The Republic in the Mirror – How a Billion Dollars and a President Erase Reality

"Prices are down, income is up, our Border is closed, gasoline is CHEAP, inflation is DEAD — Our Country is BOOMING!" – When words become weapons, this sentence is a glancing blow against reality. A sentence as if from a school play about autocrats. A sentence that doesn't inform but hypnotizes. Donald Trump, the 45th and 47th President of the United States, posted it on Truth Social – embedded in an America that is disintegrating daily. And while hospitals lay off staff, gas stations revert to "Cash Only," and families rely on food stamps, Trump embarks on the greatest self-staging of his political life: a billion-dollar battle for his ego – financed by taxpayers.

Leading this absurd spectacle is Attorney General Pam Bondi – a woman who doesn't so much speak at cabinet meetings as she does invoke. Her figure: 258 million lives saved through seized fentanyl. Her rhetoric: Trump is the greatest president in history. Her demeanor: composed, made-up, consecrated. Yet, the day before, she spoke of 119 million – a discrepancy of nearly 140 million, seemingly added by sheer divine grace or PR instinct. Even the White House found it too absurd – behind closed doors, staff laughed at Bondi's numerical gymnastics as if it were a Monty Python sketch on Fox News.

But laughter here is reserved for behind the scenes. Publicly, there is gratitude. Obedience. Praise. In ministries that no longer feel bound to the Constitution but to the man in the Oval Office – which has now been dipped in 24-karat gold. Where once hung a portrait of Obama, now looms Trump with a raised fist – a piece of art that aesthetically oscillates somewhere between shopping mall and Saddam Hussein. In the hallway hangs another Trump head, this time with the U.S. flag on his face. And in a side room stands a sculpture depicting Trump, Lincoln, and Reagan together with an eagle – Trump, naturally, in the foreground.

What seems like a poorly staged Netflix dystopia is already lived governmental reality. A billion dollars have already been spent on measures that have nothing to do with democratic statecraft – but all the more with narcissistic personality cult. Among them: a DHS advertising campaign in which Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem thanks Trump in every frame. A military parade in Washington on June 14 – coincidentally Trump's birthday. And a "Sky Palace" – a Qatari luxury jet officially serving as Air Force One, but unofficially intended to become Trump's future library jet. Paid for by the people, donated by a Gulf emirate. The ban on such gifts? According to Bondi, it doesn't apply. She was formerly a lobbyist in Qatar.

And what are the Republicans doing? They stand in formation. They laugh along. They introduce laws to create "Trump Accounts" for newborns. They vote to rename Dulles Airport to "Donald J. Trump International." They want his face on the $250 bill – and, yes, on Mount Rushmore. Not posthumously, but now. During his lifetime. "He means it seriously," says an insider. "He really wants it." Not because he wants to compare himself to Roosevelt – but because he believes Roosevelt was never better.

American fascism doesn't wear a brown shirt. It wears a baseball cap. And it doesn't make clear cuts – it lets things slide. A statue here, a law there. A holiday, a gilded doorknob, a commemorative plaque. Everything seems absurd until it becomes everyday.
This government is no accident. It's a strategy. Its propaganda doesn't aim for approval but for overwhelming. For a complete reinterpretation of reality – with Trump as the divine center, and the world as the stage of his self-reflection. Those who contradict become enemies. Those who remain silent become fellow travelers.

And so the president strides through a White House of gold. Past paintings showing him winning wars that never happened. Past statues honoring him with accolades no one ever bestowed. And past a country that watches silently and incredulously – as if erased by its own president.