The Lincoln Logue | Trump to Taxpayers: 'You Got Venmo?,' Powell’s Face Says It All, & Is J.D. Doing Trump Dirty on Epstein?

Plus: Firefighters clean toilets, the DOJ hides names, and the President sues Rupert Murdoch — while going after Obama for the 2016 election (that he won).

If there was ever a week that perfectly captured the chaos, cowardice, and cartoonish cruelty of the Trump era, it was this one. In Arizona and Oregon, wildfires rage across the land, while Trump’s gutted Forest Service leaves firefighters to clean toilets and beg for gas money. At the White House, the President faced bombshell reporting that his name appears in the Epstein files — so he did what any narcissist cornered by consequence does: he accused Barack Obama of treason.

Then came the kicker: The Treasury Department added Venmo as a way to “help reduce the national debt,” as if crowdfunding could undo decades of tax cuts, wars, and corporate theft. Meanwhile, Trump picked a fight with Jerome Powell over imaginary budget overruns, only to fold once the Fed Chair did the math in real time.

Every story this week reveals the same pattern: hollow out government, weaponize grievance, and scapegoat your enemies. Nothing is too small to politicize and nothing is too sacred to destroy. Whether it’s frontline workers or democratic norms, the goal is always the same — discredit the system while demanding its obedience.

Welcome to The Lincoln Logue — the part of your week where we pull back the curtain and light up the lies.

---

Monday, July 21 — Wildfires Burn, but Firefighters Are Busy Scrubbing Toilets

▌MAGA’s version of public safety: understaffed, overworked, on fire (and cleaning up their crap).

Across the American West, wildfire season is in full swing — and Trump’s Forest Service has responded by gutting its own workforce. Over 5,000 employees have left in the past five months alone, thanks to buyouts and forced attrition (thanks, Elon!) Entire fire crews are missing critical support staff, leaving frontline firefighters to handle logistics, scrub bathrooms, and operate ranger stations instead of putting out fires.

In Oregon, one crew reportedly went hungry for days while scrambling to source their own chainsaw fuel. In New Mexico, a fire duty officer confirmed what others only whispered: trained fire personnel were reassigned to mow lawns and answer phones. This is the result of an administration that sees government not as a service but as an obstacle.

The USDA insists the Forest Service is “fully staffed” and denies the accounts of chaos on the ground. But the truth — reported by over a dozen active and retired employees — is harder to spin. With red-carded support staff gone, and “efficiency” mandates redirecting remaining personnel toward timber and fossil fuel quotas, critical firefighting roles are being neglected. National forecasts predict a worse-than-average fire year, but internal agency memos show frantic efforts to rehire staff who were recently bought out. Even as flames creep closer to homes and towns, Trump’s top priority remains deregulation, not disaster response. And with 41,000 fires already on record this year, the consequences are mounting fast.

This isn’t efficiency — it’s sabotage. And it’s part of a broader Trump doctrine: Dismantle government functions, pretend it’s innovation, and let frontline workers bear the burden. The forests are burning, and so is any pretense that this administration gives a damn. The people who fight fires shouldn’t be treated like janitors, and public safety shouldn’t be a line item in a propaganda war against “the deep state.” If this is how Trump handles literal flames, imagine how he handles the slow burns you can’t see.

Source: Reuters