In 2024, the polls favored Kamala Harris. Donald Trump won the election with a comfortable margin.

    The pollsters asked questions. The voters responded and their responses were recorded. MAGA had poisoned the political atmosphere with racist or bigoted propaganda, Us versus Them. Ordinary voters were persuaded by them but did not want to be thought of as being racist. So, the answers could not and did not reflect the true sentiment and intention of the responders.

    The Democrats should not allow themselves to be in a celebrating mood just because the polls show the approval rating of the president is low and therefore Republicans would lose the House and the Senate come November. In a street interview by a news show, a white woman, formerly a MAGA voter, said that she was not very happy with high mortgage rate and rent, high price of groceries and gas, and the war and would not support the Republicans. She added that her husband would continue to support the president and the Republicans. In how many white Republican households, the wives will defy their husbands at the voting booth and vote Democrats? Only if they had never listened to Tammy Wynette’s Stand By Your Man.

    The MAGA’s propaganda may have been so entrenched that it can’t be dislodged immediately and easily. But the bad economy, tariffs, and the war may change their dark view tainted with racism of our society and help bring back Republicans to mainstream thinking and open their eyes to the rapid deterioration of American influence in the world, especially among its previously loyal allies and friends.

    AI has helped MAGA tremendously in their plotting and scheming. But reality indicates that our power, military or otherwise, has its limits in dealing with our enemies or unexpected circumstances. The plotting to preserve white supremacy is destructively divisive making us weak and has no justification morally, biologically, ethnically, evolutionarily, or anthropologically. It should disappear for the sake of a strong healthy and productive humane society, and to preserve our American way of life – not the billionaires’ way of life.

    Ironically, the advance of AI should convince the most diehard racists that there

is no ranking of races.

JOHN P. LE PHONG

(This article appears on X, Facebook, and thelephongjournal.com)

    Hunter Biden, a son of the Democratic President Joe Biden, sat on the board of a foreign country and was paid $50,000 a month for five years. He was investigated by the Republicans relentlessly who kept his laptop in the headlines for several years but his indictment for tax evasion did not have anything to do with the laptop. They skillfully turned a storm in a teapot into a hurricane for Hunter and his family.

    Jared Kushner worked extensively with the Arab world while in the government. Six months after he left his official position, he secured Two Billion Dollars from the Saudis for his investment fund. Not a peep from anyone on the Republican side.

    MAGA’s legal knowledge and skill in navigating the labyrinth of American laws and regulations were striking compared to the Democrats’! Hunter was a loner adventurer in the making-money wilderness and easily caught by the wolves. Kushner was working in coordination with his and his in-law’s family with the support of legal and financial experts and no less his father in law’s influence, more like a global network, the modus operandi of modern world’s mega money-makers. That is how the sitting president and his family made billions of dollars in 2025 while he was, and still is, in the White House, and sit pretty in New York and Palm Beach.

    It may offend ordinary people’s common sense, but it may not be illegal. They study the law carefully and push the envelope to pursue billions, not the $50,000 that poor Hunter was accused of.

    That says a lot about Donald Trump. He is a genius and has succeeded in spearheading a new brand of politics, you may call it the Randian politics of self-interest as a virtue, heretofore, an anathema to success in politics in America, or in any democratic political system, and made it work so well for him.

    But, as I said in a previous article, his absolute dominance of the Republican party leaves no room for growth for the next crop of leaders of the party.

    Where can you find another Republican who made 30573 false or misleading claims during his first presidential term and still got the votes to win a second term? Where can you find another politician, let alone a Republican, who raises the price of gas 35.8% higher in a year and a half, started a war without asking Congress and at the same time reported personal (his and his immediate family’s) revenue of over $2 billions, and his party dare not raise its voice. Even Democrats could not say an effective word except to vent their frustration by saying they were outrageous. Where can the Republican party find another leader who has relatives, sons, and son in law ride his coattail to fabulous rich?

    What Republican, or any politician in the world, said on TV this about his political opponent: “Look at that face! Would anyone vote for that? Can you imagine that, the face of our next president? I mean, she’s a woman, and I’m not s’posedta say bad things, but really, folks, come on. Are we serious?” and won the presidential election in the United States of America, which was supposed to be the world’s leading society of civility?

     Can any member of the Republican Party command the devotion and passion, bordering on infatuation, of a 35-year-old blonde, white lady? Could any of them, when they reached 80, be able to excite a 35-year-old beautiful woman to write them intimate letters? It is a rare magnetism that Donald Trump alone in the Republican Party possesses. And that could explain why he incredibly won in 2024 as the white ladies in their 70s, his age, and probably those in their 60s, or 50s, or 40s, and of course in their 30s, the age of his devotee, would probably have never voted for Democrats when he was around.

    Would any of his successors, pretend to be a Trumpian, or even more Trumpian than Trump? Probably a lot. Just look at the Republican political landscape in Arizona.

    But would a Vance, Rubio, Jordan, Paul, Cotton, Hawley, Britt, Lake etc. be able to exhibit a bizarre aura and carry his banner and culture, or would they be burdened by his legacy and become just copycats clumsily shouting MAGA slogans louder to get attention but do not possess his ability? Would they be able to insist that an Olympian had destroyed the pond even if his government’s lawyers dismissed the charge and looked pale in intimidation? Would they be able to turn around the investigation of the Epstein Files as he did? Would they be able to make a lot of billionaires even happier than they have been with his actions?

    Would any of them without the charisma and luck of Donald Trump be attractive enough to the voters to overcome the excesses of the President?

    The picture looks bleak.

JOHN P. LE PHONG

(This article appears on X, Facebook, and thelephongjournal.com)

    At the 2026 NATO Summit in Ankara, the President openly confided to the press: “My whole life, that’s all I do is deals… That’s how I became president, I guess.”

    Why did he say it? He became president because he had made a certain deal? With whom? What kind of a deal?

    MAGA has created the doctrine, a mentality, of Us versus Em and openly advocated racism that successfully sent Donald Trump into the White House.

    People could surmise that the president had a deal with MAGA. What else explains the MAGA Congress so taciturn and compliant where the president’s acts are concerned? Such a deal would be a fabulously profitable deal. Not people’s welfare, not national interest or even security. Just a profitable deal for the parties to the deal.

    Now that the president has obtained all he wanted, would the deal continue?

    The instance in Bruxelles in 2017 where he pushed the leader of another country aside so he could emerge to the first row of world leaders standing, indicated that the president constantly, instinctively, and intuitively looks out for himself to be the first. For such programmed personality, anything he says or does could not be casual, shooting from the hip, or off the kilter but in fact well thought out in advance, programmed to serve the goal of whatever game he is playing.

    MAGA has made elections not about political high-minded ideals, the economy or prices of groceries but Us against Them. And that could be a fad, the novelty of the MAGA phenomenon that, like Hollywood’s all other fads, would fade away. Voters voted MAGA because they wanted the messiness of the state of the nation to be cleaned up as it had promised. But there are signs the voters have probably turned back to live their normal life and are no longer extremist. Democratic way of life such as paying for gas at less than 3 dollars a gallon, knowing for sure who are those who ride the truck in mask and carrying weapons, paying the same price or cheaper for a comparable American device made abroad, etc., is probably too enchanted to ordinary people for MAGA to uproot it, throw it away, and replace it with their choice of a despotic political system.

    It seems MAGA has nothing new to offer. Its attack on Anthony Fauci, clamoring on the false claim of election fraud, are stale tactics that it is wheeling out seemingly without bothering to find out if its base may get tired of them. With MAGA in total power, occupying all four branches of government, for almost two years, its supporters should now see that MAGA is even messier, negligent, and strange in managing the economy, international relations, and national security.

    With MAGA in charge, American politics has stopped being an Art. It is reduced to bulldozing. MAGA’s MO is just bulldozing forward, and all their statements that a regular politician needs to be careful about speaking are just shooting air that don’t mean much, and they suffer no consequences because MAGA possesses the bulldozer and the roads. MAGA swooped in at midnight to take a leader of a foreign country to prison. Was it to get more oil and prevent drugs from getting into the U.S.? Out of the blue, they sent cruise missiles thousands of miles away to kill the top officials of another. Was it to prevent their country from making nuclear weapons? Wasn’t there a more nuanced method to get the same or better result?

Where are we? Dejà vu? The U.S. dropped 7.6 million tons of bombs on Viet Nam, three times the tonnage used in WWII, and much more than the bombs dropped on Iran so far AND put boots on the ground – for ten years, trying to prevent the North Vietnamese Communists from crossing Parallel 17. The War ended up with the North Vietnamese not just crossing the 17^th Parallel but taking the whole country.

    In ordering the bombing of Iran, MAGA leadership has forgotten the lesson or maybe too young to remember. Or maybe the hubris of wanting to do one better than the achievement of a black Democratic president was in the way of thinking clearly and rationally.

    The president said that he became president after he had made deals. Does it mean a deal with the American people? -Unlikely as we know that he does not talk deals with a nobody such as an American voter. It must be with MAGA a large number of its members are billionaires. Is he implying that starting the Iran War was part of the deal, but is no longer his thing or responsibility? Is he washing his hands off the war? Does he signal to the nation that he is contentedly sailing into the sunset, and now MAGA will be on their own? As if saying to MAGA you must see that I have had no quality time with Barron. I want to play EA Sports FC 25 with him.

    But MAGA does not seem to be competent on its own. The dominance of the president has stunted Republican leadership. Representative Jim Jordan is still loudly investigating election fraud, and Senator Rand Paul subpoenaed Dr. Anthony Fauci to answer his question concerning the origins of COVID and triumphantly referred him to the DOJ for contempt charge.

    Democrats can entertain some hope. Three candidates who have persistently claimed election frauds won the Arizona GOP primaries for the three most important state offices, governor, attorney general, and secretary of state. People just wonder if there is no sunlight in Arizona for these people to see that the emperor has no clothes on. Or probably they do know but continue insisting on the false claim, trusting that it will work for them banking on many Arizonans still dazed in the illusion.

    The Fauci fallacy won’t work either despite the labored and persistent effort by Rand Paul, a doctor himself. Dr. Fauci was just a director of an agency who had answered questions on the subject extensively. Rand Paul is not just a doctor but also a U.S. senator with much more power and means to find the answer for himself. What have he and his Republican colleagues done to answer the question if they are so obsessed with finding it? Putting him on the witness stand before his committee was more of a show than a serious endeavor to find the truth.

   If the Democrats could convince the ordinary people of Arizona to vote these MAGA delusional demagogues off the ballots and show the American voters how many Americans would have died if Dr. Fauci had not championed preventive measures during the COVID pandemic, they would be able to find their way back to governing.

JOHN P. LE PHONG

(This article appears on X, thelephongjournal.com, and Facebook

    President Donald John Trump is a revolutionary true to the meaning of the word. He started and completed a revolution, remarkably without the baggage of killing and maiming.

    He has dramatically transformed the American political landscape. The attributes of the nice and noble approach to politics such as gentlemanliness, courteousness, politeness, even telling the truth are all gone. He took politics from the long coat-tailed, wigged gentlemen sans long coattails and wigs, and brought it to the ordinary citizens, who saw nothing wrong with getting into the House of Congress not by the front door, but by climbing the walls and breaking the windows. The ordinary citizens, the Joes and Janes, whose blood boiled when they heard an immigrant commit a crime, always consider him their Dear Leader. They have formed the base and are faithful cadres of MAGA. They don’t greet “the others”, meaning their opponents, with “Have a good day” but “F— you”. Respect for the institutions, such as don’t break the windows of the Capitol, don’t throw a U.S. senator of the other party down and smash his face against the surface of the street, has ceased to exist. Advice and Consent is out, guns and fists, literally and figuratively, are in.

    The American Democratic Society’s norms that we have known them have been changed drastically. The President has turned the White House into pure blue and blonde (or gold).

    Where the revolutionary goes, of course, his followers follow, and naturally into his cabinet. Regardless of the philosophy behind his picks to serve in his administration, true to his base, he brought the ordinary Joes and Janes into his government.

    But ordinary people have their limits that is why they are called ordinary. To put a mask on to hunt for illegal immigrants, convincing the willing Arabs to part with their billions, to chase after anti-MAGA opponents, seem to have been done competently by them, even though the last one seems to have run into some thoughtlessness and incompetence.

    But the government of a country as huge and complicated as the United States of America sooner or later will run into huge and complicated problems requiring skills, brains, and temperament to handle them effectively. The national affairs in the first half of this year seem to indicate MAGA’s lack of it.  So, wooing ordinary people for votes and staying away from hiring high mental caliber people for government works for fear of loss of control and loyalty, are two very different things. The latter may lead to neglect and failure in governing.

    The president understood politics for what it essentially is: a game – pure and simple. Nothing to do with serving the people, or higher calls, or national (implying a nation of necessarily different people) security. He understood how it worked better than the Democrats and read the pulse smartly.

    Political power in America is the votes. He said that his supporters were so loyal they would stick with him even if he stood in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shot somebody. It was considered by the ruling polite society, which was about to be displaced, as a reckless statement. But in hindsight, as things turned out, that statement eerily indicated his confidence and insight. It showed him to be an astute politician who knew his voters.

    For years the so-called establishment had laughed about him and never taken him seriously. They besieged him with problems of all kinds. He is not a Teflon businessman or politician to be sure. Problems have not slid off him. He took them head-on and beat them or made it go off the target, himself, with all the means he could think of including denying and stubbornly not accepting what his opponents believed to be the truth. He has had a single purpose, and all his energy is focused on it: winning and winning at all costs.

    He is an Ayn Randian pragmatist: relentlessly pursuing self-interest but carefully staying within the rules of the game. If the rules constrained him, he would work to beat the rules by entering politics and went for the most powerful position on earth: the U.S. Presidency.

    At the 2026 NATO Summit in Ankara, the President openly confided to the press: “My whole life, that’s all I do is deals… That’s how I became president, I guess.”

    This must be an accurate self-description of who he is, a dealmaker, an honest assessment of himself at the age of 80 looking back. He does not claim to be the most successful businessman. He does not claim to be the most astute American politican even though he could very well be.

    Why did he say it?

JOHN P. LE PHONG

(This article appears on X, thelephongjournal.com, and Facebook)