Imagine it’s April 4, 2025, and Donald Trump is not in prison.
Trump is in the White House.
You wake up before dawn, and a wave of dread washes over you as you check your news app to see what’s going on.
Trump has declared it’s Ivanka Trump Day, and his Cabinet secretaries are approaching her one by one to compliment Ivanka at an East Room ceremony. Trump gets in front of the cameras and notes how beautiful his daughter is. “If Ivanka weren’t my secretary of commerce, perhaps I’d be dating her,” Trump says.
Ivanka Trump and Donald Trump in 2020. Drew Angerer/Getty Images
Trump then goes on a tirade about China’s latest retaliatory tariff and indicates it would be “very foolish” for the Chinese to underestimate America’s military capacity. Trump hints about nuclear-armed U.S. ballistic missile submarines prowling the South China Sea.
“It would be unfortunate, wouldn’t it, if one of our patriot sub captains hit the wrong button,” Trump muses.
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Later that morning, Trump boards Air Force One, en route to Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. He’s ranting to Fox News and Newsmax reporters — among the few journalists he still allows to travel with him — about how the plane couldn’t run on “windmills.” He promises to get the price of a gallon of gas below $1. “We can do it. You’ll see,” he says. The picture on Trump’s gigantic in-cabin flatscreen, which is tuned to MSNBC so he can hate-watch “Morning Joe,” begins to flicker. Trump declares that “they don’t make television sets like they used to anymore" and orders an investigation.
“And where’s my remote? I can’t find my remote! Give me a break,” he says.
Finally, speaking from Saudi Arabia that evening, Trump announces there will be a “triumphant, never-before-seen” military parade through Washington, D.C., on May 1. The parade would celebrate soldiers that quelled nationwide anti-Trump protests in the days following his second inauguration on Jan. 20, 2025. Forty-two American citizens died and more than 700 were injured across multiple clashes.
“And maybe they’ll crack a few more heads,” Trump jests. Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman smirks beside him.
It all may sound silly, but this really isn’t far from the kind of stuff to which Trump subjected America between 2017 and 2021. We had Trump’s love affair with Kim Jong Un, which followed their debate over who had the better button on their desk. Trump wanted military parades. He wanted us to inject bleach. He redirected a hurricane with a sharpie.
President Donald Trump gives a thumbs-up to North Korean leader Kim Jong-un. (AFP)
It was a deranged mess of absurdities and legitimate causes for concern. It was every day, and it was impossible to avoid even if you just casually followed politics. Even people who didn’t couldn’t escape. Everywhere one went, people were talking about the latest insane Trump-y thing that had happened.
All of this is to say that Democrats may do well to remind the American people of how mentally exhausting it was having Trump in power.
He’s not just dangerous to democracy — he’s hazardous to Americans’ mental health.
Trump “created an environment where you are constantly in a state of fight or flight,” Lauren Carson, founder and executive director of the mental health nonprofit Black Girls Smile, told Vox. You can’t tell if he’s actually going to start a nuclear war or if he’s just posturing. You can barely understand what he’s ranting about sometimes, and he won’t stop ranting. He riles up tens of millions of impressionable Americans and panders to their darkest angels.
We really did get sick of that guy, didn’t we?
You woke up every morning and wondered what fresh hell you’d see in the news that day. He couldn’t stop doing ridiculous and terrible things, and he was constantly in front of the cameras. We were always on edge and tired — even people who supported Trump. Remember the family arguments and fall-outs? Remember avoiding people because they voted for Trump? We elected a boring guy for a reason, but now the crazy one has a real chance of winning the election next year. Voters have very short memories, so perhaps they’ve forgotten what it felt like to have Trump in charge of the nation, but I certainly haven’t.
So perhaps the Democrats should remind Americans — over and over and over again — about what we really had to endure during some of the most absurd and frightening weeks of the Trump years. Show us the crazy again. Show people who may have memory-holed those Trump experiences what they voted against when they went to the polls and cast their ballots for Joe Biden in 2020. With elections as close as ours are of late, even an effect at the margins could mean the difference between a nightmare repeated and a nightmare dispelled.
Trump and his people have learned from their past mistakes, and they’re now prepared to dismantle our democratic institutions. Trump isn’t at all being shy about it. They’ve got a lot of money and organization set up behind those plans, too.
If Trump comes back to the White House, he’s going to be everywhere, all of the time again. Everywhere. All of the time. Remember that. Every day. And for the next year, act accordingly.
