Trump’s Favorite Gesture to America Has Always Been the Middle Finger
From burying the Epstein files to weaponizing the Justice Department and intimidating cities with federal force, Trump’s obscene outburst wasn’t a lapse—it was the thesis.
Video for paid subscribers follows
People seemed a little shocked by Donald Trump answering a heckler with a schoolyard “fuck you” (hereafter F@) and a raised middle finger. I’m here to tell you there’s nothing shocking about it, because in fact, he’s been giving America the middle finger ever since he took office last year.
Let’s get the details of Trump’s recent childish behavior out of the way first. It happened at a Ford factory in Michigan, where a line worker named T.J. Sabula shouted that the president was a “pedophile protector.”
The pedophile in question is Trump’s former buddy Jeffrey Epstein, a convicted sex offender who committed suicide while awaiting trial on new charges.
Why might Trump be a “protector”? As of today, his administration is sitting on millions of investigative documents related to the Epstein case. Never mind that Congress set a December 19 deadline for their release. More important, Trump himself promised to make them public before he was even elected. The continued delay smacks of a cover-up, which raises the possibility that Trump is protecting—if not Epstein—then himself.
By refusing to release the documents, Trump is flashing a big middle finger at Congress and, more importantly, the American people. That includes members of the Make America Great Again (MAGA) movement who voted with the expectation that these papers would expose the rich and powerful—including many Democrats—as Epstein’s coconspirators. They are still waiting.
The Epstein affair is just one of countless examples of Trump’s f@-you attitude. He continues to run roughshod over the norms of his office—and the law—with such impunity that it’s hard to conclude anything other than that he has open disdain for the people he governs.
Keep Your SSN Off The Dark Web
Every day, data brokers profit from your sensitive info—phone number, DOB, SSN—selling it to the highest bidder. What happens then? Best case: companies target you with ads. Worst case: scammers and identity thieves breach those brokers, leaving your data vulnerable or on the dark web. It’s time you check out Incogni. It scrubs your personal data from the web, confronting the world’s data brokers on your behalf. And unlike other services, Incogni helps remove your sensitive information from all broker types, including those tricky People Search Sites.
Think of Incogni as your one-stop shop for erasing your info from the web. Try Incogni here and get 55% off your annual subscription with code ADAM. I use the service myself, and I highly recommend it.
At the top of the list is the current investigation of Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell, which Powell himself announced on Sunday. In a video released to the public, he said the probe was motivated by Trump’s frustration with the Fed’s interest rate policy. The president has made no secret of his anger at Powell and the Fed’s refusal to push rates lower to juice the economy. The supposed justification for the investigation? Cost overruns in renovations to the Fed’s headquarters and Powell’s testimony before Congress.
The Powell case stands apart because it threatens the independence of an institution that has long insulated monetary policy from politics. That independence is what allows the American economy to function predictably and ensures interest rates are not driven, as Powell put it, by “political pressure or intimidation.” In countries where politicians control central banks, interest rates swing wildly depending on who’s in charge, and economic instability follows.
Trump’s investigation of Powell reeks of Justice Department weaponization, echoing specious—and ultimately failed—cases brought against former FBI Director James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James. Both were on Trump’s enemies list, and both were targets he promised to pursue in the name of “retribution.” The cases collapsed, but not before Trump violated every unwritten rule governing federal prosecutorial restraint.
More recently, Trump sought to punish Minneapolis by sending 2,000 Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents into the city to hunt down undocumented immigrants, arrest them, and process them for deportation. This raised finger followed the killing of citizen Renee Nicole Good by an ICE agent as she attempted to drive away. Video shows the agent was never traumatically slammed by the vehicle. A normal president would have tried to calm tensions. Trump responded instead to public protest by flooding the city with federal agents—who now outnumber the local police force by 500. In fact as of this morning, he once again has threatened the use of the insurrection act against Americans.
As the ever-expanding ICE force increasingly resembles a small army Trump can deploy at will, he has also abused the actual Army National Guard by sending troops into Democratic-run cities under the flimsy pretext of supporting ICE operations. In reality, the deployments appear to have been ordered simply because he could. The goal was obvious: intimidation. A judge eventually halted the deployment in Chicago, but not before Trump had made his point.
Trump also flexed his muscle in October by demolishing the East Wing of the White House—the People’s House—which housed a historic ballroom and the First Lady’s offices. He bypassed the National Capital Planning Commission, the body legally empowered to review changes to the executive mansion. Why? Trump wanted a bigger venue for events.
In the same spirit, he bypassed Congress in December to attach his name to the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. The sheer gall of the move—prompting numerous performers to cancel appearances—was breathtaking. So, too, was his decision to slap his name onto the U.S. Institute of Peace.
All of this—dispatching troops, ignoring the law, siccing the Justice Department on political enemies, renaming public institutions—comes straight from the fascist playbook. Fascists, by definition, are tyrants who hollow out institutions, discard customs and norms, and aggrandize themselves through spectacle while building cults of personality. Trump has even tried to erase history, bullying the Smithsonian Institution into removing references to his first-term impeachments from a museum exhibit.
All of it, and more, confirms that we are dealing with a fuck-you dictator who has no respect for our traditions, institutions, customs, or laws. What happened at the Ford factory was not shocking at all. With two words and a gesture, Trump simply revealed—once again—who he is, and why he must continue to be fought, and crushed.
Video for paid subscribers:
