Donald Trump is officially clueless
By Richard Robbins
On Friday evening before election day, while millions of Americans were losing federal food assistance and faced the prospect of going hungry, the president presided at a Great Gatsby-themed Halloween party at Mar-a-Lago, his lush Florida estate.
Gatsby, the fictional character created by F. Scott Fitzgerald in the 1920s, staged extravagant all-day, all-night parties for the rich and frivolous sets. The novel does not end well for Gatsby, probably the most conspicuous faker in American literature.
The Trump shindig featured gyrating, half-naked damsels in what appeared to be giant-size cocktail glasses, in addition to guests decked out in their best Roaring ’20s fare – white fedoras and spangled dresses.
SNAP was ending, but Trump was partying. One was reminded of lines from the novel about two of its main characters, the super wealthy Buchanans: “They were careless people – Tom and Daisy. They smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness … and let other people clean up the mess they had made.”
Trump’s real-life carelessness refers to the suspension of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, occasioned by the shutdown of the federal government, which has hazarded everything from flying on an airplane – payless air traffic controllers, you know – to aid to farmers and other Americans reliant on government help.
Still more Trump obtuseness occurred on Wednesday, the day after the 2025 elections.
Over breakfast at the White House with Republican members of Congress, the president faulted the government shutdown, which he blamed on Democrats, and his absence on ballots, for the GOP’s less than stellar showing.
He did not mention the one thing voters told exit poll interviewers: Their top concern was the Trump economy and the cost of living, while crime and immigration, Trump’s top concerns, were well down on the list.
Later, House Speaker Mike Johnson dismissed the elephant in the room with a wave of the hand. “What happened last night was that blue states and blue cities voted blue,” Johnson told reporters. “We saw that coming, and no one should read too much into [the] election results.”
The Speaker had the virtue of getting closer to the truth than Trump’s paradoxically soothing bromide about the government closure.
But Johnson ignored the fact that in both the Virginia and New Jersey gubernatorial races, the Democratic victors – respectively, Abigail Spanberger and Mikie Sherrill – beat their GOP opponents by margins that were healthier than anticipated.
Virginia voters not only flipped the governor’s mansion from red to blue in the purple state, but added Democratic seats to the state House, securing a possible supermajority for Spanberger’s legislative agenda.
The New Jersey results were just as telling. According to polling, Republican Jack Ciattarelli had crept to within single digits of Spanberger in the campaign’s final hours.
A Democratic surge helped Sherrill blow past her Trump-endorsed challenger, however. Relative to 2021, some Democratic counties saw increases in turnout by as much as 30%; the ranks of voters in two northern New Jersey counties swelled past the 40% mark.
Reliably Democratic, New York City voters chose Zohran Mamdani, a Socialist Democrat, by a relatively slender eight-point margin over Andrew Cuomo, a former Democratic governor of the state running as an independent. Republican Curtis Sliwa ran a poor third.
Despite Mandani’s expansive agenda, the issue uppermost in voters’ minds was the cost of groceries and housing.
Pennsylvania voters retained three liberal members on the state Supreme court despite strong Republican party opposition.
While Fayette County voted “no” on retention, Washington, Westmoreland, and Beaver counties in western Pennsylvania tilted “yes.” All three counties have been Trump strongholds.
The past is not necessarily a prologue in politics. But a year out from the 2026 midterms, Trump looks increasingly out of touch.
Richard Robbins lives in Uniontown. He can be reached at dick.l.robbins@gmail.com.