Portrait of a Man Who Doesn’t Give a Fuck

Starring: indifference, ego, and forty-two million people he is actively fighting to starve.

This photo should be hung in the Louvre of moral decay.

Look at it. The tableau is so absurd it feels storyboarded by Voldemort and Liberace’s real estate LLC. A man collapses on the floor where presidents once ended wars and launched moon missions. Now the room has all the gravitas of a Vegas timeshare bathroom, festooned with Chinese-made American flags marinated in Drakkar Noir. It’s as if history’s most consequential decisions are now being made in the world’s tackiest escape room.

Aides kneel. Hands reach. Chaos unfolds.

And Donald Trump just stands there — bored, irritated, visibly put-out — like the collapse in front of him is a personal scheduling conflict. His face isn’t concern. It is inconvenience.

His jaw hangs open in that dopey, defeated pout you only see when a chain-steakhouse diner learns their “Buy One Get One Ribeye” coupon expired yesterday. His eyes aren’t searching for a pulse; they’re searching for the nearest camera.

He’s not seeking help. He’s seeking a close-up.

If Dante were alive today, he wouldn’t write The Inferno. He’d pitch a reality show called Keeping Up With the Collapse and hiss to the crew, “We don’t need CGI. Just let him talk.”

The entire scene looks like Norman Rockwell painted The Death of Empathy, directed by Jeffrey Dahmer and executive produced by Satan. Hang this next to The Scream and the painting would lean over and whisper, Is that guy okay.

It feels like someone pitched, What if Succession had a baby with Idiocracy and then handed the baby the nuclear codes. It should not be funny. But it is. It should not be real. And yet here we are.

Because this photo is not merely symbolic of who he is.

This is who he is.

A convicted felon. Found liable for sexual abuse in a court of law. A man whose closest approximation to empathy is jabbing the close door button in an elevator while someone sprints toward it.

This is who Donald Trump is.

He doesn’t give a fuck about anyone but himself.

A man collapses behind him. Just as our country has been collapsing behind him for the entirety of this second so-called term.

And he doesn’t give a fuck.

He is not thinking, Is that man okay. He is thinking, How dare he steal my scene.

This is who Donald Trump is.

He doesn’t give a fuck about anyone but himself.

He isn’t numb to suffering—he feeds on it. Suffering is his currency, his spotlight, his scepter. Every ounce of pain around him inflates his sense of importance. He doesn’t create, build, or inspire; he only knows how to conquer by making others smaller, hungrier, emptier. His power is measured in what he can take away. He is a parasite of misery, thriving on the wounds he inflicts.

Right now, at this very moment, he’s in federal court clawing to keep food out of the hands of forty-two million Americans—sixteen million of them children. He would sooner see them go hungry than admit defeat. For him, letting kids starve is preferable to losing face. Compassion isn’t a calculation; cruelty is the point.

Pain, to him, is proof of dominance. If millions feel pain, he feels powerful.

Meanwhile, he goes on camera and lies through his teeth about Thanksgiving groceries being cheaper at Walmart, playing the part of a wandering pilgrim-reporter marveling at imaginary abundance. All the while, he’s the reason families can’t afford to fill a cart, let alone a table. He peddles fantasies from the aisles while making hunger policy.

He hosts a Great Gatsby spectacle at his private club while children go to bed with empty stomachs. Food banks run dry, but the nouveau riche at his table never see the bottom of their champagne flutes. He toasts excess in a country starving for decency.

This is who Donald Trump is.

He doesn’t give a fuck about anyone but himself.

He told a grieving widow her husband “knew what he signed up for.”

He stood in Arlington National Cemetery — surrounded by the dead — and asked John Kelly, a father who buried his son there, “What was in it for them.” That isn’t just a lack of empathy. That is spiritual gangrene. It is the kind of moral rot that makes a man view sacrifice as stupidity and grief as a waste of his time.

But we’re talking about Donald Trump.

Empathy is not a muscle he refuses to use. It is a muscle that has never existed.

This is who Donald Trump is.

He doesn’t give a fuck about anyone but himself.

During the pandemic, when morgues overflowed and families held funerals on FaceTime, he shrugged and said, It is what it is.

A million people died. He shrugged. He golfed.

He called soldiers suckers and losers. He wanted to inject bleach. He told the country to get over school shootings. He is actively defying a court order to feed hungry children.

Power, to him, is watching someone fall and being the one who gets to decide whether or not they get help.

This is who Donald Trump is.

He doesn’t give a fuck about anyone but himself.

He doesn’t care about the very people who worship him. The very people who put him in power. He doesn’t care that they wore the hat. He doesn’t care that they went to the rallies. He doesn’t care that they torched their own families defending him online. He doesn’t care if they lose their jobs. He doesn’t care if they lose their homes.

He doesn’t care if they live or die.

They are props… bodies to fill a crowd shot, wallets to drain, voices to weaponize. He uses them until they break. Then he uses their brokenness as proof that he deserves more power.

If one of them collapsed at his feet the way that man did in the Oval Office, he wouldn’t kneel. He wouldn’t flinch. He’d step over the body on his way out the door.

This is who Donald Trump is.

He doesn’t give a fuck about anyone but himself.

Look at the photograph again. A man falls. Everyone else moves. Trump does not. He stands there, encumbered and offended, radiating the put-upon petulance of a man who has never once been told no. He looks like a divorced dad trying to return a used kayak to Costco without the receipt, personally insulted that the world dares to impose rules on him.

Look at the photograph. That is not empathy. That is annoyance. That is indifference deep enough to drown in.

He is a malignant narcissist and a sociopath, a man who never stopped being a child pulling the wings off butterflies just to see how much damage he could cause with the smallest amount of effort. A man who reacts to someone else’s suffering not with concern, but with irritation that their pain is stealing attention from him, the only feeling he recognizes as real.

There is a void inside his chest where a soul should be. And he fills it with suffering.

He cannot fill it with goodness. He cannot fill it with achievement. He cannot fill it with love, contribution, decency, legacy, or light. He can only fill it with power purchased through pain.

He devours the anguish of others because it is the only thing that makes him feel real. The collapse of another person, their fear, their desperation, is the closest thing to oxygen he ever inhales.

This is who Donald Trump is.

He doesn’t give a fuck about anyone but himself.

He says out loud that he’s not getting into heaven. He jokes about it. But it isn’t a joke. He knows exactly why he won’t be let in. He knows what he’s done. He knows how he thinks. He knows who he is.

A man who never stopped being a child throwing rocks at babies just to watch them cry.

This is who Donald Trump is.

He doesn’t give a fuck about anyone but himself.

He never has and he never will.

And with that, today’s song:

I love you guys!

Stay safe, stay strong, connected to each other!

💙 Jo

*Also, in case you missed it, we just launched a media network I am co-founder of, called The Siren! We have a whole slate of contributors, new shows, new faces, new voices and new ways to stay engaged and get involved! With so much more to come!

I hope you’ll check it out!!