The Lincoln Logue | Trump Aesthetic™: Obnoxious Décor, Criminal Friends, & Coercive Trade Policy
Trump builds a gaudy ballroom, Rogan may finally be fed up, and a new CBS emerges from the people who cry about free speech, but you might as well call it TrumpTV.
This week, Trump tried to prove that running from a scandal doesn’t make it go away — it just makes the scandal chase you across the Atlantic in stilettos. From Scotland, he rambled through the most panicked denial yet of his Epstein ties, claiming he doesn’t draw boobs and never set foot on “the island,” as if this were a bad episode of Love Island: Florida Men Edition. Meanwhile, his administration took a sledgehammer to press freedom by forcing CBS to accept a “bias monitor” straight out of Pyongyang, while gutting DEI programs like they were termites in a Trump casino.
Even some of his own supporters have had enough. Joe Rogan — podcast king, one-time Trump hype man — called the president’s student deportation campaign “crazy” and “shifty,” marking the latest defector in a growing exodus of influencers who finally realize the cult leader doesn’t care about the cult. Back in D.C., Trump unveiled his long-dreamed, gold-laced $200 million White House ballroom — because when the country’s collapsing, it’s time to redecorate Trump Aesthetic™ style.
And then came Friday’s tariff bomb. Canada got slapped for flirting with Palestinian statehood, Brazil for not rigging its courts for Jair Bolsonaro, and more than 60 other countries were thrown in as well — because why not? What’s the through-line? Punish disloyalty, control the narrative, and gild the hell out of everything in sight.
Welcome to The Lincoln Logue — where we unpack the lies and burnish the truth.
Monday, July 28 — Trump: “Oh, You Got To Be Kidding Me”
▌Because whatever title I was thinking of is not as funny as Trump being visibly and audibly exhausted with his historically bad coverup attempts.
Trump’s Scottish press conference was meant to project strength abroad. Instead, it turned into the week’s most surreal act of desperation. While trying to dodge questions about his ties to Jeffrey Epstein, Trump instead dove headfirst into denial — denying he drew a naked woman in a birthday letter, denying he ever went to the island, and denying there’s anything incriminating at all about his decades-long friendship with the most notorious sex trafficker in modern American history. British Prime Minister Keir Starmer sat frozen beside him, the ghost of a thousand advisors whispering “abort mission” into his earpiece.
What made this different from past deflections was Trump’s tone: not mocking, but increasingly desperate. For the first time, he offered a “business dispute” as the reason for their falling out — not the crimes, not the accusations, just some shady poaching of Trump’s staff. He rambled about island invitations he allegedly turned down, about never drawing women because he’s “not a drawing person,” and even suggested Democrats would’ve already released any dirt if it existed. It was a bizarre, paranoid fugue from a man who once gleefully stoked Epstein conspiracies, only now he’s the headline.
But none of it has worked. The press didn’t move on. The MAGA base didn’t forget. America as a whole has not moved on. And Vice President J.D. Vance’s sad little detour — blaming Bush and Obama for not prosecuting Epstein harder — only underscored the fear. Because what Trump is trying to bury isn’t just a scandal. It’s the biggest open secret in American politics. And now it’s following him wherever he goes, even to his sacred golf courses. The Epstein cover-up has gone global, but it’s only exposing the rot faster.
Source: CNN