(Dobbs) I Almost Wish I Could Sleep Until 2028

“I just can’t read the news anymore. Every day is worse than the last.”

I really didn’t want to be like this. I have friends, not just disheartened but devastated that Donald Trump will set the tone for the next four years, who have told me, “I just can’t read the news anymore. Every day is worse than the last.”

I didn’t want to be like that. I read the news each day, lots of it, the good and the bad and the ugly. But yesterday morning when I got up, I felt the way my friends feel. I just didn’t want the ugly anymore. What new nominee had Trump named, what new policy had he announced, that will drive us deeper into a dirty hole?

I didn’t want to wake up to more crude chronicles of the sex life of Attorney General nominee Matt Gaetz, who has been the subject of two investigations about alleged sex with a minor. But I did. 

Because there’s more. The newest report yesterday was that two women testified to the House Ethics Committee that Gaetz paid them for “sexual favors,” swearing that the then-Congressman, who has denied ever paying for sex, held “sex parties” where that’s precisely what he did. 

Gaetz’s sex life— at least the part with grownups— is his own business, but his goals for the Department of Justice are ours. Gaetz, like Trump, has been contemptuous toward some of the very law enforcement agencies he would rule. Gaetz, like Trump, has charged that justice has been “weaponized” against them both. The fact that the Justice Department under Joe Biden prosecuted Biden’s own son Hunter undermines their accusation, but if Matt Gaetz becomes Trump’s point man for retribution, critics like Liz Cheney and Nancy Pelosi had better start looking for property in Portugal and other opponents had better start looking over their shoulders for the jackboots because when Trump promised to imprison political enemies, he wasn’t kidding. It will be Trump and Gaetz who weaponize the Justice Department. Their message to agents and prosecutors alike is, you’d better go along or go away.

I didn’t want to wake up to learn that Trump wants to put an antagonist in the fight to combat climate change in charge of the Energy Department. But I did. 

Despite global temperatures dangerously rising and natural disasters dangerously growing, Trump announced his nomination of oil company exec Chris Wright, who has declared, “There is no climate crisis.” He has compared government mandates for clean energy to Soviet Communism, and has made the risible argument, “There is no such thing as clean energy or dirty energy," as if fossil fuels don’t contribute to pollution and global warning any more than solar or wind or hydroelectric power. Coming to federal lands near you: Drill, baby, drill.

By the way, the price of stock in Wright’s company went up yesterday by 6%.

I didn’t want to wake up to learn that Trump’s pick to chair the Federal Communications Commission is in chilling lockstep with the president-elect on “reviewing the activities”— which can mean the licenses, which can mean yanking the licenses— of television and radio outlets and of internet providers they don’t like. But I did.

FCC nominee Brendan Carr not only sees the media the way Trump does, as “enemies of the people,” but he’s the man who wrote that chapter in the foreboding Heritage Foundation document that Trump dishonestly disavowed during the campaign, “Project 2025.”

Carr already has warned the heads of Facebook, Google, Apple, and Microsoft that “Americans have lived through an unprecedented surge in censorship,” and “your companies played significant roles in this improper conduct.” This, by the way, from the party that bans disagreeable books in 32 states. Carr’s pledge to “dismantle the censorship cartel” might sound good on the face of it until you realize he will open the social media door to inflammatory misinformation and disinformation from Nazis, racists, anti-semites, and hate-mongers of every kind.

I didn’t want to wake up to news that Trump’s pick for Director of National Intelligence was given the highest compliment over the weekend by RIA Novosti, a state-run news agency in Russia, which called her “Superwoman.” But I did.

No wonder. Tulsi Gabbard has parroted Russian propaganda, and even justified Vladimir Putin’s immoral invasion of Ukraine, twistedly blaming it instead on Joe Biden. By that measure, she checks Trump’s boxes.

As Senator Elizabeth Warren said on MSNBC, “Do you really want her to have all of the secrets of the United States and our defense intelligence agencies when she has so clearly been in Putin’s pocket?” That might be over the top, but in light of all Gabbard has said, it might not.

I didn’t want to wake up to more stories about Pete Hegseth, Trump’s absurd appointee for Defense. But I did.

It’s not just about his total dearth of qualifications. It’s not just about his white christian nationalist tattoos. And it’s not just about his aims to undo strides the military has made toward equal rights— he said on a podcast last week, "Any general that was involved, general, admiral, whatever, that was involved in any of the DEI woke s**t, it’s got to go." It’s about how soiled he already is by a sex scandal. But of course for his mentor Trump, he too checks all the boxes. Accused of sexual assault? Check. Paid hush money to make it go away? Check. Whether or not he could even find his way to the Pentagon, he’s Trump’s kind of guy.

And I certainly didn’t want to wake up to a photograph of self-proclaimed health guru Robert Kennedy Jr., on Trump’s private plane, gripping a Big Mac. But I did.

It’s bizarre because just last week, having become a regular at Donald Trump’s side, this outspoken enemy of processed foods, on tap to carry out Trump’s mandate to “go wild on food” as Secretary of Health and Human Services, told an interviewer, “Campaign food is always bad, but the food that goes onto that airplane is, like, just poison.”

So isn’t the picture of RFK, sitting there with his Big Mac and fries— sitting there with poison on his plate— a fine example of practicing what you preach?!? Not! London’s Daily Telegraph wrote the best line about it: “Every politician faces a moment when they must choose between their dearest-held principles and their career.” Now we’ve seen Bobby’s choice.

I didn’t want to wake up to reports yesterday morning that to counterbalance their planned tax cuts, Republicans intend to cut subsidies for insurance under Obamacare, which could force millions to drop their health coverage. And to make it harder for some 70-million of the poorest Americans to get Medicaid and other government safety net support. But I did.

These crusaders continue to make ridiculous arguments, like Idaho senator Mike Crapo, probably the next chair of the Senate Finance Committee: “Instead of perpetuating a tax-and-spend agenda, we can and should work together to improve health-care choice, affordability and reliability.” Why is that ridiculous? Because after four years in the presidency and four more in the wilderness, the best Donald Trump can come up with to improve on the Affordable Care Act is, as he said in the presidential debate, “the concepts of a plan.” It sounds like they want to rip it down before even drawing up plans to rebuild it.

Finally, I didn’t want to wake up to a story from Columbus, Ohio, where a small group of neo-Nazis went marching down the street, openly flashing flags with the swastika and shouting racist and anti-semitic slurs. But I did.

The Anti-Defamation League reports that last year, gatherings of white supremacists reached an all time high. These people are emboldened by Donald Trump and the despicable extremists he embraces.

I didn’t want to wake up to any of that. But I did. I almost wish I could sleep until 2028. 

Over more than five decades Greg Dobbs has been a correspondent for two television networks including ABC News, a political columnist for The Denver Post and syndicated columnist for Scripps newspapers, a moderator on Rocky Mountain PBS, and author of two books, including one about the life of a foreign correspondent called “Life in the Wrong Lane.” He also co-authored a book about the seminal year for baby boomers, called “1969: Are You Still Listening?” He has covered presidencies, politics, and the U.S. space program at home, and wars, natural disasters, and other crises around the globe, from Afghanistan to South Africa, from Iran to Egypt, from the Soviet Union to Saudi Arabia, from Nicaragua to Namibia, from Vietnam to Venezuela, from Libya to Liberia, from Panama to Poland. Dobbs has won three Emmys, the Distinguished Service Award from the Society of Professional Journalists, and as a 38-year resident of Colorado, a place in the Denver Press Club Hall of Fame.

You can learn more at GregDobbs.net