Is Donald Trump Dying!?

Your task will not be an easy one.Your enemy is well -trained, well -equipped and battle -hardened.

There is not a liberal America and a conservative America.There is the United States of America.Hey folks, it's Rick Wilson and welcome back to the elephant in the room.I am, as you can see, once again, traveling back in California this week to do some fundraising for the Lincoln project and to do some meetings with folks out here.We've had a lot of big news this week, but there is a big elephant in the room, a really big elephant in the room.And I want everybody to get conscious of it quickly.

And that elephant in the room is that Trump is dying.We heard about this earlier in the week.But I want you to understand something.When I say Trump is dying, I don't mean, like, the metaphorical Trump is dying as we are all, you know, dying as we pass through the chill void of space.Trump is dying in ways that are worse for him than physical death.Trump is not one of those people who thinks about what comes next or the consequences of his life.

He wants to be the center of everything forever.And that's a huge elephant in the room because Trump is dying, and it's shaping everything he does.Came back from Walter Reed this week with a perfect bill of health, as you can imagine.I mean, I know you were shocked as I was to find that Donald Trump has the physique of a Navy SEAL, the cardio of a 30 -year -old super athlete, zero body fat.He's 6 '7", weighs 185 pounds of lean muscle mass.Yeah, yeah, I believed it.

Yeah, it just totally sold me.How about you?Trump is dying.Not fast enough for me.people, certainly not fast enough for me, because when he passes, the evil that he has caused will remain, but the glue that Trump served as, as the sort of adhesive that held together all these different parts of the Republican Party, will dissolve.They will still have power, but it will be harder for them to use it.

And that is something I think that is haunting Donald Trump right now, because he's dying politically.Yes, he can still do his stupid superpower, his one -shot party trick that he does over and over again.I can make the Republican primary base do what I want.

OK.Last night was incredible.Not only Texas, but so many other places.The numbers were fantastic.And they've really been that way for a year, if you look.Hundreds of people won, and almost nobody didn't win.

Cool.Cool story, bro.And he can.You saw it in Texas.They took out a guy who had voted with Trump 98 % of the time in John Cornyn.They made it much more likely the Democrats could win that seat.

Still a high hill to climb, don't mistake me.But they made it much more likely.They pipped the one guy.who is letter perfect for Tallarico to whip like a rented mule.But that's the power he has remaining.Even this Congress, even this group of lapdogs and lackeys and ball lickers and ass kissers will not vote for the ballroom.

I wish they would.They literally fled town so they didn't have to vote.vote for the slush fund in the ballroom.The resistance that they're feeling right now is that tiny little prick.I'm not talking about Trump.That Stormy Daniels said that.

But that tiny little prick of conscience and survival and fear.And all of them are feeling it more intensely every day.Suddenly, this isn't like an easy layup anymore to just be the Trump guy.Even in red states, the Trump guy is not the job you want.because the voters are done.So Trump is dying politically among those voters.

He's dying among those people who were promised a golden age.He's dying among those people who cannot spin themselves out of the fact that gas is going to go up.and up.

It wasn't this high before he became president.Man, gas was three something.

Watching the gas prices go from like 320 all the way up to 380 has been really scary.

The gas, the gas prices.I mean, why is it so expensive?You know, I mean, just fix it.

Now the projections are that gas prices will not come down to the Biden era $3 until the year of our Lord 2032.I want you to process that for a second.Sit with that idea for a second.Gas prices at five bucks until 2032.because he chose a war that burned the remainder of his political capital.The tariffs hurt it.

Epstein hurt it.The ballroom hurt it.Tearing the end off the White House hurt it on the East Wing.But this is the final straw.He's dying politically because it's a narrower and narrower and narrower, smaller and smaller and smaller group of people that support Donald Trump.His approval ratings, folks, aren't just bad.

They are so cataclysmically bad that Democrats need to be making job one, tie the economic distress that every American is feeling, well, except Donald Trump and his cronies to Trump and his corp and the Republican party's corruption.Tie them together.That's why he's Donald Trump.And there's another area where Trump is dying, and it's culturally.Whether you like it or not, Donald Trump, as gimcrack and as low -end and as low -rent and as trashy as his brand always was, was a part of the culture.In New York, he was a part of what we call the Page Six culture.

For those who have not lived in New York, New York Post, Page Six, gossip column every day.The Page Six culture in New York was one where Trump, learning from Roy Cohn, learning from the great deceiver Roy Cohn how to play gossip and scandal games, he became an adept at that.He was very, very, very, very good at it.That cultural relevance helped him build his, again, cheap, sleazy, gimcrack, low -end Timu brand of fake rich.He's a fake rich guy.We've all been through this a million times.

That led to The Apprentice, which for 14 years embedded in the minds of the American culture, because we would love reality TV shows in this country.It embedded in the minds of many, many, many, many, many millions of Americans three big lies.One, that Donald Trump was the richest man in America.He was a powerful, powerful, rich man.Two, that he was a great businessman.And three, that Donald Trump was the negotiator par excellence.

There was no one in the world who could make a deal like Donald Trump.It was all a lie.But it made Trump a part of the culture, a celebrity in the culture.Whether you liked it or not, you knew who he was.Whether you believed it or not, the message was consistently delivered for 14 years on The Apprentice.

You're fired.You're fired.You're fired.You're fired.You're fired.You're fired.

You're fired.

You're fired.He's a businessman.You're not.He got rich.You didn't.He'll make you rich.

if he likes you and you like him.That cultural touchstone of Trump and Trumpism is, that is a depreciating asset, like I can't even tell you.And this is, I'm going to take a brief aside here and talk to our MAGA viewers.And we have some.They send me plenty of hate mail every week.Guys, you don't want to admit you were suckered.

No one ever does.Okay.No one ever wants to admit they got taken.I get it.No one wants to say, well, you know what?Yeah, I got scammed.

I got conned.I got tricked.We had a woman who was a con woman, came into our lives, I don't know, probably 10 years, 15 years ago now, and really did a number on a lot of people.Took some money from us.We got it back.But she played the game.

And she went out there.And she would go to people with these, oh, I'm taking care of my debt, my dying husband, and my dying mother -in -law, and this and that.And it was very convincing.And no one wanted to admit they got suckered.No one wanted to admit she was a communist, that she had been arrested for bank fraud.Once you knew the story, you're like, oh my God, how did I get taken by that?

That's amazing.What was I thinking?I was being compassionate and she was playing off of my compassion.Everybody who was around her was getting hit up for money.This is what Trump did to America.It's what Trump did to you guys.

He tricked you.He promised you that he would hate the people you hate.And he told you that the people you hate were the people who made you poor.The people that looked down on you made you poor.It was never you.It was never anything you did or didn't do.

He told you he would end all that wasteful spending in Washington and give you the money back.He told you over and over and over and over again that a golden age was coming for you, that he cared about you.you living out there in the suburbs, you living out there in the countryside, you living wherever you live in the deep South, the Midwest or the Northwest, wherever you were, he was going to take care of you.He's never even tried.Not last term, not this term.You feel rich?

You feel rich?Did the cultural magic of Donald Trump make you feel rich when you were putting gas in your tank this week for five, six bucks?

The surging gas prices, a major shipping route for oil, has effectively been shut down amid this war, sending shockwaves through the markets, with gas jumping nationwide from an average of $2 .92 in Kansas to more than $5 a gallon in California.

Did the cultural magic of Donald Trump, the great negotiator, just disappear when it came to giving up, capitulating, showing the white flag to Iran?Because that's what happened.

I'm playing it out, and we're going to see.And that's what I do.I negotiate.They negotiate.They're very good negotiators.They're crafty.

But, uh...Your mortgage rate coming down?Nope.

Also, mortgage rates now affected by all of this.Now above 6 .5 % for a 30 -year mortgage.It was less than a month ago that they were below 6 % for the first time in years, Tom.

Your rent prices coming down?Nope.

Well, if you rent, it may not come as a surprise.

It's getting harder to get by.

Yeah, this shouldn't be a huge surprise to anyone.But when you actually see the numbers, I think it's fair to say it's something else.

Your health insurance prices going down?Nope, they're going up all of it.

More than 20 million Americans will see their health care costs soar with Affordable Care Act subsidies expiring.Premiums expected to skyrocket 114 % on average for those millions, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation.

You're paying more and it's his fault.And it's the people who supported him in Congress.99 .7 %the time is the average Republican member of Congress.99 .7 % of the time, they have voted for Donald Trump's agenda.They did this to you.

The pain you are feeling is from him.But that cultural connection, so ended the lesson.That cultural connection that Trump had to America has now become awkward.You know, it's funny, you, you see a lot of bands from the eighties and nineties out still touring, still doing great work, still playing great music.And, and I found that the ones that sort of own their journey and own their age, they're happier.They're people that are enjoying their lives.

They're out there, you know, having some fun, still making a living at it and God bless them.But there are a lot of people that were big stars in the eighties or nineties where the, the roadshow is tired now.They had one hit and they still want to go out and pretend that they're a 24 year old.hairband, heavy metal rocker.It doesn't work that way.Trump's brand, if you will, that transgressive, funny, brawling guy that you liked in 2016 so much is dying.

That cultural connection that worked for a set of boomers and a set of Gen Xers and briefly flirted with a set of younger voters in 2024 is gone.The only people who are net majority supportive of Donald Trump right now are rural, non -college white men.It's narrowing.And that is the political damage is the one thing, but the cultural disconnect is the other.And what Trump showed you was not that he was the working man's billionaire.What he showed you was he is a vulgar, cheap, greedy Sal.

He's a hog, wallowing in slop.He wants toballroom.He wants a golf course.He wants a memorial.He wants an arch.

He wants to put Timu Bukaki all over the White House.He wants to do all these things to aggrandize himself because he feels his position slipping in the culture.He feels his position slipping in American life.And so he wants to brand the country as his own.One last run for all the marbles.This is not a sign of strength, folks.

It's a sign of his weaknesses.It's a sign of his pathologies.He's an old, sick, dying man who has failed as a president.He's failed as a president.Donald Trump, in a weird way, he won the presidency twice.But he's failed at everything else in his life.

He's a shit father.

Not good timing for me. I have a thing called the RAD and other things.That's one I can't win on.If I do attend, I get killed.If I don't attend, I get killed.By the fake news, of course, I'm talking about now.But he's got a very, a person I've known for a long time, and hopefully they're going to have a great marriage.

He's a shit husband.He's never been a friend to anyone who couldn't do something for him.And as people like that die, they become even greedier, even more selfish, even more psychotic, even more weird.And so a lot of what you're going to see between now and election day is Trump acting out and demanding you pretend that he's still the 24 year old hair metal band guy in 1986.He's going to want you to pretend that he's still the same guy who was the rock and roll transgressive crazy dude in 16 that so many Republicansare like, yeah, he's going to mess Washington up for me.

It didn't happen, did it?You know why it didn't happen?Because it could never happen.It didn't happen because it could never, ever happen.But now you're seeing the proof of the death of Trump culturally, and that is eating him alive.He will not be a figure in history that is looked back at as some titanic leader.

He will be a joke.He will be a clown.He will be a footnote.He will be something ugly and small and shrill in our history.if we survive it.The idea that the political death and the cultural death are linked is one you should really keep in your mind.

And I want to talk now about the biggest cover -up since the Epstein cover -up, and they're sort of parallel track cover -ups.Guys, I want to know where the books are about Donald Trump's declining health.I want to know where the long -form podcast series are about Donald Trump's declining health.I want to know where the endless, endless, endless battering questions are to the White House press corps about Donald Trump's health.Guys, he looks like he's the guy who was bitten by the zombie on the hand and is pretending to all his friends he wasn't bitten by the zombie.He's going to turn any minute now.

It is incredibly obvious that he is unable to stay awake.It's incredibly obvious he can barely walk, guys.Watch him walk.He looks like he's about to tip over like a weeble.It is incredibly obvious with the bruising on his hand, the bruising on his neck, the weird aphasias, the swelling everywhere.None of this in any other president would have been anything but the top story.

They do not ask the question because they know they will be thrown out of the White House press corps.They do not ask the question because they know that they'll take their hard pass away.They'll take their badge away.They know that.They get it.But mainstream media, friends, it is a small sacrifice to make to tell the truth about Donald Trump's health, even if you get thrown off the campus the next day.

He is dying medically and physically.It's quick.This is a rapid decline.He is 80.He has had a life of very unhealthy behaviors.He is not, he's not a guy who is going to last through the next two years, in my opinion.

So when I wrote that piece about this stuff earlier in the week, the last line was, you know, and on that day, and we all know what the day is, I expect the better angels of my nature will be taking their PTO.And I had somebody, a friend write me like, oh, come on, man, you know, you shouldn't speak ill of the dead.And I'm like, really though?Really though?The way Donald Trump has burned down every institution, every norm, every behavior, every expectation of civility and rationality in this country for the last 10 years, when he's dead, I do not want to be required to have an official position of kindness to the Trump family and regret.I want them all in prison.

They are a crime family.They are engaged in rampant criminality at a scale that has never been imagined in this country before.I want them to suffer as they have caused Americans to suffer at such enormous scale and intensity.Donald Trump is dying.And when that day comes, there are going to be people who tug at you and go, come on, don't do that.Don't be, don't be like that.

Don't be like that.Don't speak ill of the dead.Oh no, my friends, everything that you believe you should say that day, you should say.America will be dancing in the streets when Donald Trump dies.They will be.This country will feel a great weight lifted from its soul.

This country will feel a great pain relieved at long last.Trump is dying.He's dying culturally.He's dying politically.He's dying medically.We all know it.

We all see it coming.And we have to start planning for what's ahead.That's a longer story for another day.But the idea that we can just one day shake our hands and gust off and say, OK, well, he's done.It's over.He's gone.

He's dead.It is appealing, but it is not sufficient.It will be delightful, but it is not enough.We have a mess to fix.We have a world to clean up.We have a group of people who have abused this country in ways economically, socially, politically, psychologically that requires punishment and pain for them.

We have a system of justice teetering on the very brink that must be reformed from the top to the bottom.I don't want to hear anybody tell me we need to put this behind us, because Trump is dying.We need to put him in the ground politically and culturally.And when the time comes, he'll go there medically on his own river of Big Mac juice.But putting him in the ground at long last, after 10 years, I'm starting to see the end of the road, and I like it.It's going to make this country a lot different.

It's going to make all of us a lot different.But Donald Trump is dying, and that, my friends, is the elephant in the room.and good luck.