The Lyin’ King and Sickofans

By Ed Raymond

fargogadfly@gmail.com

What are the four freedoms of Donald John Trump?

Nearly a century ago, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt said every citizen in the United States of America should have four freedoms: Freedom from want and fear, freedom of speech and freedom of worship. In 2025, President Donald John Trump has demonstrated his four freedoms: Freedom from truth, constitutional law, empathy and freedom of Christian Nationalism, cruelty and torture.

On August 26, the CEO of the Divided States of America and the president of the Trumplican States held a televised press conference of his Cabinet for three hours and 17 minutes. The Lyin’ King kept emphasizing: “I’m the president of the United States and I have the right to do anything I want to do.” He dominated the conference with two long speeches of 17 and 15 minutes and responding to the glowing plaudits expressed by each of his Cabinet secretaries. I have not heard of anyone who has counted the thousands of lies told by Trump in that very long conference, including the one: “I’m not a dictator, by the way.”

Being a malignant narcissistic coward and the victim of sociopathic-psychopathy illnesses, it’s difficult to get a microphone out of his hands and consequently, his handlers failed to do so. As his White House Mall and Mercantile staff and cabinet secretaries genuflected, bowed, sniveled, bootlicked, kowtowed, brown-nosed, groveled, smarmed and kissed ass with reverent adoration and worshipful idolization, the Great Leader beamed with pride — for himself, while delivering the daily vomit from the White House. The greedy billionaire Cabinet secretaries who know nothing about governing pledged fealty and love to another billionaire bloviator who knows nothing about governing.

There was the anti-vaxxer Secretary of Health and Human Services Kennedy pledging to Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) when he knew nothing about the Centers for Disease Control, vaccines, drugs, hospitals, nursing and health, including the healthy fact his own family has disowned him because he has “gone wild” with disintegrating brain rot. As the cabinet continued to be pliant slaves and sycophants, I suddenly thought they are really “sickofans” of Trump, representing a new pandemic of brain rot “sickofania” among Trumplicans.

All politicians must read about my French hero Cyrano de Bergerac

The 19th century French dramatist Edmond Rostand wrote a play about chivalry, wit, truthfulness and bravery, all wrapped in the body of Cyrano de Bergerac, the greatest swordsman in France facing a situation similar to what Republican senators are facing in the fascism and dictatorship of the Lyin’ King Donald and his White House Mall And Mercantile. The following is Cyrano’s response to a fascist French government like Trumpistan:

“What would you have me do? Seek for the patronage of some great man.

And like a creeping vine on a tall tree, crawl upward where I cannot stand alone?

No thank you! Dedicate as others do, poems to pawnbrokers. Be a buffoon

In the vile hope of teasing out a smile on some cold face? No thank you!

Eat a toad for breakfast every morning? Make my knees callous and cultivate a

supple spine? — Wear out my groveling in the dust? No thank you!

Scratch the back of any swine that roots up gold for me? Tickle the horns of

Mammon with my left hand, while my right too proud to know his partner’s

business, takes in the fee? No thank you! Use the fire God gave me to burn incense

all day under the nose of wood and stone? No thank you! — Or to change form —

Shall I go leaping into ladies’ laps and licking fingers? Navigating with madrigals for

oars, full of the sighs of dowagers? No thank you! Publish verses at my own

expense? No thank you!

To sing, to laugh, to dream, to walk in my own way and be alone, free, with an

eye to see things as they are, a voice that means manhood — to cock my hat —

where I choose, to travel any road under the sun.”

There was a real Cyrano de Bergerac. He was a French novelist and playwright who lived in the 17th century. The play written by Rostand has some inventions. The major change: Cyrano, who has a huge protuberant nose, has fallen in love with Roxanne, a distant cousin, but feels she will never love him because of his overhanging nose. Roxanne thinks she loves a handsome young man who is as dumb as a rock. So we have a play filled with swordsmanship, cowardice, war, bravery, comedy, romance and complicated personal relationships. Several movies have been made of the play, but one made in 1950 starring Jose Ferrer, who won an Academy Award Oscar for his portrayal of Cyrano, is the most interesting one to watch. I think it’s the finest performance ever by an actor because of the physical and mental demands of the Cyrano role.

No wonder we are short of toads — Republicans have eaten them all

Congressional Trumplicans have been eating grilled, fried, boiled and sautéed toads for years while groveling an obsequious “Thank you, Sir!” whenever near “The Chosen One.” They all scratch the itchy spineless back of their Great Leader if he shares his gold with them and respond with a fawning “Thank you, Sir.” They have decided to travel Trump’s Yellow Brick Road to Trumpistan restricted to billionaires, Christian Nationalists, National Rifle Association, Moms for Liberty busy banning and burning books and FOX TV anchors and right-wing newspaper columnists expounding historical fiction.

Among the least qualified among the most unqualified Cabinet in history, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota on June 6, 1980. Remember June 6, 1944? That was D-Day when Allied Forces stormed the beaches of Normandy. The son of a Norwegian basketball coach and a Norwegian business coach (both right-wing Republicans), Pete was valedictorian of his class at Forest Lake, Minnesota, was a high school All-Conference football and basketball player and as a Fox host was later known for throwing an axe at an axe-throwing contest, accidentally wounding a drummer. Surprised? By this time in his personal history he was known as an alcoholic.

After high school graduation, Pete turned down a West Point appointment to go to Princeton and play basketball. He studied politics and published a right-wing student newspaper called the “Princeton Tory.” To make a long story short, as an adult he never exemplified “Minnesota Nice.” He has been married three times like the sexual predator he serves. He has been accused of sexual assault and of being drunk at jobs occupied and parties attended. As a weekend host on Fox News, he often lied while drunk, an accomplishment shared with his direct Fox boss Roger Ailes, who specialized in both, plus sexually harassing female employees.

A brief summary of a believer in evangelical churches and MAWF

Now that Dictator Trump has succeeded in MAGA and MAHA, perhaps he will Make America White Forever (MAWF). Hegseth is a member of the Communion of Reformed Evangelical Churches (CREC), a group of churches made up of nutcases of white nationalists who sermonize that women in the White Divided States of America should not be allowed to vote. Hegseth, this nice kid from Minnesota, has gone off the rails constantly in adulthood, eaten more toads than most and taken the wrong forks in the roads of life.

The big question is, Why did this nice kid from Minnesota, a graduate of Princeton University who studied briefly at Harvard University, end up as Secretary of Defense to a White Nationalist nutcase who has never read the Bible or the Constitution of the United States? Is it because he studied politics in college instead of majoring in the humanities and liberal arts? His parents are both Norwegians whose ancestry and present society uses the policies of democratic capitalism to end up in the top five of the United Nations “Happiest Nation and People” survey ranking.

Hegseth was raised in a strong blue state that supports the LBGTQUIA+ community, medical care for transgender people, abortion, free lunch for all K-12 students, parental leave, Medicare and Medicaid, gun control, affirmative action and all Diversity, Equity, and Inclusive programs, So, why did he move his family to Tennessee, a red state that opposes everything listed above for Minnesota? Why did he become a thrice-married sexual predator and drunk who often had to be carried out of bars? Does he have bad genes? Why did he turn “conservative” (whatever that means today) and transform himself into a Trumplican and a weekend Fox TV anchor spouting the white supremacist bullshit of the Murdoch family?

Although he spent nine years in U.S. Army and National Guard service, his largest command was a small platoon of guards for eleven months at a detention camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. As a Marine officer, I commanded a heavy machinegun platoon and an infantry company. I did notice that military officers who did not have the ability or personality to command a combat unit usually ended up assigned to propaganda-spouting “civil affairs” units as Hegseth was…twice. According to records, he volunteered to go to Iraq and served as an officer in the Army’s 187th Infantry Regiment, but never as a commander of a platoon or company. Evidently, he was a “civil affairs” expert.

Here are a few commandments of many in Hegseth’s church

1. Women shall not be allowed to vote or enlist in the military.

2. Women who have abortions shall suffer public executions.

3. Women who commit adultery shall be publicly executed.

4. Liberalism is a greater threat to the U.S. than neo Naziism.

5. All ICE raids and operations shall be supported according to the Bible.

6. Slavery is permissible because the Bible says so.

7. Children shall be enrolled in what the church calls “Classical Christian” schools.

8. White christian nationalists shall dominate the U.S. and the world.

9. Mass immigration is a liberal attempt to destroy Anglo-Protestant culture and shall be obliterated.

10. Jesus Christ believes in the prosperity gospel and will provide camels to stroll through the eyes of needles. (Perhaps the rich may steal miniature camels from Lilliput.)

Hegseth’s church is a “nutcase” of Christian Nationalism and farthest-right positions. It preaches that Canada shall be absorbed by becoming the 51st state. It supports the rise of Russia and China in world affairs and supports executing homosexuals in Uganda. It believes the Divided States of America needs an authoritarian and religious zealot as a president — or dictator. Hegseth has expressed his reasons for moving to Tennessee in several podcasts: “We moved to a church and a community and a whole view of the world that has changed the way we think, too.” He also has co-authored a book “Battle for the American Mind” which supports the premise that schools shall rebuild Christendom for all kids.

Perhaps parts of this column reveal why Dictator Trump is dominating the news cycle by attempting to rule all aspects of life in the country.

Breaking News! We are running out of toads! Trump just threw a big dinner for about twenty tech billionaires so they could also fawn, grovel, kiss ass and thank him for being a genius.