What is happening at SNL? It’s not funny anymore. The premises for most of the skits this season are sophomoric and stilted, and it seems like the writing staff has been taken over by a bunch of high schoolers. The tongue-in-cheek edginess is gone for the time being.

Weekend Update is still OK, but even that doesn’t deliver the same punch. Maybe when enough players leave, the dynamics and chemistry change and it takes a while for the new cast to find their stride? I don’t know, but right now, it’s just a cheap late-night product hardly worth watching.

I really hope they aren’t looking over their shoulder for Trump.

Who does that? Who thinks this way, besides a demented, aging egomaniac?

Oh, I get it. Trump is still trying to outrun the whole Epstein thing. So why not get the media to traipse down another rabbit hole, pushing and shoving each other in the crush to run a story about how he wants the new Commanders football stadium to be named after him. That oughtta occupy ‘em for a couple days.

What’s next? Will we find out that the new “ballroom” will be more than just a place for dignitaries and wannabes to hang out and be seen? What’s gonna be built underneath it?

It’s really rich, and the height of political theater, for John Thune and Mike Johnson and other Republicans to vomit Broadway caliber drama and over-the-top outrage over Democrats not yielding on the health insurance premium increases that will result from this latest CR, as government operations are held hostage yet again in another shutdown.

Thune and Johnson stand before colleagues and press and enemies across the aisle, lambasting Democrats for holding their ground in the midst of excessively harsh and severe (i.e. draconian) legislation that begs for revision or removal. It has me wondering if all of this isn’t just more tactical stonewalling to keep the media off the scent of the Epstein files. Could it all be in service of yet another distraction?

What a filthy, sad lot the Republicans have become—protecting a criminal, endangering public safety, letting the economy crater, offering up legislation that has the patina of some sort of fiscal conservatism but in reality is just a cudgel to be wielded with no regard for the millions left foundering in its wake.

This is ugly politics, calculated villainy, and just more evidence for the many who feel like they’re watching America implode. There’s money for a useless ballroom from equally useless billionaires, but it’s time to scrounge when it comes to lending a hand to fellow citizens.

I’ve had enough of the ignorance, and of people thinking they know what’s what. I’m done with the parrots who just repeat what they hear from their racist friends and relatives.

I’ve had it with all who have given up on humanity, all who so readily label and judge and assume, all who jump on bandwagons and create scapegoats and enemies out of thin air, who sit at home and think up catchphrases that they hope will stir patriotism, or mistrust and fear, who make shit up and then package it as truth and get people to buy it.

Stop putting words in our mouths, stop deceiving yourselves. Stop being so weak!

The Trump administration is one big false flag operation with a misplaced fixation on wokeness. They want us to be afraid, but they’re the ones with all the phobias. It was Socrates who is quoted as saying, “When the debate is lost, insults become the loser’s tool.” The truth is that Trump and all the people propping him up are peddling nothing more than a product of their own dysfunction, their own fears and suspicions. And they want the rest of us to drink that Kool-Aid.

There’s a quote attributed to Isaac Asimov that says, “Anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.”

I don’t believe I’ve heard a better distillation of what we’ve been suffering through for the last nine years.

Donald Trump is about as shallow as they come. He touts the ballroom construction and Lincoln bathroom reno as great accomplishments. He points to those as things we should be happy about and impressed by. He says the Democratic dominance in Tuesday’s elections was only because he wasn’t on the ballot—and, well, maybe the shutdown had something to do with it. He really is a sad, pathetic one trick pony, maybe unwilling to acknowledge that in a substantial way, he was on the ballot.

It won’t be long before JD is stepping in, or there’s a major strategy shift and some in-fighting, a grooming of someone else to take the reins. Who knows what’s already going on behind the scenes? The trouble here is that even if the day arrives when Trump is no longer a factor, the cancer is spreading to the bones, and there are likely many others more capable and more legitimately frightening than Donald.

Now that the ’25 elections are over, we can bet on a doubling of efforts by the brain trust to ensure the 2026 midterms will yield more satisfying results. And these efforts won’t include a palatable, enlightened platform.

Get ready, America. The shit’s just gonna keep hitting the fan. Vought and Miller and the rest have no intention of going gently into that good night.