So here I am, minding my own business, enjoying a shockingly normal Tuesday in the United States of America, circa mid-2025. I just paid $3.15 a gallon for gas (thanks, Keystone reboot), inflation isn’t gouging me at the grocery store anymore, and I haven’t been arrested for voting wrong—despite what MSNBC promised would happen by March. All in all, a pretty decent day.
Then I open my phone and there it is: the 17-paragraph unhinged Facebook post from my progressive high school friend, who writes like she’s trying out for the lead in a Broadway adaptation of The Handmaid’s Tale: The Musical.
It starts the way these always do:
“You realized Trump was a liar and a swindler his first time. The economy is worse now because many of you elected him. America is hated around the world because of you. You were warned about the autocracy. Yet you support him. And you wonder why I don’t reach out to you?”
Well… now I’m reaching back.
Let’s take this line by line and give it the full Ian Schwartz reality check.
“You realized Trump was a liar and a swindler his first time.”
Ah yes, because before Trump, all our presidents were humble monks with nothing but truth in their hearts and honesty in their tax returns. I guess we’re all just supposed to pretend Bill didn’t lie under oath, or that Obama didn’t promise, “If you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor.” And Joe? The guy plagiarized in 1988, forgot the location of his own son’s funeral in 2024, and once told a story about facing down Corn Pop with a chain.
Let’s be adults. Politicians lie. That’s not an endorsement—it’s a fact. The question is: do their policies work? Because I don’t care if Trump tells me it’s sunny while it’s pouring, if I’ve got a full tank of gas, a secure border, and a stocked fridge.
“The economy is worse now because you re-elected him.”
You say this like the economy was crushing it under Biden. Do I need to remind you of the “Eggflation Era”? The time when Target was locking up SPAM because of shoplifting? Or when Americans had to play credit card roulette to buy a dozen eggs and a bag of grapes?
Trump 47 may be many things, but he didn’t create the inflation hangover we’re still nursing from the $6 trillion stimulus bender. And as for the “worse” part—maybe don’t throw stones from your rent-controlled Brooklyn apartment while the GDP is recovering and your unemployment benefits are drying up because people have jobs again.
“America is hated now because of him.”
Oh sweetie, please. America has always been “hated.” We were hated when we saved Europe in World War II. We were hated during the Cold War. We’re hated when we bomb something and when we don’t. Our mere existence irritates a whole league of foreign despots and jealous Twitter philosophers.
But when Trump talks tough and doesn’t send pallets of cash to Iran, that’s somehow uniquely offensive? Meanwhile, our allies are now paying their fair share in NATO again and not expecting Uncle Sam to foot the entire bill while getting passive-aggressive emails about our “tone.”
And you think he’s the problem?
“Autocracy is imminent.”
I’m sorry, but if we were actually living in a dictatorship, you wouldn’t be tweeting about it from your iPhone at the dog park with a kombucha in hand. You’d be in hiding. Or a work camp. Or worse—stuck watching state-run TV starring Rachel Maddow in a gray jumpsuit explaining why corn production must increase.
Here’s a fun thought experiment: If Trump were truly an autocrat, do you think he would allow the media, Hollywood, academia, TikTok, and half the federal bureaucracy to openly campaign against him 24/7? No, he’d have replaced Don Lemon with Don Jr. and renamed CNN the “Covfefe News Network.”
What we’re living through isn’t fascism. It’s your guy losing—and you not being able to cope.
“You still support him…”
Yes. And guess what? I’m not alone. Trump didn’t sneak into the White House with a crowbar—he was elected. Again. By millions of Americans who weighed the options and decided they’d rather have bombastic tweets than bombs in embassies, open borders, or TikTok influencers setting economic policy.
You don’t have to agree with that. But maybe understand that for a lot of us, voting Trump wasn’t about adoring the man. It was about rejecting a political class that calls you a bigot if you want safe streets and affordable burgers.
“And you wonder why I don’t reach out?”
Actually, I stopped wondering. Because the last five times we spoke, you referred to half the country as “cultists,” “nazis,” “climate arsonists,” and “threats to democracy.” You treat people like me not as citizens you disagree with—but as enemies to be purged, canceled, or unfriended.
Let me ask you this: How do you expect to build bridges when your whole platform is “I’m smart and righteous and you’re evil and brainwashed”?
If your goal was to isolate everyone who doesn’t vote like you, congratulations. You did it. You’re in a one-person book club with no discussion, sipping soy lattes and wondering why everyone else just “doesn’t get it.”
Final Thought
So no, I don’t think it’s “strange” that you don’t reach out. But maybe next time you want to scream into the void about how democracy is collapsing, look around. The power’s on. People are working. Kids are in school. The President is doing… what Presidents do.
And if you still feel like the sky is falling?
Grab a helmet. We’ll be fine.
Ian Schwartz is a contributor to Direct Line News. Contact Ian at Ian.Schwartz@mcgopclub.com
Direct Line News is a Maryland-based free-access publication committed to the Republican reform tradition.
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