Life During Trumptime — 2/9/26 - 2/15/26
This President’s day I’m thinking of America’s other rotund split term Commander-in-chief, Grover Cleveland. Elected in 1884, Cleveland was the first Democrat to hold the office since the Civil War. Like Trump, Cleveland faced credible allegations of sexual assault during his first campaign. The widow Maria Halpin wrote a letter saying Cleveland raped her and had a child she claimed was his. Opponents shouted “Ma, ma, where’s my Pa?” at supporters during the campaign. “Gone to the White House Ha ha ha,” the supporters belted after he won.
Also like Trump, Cleveland couldn’t win his first re-election bid and sat out for four years before returning to the Presidency with a narrow margin in the popular vote. Public sentiment turned against Cleveland during his second term as he struggled to navigate tariffs, a financial crisis, and a rising tide of populism. He left the White House under a cloud.
February 9, 2026
Dr. Oz—fulltime administrator for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services and part time anti-Armenian conspiracy theorist—begged the nation to get vaccinated. “Take the vaccine, please,” the doctor said on CNN.
I live in South Carolina near the epicenter of a measles outbreak. The number of confirmed cases is almost 1,000 and is expected to grow. A mix of medical freedom advocates, crunchy MAHA moms, and rural infrastructure created the perfect conditions in South Carolina to bring back a disease that was once a distant memory.
But there are no atheists in fox holes and no anti-vaxers during an outbreak. Vaccination rates surged 162% in Spartanburg where the outbreak is worst and a state Senator has proposed legislation that would end the state’s religious exemptions for vaccines and make MMR shots mandatory for kids attending public school.
Some still aren’t convinced. “This bill goes too far. Since 2020, we’ve seen a concerted push to curtail personal liberty in the name of health and safety,” South Carolina Attorney General Alan Wilson said in a statement about the proposed legislation. “Eliminating religious exemptions and mandating medical decisions by force is not who we are as a state or country.”
I got a titer this week, a blood panel that let me know I was still immune to the disease. The nurse who checked me in thought it was bizarre. “Do you work with the public or something?” She asked.
February 10, 2026
Vice President JD Vance visited Armenia, a first for a sitting US executive. As part of the tour, press took a picture of Vance laying a wreath at the Tsitsernakaberd Memorial Complex which honors the dead of the Armenian Genocide. The picture ended up on the Vice President’s official Twitter account but was removed after Vance left Armenia. The post had called the Armenian Genocide a genocide, something American ally Turkey doesn’t love.
“Obviously, I’m the first vice president to ever visit Armenia. They asked us to visit the site. Obviously, it’s a very terrible thing that happened a little over 100 years ago, and something that was just very, very important to them culturally,” Vance told reporters when asked about it later.
February 11, 2026
The FAA shut down the air space above El Paso, saying all flights in the area would be grounded for 10 days. It opened the skies again a short time later. The Pentagon and Federal Aviation Administration were, if not actively feuding, not adequately communicating.
The Pentagon claimed it was testing new high powers anti-drone lasers and felling cartel drones. It failed to alert the FAA that it was taking shots in the area and kicked off a panic.
Later, it turned out that all the Department of War managed to destroy with its lasers was a party balloon. The Pentagon loves to shoot down balloons above the United States.
February 12, 2026
War is big business on Polymarket.
The Wall Street Journal reported that Israel had arrested soldiers and civilians for using classified information to make money on the gambling site.
“Last year, a user who went by the name ricosuave666 correctly predicted the timeline around the 12-day war between Israel and Iran. The bets drew attention from other traders who suspected the account holder had access to nonpublic information.
The account in question raked in more than $150,000 in winnings before going dormant for six months. It resumed trading last month, betting on when Israel would strike Iran, Polymarket data shows.”
This keeps happening. Another Polymarket user made $400,000 betting on the ousting of Nicolás Maduro just hours before the US announced his capture. In December, someone at a thinktank that tracks the frontlines of the War in Ukraine was fired after manipulating the map to win bets on Polymarket.
February 13, 2026
A pair of speeches and a bit of overt bigotry closed out the week.
On Friday Trump spoke at Fort Bragg where he played the hits. He talked to the troops and their families about Melania’s documentary, said he’d saved the economy, and rambled about the Dow Jones and 401ks. Then he told the attendees that they had to vote for Republicans if they wanted to keep the name of their beloved base.
Fort Bragg is an American institution and, among the US military, an iconic symbol. It was originally named for Confederate general Braxton Bragg and the Biden administration renamed the place “Fort Liberty” seeing as the Confederacy is finally out of fashion in much of the country. Many of the rank and file in the military didn’t love the change. Not because they hated liberty and loved the Confederacy, but because Bragg had always been Bragg. Trump’s Department of War re-christened “Fort Bragg” in honor of WWII era paratrooper Roland L. Bragg, cutting out the Confederacy and retaining the name. A tidy solution for a mostly untidy administration.
According to Trump, changing Fort Bragg’s name again is at the top of the Democrat’s to-do list. “We have your name back. We got your name back from the radical left. The radical left is not happy about it,” Trump said. “It’s another reason you have to vote for us, because they’ll change it back to whatever it might be.”
Later he brought out Republican Senate candidate Michael Whately and endorsed him in front of the gathered troops. Then he made it clear what might happen should Whately not win. “I heard they were taking the name Fort Bragg off, I said no, no, no, they’re kidding,” Trump said. “They’re not going to do-they did-they took the name off. We got it back very quickly, but they took it off. And if we don’t win the midterms, they’ll take it off again. They’ll take it off again. You can’t let that happen.”
February 14, 2026
On Valentine’s Day, Secretary of State Marco Rubio delivered a speech in Munich that tried to have it all ways. Speaking at a security conference, Rubio invoked the history of Western civilization, decried open borders, and asked Europe to stick it out with America for old time’s sake.
“We do not need to abandon the system of international cooperation we authored, and we don’t need to dismantle the global institutions of the old order that together we built. But these must be reformed. These must be rebuilt,” Rubio said.
He outlined a world where America takes the lead and solves its problems aggressively without anyone telling it what to do but with the full support of Europe. “It is the path we ask you here in Europe to join us on,” Rubio said. “It is a path we have walked together before and hope to walk together again. For five centuries, before the end of the Second World War, the West had been expanding—its missionaries, its pilgrims, its soldiers, its explorers pouring out from its shores to cross oceans, settle new continents, build vast empires extending out across the globe.”
The speech, it seemed, didn’t go over well with Europeans.
February 15, 2026
Political life during Trumptime is defined by extremely online grievance politics and Rep. Randy Fine (R-FL) spent his Sunday on Twitter reminding me of that.
It began when Fine posted a bigoted tweet about Muslims. “If they force us to choose, the choice between dogs and Muslims is not a difficult one,” the post said, referring to a recurring fear among some conservatives that America’s Muslims will usher in anti-dog Sharia-based laws.Fine then spent the next few hours posting AI-generated pictures of dogs on the Gadsden Flag.
The truth, of course, doesn’t matter to Fine. The content and attention was too good to pass up.