The outrages keep piling up day after day. On February 6, 2026 at 5:44 in the morning, the Truth Social Account from “Donald J. Trump@realDonaldTrump” tweeted a 62-second video of former President of the United States Barack Obama and former First Lady Michelle Obama as hairy, muscular apes, swaying in a jungle to music. I do not know how many overt racists there are in the United States of America. I venture there are not enough to keep either the President or his party in power.
As the reaction built, President Trump’s spokesperson, Karoline Leavitt, admonished the public: “Please stop the fake outrage.” The blowback must have continued nonetheless. Later in the day the link to the tweet was severed, an unusual move from this President. In full damage mode, it was all blamed on a nameless “staffer.” However, the tweet had gone out at 5:44 a.m., an hour when insomniacs are known to tweet.
Mr. Trump’s FBI raided Georgia’s Fulton County election office on February 4, 2026 and seized election files. Mr. Trump again claimed the 2020 election in Georgia had been stolen despite at least two hand recounts, Mr. Trump’s loss of his court challenges all the way to the Supreme Court, and the fact Republican election officials in Georgia had run the election and certified it to Congress. The Georgia Republican officials had strongly disputed his claims.
At the same time Mr. Trump called for the federal government to take over the election machinery in the states where his party had lost the 2020 election to Democrats. Mr. Trump said that despite the fact that the Constitution (Art.1 sec. 4), explicitly reserves the running of Federal elections to the states. Apparently, our Founding Fathers intended the federal elections not be under the control of one man with all the power in Washington. Mr. Trump implied his government in DC should control the election machinery during the upcoming 2026 Midterm elections. His knows his party will lose power in the House unless he finds a way to stop it.
Mr. Trump on February 1 demanded that a gold embellished triumphal arch be built that would rise 250 feet high, tall enough to tower over the Lincoln Memorial. The Lincoln Memorial would be visible only as a much smaller building through the arch. Apparently, Mr. Trump is not about to be upstaged by President Lincoln. That very same day Mr. Trump also announced that the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts would close for two years. It must not have helped sales for his handpicked board to put Trump’s name before JFK’s.
Only the day before that Mr. Trump had been asked in an interview by the New York Times “if there are any checks on his power when it comes to the world stage?” Mr. Trump did not cite the Constitution or the checks and balances by the Congress or the Courts. He replied “only my own morality,” adding “It’s the only thing that can stop me.” What if there is none?
Earlier, in January, Deputy White House chief of Staff Stephen Miller and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, without citing proof, called the slain Renee Good and Alex Pretti “domestic terrorists.” Cardinal Cupich who lives in a rectory in Chicago, Pope Leo’s hometown, said pointedly of those cases: “there’s a narrative out there that’s trying to be marketed to the American people that flies in the face of what our eyes told us.” In Washington, wasn’t it the very President honored by the soon to be diminished Memorial on the reflecting pool who had said: “You can’t fool all of the people all of the time?”
Earlier still on January 21 Mr. Trump had implied he would forcibly invade and occupy with American troops our NATO ally, Greenland. Greenland is a semiautonomous possession of another NATO ally, Denmark. After the 25th Amendment was broached, Mr. Trump backed off the force bit. However, he immediately went to Davos the day after and threated punitive tariffs on our NATO allies who wouldn’t go along with it. There he tried and failed to intimidate Denmark’s representative Rasmus Jarlov; the Premier of Canada, Mark Carney; and the head of the European Parliament’s committee on international trade, Bernd Lange. None of it worked.
Mr. Trump did all that in just a little over the two weeks as I write these words. Mr. Trump has almost three more years, or according to the countdown clock at this very minute, 1078 days eight hours to reach January 20, 2029 at midnight (www.logwork.com/countdown-h5o4). Will our Constitution as a democratic Republic hold each day to the end? It depends on each of us, whether we speak and take action as citizens unbound by fear.
Robert P. Wise is a Northsider.
