Life During Trumptime — 2/2/26 to 2/8/26
I’m starting a little writing project on the side to help keep me sane over the next three years. Between Epstein, Trump and the daily rhythm of the news it feels like many people I know are coming unmoored. Friends in the news business are losing their minds trying to keep up and friends out of the news business are just losing their minds.
The pace of the news is relentless and it’s not going to let up. Everyday I see a story, a video clip, or a post on social media that makes me feel tired, overwhelmed, or horrified. Often all three at once. I’m going to save one thing everyday that makes me feel that way then share it in a list after the week has passed.
Why? To purge it, to catalog it so I have it to look back on so that I know it’s real, so that I know it happened, and also because of something a friend said to me.
I’ve known this guy for 30 years. I grew up with him. He lives near the spot where US Customs and Border Patrol agents killed Alex Pretti. He heard the gunshots and mistook them for the sounds of his children banging around on a metal shelf, a common noise in his home. When he figured out what had happened, he bundled up his family—including a newborn—and drove them to a nearby relative’s home to shelter from the chaos.
He described watching his baby’s eyes water from the fumes in the air. “When I was loading the car you could smell the cordite propellant and your eyes would water from the CS,” he said. “But we got out and if it happens again we’ll be faster.”
That last bit has haunted me since he said it and it’s the main reason I’m doing this. Everyday we see some wild thing in the news that’s hard to parse and impossible to ignore. I just need to put them all down somewhere as they come up; keep a catalog of them. America will survive this, but not unchanged and I want some kind of record to look back at once it’s done.
My hope is that “if it happens again we’ll be faster.”
Life During Trumptime — 2/2/26 to 2/8/26
February 2, 2026
A US intelligence official filed a whistleblower complaint against Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard eight months ago. Congress has not yet seen the complaint and its contents are said to be so salacious that the complaint itself is locked in a safe.
“A cloak-and-dagger mystery reminiscent of a John le Carré novel is swirling around the complaint, which is said to be locked in a safe,” The Wall Street Journal reported. “Disclosure of its contents could cause ‘grave damage to national security,’ one official said. It also implicates another federal agency beyond Gabbard’s, and raises potential claims of executive privilege that may involve the White House, officials said.”
February 3, 2026
Trump called on Republicans to “nationalize elections.” Talking to reporters, Speaker of the House Mike Johnson backed Trump and stoked fear about the integrity of the system.
“We had three Republicans who were ahead on election day in the last cycle and every time a new tranche of ballots came in they just magically whittled away until their leads were lost,” Johnson said. “It looks on its face to be fraudulent. Can I prove it? No.”
Also on February 3, Assistant United States Attorney Julie Le broke down during a court hearing in Minnesota. The Judge was dressing Le down for failing to comply with lawful orders. “What do you want me to do?” Le said. “The system sucks. This job sucks…sometimes I wish you would just hold me in contempt, Your Honor, so that I can have a full 24 hours of sleep.”
February 4, 2026
Oklahoma Governor Kevin Stitt delivered his final state address and compared Indian tribal sovereignty to a diversity, equity, and inclusion initiative.
“Many of us have decried the DEI programs of the Biden administration, yet stand quietly by when some say an Indian should be subject to a different set of laws. We either believe in equal rights for all or we don’t. And it’s time to choose,” Stitt said.
About half of Oklahoma is tribal land.
February 5, 2026
The CIA shuttered The World Factbook, a publication of information about the world as the Agency saw it. The CIA first put out the Factbook in 1962 and began producing a public version in 1971. Officers donated some of their personal travel photos to The World Factbook, which hosted more than 5,000 photographs that were copyright-free for anyone to access and use,” said a blogpost about the end of the Factbook.
The CIA didn’t just stop making the Factbook, it also pulled the archive offline though several independent projects are working to archive what was abandoned.
February 6, 2026
Trump posted a video on his Truth Social account that depicted Barack and Michelle Obama as apes. The video, posted just before midnight, was up for 12 hours before someone deleted it. Trump refused to apologize for the video, claimed he wasn’t the one who posted it and said he “didn’t do anything wrong.”
February 7, 2026
The Epstein files revealed that Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr. went hunting for dinosaur fossils with Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislane Maxwell. “We took my kids fossil hunting in Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota. That was the extent of anything that I had to do with Jeffrey Epstein’s airplane,” RFK Jr told NewsNation.
February 8, 2026
The Super Bowl halftime show aired and was, predictably, a frontline in the culture war. Bad Bunny performed in Spanish and delivered a message of love. Turning Point USA ran an alternate halftime show headlined by Kid Rock.
“Like most Americans, I’ve enjoyed watching the Super Bowl. But the halftime shows began pushing moral boundaries and have become more and more sexualized. This year, they’re having Bad Bunny perform. The @NFL leadership is pushing this sexualized agenda. Thank you, @TPUSA and @MrsErikaKirk for providing an alternative—’The All-American Halftime Show’ with the agenda of celebrating family, faith, and freedom!” Franklin Graham, son of evangelical powerhouse Billy Graham, said in a post on X.
“Yes, like so many Christians who feel besieged by a wicked culture, I’m grateful to @TPUSA
for platforming the God-fearing paragon who brought us hits like ‘Balls in Your Mouth,’ ‘Wax the Booty’ and ‘Cadillac Pussy,’” replied journalist Tim Alberta.