Heather Delaney Reese

“Shortly after 1 pm this afternoon, Donald J. Trump walked into the East Room to join faith leaders for an Easter lunch celebration. He appeared energized, talkative, and completely unrestrained. As he made his way to the podium, his makeup sitting unevenly across his face, a harsh line of orange against pale skin along his collar, he paused on the stage, soaking in the applause and encouraging the crowd to keep cheering. Once at the mic, he launched into nearly 45 minutes of rambling, self-focused commentary that had very little to do with Easter and everything to do with himself. He drifted between attacks on judges, racist rhetoric about immigrants, and bizarre tangents about seizing foreign oil and mocking allied world leaders, all while religious leaders stood beside him and said nothing.

But most telling about the whole event was what happened after. Because shortly after the luncheon had ended, the White House made a move not often seen. They deleted the video recording of his entire speech. And we have to imagine that they did this because what he said was such a disaster that even they knew it would be a struggle to contain it. How do you explain the president saying, “When somebody’s nice to me, I love that person. Even if they’re bad people, I couldn’t care less. I’ll fight to the end for them.” And how do you make sure that the United States is safe from both domestic and foreign adversaries when the president says you can be “bad” as long as you are nice to him? Where does that leave us as a country?

When taken in context to everything else he said today, to a room full of pastors, reverends, and bishops, during Holy Week, it just keeps looking worse. He did full impressions of Allied world leaders turning him down when he asked for help in the Strait of Hormuz. He mocked British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, telling the room the UK has “two old broken down aircraft carriers.” He mocked French President Macron, calling him “France Macaron,” joking that Macron’s wife treats him “extremely badly,” and referencing “the right to the jaw.” These are the leaders of nations whose soldiers fought and died alongside ours in Afghanistan after September 11th. These are the countries that invoked NATO’s mutual defense clause for the first and only time in history, not for themselves, but for us. And this is how he talks about them at an Easter prayer lunch. Because they weren’t nice to him. Because they didn’t join his unjust and dangerous war.

And while he was mocking the allies who wouldn’t help him, he told the room exactly why the fight is really happening. “We could just take their oil,” he said, talking about Iran. “I’d prefer just to take the oil.” The Associated Press flagged it as the lead story of the day. The President of the United States, surrounded by men and women of the cloth, openly admitted he wants to seize another sovereign nation’s natural resources. He said the only reason he wouldn’t is that Americans don’t have “the patience.” Not that it’s wrong or that it violates international law, but that it would take too long.

Then he moved to Venezuela, bragging that the invasion was won “in 45 minutes” and comparing it to “a fighter getting knocked out in the first three seconds.” He told the room the United States now controls “59% of the oil in the world.” He described the arrangement as “like a joint venture.” This is what the wars are for. This is what the alliances are being reshaped around. Oil and obedience for a power-hungry monster.

And then, still in that same room, still surrounded by religious leaders, he turned to the subject of Somali immigrants in Minnesota. He called Somali people “low IQ.” He said Somalia is “the worst country anywhere in the world” where “they just shoot each other all day long.” He claimed they have “94% unemployment” and “stole $19 billion.” He said they come to this country with no money and immediately go out and buy Mercedes-Benzes. He called Congresswoman Ilhan Omar “a stone-cold crook” and repeated the long-debunked claim that she married her brother. This is how the President spoke during an Easter celebration.

And while he was dehumanizing immigrants and confessing to imperial ambitions, he made clear exactly how little he thinks of his fellow Americans. He told his budget director not to send any federal money for daycares because he is spending all his time fighting wars he created. “The United States can’t take care of daycare,” he said. “We’re a big country. We have 50 states. We have all these other people. We’re fighting wars. We can’t take care of daycare.” Then he went further, calling daycare, Medicaid, and Medicare “all these little things” and “all these little scams.” He said the federal government has one job: “military protection.” States should raise their own taxes to pay for the rest.

Daycare is not “a little scam”. Daycare is how families are able to work, build stability, improve their economic futures, and the futures of their communities. Daycares are some of the first places children receive education. They are often the first time a child learns structure, socialization, and routine outside of the home. Subsidizing daycare is not a handout. It is an investment in the children who will inherit whatever is left of this country when he’s done with it.

And Medicare is not a government gift. Medicare is something that Americans pay into for their entire working lives. It comes out of every paycheck. People sacrifice from their earnings for decades with the understanding that when they reach retirement, that safety net will be there. They already paid for it. They already funded it. It is their money. And Medicaid is not something people receive on a whim. You have to qualify. It exists for the most vulnerable among us, and he called that a scam, too.

A large portion of his own supporters are Medicare recipients, people who are in their retirement years, who showed up for him, voted for him, and believed him when he said he would protect them. And this is how he talks about them when he thinks he’s among friends. Like they’re a burden. Like the programs they depend on to survive are a line item to be cut, so he can keep fighting wars and building ballrooms.

He used the occasion to attack the judiciary, too. He called the judge who blocked his ballroom “not good people.” He said Democratic judges would rule against you “even if the person admits they’re guilty.” He called Republican judges “stupid people” for wanting to show independence from him. Hours earlier, he had become the first sitting president in American history to attend Supreme Court oral arguments, sitting with his arms crossed, staring at the justices hearing his attempt to end birthright citizenship. He was not there in support of anything; he was there to intimidate. Thankfully, much like most of his presidency, that didn’t seem to work either. Both liberal and conservative justices were deeply skeptical. Justice Barrett questioned whether his legal theory would even apply to the freed slaves the Fourteenth Amendment was written for. Justice Gorsuch tore apart the administration’s central argument. He showed up to flex, and the court didn’t flinch.

Then came the moment that, in any functioning democracy, would have ended a political career. While reading the biblical passage about Jesus entering Jerusalem, he stopped mid-sentence and said, “They call me king now. Do you believe it? No king. I’m such a king. I can’t get a ballroom approved.” He compared himself to a king while telling the story of Christ’s sacrifice. At an Easter celebration. In the White House.

And throughout it all, his right hand was covered in a visible square of beige foundation, poorly blended, clearly covering bruising that had been visible for weeks. His left hand was also noticeably paler. When reporters asked, the White House responded with a canned statement calling him “the sharpest, most accessible president.” Another typical response from this administration.

But what may be the most disturbing part of the entire event was not anything Trump said. It was the silence of every faith leader in that room. Not one of them stopped him. Not one pushed back, not even during the racist rant or during the King comparison. Instead, they laid hands on him and prayed. Pastor Paula White told him, “No one has paid the price like you have paid the price.” She compared his suffering to the death and resurrection of Jesus. Franklin Graham compared him to the biblical Esther, chosen by God to save the Jewish people. Another pastor thanked God for “causing him to turn his head” when the bullet came in Butler, Pennsylvania. These are not true spiritual leaders. These are enablers offering divine cover to a morally corrupt man during the week Christians honor the one who washed the feet of strangers and died for the sins of others.

And then, at the end of it all, someone asked what his primetime address to the nation would be about later that night. The President of the United States said, “Basically, I’m going to tell everybody how great I am. What a great job I’ve done. What a phenomenal job.” And that is exactly what he did.

Less than 24 hours earlier, the White House had announced that the president would deliver a primetime address to the nation. From the moment the announcement dropped, the country was on edge. Was he ending the war? Was he pulling us out of NATO? Was he announcing a ground invasion? For an entire day, the weight of not knowing sat on all of us. That is what he does. He holds the country and the world hostage with the anxiety of what comes next, forces everyone to stop and wait, and feeds on the attention.

And the man who walked into the Cross Hall of the White House at 9 PM looked nothing like the man who had walked into the Easter lunch just hours earlier. His head was down. His steps were heavy and slow. His eyes were sunken, and the color was drained from his face. He was breathing so hard I thought there was a chance he might have some sort of medical emergency right at the podium. This was not a president preparing to lead. This was a man barely holding himself upright.

For nearly 19 minutes, he read from the teleprompter, struggling with it the entire time. He said “epic theory” before correcting himself to “epic fury.” He said “batter field” instead of “battlefield.” He had trouble pronouncing numerous words and at times appeared to repeat, almost verbatim, his own Truth Social posts from earlier in the week as though he were reading them for the first time. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer asked if there has “ever been a more rambling, disjointed, and pathetic presidential war speech,” and called Trump “completely unfit to be Commander-in-Chief.” Senator Chris Coons wrote simply, “No clear plan. Rambling, unmoored, unserious.” Representative Jason Crow said, “No American is going to bed tonight with a more clear picture of what the endgame is.” Raw Story reported that political analysts and observers were “left puzzled and confused by the address.” Ian Bremmer of Eurasia Group called Trump’s Iran statements and policies “completely incoherent.” And even his own advisers admitted to Axios that they don’t know what he intends to do next, with one senior adviser saying, “Nobody knows in the end what he’s really thinking.”

It was babbling. It was disconnected. And it was completely unbecoming of the President of the United States of America. He told us there was no inflation, which is not true. He claimed every fallen soldier’s family told him, “Please, sir, finish the job,” language borrowed almost word for word from Pete Hegseth, and we already know that at least one Gold Star father has publicly disputed that account. He thanked our “allies” Qatar, the UAE, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and Bahrain, countries whose leaders fund his family’s business interests, while never once naming the actual allies who have stood beside us through decades of mutual defense. He bragged about military victories as if he personally flew the missions. And he threatened to send Iran “back to the stone ages.”

But one line summed up the entire address: “Never in the history of warfare has an enemy suffered such clear and devastating large-scale losses in a matter of weeks. Our enemies are losing, and America, as it has been for five years under my presidency, is winning, and now winning bigger than ever before.”

He said five years. Because in his mind, all five of those years are one continuous reign. The Biden presidency doesn’t exist in his reality. The election he lost doesn’t count. But even more embarrassingly, he is trying to rewrite history and the reality we are living in right now. The economy is crashing. Fuel prices are surging. Everywhere you turn, people are talking about the economy and are gravely concerned. He held the country in suspense for an entire day just so he could say out loud how great he is.

And while the country was processing what it had just watched, the rest of the world was already responding. Because what Trump did today wasn’t just embarrassing for the United States. It was destabilizing for the planet.

Earlier in the day, he told Reuters he is “absolutely” considering pulling the United States out of NATO. He called the alliance “a paper tiger.” He said he was “never swayed by NATO.” And he said Putin already knows it, as though validating the assessment of a dictator who invaded a sovereign nation is something an American president should be doing or even thinking. He told the British newspaper The Telegraph that a withdrawal is “beyond reconsideration.” When asked if he would do it, he said, “Wouldn’t you do that if you were me?”

And to answer his question, no. No, we wouldn’t. Because NATO is the reason our children and grandchildren have not had to fight World War III. NATO was formed in 1949, in the ruins of a war that killed more than 70 million people. It was built on a single, radical idea: that an attack on one member is an attack on all. That idea has held for 77 years. It was invoked for the first and only time after September 11th, 2001, when our allies came to our defense. Not the other way around. They came for us. Soldiers from the United Kingdom, Canada, France, Germany, Denmark, and dozens of other nations deployed to Afghanistan, fought alongside Americans, and many of them never came home. To call that a “one-way street,” as Trump did today, is an insult to the dead and one of the most despicable things he has ever said.

And the man who is one of his biggest enablers, Marco Rubio, is the same man who, as a senator, co-sponsored the 2023 law that requires two-thirds of the Senate or an act of Congress to approve any withdrawal from NATO. He wrote the law to prevent exactly what Trump is now threatening to do. And now, as Secretary of State, Rubio is saying NATO’s “value” needs to be “reexamined” because allies refused to join Trump’s unjust and illegal Iran war. The man who built the guardrail is now helping tear it down. That is the corruption of this system in a single person.

And what Trump doesn’t understand, or doesn’t care about, is that NATO is not just a military arrangement. It is the architecture that prevents great power wars. It is the reason Europe has seen relative peace for nearly eight decades. It is the reason Russia has not moved on a NATO member. It is the structure that allowed the United States to project stability without having to wage wars. When you weaken NATO, you don’t make America stronger. You make America isolated and weak. You invite the very conflicts NATO was built to prevent. And you tell every adversary on the planet that the United States can no longer be relied upon.

Authoritarian leaders always weaken alliances before they consolidate power. They isolate their country, remove external checks, and surround themselves only with leaders who mirror their methods. Hitler pulled Germany out of the League of Nations in 1933, two years before he began his military buildup. Putin has spent decades trying to fracture NATO from the outside. Because without NATO, Putin’s Ukraine invasion spreads to neighboring countries.

And the consequences of Trump’s complete disregard for how any of this works are already here. Today, Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese delivered a rare national address to his country about the fuel crisis created by this war, the first such address since the pandemic. Albanese warned of “tough months ahead,” admitted that “no government can promise to eliminate the pressure this war is causing,” and urged citizens not to panic-buy fuel, asking them to take public transport so that farmers, miners, and tradespeople could keep working. Two Australian states announced temporary free public transit to ease the pressure. The same day, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer also addressed his nation, calling NATO “the single most effective military alliance the world has ever seen” and making clear the UK would not be dragged into Trump’s war. Two allied nations, on opposite sides of the world, both felt the need to address their people on the same day because of the chaos one American president has created. That is the isolation Trump is building. Not just from our enemies, but from the countries that have stood with us for generations.

And I want to say something to our international readers, because I know you’re watching. I know it looks like we’re not doing anything, or at least not enough. I know it feels like the American people are sitting by while our government dismantles the global order. And I understand why it looks that way. But please know that tens of millions see what is happening, and we are fighting back. What you’re seeing is not apathy. It is the helplessness of living inside a system that is being bent beyond recognition by people who do not represent the majority of us. We are not doing nothing. But we are not doing enough. And I think most of us know that. I personally believe we should all be in the streets. I think about that every day. And I think the day is coming when we will be. But until then, we use every tool we have. And the most powerful one we have right now is the truth.

A CNN poll released today confirmed what so many of us are already feeling. Trump’s approval on the economy has hit a career low of 31%. Two-thirds of Americans say his policies have worsened economic conditions. His approval on inflation dropped from 44% a year ago to 27%. Seven in ten say he doesn’t have a clear plan for gas prices. And the cracks inside his own base are widening. Among Republicans, strong approval dropped from 52% in January to 43%. Among Republicans under 45, his economic approval is down 23 points since the start of the year. One Republican respondent wrote, “Prices! Everything is so expensive. Between gas and grocery prices, we are poor.”

Those numbers are not just data. They are a map. They show us exactly where the path forward is. Because the people who are going to decide the midterms are not the die-hards who will never leave him. They are the people who voted for him in 2024 and are now watching their grocery bills climb and their gas tanks empty. They are the people who are against what’s happening but stayed home because they didn’t think their vote mattered. They are the ones who need to hear from us. Not from a headline, but from someone they trust. From a neighbor. A coworker. A friend. From posts like this one, shared at the right moment, reaching the right person.

Our goal is to take both chambers of Congress in November. The House and the Senate. Both are possible. Neither is guaranteed. If we fall short in one, we keep fighting. But both are within reach if we do our part. If we keep people informed, and if we keep showing them what is happening and reminding them that we do not have to live like this. That there is a clear path out of this darkness. That the numbers are already moving in our direction, and all we need is to reach the people who care but haven’t yet realized how much their voice matters. We know what we have to do, and I know we can do it. That is why I still have hope for America. And you should, too.

I’ll see you tomorrow,
Heather”