Invisible Half Man, 52nd Day of Childwinter, 525 M.E. (Deneb): He thought he was the King of America, where they pour Coca Cola just like vintage wine. Now I try hard not to become hysterical but I'm not sure if I'm laughing or crying (Elvis Costello, Brilliant Mistake, 1986). 

The Hanford nuclear site in Washington state was used from World War II through the Cold War to produce two-thirds of the nation’s plutonium for nuclear weapons, leading to major contamination. An unfortunate legacy of the Oppenheimer years, it's been called "the most radioactive site in the Western Hemisphere" because it can't compete with Chernobyl (hey, it's hard to beat the king, man). A friend of mine who worked for the federal Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR, pronounced "Attsa Doctor!") visited the site in the 1980s and described it in a letter as "beautiful countryside, friendly people, millions of gallons of contaminated groundwater." 

Now Trump and his DOGGIE have fired more than a dozen Department of Energy workers at the Hanford site, and at least 30 more federal workers there took buyouts. The employees  included safety engineers, environmental scientists, and employees who protect workers’ rights and are responsible for negotiating with regulators to make sure the environmental cleanup is completed within federal standards. What could possibly go wrong with limited supervision and expertise at one of the globe's most radioactive sites?

Meanwhile, Trump’s approval rating (45%) is below 50% according to the non-partisan Gallup poll, meaning that more Americans disapprove of his performance than approve. This underwater approval rate is all the more remarkable coming as it is during the "honeymoon" period of his first month in office and is a full 15 points below the average mid-February historical rate for all other presidents since 1953. It's even lower than his own first post-inauguration reading of 47% in 2017. For the record, Democratic presidents John F. Kennedy (72%) and Jimmy Carter (71%) had the highest approvals at this point in their terms.

Trump’s ratings on the specific issues and actions of his administration in the first weeks of his presidency are similarly underwater, including immigration (46%), foreign affairs (44%), foreign trade (42%) and the economy (42%). Meanwhile, only 40% of Americans approve of his handling of the situations in Ukraine and in the Middle East.

As a nation, we're becoming increasingly polarized. Before Trump's first term in office, the gap in approval between political parties during a President' first February in office ranged from 21 to 60 points. In 2017, that gap rose to 79 points for Trump, increased further to 84 points in 2021 for Biden, and is now at a record-high 89 points for Trump.

Despite his low approval ratings, Trump recently posted a picture of himself to social media wearing a crown on his head and the words "Long live the king."  It was obvious trolling, a fine idea at the time, as Elvis Costello would say, but now it's a brilliant mistake. The ever-lengthening list of Trump's "brilliant mistakes" is remarkable as the Stable Genius managed all this in only his first month in office. 

He falsely claimed that Ukraine had somehow started the war with the invading Russian army and called Zelensky a “dictator” who took money from the U.S. to go to war with Russia, and is demanding half of Ukraine's mineral wealth in exchange for providing military support. He spread a lie that U.S.AID had shipped $100M of condoms to Hamas and suggested the U.S. should take over the Gaza strip and "own it," displacing all of the native Palestinians to create some sort of Middle East Malibu. He also hinted at taking over Greenland and Panama using military force, and suggested Canada become the 51st state. He imposed tariffs on Canada, Mexico, and China and then lifted the tariffs on our North American neighbors after they repeated pledges that they had already made. After firing the workers in charge of U.S. nuclear-weapon safety, he realized that those workers were actually kind of important but didn't know how to call them back, and then the very same thing happened with fired Agriculture workers who were combatting the avian flu. He proposed renaming the Gulf of Mexico and Denali and then threw a hissy fit when the AP didn't adopt his new names. He blamed the L.A. wildfire crisis on some imaginary "giant faucet" in northern California and then ordered 2.2 billion gallons of water dumped from the state's reservoirs onto Central Valley farmland that didn't need it and where it won't benefit firefighters at all (but will cause problems this summer when droughts begin). He replaced a four-star general at DOD with an inexperienced, alcoholic, black-out drunk Fox & Friends weekend host, and pardoned or commuted the sentences of all of the convicted January 6 rioters, including the most violent felons who pled guilty to attacking and, in some cases, killing police officers. He withdrew the U.S. from both the Paris climate-change treaty and the World Health Organization, and tried to end the constitutional birthright citizenship of those born on American soil. After a tragic air accident, he blamed the incident on "DEI," even as he admitted he had no evidence but just "common sense," and of course his "greatest hit," the continued Big Lie that the free and fair 2020 election was somehow "rigged" against him, despite the absence of a shred of evidence and multiple lost court cases.   

The latest injury on top of all the insults occurred yesterday when the Republican Senate approved Trump nominee and MAGA conspiracy theorist Kash Patel to lead the FBI. All of Trump's nominees were reprehensible, but three candidates in particular stood out for their vileness - RFK Jr. as HHS Secretary, Tulsi Gabbard as Director of National Intelligence, and Patel as the FBI Chief. Now all three have been confirmed and I'm just nauseous.    

He thought he was the King of America but it was just a boulevard of broken dreams, a trick they do with mirrors and with chemicals. I wish that I could push a button and talk in the past and not the present tense and watch this hurting feeling disappear.