Trump Just Used Our Tax Dollars to Call YOU a Communist

We live in the dumbest timeline.

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I about threw my phone across the room last night.

An ad came on that, at first glance, looked like a yet another absurd campaign ad for Donald Trump. It accused every Democrat in America of being a communist, a Marxist, a socialist. It promised America will never become a communist country. It praised Trump’s second-term agenda: his tax cuts, and how we’re apparently bringing manufacturing jobs back, which isn’t even remotely true. It was weird, but it was more or less exactly the kind of bullshit political ad we’ve all seen a thousand times. Then came the kicker: It wasn’t a campaign ad at all. It was paid for by the United States government.

Paid for by you. Paid for by me. They used our tax dollars to pay for it.

I am filled with rage at the way these people waste our money on garbage like this. Think about it for a second. The average American can barely afford to fill up their gas tank right now. They’re kicking people off their health care en masse. Rural hospitals are closing. People are giving up on the American dream – the basic promise that if you work hard and do everything you’re supposed to do, you should be able to afford a home, to retire with some dignity, to raise a family, and build a life that feels a little more secure than the one you started with. And meanwhile, Donald Trump is stealing billions and billions of dollars from the American people and spending your money to prop up his own political party – or, really, himself – in the midterms, to build his stupid ballroom, to bankroll his stupid golf trips, to fund a slush fund to bail out January 6 insurrectionists.

We’ve never seen anything like this. It is a staggeringly disgusting abuse of taxpayer money. As far as I’m concerned, lock them all up and throw away the key.

But here’s the thing. When the rage finally subsided, a new sensation took its place. I started to think about what I had just watched. And underneath all that anger, I noticed something else. I could smell their fear. I could smell their desperation.

Think about what it takes to get to this point. Trump and the Republican Party are already spending hundreds of millions in campaign funds, money they’ve taken from corrupt billionaires like Elon Musk, trying desperately to save Ken Paxton in Texas, Roger Marshall in Kansas, and candidates in all the other stretch states where Democrats are seriously competing right now. These are places where I think we have a real opportunity to elect Democrats at the federal level for the first time in a very long time. And on top of all that, they’re now running taxpayer-funded ads on Fox News. That’s the part I can’t shake. You don’t do that when you feel good about where you stand. You do that when you are truly, spectacularly desperate.

Maybe it’ll work. I doubt it, but maybe.

I think the American people are onto their shit. More than that, I think they’re exhausted by it. People are tired of the standard Republican move of calling anybody who disagrees with them a communist or a traitor. They’re tired of MAGA talking heads on cable news attacking trans kids. They’re tired of hearing about Hasan Piker. They’re tired of this whole era of our politics. I know I am. It’s been crass and disgusting and exceedingly stupid. But underneath all of that stupidity and outrage, something much darker has happened: It has robbed so many people of their fundamental dignity.

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It’s taken so much from us. How many families have been shattered by the way we’ve done politics over the last ten years? How many lives have been ruined by the callous, careless decisions Donald Trump made in his first term and is making again in his second? How many people are barely scraping by? How many have given up on the American dream, gone cold, and stopped showing up for their communities? How much of ourselves have we surrendered to being angry all the damn time?

This can’t go on. I don’t want to live this way anymore. I don’t think any of us do.

Now we’re seeing polling that shows Trump’s approval rating under 30 percent, the first time we’ve ever seen that. He’s more unpopular now than he was after the insurrection on January 6th. That’s depressing to say out loud, but it’s heartening in its own right. People know. People are tired. People are over this.

And yes, 25 percent of this country is never going to abandon their king. I understand that. And I love them just as much as I love any of my other fellow countrymen, even if they’re lost in the MAGA whirlpool. I don’t want to spend the rest my life resenting my neighbors. Because if I do, they win.

It’s time to turn the page. Hell, it’s time to close the book, toss it in the incinerator, and write a new American chapter. I know that sounds cheesy. It’s the first thing that came to mind when I sat down to write this, and I’m not one for revising away my own naïveté. I still believe that we are capable of something better than this. Sue me.

The next month is going to be challenging on every level. They’re going to try to stretch us thin. They’re going to abuse their power. They’re going to meddle in the midterms. They’re going to lie, cheat, and steal.

And they are going to fail.

They’re going to fail because of the wave coming for them. We built that wave together, in lockstep with our brothers and sisters and friends all across this country, in solidarity with one another, to build a better America. It’s too big for them to rig. It’s simply too big. I don’t believe there’s anything they can do to stop the freight train that’s headed their way.

But there’s still a lot of work to do.

And that means we can’t just sit around being pissed off. I wrote last week about the fear I’ve been carrying into this election and about something I’ve had to learn the hard way: fear is energy. If you sit with it long enough, scrolling for hours, imagining everything that could go wrong, it doesn’t protect you or prepare you. It just eats you alive. But give that energy somewhere to go – into the work, into organizing, into preparing for the thing you’re afraid of – and suddenly fear becomes useful.

I think rage works the same way. It needs somewhere to go.

A little bit of mine went into this piece. The next bit is going into my YouTube videos and into the work I do with my clients. And yes, some of it is going into taking my son to the Cubs’ last home game this afternoon. Sometimes your best act of resistance is just being a good dad for an afternoon. Being present. Loving your family. Remembering that there is an entire world outside the glowing rectangle in your hand. These people already take enough from us. I’m not giving them an afternoon with my son, too.

So take that rage, or whatever it is you’re feeling, give it somewhere to go. Make it useful. Don’t let these pricks get away with the theft, the corruption, and the depravity they’ve put on display over the last two years.

Send them a message. Let’s elect a Democratic House. Let’s elect a Democratic Senate. Let’s win a whole lot of governor’s races. And then let’s show people what a functioning government that actually works and fights for them looks like.

We’re going to keep fighting to build a better Democratic Party, too. That fight doesn’t end on Election Day. It’s only beginning. But right now, we have a major opportunity to deliver a blow to Trump’s MAGA movement and show them that there are consequences for what they have done.

Let’s fucking go.

With urgency,

–Mike