Craven, Cuckholding, Cowards

Donald Trump’s Republican Party

Once upon a time, Donald Trump said he could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot someone without losing any votes. The sentence lodged itself there, less a provocation than a promise, less a threat than a mission statement. Everything that’s happened since—every crime, every lie, every act of public rot—bends obediently toward that moment, as if the future itself tilted to accommodate it.

Piggy Trump likes to quote The Snake. He recites it the way men recite scripture when they want permission instead of absolution. You knew damn well I was a snake before you took me in. He delivers the line with a grin that suggests cleverness, as if advance notice dissolves consequence, as if confession functions as a waiver, as if naming the venom absolves the bite.

Because at this point, he could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue boeberting Vladimir Putin with one hand and setting fire to the American flag with the other, funneling Venmo payments of our tax dollars to his progeny and livestreaming the whole damn thing on Truth Social for $5.99 a viewer—and he wouldn’t lose a single vote.

Republicans wouldn’t blink. Wouldn’t flinch. Wouldn’t even bother performing the cheap theater of discomfort. Loyalty hasn’t hardened—it’s rotted. It’s rigor mortis with a whip, obedience stripped of thought, conscience, or pulse, a party so morally dead that stillness passes for strength, the stench thick enough to gag anyone still capable of breathing.

He bragged about sexual assault.

He stole from his own charity.

He committed fraud in the open.

He was convicted on 34 felony counts.

He was found liable for sexual abuse.

He hoarded national security secrets like junk mail and stacked them in his goddamn bathroom.

He incited a deadly attack on the Capitol to claw his way back into power after losing an election.

And what did Republicans do? Nothing.

He mocked prisoners of war and said he didn’t “like” people who got captured.

He called the fallen suckers and losers.

He turned his back on Ukraine.

He picked fights with NATO.

He disparaged the service and sacrifice of our allies in Afghanistan—a five-time draft dodger sneering at the dead.

He demolished a third of the White House, paved over the Rose Garden, shuttered the doors of the Kennedy Center.

And what did Republicans do? Nothing.

Journalists are being arrested for doing their jobs.

Americans are being murdered in broad daylight.

Children are being kidnapped and detained in concentration camps.

Fishing boats have been blown apart.

Sovereign nations have been bombed.

Elections are being threatened.

Ballots are being seized.

The machinery of democracy is being grabbed by the throat.

And what are Republicans doing? Absolutely fucking nothing.

They stand there—gelded—self-neutered, stripped of spine and purpose—while he pockets billions and billions of dollars, sells pardons, and tells the rest of us to live with less, all of it capped with a gaudy, gold-plated ballroom built to glorify himself like a bankrupt king staging his own coronation.

And still, none of it costs him a thing. Not the crimes, not the cruelty, not the corpses left in policy’s wake. It doesn’t loosen his grip or thin his ranks. It doesn’t fracture the base or fracture the lie. The Republican Party absorbs it all—every felony, every slur, every stolen secret, every dead child, every broken institution—and turns it into obedience. The party closes ranks and shamelessness becomes discipline, cowardice becomes strategy, cuckholding becomes creed — a party aroused by its own abasement.

How can you say you didn’t see it?

How can you say you know nothing about it?

How can you refuse to comment, refuse to name it, refuse to say out loud what is sitting there on the page?

These are the same “Bible-clutching” hypocrites who lost their goddamn minds because Hunter Biden sold some paintings. The same ones who dragged this country through years of sanctimony and spectacle over a blowjob. The same ones who lectured everyone else about morality, purity, family values, and the fragile soul of the nation until they were hoarse.

Last Friday, they finally released more Epstein files—three million of them, barely half of what they are legally required to turn over—after months of slow-walking, stonewalling, stalling, and strong-arming. After fighting it. After calling it a hoax. After telling us there was nothing there. After leaning on members of their own party to block the release. After Pam Bondi went on television and said the files were on her desk, then later shrugged and said there was nothing to see, nothing to worry about, nothing worth your attention. Three million pages pried loose like teeth, dropped late, fragmented, and incomplete—not transparency, not honesty, not justice—but a gesture meant to exhaust us. Meant to numb us. Meant to make the horror feel procedural instead of personal, distant instead of devastating. This wasn’t accountability. It was anesthesia. A controlled dose of horror, carefully administered so the real wound never gets treated—so we don’t linger too long on what they fought so hard to keep buried, or why they were so desperate to tell us it didn’t matter.

Because what we are talking about here is the rape and torture of children.

And the threats that followed.

Children reduced to objects of control. Fear deployed as leverage. Silence enforced not by accident but by design. Pages that describe harm no child should ever have to carry, followed by intimidation meant to make that harm disappear. Words that don’t fade when you close the document. Details that lodge themselves under the skin and refuse to leave.

These are children.

And every second spent dodging, deflecting, or pretending not to see is another second this country chooses power over protection.

And as if surviving weren’t already a lifelong sentence, these survivors are being retraumatized—names, schools, hometowns, parents’ addresses spilled into public view, safety sacrificed to bureaucratic sloppiness and elite indifference. They are now forced to fight the government itself just to be re-hidden, to plead for redaction, to protect their lives from being torn open again so powerful men can remain padded, preserved, unnamed. This is heartbreak administered twice: trauma revisited, dignity denied, pain recycled for the comfort of those who never pay its price.

Republicans move through their days as if this requires nothing from them. As if the allegations hanging over the presidency are something that can be endured rather than confronted. The sexual abuse of children is treated as survivable—ugly, uncomfortable, but not disqualifying. Not because they’re unclear about what this is, but because they’ve already decided what they’re willing to tolerate.

Todd Blanche shrugs and says there’s nothing in the files that could lead to prosecution, and the ease of it curdles the air. Because once he says it, the question stops being theoretical.

If there’s nothing there, then why was Ghislaine Maxwell sent to prison? What evidence put her there. What testimony and documentation proved a trafficking operation so real it destroyed lives—and yet somehow trafficked children to no one worth naming?

We know these files carry consequences. We’ve watched them take shape. A prince lost his title because his name appeared. Careers ended. Access vanished. The material mattered.

Then the trail reaches Donald Trump, and the machinery locks up.

At that point, the restraint isn’t procedural. It’s protective. Going any further would mean saying names they’ve decided are too powerful to touch. It would mean admitting that accountability has a ceiling, and it’s built to keep certain people safe.

How hard is it to say that the raping and torturing of children is a red line?

There are outliers. A handful. People I don’t agree with and would never otherwise defend—Thomas Massie, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Nancy Mace, Lauren Boebert—who, on this single issue, have demanded accountability for survivors. That’s how rare basic decency has become. Watch what happens to anyone who breaks rank.

Donald Trump understands this perfectly. He praises Steve Bannon in public, casually, knowing exactly what it signals. This isn’t sloppiness. It’s a taunt. A reminder. A dare.

Too often, the press looks away. Sands the truth down. Accepts non-answers. Moves on. This isn’t neutrality. It’s assistance. It’s how the unbearable becomes background noise.

They want us used to it. Softened. Resigned. Trained to absorb the horror until it feels ordinary.

I am not getting used to this. Not for my daughter. Not for yours. Not for every single child whose safety they have decided is negotiable, whose bodies they reduce to footnotes, whose lives they expect us to trade away for political convenience.

I will not get fucking used to it.

I don’t understand how anyone can. I never will. And I honestly and truly hope with everything that I am that I never, ever do.

And with that, today’s song:

I love you guys!

On my way to the Pennsylvania state capitol to meet (and interview) Governor Shapiro! Stay tuned for that episode!!

Please stay strong, stay safe, and stay connected to each other!

💙 Jo