It is Happening Again

First of all, thanks for your patience as I put Swamp Person on pause and enjoyed an extended holiday break! We’re back just in time to check in with politics, which I’m sure is going great.

Oh. Well. Bad news! Donald Trump is the president again. We’re two days in and it’s already light years worse than I remember from the first go-round, and he’s already gunning for our society’s most vulnerable members for no reason other than he finds it enjoyable to hurt people. And many of his supporters share his malicious thirst for pain. For all the egg prices voters, I hope yesterday was eye-opening for you!

Before we get to yesterday’s Neo-Nazi rally held just 3 or so miles from my home here in DC, we should discuss TikTok and the circumstances surrounding its brief “ban,” because I think the whole situation is representative of how stupid the next four years are going to be. On January 18, TikTok briefly went offline, after failing to comply with a new federal law requiring it to either divest itself from its parent company, ByteDance, a company based in China, or cease operations in the United States. This law, which was passed on a bipartisan basis and signed into law by former President Joe Biden last year, was apparently necessary due to “national security concerns” that were never adequately communicated to the American people, nor apparently were they adequately communicated to other Members of Congress!:

Unwilling to divest from ByteDance, TikTok appealed to the Supreme Court, and in an extremely rare turn of events, the Court ruled 9-0 that the law was valid and that TikTok needed to divest or shut down. TikTok opted to shut down.

For like 5 hours, anyway. After some apparent behind-the-scenes wrangling between TikTok’s CEO, Shou Zi Chew, and Donald Trump that included a boot-licking system-wide message on the app that said “We are fortunate that President Trump has indicated that he will work with us on a solution to reinstate TikTok once he takes office. Please stay tuned!" TikTok pretty quickly came back online.

Once service was restored, users were greeted with another message exalting Trump: “In agreement with our service providers, TikTok is in the process of restoring service. We thank President Trump for providing the necessary clarity and assurance to our service providers that they will face no penalties providing TikTok to over 170 million Americans and allowing over 7 million small businesses to thrive.” And thus, Donald Trump became the savior of TikTok and, by extension, the youths.

You see what happened here? TikTok played the game perfectly. All Trump cares about is a) hurting people and b) being adored. To get ahead in his esteem, all you need to do is debase yourself at his feet, and make sure as many people as possible know that you did. Trump now gets to enjoy the added benefit of not just “saving” TikTok, but sticking it to out-of-touch Dems who banned it in the first place. Is that exactly what happened? No, but this is not administration friendly to facts, only appearances, and it appears as though Trump brought back the Nishiyama Daddy Daddy guys (thank God, honestly) and restored joy in all of our hearts.

Now here’s the fun part: Congress only started chasing this TikTok ban after Trump announced he wanted to ban TikTok in 2020!!!! HE’S THE REAL KILLER! It’s the classic Trump honky tonk, folks:

1. Casually announce a major policy proposal from somewhere weird, like the back of his golf cart, or backstage at Monday Night RAW, or standing underneath a priceless artifact from the Lincoln administration. The basis for this policy proposal makes no sense and is probably racist, but the media treats it as normal

2. Republicans, dedicated to taking orders from Trump regardless of their logical inconsistencies, pounce on the opportunity to be Trump’s Favorite Boy

3. Democrats, who by and large believe “bipartisanship” is more important than the actual quality of any legislative proposal, trip over themselves to support it

4. The law passes, and the Democratic president signs it into law, thinking this can be a good, bipartisan legacy maker

5. Donald Trump, who is an idiot with no object permanence and who almost certainly forgot he even said anything about the policy proposal in the first place, changes his mind. He will save whatever it was he originally planned to destroy, for clout

That’s basically what happened with TikTok, except somewhere along the way he, or one of his loyal brownshirts, realized the TikTok is a powerful communications tool with an algorithm that is so finely tuned that I have never in my life been accidentally been served a MAGA-themed video (unironically). This is a problem. MAGA now controls the communication flow on other major social media platforms, namely Facebook/Instagram, and Twitter (or X, if you absolutely must). Other tech oligarchs eager to lick Trump’s boots include Jeff Bezos and the guys from Google. But TikTok had not yet been captured, at least not as explicitly as the rest.

The ban handed Trump an opportunity to bring them in. Yesterday, after he was sworn in, Trump officially signed an executive order theoretically designed to protect TikTok, although if I were the CEO I’m not sure I’d find much comfort in the text.

Basically the way this ban worked in the first place is that it gave the Department of Justice the authority to go after not just TikTok but also “service providers” -- the companies that run app stores (Apple and Google) who make TikTok available for download. Trump’s executive order says “I promise not to penalize you even if you operate in violation of the law, but also, this Executive Order is not actually a promise in the traditional sense of the word.” If I were the CEO, I’d read it like this: follow the lead of Elon and Zuck, run your social media company to benefit me above all else, and you can keep it.

As a former Twitter addict, I regret to inform TikTok’s largely liberal/progressive creator base that this will be an absolutely rancid user experience. The only way for TikTok to appease Trump is to defile its basically perfect algorithm and start prioritizing pro-MAGA, pro-Project 2025, anti-immigrant, racist, or even full on Neo-Nazi content. In other words, TikTok is definitely dead, ban or no.

And so it was, Day 1 of Trump 2.0. He didn’t stop at exacting promises from major communications platforms, though. By the end of the day, he had issued several unconstitutional Executive Orders aimed at “repealing” birthright citizenship (unconstitutional; not how that works), establish that there are only two genders (scientifically untrue, and also not how this works), and proclaiming ICE agents can enter schools, hospitals, and places of worship to tear undocumented people away from their communities.

Oh yeah, and then his top surrogate did an enthusiastic Nazi salute at his post-inaugural rally, twice. Don’t worry, the press will definitely get to the bottom of whether or not it was actually a Nazi salute or just a classic oopsie daisy where one’s arm totally does the Sieg Heil motion on accident. The ADL is also on the case!

With all that said, I think it’s clear that the next four years are going to be inordinately rough on all of us. Democrats are not helping. Many, many, MANY Democrats issued statements yesterday claiming that they’d be happy to work with President Trump on a bipartisan basis to lower costs, bring relief to the American people, and any other policy where we might have common ground. There are no words for how unfit for this moment those statements are.

Grow a fucking spine, you guys! They’re NAZI SALUTING ON LIVE TELEVISION FOR FUCK’S SAKES! He doesn’t care about lowering costs and he doesn’t care about anyone but himself. He’s a racist freak. Everyone around him is a racist freak. Get away from them and get a fucking grip!

As a reminder, if you see your Member of Congress capitulating to the Trump administration, feel free to give them a call at (202) 224-3121. Call early, call often! And remember: not all resistance actions need to be directed at Congress. Find ways to stay engaged with your community, your neighbors, your friends. Find volunteer opportunities! Whatever it takes to stitch back together our ragged society!

Thanks for supporting Swamp Person. If this feels like the kind of thing you might one day want to financially support, please consider “pledging” a financial contribution. You won’t be charged unless/until I turn on a paid subscription tier!

Meanwhile, feel free to follow me on BlueSky and check out my podcast, Text Me Back, that I host with my best friend Lindy West!