Internet gleefully pronounces Trump dead

Is it good if a sickly POTUS goes missing for four days and his people are thrilled about his possible demise?

As Senator Joni Ernst told her fuming constituents during a career-ending health care town hall in Iowa this summer, “We are all going to die.”

And some of us, inshallah, may be hurtling toward that sweet release sooner than others. Namely President Donald Trump, whose swollen cankles, makeup-caked hand bruises, inability to walk in a straight line, and declining mental faculties have fueled speculation for months that he is nearing the end. Pair that with three new developments this week—J.D. Vance’s weird insistence that he’s prepared to take over as commander-in-chief in the case of a “terrible tragedy,” Trump suddenly becoming obsessed with the idea of “getting into heaven,” and Trump’s suspicious disappearance from public life for four days—and rumors of the president’s death went into overdrive.

The White House squashed the rumors today, kind of, by releasing a grainy photo from afar of Trump looking like shit while supposedly playing golf in Virginia.

I am not here to fuel the theory that Trump is actually dead; I believe I will feel it in my bones when that day finally comes. But I do think, if I were Donald Trump and essentially lived through my own Irish funeral online, I might consider the overwhelmingly celebratory nature of the memes about my demise and what they might suggest about the choices I’ve been making. I also might consider what it means that the whole world thought I died because I stopped flapping my gums about insane shit to the cameras for five minutes. This is an incredible opportunity for self-reflection, if there ever was one, for a very old fascist man who still wants to get into heaven.

On that note, I’d like to round up some other political news that didn’t make me want to swan dive off the Chrysler building this week:

• Democrat Catelin Drey won a special election this week in Iowa to flip a deep red seat blue and smash Republicans' supermajority in the Iowa Senate. This is the FOURTH special election in Iowa this year in which Democrats have overperformed by 20+ points, which likely has something to do with Joni Ernst suddenly announcing her retirement this week. Drey’s big upset follows the trends we’ve been seeing in Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Wisconsin, and elsewhere of Democrats suddenly crushing in blood red districts since Trump came into power, which bodes very well for midterms, assuming we are still having midterms at all.

• Maine voters chanted “SHAME!” at Susan Collins at a ribbon cutting ceremony this week, which she pretended not to hear. But she should be very concerned for her career in the Senate, to use her favorite word, because a charismatic, populist oyster farmer named Graham Platner is coming for her and I suspect he is going to win. (Read this brilliant profile of him by Ana Marie Cox if you haven’t, it was my favorite thing I read all week.)

• And a federal appeals court just affirmed a lower court’s ruling that Trump overstepped his presidential powers in imposing tariffs on the entire world without Congress’ approval, which deals a huge blow to his entire economic strategy and his ego. The tariffs remains in place until October 14, allowing enough time for the administration’s inevitable appeal to the Supreme Court—but most legal scholars I’m reading seem to think SCOTUS will uphold the ruling, if only to save Trump from the economic consequences of trying to punish other countries (and inevitably our own consumers) for no reason.

Cheers to another week of #TrumpDeathWatch on socials.