Doing Putin's Job For Him: The Trump Cabinet's Meme War on America
We are being led by a bunch of clowns with flamethrowers
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Picture this. American troops in harm’s way. Gas prices climbing toward record highs. The economy teetering on the edge of recession. Russia attacking Ukraine. China flexing across the Pacific. Iran probing every soft spot it can find. The world is on fire, and the global order our parents and grandparents built — the order that has kept us prosperous, free, and feared by tyrants — is shaking on its foundation.
So what is the Trump White House doing about it?
Posting cartoon turtles.
I wish I were joking. The Secretary of Defense — the man trusted with the lives of our service members and the security of the United States — is at this very moment pumping out memes of “Franklin the Turtle” mocking his own performance before the United States Congress. Mocking the very institution charged with overseeing his department. Pete Hegseth, who couldn’t run a small VFW post without losing the keys to the building, now treats his cabinet seat like a TikTok account. And the communications operation cheering him on? It looks less like the West Wing and more like a casting call for a discount Bond villain franchise — the kind of operation where the henchmen seem to have wandered in off a rejected SNL sketch and somehow ended up with security clearances and West Wing access.
Let me tell you what this looks like from the outside. Because I’ve actually been outside.
In my years in Congress, I had the privilege of traveling to some of the most fragile democracies on Earth. Kenya. Ethiopia. Liberia. Lebanon. Georgia. Azerbaijan. I sat across the table from leaders trying to hold their countries together while ethnic, sectarian, and political fault lines tried to rip them apart. I saw what happens when a country stops being able to agree that it’s a country. People die. Economies collapse. Strongmen rise. Foreign powers walk in and carve up the bones.
You know what I never once did on any of those trips? I never attacked Barack Obama in front of a foreign leader. Not once. I disagreed with him plenty on foreign policy — and said so back home — but when I sat across from a president or a prime minister in Tbilisi, I represented the United States of America. Period. And the Democrats on those bipartisan delegations? They never trashed Donald Trump in those rooms either. Not because we agreed with each other — but because we understood something this current cabinet has apparently never grasped: the moment we stop being one country in front of the world is the moment our enemies win without ever firing a shot.
That used to be the unwritten rule. That used to be the bare minimum of patriotism. “Politics ends at the water’s edge.” And that, in fact, is one of the central reasons America has been so successful for so long.
This administration has set that rule on fire and is roasting marshmallows over it.
And here’s the truly deranged part — they’re not even doing it for strategy. They’re doing it for clout. They’re doing it for a dopamine hit. Every cabinet secretary in this administration has turned into a contestant on a reality show called Who Loves Daddy Most? Marco Rubio — a man I once genuinely respected, a man who knows better in his bones — has decided the next American passport needs to feature Donald Trump’s face on it. The Department of Justice is hanging banners on its own building like it’s a high-school pep rally before the homecoming game. Cabinet agencies are racing to out-grovel each other with displays of personal devotion that would embarrass a mid-level North Korean propaganda minister.
Every single one of them knows it’s ridiculous. Every single one of them knows it’s grotesque. Every single one of them is doing it anyway, because in this White House competence doesn’t get you noticed — only loyalty theater does. So they perform. They post. They meme. They humiliate themselves on camera, hoping the boss will smile and pat them on the head like the obedient lap dogs they’ve decided to become.
Meanwhile, in Moscow, Vladimir Putin is doing victory laps in his office. In Beijing, Xi Jinping is taking notes. In Tehran, the mullahs are popping the non-alcoholic champagne. They don’t have to spend a dime on disinformation against America anymore. The Trump cabinet is doing it for them, for free, in 4K, with custom graphics and a soundtrack.
This is what divided countries look like, by the way. I’ve walked through them. The political class loses interest in governing and develops an obsession with humiliating its domestic enemies. Cabinet positions become merchandise. Public buildings become billboards for the leader. Serious people stop showing up to serve, and unserious people fill the vacuum, because being unserious is now the only qualification that still matters. By the time anyone notices that the country can’t actually do anything anymore — can’t fix a road, can’t win a war, can’t keep its currency stable, can’t keep its allies — it’s too late.
We are sliding down that hill. Right now. In real time. With cartoon turtles.
So let me say this clearly, on the record. If I was ever President of the United States, the very first thing I will do is rip this stuff down. The banners come off the buildings. The pictures come off the passports. The meme accounts go dark. The cabinet members who can’t tell the difference between governing a superpower and running a middle-school Instagram page will be replaced with adults — adults who understand that their job is to serve the country, not to audition for the king.
We will restore the united front. We will remember that disagreement at home does not require betrayal abroad. We will treat the Department of Defense like it actually defends something. We will treat the State Department like it actually represents a state. And we will tell our allies — and our adversaries — that the grown-ups are back in the building.
The world is watching. They see the memes. They see the banners. They see the groveling. And they’re laughing — right up until they stop laughing and start moving.
Russia, China, and Iran could not have scripted a better blueprint for the slow dismemberment of the American project than the one this White House is acting out for them, live, every single day. The most patriotic thing any of these cabinet members could do right now is shut up, log off, and try — for once in their professional lives — to do their actual jobs.
Until they do, the rest of us — Republicans, Democrats, independents, anyone who still loves this country more than they hate the other side — have a duty to call this what it is: a clown show on top of a crisis. A children’s table running a superpower. An administration so addicted to its own dopamine drip that it is, knowingly or not, doing the enemy’s work for them, one turtle meme at a time.
We deserve better. The troops deserve better. The country deserves better.
And one way or another — we are going to get it back.
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