Golden Calves In His Image
Life During Trumptime - 5/4/26 - 5/10/26
I am, as I write this, sitting at a journalist conference listening to a man explain how doomed America would be should Russia or China launch hundreds of nuclear weapons. His speech is followed by another from a former government employee who lost his job in the DOGE cuts. He’s explaining how bad global warming is and will be. There is a sick comfort in these doomsday predictions for me, a reminder that all things move towards their end.
I imagine the legs of a tarnished gold statue sunk into wetlands that have taken over a former golf course. Kudzu devours the figure’s abdomen, vines obliterating the face making it impossible to know the subject. Arches crumble. Paper disintegrates. Glue evaporates and coins fall from walls. Even memory fades in time.
Here’s what I saw last week.
5/4/26
US Secret Service agents shot a man named Michael Marx near the White House. According to an indictment released two days later, Secret Service agents noticed Marx had a concealed handgun and was near a Vice Presidential motorcade. Marx allegedly attempted to flee the scene and shot at agents, wounding a civilian in the process. Agents then shot Marx in the “hand, left arm, and upper abdomen.”
“Fuck the White House. Kill me, kill me, kill me,” Marx allegedly said in the ambulance on the way to the hospital.
Monday also saw the start of Operation Project Freedom, a US led effort to guide ships through the Strait of Hormuz and bust the Iranian blockade. US Central Command (CENTCOM) claimed it guided two merchant vessels through the Strait. The IRGC said this was a lie, that no ships had cleared the Strait, and that it had fired warning shots at passing vessels. Merchant ships in the area confirmed the Iranian attacks.
5/5/26
Secretary of State (and so much more) Marco Rubio announced the end of Operation Epic Fury, Trump and the Pentagon’s name for the War in Iran. “Operation Epic Fury is concluded. We achieved the objectives of that operation,” Rubio explained during a press conference.
“I’m not going to—we’re not cheering for an additional situation to occur. We would prefer the path of peace. What the President would prefer is a deal. He would prefer to sit down, work out a memorandum of understanding for future negotiations that touches on all the key topics that have to be addressed, a full opening of the straits so the world can get back to normal, and he’d prefer that that be negotiated through the route that Steve and Jared have been working and that all of us have been supporting.
That’s the route he prefers. That is so far not the route that Iran has chosen. And so the result has been that the United States has to do something about the fact that we’re the only nation on Earth that can do anything to open up a lane within the Straits of Hormuz to get product and to rescue these people that are trapped in there. And that’s what we’re undergoing now.”
The same day, Secretary of War Pete Hegseth claimed Operation Project Freedom was a present. “As a direct gift from the United States to the world, we have established a powerful red, white and blue dome over the strait,” Hegseth said in a briefing to the press. “American destroyers are on station, supported by hundreds of fighter jets, helicopters, drones, and surveillance aircraft, providing 24/7 overwatch for peaceful commercial vessels except Iran’s, of course, which is why our ironclad blockade remains in full effect as well. In fact, six ships tried to run the blockade out of Iranian ports as Project Freedom commenced, and they were all turned around. This is more than strategy. It’s also humanitarian.”
Hours later, Trump said Operation Project Freedom was on hold.
“Based on the request of Pakistan and other Countries, the tremendous Military Success that we have had during the Campaign against the Country of Iran and, additionally, the fact that Great Progress has been made toward a Complete and Final Agreement with Representatives of Iran, we have mutually agreed that, while the Blockade will remain in full force and effect, Project Freedom (The Movement of Ships through the Strait of Hormuz) will be paused for a short period of time to see whether or not the Agreement can be finalized and signed,” he said in a post on Truth Social.
5/6/26
General Atomics shared pictures of a Kansas State University branded Predator drone as part of a long-term partnership between the university and the defense contractor. Along with the deadly drone, General Atomics has donated $10 million to build out the Kansas State University Salina campus. KSU is now The College With Its Own Predator®, according to a press release.
Rep. Mike Collins, a Republican representing Georgia, shared an AI-generated picture of himself decked out in jewelry seized and auctioned by US Marshalls.
Maryland legislators demanded answers from the Pentagon following the revelation that Joint Base Andrews leaked 32,000 gallons of jet fuel into the Potomac River. The DoW knew for months but failed to inform Maryland. There are echoes of the Red Hill water crisis in Hawaii. In 2001 families living on and near Joint Base Pearl Harbor–Hickam noticed their water was contaminated and later learned that a broken fuel container had spilled tens of thousands of gallons of fuel into the Oʻahu aquifer.
Pastor Mark Burns unveiled a 22-foot tall golden statute of Trump at the Trump Miami Doral golf course. “Let me be clear: this is not a golden calf. We worship the Lord and Jesus Christ and Him alone,” Burns said in a post on Instagram.
5/7/26
Iran and the US continued to exchange fire in the Strait of Hormuz. Trump continued to say the ceasefire was still in effect. Pakistan insisted that the war would end soon.
Hegseth lauded the fiscal responsibility of the Trump administration’s proposed $1.5 trillion defense budget in a video posted on X. The Secretary of War promised to eliminate graft and waste in the defense procurement process and said that defense CEOs had grown rich off American taxpayers.
He also name-checked “Deal Team Six,” a group of negotiators he said would get America a better deal on defense projects. Who has Hegseth tasked with handling the negotiations? Steve Feinberg, CEO of the private equity firm Cerberus turned Deputy Secretary of Defense (War). Former Cerberus employee George Kollitidies is leading Deal Team Six.
Slate reported that Trump has been gluing coins to doors in the White House. “Outside the West Wing, he took ‘challenge coins,’ which are these military coins that the president can give away as a party favor when he meets people, and started gluing them to the middle of doors.”
5/8/26
The Department of War released what it said would be the first of a batch of “UFO Files,” a mix of redacted photos and documents related to unidentified anomalous phenomena (UAP). The files are an unsorted tranche going back decades, a cross section of sightings and write-ups of people seeing odd lights in the sky.
“These files, hidden behind classifications, have long fueled justified speculation—and it’s time the American people see it for themselves. This release of declassified documents demonstrates the Trump Administration’s earnest commitment to unprecedented transparency,” Hegseth said in a statement accompanying the release.
My favorite of these new UFO disclosures concerns an incident witnessed in September 2023 by a person in an F150 near a “US test site.” Here’s a picture, made by the FBI, of what they say they saw.
“Actual site photo with FBI Lab rendered graphic overlay depicting corroborating eyewitness reports from September 2023 of an apparent ellipsoid bronze metallic object materializing out of a bright light in the sky, 130-195 feet in length, and disappearing instantaneously,” said the accompanying description.
“The vehicles drove through a couple of gates and [redacted] saw a bright light over the horizon. The light was stationary in the air, then started moving to the right, then disappeared. [Redacted] could see the light through the top right of the vehicle’s windshield. The light was bright white and was visible for ten seconds before it disappeared. The light stayed the same size throughout the incident. [Redacted] thought the light was ten to twenty miles away. [Redacted] did not notice any interference with his vehicle.”
The FBI conducted this interview via Facetime, according to the writeup of the incident.
5/9/26
It’s dangerous to divine the thoughts of a person from their social media posts. We aren’t our posts. And yet…I find this is not a truism I can often abide by. The people in power, whether CEOs or politicians, love to post. It often feels like performance is the point of their lives, not corporate or civic governance.
“Trump’s Truth Social lays bare narrow obsessions of an extremely online president,” NPR said in a recent story.
And so.
On Saturday, Trump posted an AI-generated picture of butterflies crumbling into the ocean next to a photo of drones breaking apart below the caption “Drones Dropping Like Butterflies.”
He followed this up with two more pictures of AI-generated war propaganda and then seven photographs of Trump National Golf Course in Virginia. The golf course photos had an odd sheen, as if someone had taken a photo of a television screen. Some of them repeated.
He followed this up by posting more AI-generated war propaganda and a grotesque caricature of Illinois Governor JB Pritzker.
5/10/26
Work began on “repairs” to the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool in Washington DC. Contractors drained the pool and began to paint it blue. Trump initially said this would cost $1.8 million, but costs have already ballooned to $13.1 million. The White House rushed the bidding process for the project, claiming that a delay would cause “serious injury, financial or other, to the government.”