Don’t Believe Your Lying Eyes 🤡

By Rob C.

Art by Adam Zyglis

TL;DR: Grandpa McCheetos spent twenty minutes shouting at a nation that can barely afford eggs, claiming he’s turned a “dystopian hellscape” into a “gold-plated toilet seat” in record time. Between claiming mathematically impossible drug price drops and ignoring the skyrocketing cost of housing and healthcare, our Con-Mander-In-Chief has officially checked out of reality and into a permanent Twitter-fueled fugue state.

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Don’t believe your lying eyes, America. Don’t believe your dwindling bank account, the predatory interest rates on your credit cards, or the fact that your grocery bill looks like a down payment on a luxury sedan. According to the twenty-minute fever dream Grandpa McCheetos just shouted at the cameras, we’ve officially transitioned from a dystopian wasteland to a literal gold-plated toilet seat in just one year. It’s a miracle! Or, more accurately, it’s the kind of dementia-fueled rant that usually results in a concerned nurse gently suggesting a nap and some applesauce.

Our favorite Orange Rooster stood before the nation to crow about his “unprecedented” success, scolding the American people for not being grateful enough for the imaginary paradise he’s built on a foundation of caps-lock social media posts. The highlight of the evening—if you enjoy watching the basic laws of mathematics be publicly executed—was his claim that he’s decreased drug prices by 300, 400, and even 600 percent. Apparently, nobody in his cabinet has the heart or the basic elementary education to explain that a 100 percent decrease makes something free, and a 600 percent decrease means the pharmacist should be handing you a check and a bouquet of roses every time you pick up your insulin. It’s a bold new economic theory where math is just a “liberal hoax” and the facts don’t matter.

Meanwhile, back in the world where people actually have to eat, grocery prices continue their steady climb into the stratosphere. While the administration pathetically points to the falling price of eggs—ignoring the fact that the bird flu spike that drove prices up happened on his watch—the rest of the store remains a crime scene. Healthcare is currently a ticking time bomb as the Republicans have slashed the ACA, and the housing market has become a cruel joke played on anyone who wasn’t born into a real estate dynasty.

We’re told to celebrate a slight dip in gas prices, though diesel fuel remains stubbornly high because the oil companies haven’t quite finished milking us for every cent of artificially inflated profit. But don’t let those pesky facts get in the way of the narrative. To our Con-Mander-In-Chief, the struggle of the average American is just background noise that he can drown out by turning up the volume on his own delusions.

Most Americans are drowning in the ever-increasing cost of living, struggling to decide which utility bill to skip so they can afford rent. But the man currently destroying the White House has no clue how real people live because he hasn’t lived a “real” day in his entire pampered, gold-leafed life. We aren’t living in a golden age; we’re just being shouted at by a man who thinks we should all live in his personal fantasy.

Don’t let Grab-Ass Grandpa scream you into submission: Hit the like, share, and subscribe to keep the good trouble coming!

— Robert Cain, author of Democracy for Sale: How Corporate Greed Is Corrupting Democracy and Endangering the Planet.