I was too busy with work to watch the State of the Union, but from the clips I’ve seen Biden was far from the doddering dotard Republicans and the prestige press (but I repeat myself) have spent years painting him as. Apparently their “pivot” is that Biden was on drugs!
Given that the Trump White House pharmacy under the leadership of Dr. Ronny “Feelgood” Jackson was throwing around uppers and downers like beads at Mardi Gras, and that Tubby himself is an obvious user, you might say it’s projection, but I begin to think it’s the only explanation they can fathom. For why, in their view, would anyone get so excited about traditional Democratic policies that help less fortunate Americans get ahead? It’s got to be drugs!
Readers of Roy Edroso Breaks It Down know that for years I’ve been doing sketches in which “The Formula” – a mix of cocaine, Adderall, ketamine, and Lord knows what – is used by Trump’s handlers to keep him upright. (I’ve even got a few with Biden in them; here’s one I think you might enjoy under the circumstances.)
The cherry on the SOTU Sunday was Senator Tradwife’s rebuttal. As has been pointed out, her delivery is only bizarre if you’re unacquainted with the “fundie baby” voice with which evangelicals project winsomeness to cloak their theocratic intentions. But maybe now that ordinary Americans have gotten a load of it on national TV they’re starting to realize how fucking weird that whole crew is.
I mentioned Roy Edroso Breaks It Down, which is a subscriber service – but as usual on Fridays I have a few free issues for you joy-poppers. Feast your eyes!
First, another of my recurring features – political talk show Received Opinion with your host Bolt Upright – in which Bolt asks whether Kyrsten Sinema’s departure from public life (the less-remunerative non-lobbyist part of it, anyway!) is yet another example of the sad death of comity and compromise in Washington, which in Bolt’s view and the view of all network chuckleheads are values to be treasured above democracy, equity, and everything else.
Also: My annual Oscar predictions! Yes, once again I’m indulging my sick interest in this festival of glamour and hubris! I’m already getting cold feet about my Adapted Screenplay pick, but by and large I think I’ve got something worth risking $5 in a pool. (That statement implies no responsibility if you lose the house! Wager responsibly!)
Everyone is aflutter today over news that Donald Trump suddenly thinks Ron DeSantis’s six week abortion ban in Florida is “a terrible thing and a terrible mistake.” Hapless reporters and commentators are running around asking whether Trump is now pro-choice, whether he’s going to steal Democrats’ big issue out from under them. And at least some Democrats seem to be worried about this too.
News flash: don’t wait for the big reporters clarify this for anyone or explain that it hardly makes sense that the self-described “most pro-life president ever” might now be a credible spokesman for reproductive rights. Get serious people: Democrat and abortion rights supporters generally will have to do this on their own. Don’t wait for whatever civic thing you’re thinking journalists are supposed to do. This is a choice opportunity for the President and every other high profile Democrat to take Trump up on his newfound opposition of Republican anti-abortion overreach. As the head and paramount leader of the GOP Trump should show everyone who is boss by forcing Republican members of Congress to vote for a new law overriding all the states that now have six week abortion bans. Actually get rid of the 15 week ones too. Joe Biden can offer to reach across the aisle and sign Paramount Leader Trump’s newest accomplishment.
People have never seemed to get that waiting to see what new nonsensical thing Trump will come up with next has never made sense. It’s a constant game of giving him the initiative and giving him power. Besting him in some kind of notional logical argument has always been a fool’s errand. Making him look absurd and silly is fighting him on his own turf.
It’s Lena Ruseva, whose phantasmagorical portraits of the former president imagine him in a variety of mystical and historical situations, including as a Roman emperor, a pharaoh, meditating in the robes of a Buddhist monk, and a warlord astride a bear. Her collection is called “Trump: Parallel Universe.” And it has attracted the attention of bigwigs in the MAGA universe.
Take the piece-de-la-resistance, the one before which Bernie Kerik posed: “The Expulsion from the White House.”
It’s something out of a quaalude MAGA fever dream. The work depicts Trump as an avenging angel – toga, wings, and flaming sword – casting an Adam and Eve-esque Biden and Kamala out of the edenic White House and off into the darkness.
In another Ruseva masterpiece, Trump’s divinity is more explicit. Inspired by Michelangelo’s “The Creation of Adam,” she portrays Trump as an astronaut reaching out his finger of god to a green alien. It is titled “Star Peace.” Trump is no mere tribune of the American electorate. He is a deity with a divine right to the Oval Office – and to the galaxy.
Ruseva, an aspiring muralist, takes that approach to the canvas, resulting in a vaguely defined landscape and human subjects who are either the victims of pituitary dysfunction or misplaced satire.
Let’s move on to another notable work in Ruseva’s collection: Trump as Santa.
In this depiction, we have the former president fulfilling the role of saintly gift-giver, only to be thwarted by a grinch-like Joe Biden, absconding with votes. The color palette is typical of Christmas painting, a tired arrangement that doesn’t inspire much apart from the bizarre scene its used to convey. Perplexingly, Ruseva strikes a note of incoherence here: Why is Santa-Trump so helpless? Why does he stand with his arms open, looking on as Grinch-Biden sneaks away with the election results?
It’s in the dogs and cigars, however, that Ruseva’s ouvre really hits its stride.
Ruseva doesn’t depict Trump directly, here, but it’s all MAGA. Veterans can commission her to paint a large dog in their own uniform smoking a cigar of their choice. In this world, the painting screams, men are men. And, they’re dogs too.
In a Tuesday interview, Ruseva gave TPM some insight into her art, saying that “99 percent of my clients are gentlemen.”
She got her start in the painting business only recently, after her boyfriend posted on Facebook a painting she gave him as a gift of a smoking lion in a tuxedo.
“I started to get tons of requests from men who like cigars, who love hunting, so I discovered my target audience,” she said. “And so I started to paint as professional artist for people who love cigars or hunting.”
But it’s about more than just cigars. Ruseva, a Russian immigrant, sees the paintings as a way to commune spiritually with those Americans who regard the Biden administration as hell-bent on a Putin-style takeover. Rhetoric that Biden’s economic agenda is a step towards Soviet-style communism – and that the 2020 election was decided by Putin-style fraud – resonates with her, and in her art.
Take the “expulsion” of Biden and Kamala. Ruseva described it to TPM as the “deportation of Biden and Kamala out of White House,” likening it to a “biblical mural.”
Apart from the “expulsion” of Biden and Kamala, Ruseva’s Trump: Parallel Universe collection features him riding a shark and as the Statute of Liberty, holding a book titled “How to Serve Democrats.”
Ruseva’s stab at the political led her to the cigar aficionados at New York City’s Republican party.
Bernie Kerik, the ex-con, Giuliani associate, and former Iraq interior minister, was the first “big name” to reply to an invitation to Ruseva’s October 2021 exhibition, she said. Kerik introduced her to Sean Spicer and Andrew Giuliani, Ruseva said, and even sent photos of her work to Trump himself.
Boris Epshteyn, a co-host of Steve Bannon’s War Room: Pandemic podcast, even bought a painting at an October showing at Manhattan’s Metropolitan Republican Club.
Ruseva had initially partnered with the New York Young Republican Club to find a venue, but she said that a mixture of violent anti-Trump threats, unwillingness to book, and high prices meant that nobody in the five boroughs would give her a place.
Ruseva addressed the difficulty in a post that linked towards a Trump portrait called “Anti-terror.” It features Trump strangling a bearded man wearing a baseball hat that says “terror” on it – another triumph for the Donald.
But at Ruseva’s exhibition, Kerik himself struck a darker tone.
He said that he came to support Ruseva because he believed that New York City’s art galleries had unfairly cancelled her. She “shouldn’t have gone to three or four different venues, she shouldn’t have been thrown out of different venues because of her opinions, because of her art,” Kerik told the crowd, according to a clip posted on YouTube.
He added that Ruseva, a former resident of the USSR, had a lot to teach Americans about history and that Joe Biden was only President thanks to Republican legislators “who didn’t have the courage to stand up and not certify those votes.”
Kerik added that he “took a bunch of photos” of Ruseva’s paintings.
“I want to make sure the President sees them,” he added, to thunderous applause.
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