the very conditions they decry.
They both are right.
We clutch the pearls of pseudo-science and wisdom we glean from our favorite poisoned well of journalism while our critical faculties erode. We cannot tell what feels right from what’s factual. We are overwhelmed by suspicion and superstition alike — and I’m not just talking about RFK Jr.
Some are convinced that the internet and social media are our biggest problems. Many politicians, entertainers, scholars and journalists say as much. Trump certainly exploits social, and all other, media. He practically governs by fiat on Truth Social as if he were a medieval lord, while his minions relentlessly disperse their anger and vitriol across cyberspace. His opponents do the same.
Some of his opponents are smart enough to troll him on social media — but then again, being smarter than Donald Trump isn’t unusual or difficult.