PROVIDENCE — When the current occupant of the Oval Office moved back into the White House last year, at least when he’s not starting wars from his Florida compound and/or golfing, I routinely referred to him as the Mad King. I was being far too kind.

This racist, sexual predator, serial liar, thief, traitor, mass murder is a Monster. He feeds on hate and cruelty. He needs constant praise — all of which is undeserving. He’s done nothing to help anyone but himself and his ghoulish family, and maybe his cabinet of creeps and his cartel of sycophants who tromp about the U.S. Capitol and statehouses around the country.

The fact he was elected twice is sickening. It speaks volumes about how ignorant, hateful, and desperate this country is. For that, we can blame a long-broken two-party system that constantly craves power and dark money. When we continuously leave people behind, it spawns monsters that take advantage of distressed situations.

We end up with a thin-skinned playground bully who is nothing more than a puppet for Netanyahu and Putin. He’s a useful idiot for the world’s worst, of which he is most certainly one. He trades “love letters” with a ghoul who uses brutality, fear, and surveillance to rule over one of the world’s most repressive, totalitarian states. Our Monster is jealous. He wants to do the same here.

ICE is his personal goon squad, funded by taxpayers. His attorney general is considering a new rule that would stop state bar associations from investigating misconduct by Department of Justice lawyers. He’s trying to rig the midterm elections. He’s helping his wealthy allies/enablers take control of the media.

The Monster’s director of the National Economic Council, an always smirking mouthpiece, has said the regime isn’t really concerned about the economic impact its illegal war on Iran is having on everyday Americans. The Monster uses his position of power to enrich himself and his corrupt family.

Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump have backed a new drone company that is vying to meet Department of Defense demand to fill a void left by the regime’s ban on Chinese drones. Powerus, a drone roll-up company based in Florida, is merging with a publicly traded golf course holding company backed by Beavis and Butt-Head. The merger will result in Powerus, which was formed last year, trading on the Nasdaq stock exchange. These country club drones will crash and burn like Trump Vodka, Trump Steaks, and the casino the criminal family bankrupted.

This merger is war profiteering in plain sight: lead MAGA Monster bans Chinese drones; starts wars; new family drone company chases Pentagon contracts; bombs fall, on schools and civilian infrastructure; more taxpayer money wasted on death and destruction; the Monster and his family profit.

The Wall Street Journal recently reported the Monster is set to receive a $10 billion fee from investors in the recently completed deal to take control of TikTok’s U.S. business. The payment is part of the agreement through which investors friendly with the the regime gained control of TikTok’s U.S. operations from its Chinese parent company.

These are just two of the many hustles the Monster is allowed to run. Phony agencies, such as the insultingly named Board of Peace, are created so the Monster can funnel billions to himself. Don’t forget his pardons-for-dollars scam. When the Monster holds center stage, bribery, coercion, extortion, insurrection, money laundering, and pedophilia are no longer crimes.

Fascism is an ideology of divide and conquer. Turn citizens against immigrants. Turn cisgender and heterosexuals against transgender and homosexuals. Turn faiths and cultures against each other. Then watch the destruction while profiting from the misery.

Jimmy Carter was forced to sell his peanut farm, but this Monster is allowed to profit from the presidency like no one else in modern U.S. history. Since the Monster was reelected, Forbes has estimated his net worth is up $2 billion, to $6.5 billion; Eric Trump’s is up tenfold, to $400 million; Don Jr.’s is up six times, to $300 million; 19-year-old Barron is worth $150 million; and Jared Kushner became a billionaire.

Kushner’s unchecked crime spree is far from finished. The Monster’s son-in-law is soliciting money for his business interests while working as a Mideast envoy and negotiating U.S. foreign policy for the regime. He’s trying to raise some $5 billion from foreign governments for his private equity firm. The Arab world owns this grifter.

This ill-gotten financial windfall has nothing to do with the sleazy family’s business acumen; it’s because they and the MAGA criminal enterprise are corrupt to the core. It’s all about subjugating the masses so the MAGA warlords can rule without consequence. The American Taliban wants to North Korea-ize the United States.

In a reboot of “The Apprentice,” the Monster believed he should have been involved in the appointment of the next Iranian leader. He wasn’t. A more radical supreme leader was installed, the pissed-off son of the former leader whom U.S. and Israeli warmongers killed, along with five other family members. Cadet Bone Spurs responded by saying the new leader “is not going to last long” if the Iranians don’t get his approval first. He’s willing to send your children, not his, to prove it.

The FIFA Peace Prize and America First Award winner — I thought participation trophies were woke? — also wants to bomb Cuba. His predator eyes leer at Greenland.

Sen. Markwayne Mullin, MAGA-Okla., the Monster’s choice for the next Department of Homeland Security secretary — after the previous one failed spectacularly, completely, and publicly — has an associate’s degree in construction technology, worked as a plumber, hosted a home-improvement radio show, and doesn’t have any relevant security, immigration, disaster management, or intelligence experience. He was, though, briefly a mixed martial arts fighter. He also owns a ranch.

The Monster and is minions leverage federal funding in attempts to impose their grotesque white Christian nationalist agenda on a country that was explicitly created to be secular. He tells the Iranian people to take control of their destiny and keep protesting, while here his goons beat, tear-gas, terrorize, murder, and fabricate cases against those peacefully protesting the regime’s violent, illegal, and unconstitutional ways. Blowing whistles gives the snowflakes headaches.

The Monster kidnaps and zip-ties children here, and bombs students over there. He builds a system of concentration camps here, and blows boats out of the Caribbean, killing people he labels drug traffickers without any evidence. The regime deports parents without allowing them to decide whether to bring their children with them. He and the personalist regime label the Americans it murders on our streets domestic terrorists.

He pardons some 1,500 insurrectionists who attacked the U.S. Capitol on his behalf. About three dozen have since been rearrested on various charges, including a Florida handyman who was recently sentenced to life in prison for molesting two children.

The Monster repealed the Biden administration’s amendments to the Mercury and Air Toxics Standards. This spiteful rollback allows for higher emissions of neurotoxic mercury and other heavy metals and reverses stricter standards that were projected to reduce such pollutants by 70%.

The regime is also focused on rolling back regulations governing toxic per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, better know as PFAS. This month the regime announced it would weaken, delay or rescind regulations on nearly three dozen climate, air and water pollution, and emissions regulations.

The Monster’s policies are likely to lead to soaring rates of lung disease and premature death, according to a new study by pulmonary specialists and public health experts.

The analysis, published in the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine, examined policies adopted during the Monster’s second term across 10 sectors, including health care access, environmental regulation, workplace protections, and vaccine uptake.

The regime’s life-threatening policies are likely to increase lung disease incidences, worsen existing illness, and undermine care for patients already suffering, according to the researchers. Taken together, they amount to “an attack on Americans’ lungs” that could mean millions “die needlessly in the years ahead.”

Regime miscreants have reached an agreement that will pay nearly $1 billion to TotalEnergies, the French energy company behind two offshore wind projects off New York and North Carolina.

Under the terms of the agreement, the Interior Department will cancel the leases in federal waters for the two projects. The regime then pays some $928 million to TotalEnergies, reimbursing the company for its winning bids in lease sales during the Biden administration. TotalEnergies abandons its plans to build the offshore wind projects and commits to investing in natural gas and oil infrastructure, including a liquefied natural gas facility in Texas. The regime press release announcing the deal is riddled with lies and hyperbole.

Since the monster doesn’t value human life — when asked whether Americans should be worried about retaliatory Iranian-backed attacks at home, he says, “I guess. Like I said, some people will die.” — the natural world doesn’t stand a chance.

The regime has decided to illegally auction off millions of acres in the Gulf of Mexico to the oil industry without any consideration given to the region’s communities, wildlife, waters, and environment.

Last month, the Monster was given another participation trophy, the “Undisputed Champion of Beautiful, Clean Coal” award from mining executives.

He addresses the plight of the critically endangered North Atlantic right whale by threatening to weaken the Obama administration’s 2008 vessel speed rule, one of the most important federal safeguards protecting the marine mammals from lethal vessel strikes. There are less than 400 of this magnificent leviathans left, and the two primary threats they face are collisions with vessels and entanglement in commercial fishing gear.

Last month the Bureau of Land Management published a notice of intent to gut the management plans governing nearly 2.5 million acres of Northwest forest. The proposal seeks to eliminate old-growth and wildlife protections to facilitate what the regime calls “maximum” logging capacity. Kickbacks undoubtedly paved the way.

The stated goal of this wilderness massacre is to accelerate timber harvest to about a billion board feet annually, or four times the current level. This destruction would match the peak production of the 1960s, before the Endangered Species Act existed.

The Mar-a-Lago Monster has no discernible skill beyond shamelessness. His understanding of the economy is limited to gasoline prices, which he thinks you need an ID to pump. His whimsical tariffs are destroying the economy. He’s stealing Venezuela’s oil and stashing the profits in an offshore bank account. He tried the same deadly con in Iran.

People are losing their health care coverage, food prices are surging, housing is unaffordable, and war is raging and the Monster calls the affordability crisis a hoax, a fake narrative, a con job by the Democrats. The Monster and his minions, though, are the lead drivers of the rising cost of living.

A MAGA Sleestak from Florida, Sen. Rick Scott, shrugs and says ”unfortunately, prices are gonna be up for a while.” He was specifically talking about gasoline prices, but we know the Medicare and Medicaid con artist could easily have been speaking about the cost of anything. The MAGA rabble only cares about placating the Monster. It stands for nothing but self-preservation.

Sen. Jon Husted, MAGA-Ohio, recently said low-income people don’t know how to “navigate the real world” because they’re too dependent on the government just handing them money.

MAGAs never complain about government bailouts, policies, and subsidies that protect corporations from market risks while leaving workers exposed. Corporate welfare — socialism for the wealthy and rugged capitalism for the poor — and regime corruption have set the real world on fire. Taxpayer money for the racist and vile Elon Musk and an illegal war, but not to feed the hungry.

This country’s unaffordability crisis is supported by what the Institute for Policy Studies has labeled the Low Wage 20 — 20 corporations that employ some 6.7 million people across the United States. Their names are familiar — Amazon, FedEx, Starbucks, Tyson Foods, and Walmart — but their immorality grows by the day.

Their low-wage swindle leaves many of their employees with no choice but to rely on public assistance. Fifteen of the Low Wage 20’s median pay in 2024 was below the $35,631 income limit for a family of three to be eligible for Medicaid in most states, according to the 20-page report.

For 13 of the corporations, worker pay fell short of the $33,576 threshold for a family of three to be eligible for Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program assistance (food stamps).

While the average CEO pay at these 20 low-wage corporations was $18.6 million in 2024 — just shy of the $18.9 million average for S&P 500 CEOs as a whole — their immoral business model relies on government programs to provide the money they’re not willing to pay single parents and senior citizens who MAGA monsters believe should work until they die.

Of course, the funding cuts and regulatory hurdles rooted in MAGA’s One Big Ugly Bill Act have further ripped the social safety net apart. To afford food, MAGA monsters have recommended we eat cheap cuts of meat, such as liver, and suggested a $3-per-meal budget option consisting of “a piece of chicken, a piece of broccoli, a corn tortilla, and one other thing” — perhaps a cracker or a spoonful of porridge.

A Mar-a-Lago menu autographed by the monster that sold for $2,069 last year doesn’t feature liver but it does offer cake.

MAGA’s recommended happy meals don’t apply to them and the Monster’s scandalous cabinet when taxpayers are footing the bill. In September 2025 alone, the Pentagon spent $15.1 million on ribeye steaks; $6.9 million on lobster tails, the Department of Defense also spent some $7.4 million on lobster tails in four other months last year; $2 million on Alaskan king crab, the fifth time the Pentagon under the monster has spent $2 million or more on king crab in a single month; $1 million on salmon; $139,224 on doughnuts; $124,000 for ice cream machines; and $26,000 for sushi preparation tables.

While the underbelly of MAGA world — that would be you and me — are concerned about inflation/corporate greed, membership fees for the Monster’s Mar-a-Lago lair have increased from $100,000 in 2016 — his first year in office — to $1 million in 2024 — his first year back.

Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington reported last month that in his first 365 days back in office, the Monster visited his properties 198 times and visited his golf courses 116 times, “sending a message to those looking to influence his administration that his properties are open for business.”

“Foreign government officials visited his properties 55 times, pouring money into Trump’s pockets, and special interest groups held 57 events at them,” Rebecca Jacobs wrote. “Trump and his family profit financially. Special interests benefit. Foreign governments benefit. And everyday Americans come last.”

To address the mounting challenges faced by everyday Americans, a monstrous ballroom is being built at the White House; there are plans to build a 100,000-seat stadium near the White House to host UFC fights on the special boy’s 80th birthday in June; and there are plans for the streets of Washington, D.C., to host an IndyCar race this summer to entertain a petulant husk.

The Monster could easily be stopped, but, sadly, we’ve elected far too many horrendous, amoral, cowardly, and unprofessional people. They have embedded themselves like ticks in all levels of government, including six on the Supreme Court.

It’s not difficult to understand why an estimated 20,000 protested this grotesquerie Saturday in Providence and another 3,000 No Kings rallies/marches nationwide attracted an estimated 8 million more. It’s also no longer difficult to understand those who support the Monster’s thievery, brutality, and hate. It’s now easy for me to understand what happened in 1930s Germany.

Impeach and then convict. This Monster and his minions belong in prison. We also are in desperate need of a resistance leader — a 21st-century Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X, Harriet Tubman, or Virginia Hall.

Frank Carini can be reached at [email protected]. His opinions don’t reflect those of ecoRI News.