When last we met, the regime was sulkily stalling the court-ordered removal of a certain game show host’s name from a certain arts center. Which I loved. You dorks wanna draw the humiliation out? That’s super hot, actually. There’s absolutely nothing sexxxier than autocracy in retreat.

First the scaffolding goes up. Sits there for a bit, coquettishly building anticipation. Clownish last-minute legal appeals only spike my arousal.

Then it turns out the scaffolding is only there to hide the removal from the public. Which is just…thrillingly degrading. We’re sinking to exotic new depths of self-abasement here, folks. The naked emperor attempts the dance of the seven veils.

Not that I don’t get it. If I were an aspiring tyrant, I wouldn’t want such a potent image of my weakness in circulation, either. And if I were a malignant narcissist fresh off getting big-timed by what’s left of Milli Vanilli, I’d be so fucking scared of headlines like Kennedy Center De-Naming Videos Draw Better Ratings Than All of Two-Term President’s State of the Union Addresses Combined that I’d piss myself, and Susie says she’s not getting up in the middle of the night to change me anymore, so I’m on my own.

So I guess this tarp stays up untilllllllllllll…?

…until whatever Enrique Tarrio has planned for that $1.776 billion blows up in our faces? Or until the inevitable Cabinet meeting nap from which no man wakes, no matter how many memorials to other people he glues his name to?

Look, there’s not enough scaffolding in the world to cover what’s coming for you dorks. So why bother?

When you lose enough wars, folks start to notice. In fairness, only the one with Iran is Wikipedia official at press time, but it won’t be long before refs invoke some sort of mercy rule in the Reflecting Pool affair.

Those stories tie together so tidily, don’t they? And the moral is, like, don’t pick stupid, unnecessary fights with Middle Eastern theocracies or with algae. It would make a fantastic children’s book if the main character wasn’t a rapist.

Yeah, Iran grabbed him by the midterms, all right. When you control the Strait of Hormuz, they not only let you do it, they ship you pallets of cash for the privilege.

Maybe I’m not being fair. Maybe I’m just mad because the president promised my childhood baseball card collection to the Supreme Leader in this “memorandum of understanding.” I’m still reading through the terms and conditions, actually…goddammit, does this really obligate every American to do the Truffle Shuffle on command?

I bet I’m the first person to notice the irony of the Art of the Deal guy cutting the worst deal in the history of deals. But that’s why you’re reading this, for the genius-level insight. For my next trick, I will tell you the names of various animals simply by looking at drawings of those animals.

Deal’s such a stinker, they’re trying to lob it onto JD Vance’s sinking ship, which is glorious (and efficient, really). DAD LIKES MARCO BETTER NOW, SORRY, BYE, leaving JD alone on deck with a bucket, scooping futilely and blubbering, “B-but I have my book tour this w-week.”

Yeah, JD’s got a new book out about what a good Christian he is for telling dehumanizing lies about immigrants and starving a few hundred thousand people (so far) to death and building concentration camps and blowing up schoolchildren ANYWAY he should be president so he can do even Christianer stuff.

It was supposed to be the grand unveiling of JD 2028, after god knows how much planning and research, and the people he works with shoved a flaming bag of dog turds in his hands and ran away laughing, and absolutely no one deserves it more.

The knives are OUT, y’all. The ones the Dotard hasn’t accidentally thrown in the trash, anyhow.

Connoisseurs of MAGA tears will not want for options in the days to come, but I suspect the Iran Hawks Reacting to the MOU vintage will be treasured, preserved in small batches for special occasions. It was so kind of them to document the moment the monkey’s paw curled around their balls…just exquisite stuff. You wanna swirl it around in a snifter.

Watch Trey Gowdy. “I didn’t believe it. I thought somebody was spoofing me when I saw it.” Yeah, he’s stupid and venal and treacherous and cowardly and weak and generally unfit for power in a thousand ways. Is that not working out for you anymore?

Hmmm. Perhaps if you had opposed his authoritarian power grabs rather than enabling them, Iran wouldn’t be so much richer and more powerful today. Ah, well. Hindsight.

Rumor has it the Nobel people will award the first-ever Trolling Prize next year, to whoever it was that suggested Versailles for the ceremonial capitulation. So simple. So elegant. The perfect bait.

Look how happy Macron looks in those photos. That’s the smile of a man who finally foisted the burden of a century of surrender jokes onto another culture.

Joke’s on you, Frenchie. We’re manufacturing so many visual metaphors for our nation’s decline, we barely even noticed yours. I assume the Reflecting Pool saga will continue advancing in comedic absurdity until we get clips of Jake Tapper reporting, “The president’s $15 million coat of paint continues flaking off in chunks, which emit what can only be described as ‘fart sounds’ as they float away.”

Say, maybe that pool boy Melania recommended doesn’t know as much about algae as we were led to believe. Perhaps his expertise lies in other fields.

Anyhoo, if all this symbolism is still too subtle for you, you can always watch the guy with the nuclear codes fight a losing battle with the clasp on a medal. Yeah, there are “no limits” to your power, old man, beyond those imposed by the snowballing deterioration of your never particularly impressive brain.

Someone else whose power could use some limits is Chief Warloser Pete Hegseth, who continues to undermine national security in a frankly fascinating variety of ways, from causing flu outbreaks on military bases with anti-vax culture war self-sabotage to directing yet another petulant tantrum at allies who seem increasingly tired of our bullshit.

Except that Giorgia Meloni, who begged for a selfie, helplessly ensorcelled by the raw charisma of a narcoleptic octogenarian with half a pound of makeup on the back of each hand. And sure, that’s a lie, but one well worth straining diplomatic relations over. We can just throw a tarp over Italy for a few years; it’ll be fine.

Remember that time the regime paid hundreds of millions of dollars to an energy company to not build some windmills? They did that again. More than two and a half billion taxpayer dollars have now been spent to abandon existing wind farm contracts. Such government inefficiency never would’ve happened under Big Balls’ watchful eye.

The administration definitely isn’t a cult; they’re just doing wacky, sauerkraut-based fad diets together, so apparently they all smell weird now, too. If anybody’s interested, it’s Bobby Brainworm’s thing, so we can assume whale head juice is allowed.

O, how the ovipositor Stephen Miller uses to lay eggs in his human victims’ chests must have stiffened when he saw that opportunity to suspend habeas corpus! Why, I bet —

Hang on, SUSPEND HABEAS CORPUS? Oh right, the fascism! Sometimes you get so caught up laughing at the incompetence, you don’t notice the police state shit until you’re halfway to the Salvadoran torture gulag.

Like, sure, this crap they’re trying with these Minnesota protesters won’t stick, but it’s the malice that counts.

It’s all they have left, really. Whatever poisonous little chemical surges in the MAGA brain when some dork bellows MICHELLE OBAMA IS A MAN on the White House lawn. Looks fulfilling.

Meanwhile, the Barack Obama Presidential Center opened this week, and they had rock stars and dignity but probably no stale McDonald’s products. All the Cult45ers insist their guy’s presidential center will be way better, but they should probably figure out how to repaint the bottom of a fucking pool before they get cocky.

Yikes. Okay, if you enjoyed the preceding diatribe, why not drop a few bucks into my beer fund (now accepting Cash App, PayPal, and Venmo)? I promise to spend it on beer and not state-sponsored terrorism, even if I’m suddenly handed $300 billion. I like beer that much.

As always, sign up on the email list and follow @john_luzar! And answer those Kickstarter surveys, because the Kickstarter for the second issue of GENERAL WASHINGTON AND THE LIBERTY TREE is right around the corner…oh, and stay safe out there!