Ma, She’s Making Eyes at Me, the Islamic Republic of Japan, and Other Trumpian Delusions by John G. Russell

 “Every minute he gets bolder

Now he’s leaning on my shoulder”

— “Ma, He’s Making Eyes at Me”

“I just kiss them. I don’t even wait. And when you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything.”

— Donald J. Trump

Trump does not live in the real world. His is a delusional, alternate universe, built on a matrix of lies, pieced together from AI-generated slop. It is a world in which Trump is a six-foot-three, 238-pound stable genius who has never had a scalp reduction, and where the word “weave” refers only to his elaborate, Joycean, stream-of-consciousness connection of disparate topics, not to his equally ornate but mangy coif. It is a world where he and his enablers float comfortably and unmired in a pristine, “American flag blue” Reflecting Pool devoid of algae, and where the White House doesn’t look like collateral damage in an attritional war on democracy. Here, Trump is a muscular, lightsaber-wielding Jedi knight, a comb-over Yoda without jowls or a vagina neck. It is a machismo paradise where a “stalking” female Italian prime minister gazes up at him with eyes so adoring that it necessitates a restraining order. It is a world where the president can attack hijab-wearing kindergarten graduates, while remaining utterly silent about yarmulke-donning high schoolers.

In this delusional world, Barack and Michelle Obama – when they are not swinging from trees and a leonine Trump is not lording it over the jungle – wave to unseen crowds (doubtlessly smaller than Trump’s massively overestimated throngs) from a graffiti-covered Air Force One. Meanwhile Trump’s own repainted Qatari-g(r)ifted jet – which now, with its inverted color scheme, looks more like one of his corporate jets (right down to the redesign of Old Glory on its tail!) than the robin’s-egg blue and white symbol of the American presidency – requires additional defensive upgrades as he pours more bling into the Oval Office than ever adorned any “low-IQ thug.”

It turns out that it is Trump who is quite literally making eyes for Giorgia Meloni, doctoring them in a photograph so that it appears she is a Trump groupie, presumably, one of those women he infamously bragged about on the Access Hollywood tape who will let him do anything because he is a “star” (or, as he announced at the G7 summit in France, “the boss”). In fact, it is the orange lecher himself who seems to need the restraining order. Meeting with Meloni in 2025, it was Trump who sounded like a gushing, star-struck stan:

We have a woman, a young woman, who’s a – I’m not allowed to say it, because usually it’s the end of your political career if you say she’s a beautiful young woman. Now, you use the word beautiful in the United States, about a woman, that’s the end of your political career, but I’ll take my chances. 

Trump’s political career relies on taking chances that typically involve flattering those who worship him and tearing them down once they come to their senses and see him for the charlatan he is. And so, Meloni, an erstwhile ideological ally of the president, is jettisoned, following the same downward trajectory of another “beautiful” Trump admirer, Marjorie Taylor Greene.

One would think that Trump has more urgent matters to attend to than insulting his detractors and flooding the internet with AI fakery, an endless parade of ill-conceived and poorly executed vanity projects, and self-enriching grifts. But there are no adults in the room to wean this 80-year-old man, who possesses the maturity of an adolescent internet troll, from these endeavors. If anything, they egg him on, encouraging his bad behavior by stroking his ego and stoking his resentments. Natalie Harp, the Ivanka clone and Trump’s personal internet meme hunter, serves as his “human printer,” assisting him in selecting which erratic, deliberately offensive, dictated missives and AI slop to post to Truth Social.

One would also think that it would be in the national interest to have a president whose perceptions of the world are firmly grounded in reality. Yet, at the Ankara NATO summit, the man holding the nuclear codes declared that the “Islamic Republic of Japan” launched 111 missiles against the USS Abraham Lincoln. If so, then the two countries are now technically in a state of war (or is it a state of “excursion”?). This revelation certainly must have come as news to Ayatollah Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi, whom Trump chided earlier this year during her U.S. visit for her country’s surprise attack on Pearl Harbor almost a century ago – even as he defended his own pre-emptive surprise strikes on Iran, while simultaneously claiming her as his “biggest fan.”

Naturally, no one in the press corps corrected Trump. Yet the gaffe is disturbing when considered in light of both its suggested Islamophobia and the current rising tide of xenophobia in Japan. Rightwing nationalists, encouraged by the political success of the “America First” movement abroad, have used the growth of the Muslim population to fan anti-Muslim sentiment, a narrative further fueled by a pep talk Turning Point USA’s Charlie Kirk gave to Japanese nationalists in Tokyo just days before his assassination. Indeed, Japanese xenophobes may exploit Trump’s remark to further stoke growing anti-immigration and anti-Muslim sentiment among the country’s own Trump-inspired “Japanese First” crowd by suggesting the gaffe may be a prediction of things to come if Japan does not actively pursue policies to close its borders to foreigners.

One assumes Trump simply misspoke and meant to reference Iran’s March 24 vessel attack – not May, as his “two months ago” framing implied. Yet while the media in both countries highlighted Trump’s mislabeling of Japan, their ability to distinguish fact from flub did not extend to the actual date of the attack or his inflated missile count. The president’s professed love of inflation goes far beyond the economic strife he has inflicted upon Americans and the world at large. So, it should come as no surprise that he inflated the number of missiles launched by “Japan.” While Iran, the actual culprit, reported four at the time, Trump initially claimed 100, then 101, and, as of July 9, the unconfirmed yet virtually uncontested 111. He is apparently pulling these numbers out of the same thin air from which he draws his crowd sizes, vanity project costs, and prescription drug price reductions.

So far, Trump has been left to roam his alternate universe relatively unchallenged. His supporters either believe his deceptions or they find them an amusing finger in the face of the “Establishment.” Less gullible, more critical minds, disturbed by what they see, are in no position to stop his assaults on reality, or if they are, they have chosen not to do so. Instead, all they do is ridicule him, pointing to his disconnect with the real world, even as their lives in that world are assailed daily by the havoc his policies have wrought. Trump’s advisors and his cabinet of sycophants show neither sign nor inclination that they want to restrain him. Congress gives him a pass as its members mull how best to further their own political careers.

For Republicans, this has meant retaining power by faithfully pursuing the party’s Project 2025 agenda, plotting to rig the electoral system, and concealing the rumored brain death of a colleague to maintain the status quo as their party’s grasp shows signs of weakness. Meanwhile, corporate media either praise Trump’s audacity or rage impotently against his indefatigable idiocy. Whistling in the dark, late-night television tells jokes – assuming, of course, its hosts are allowed to remain on the air.

Nothing changes except the nation’s deeper descent into the abyss.

As-salamu alaykum.