Once again, the American populace is treated to the intellectual equivalent of a landfill fire, courtesy of the man who treats the Constitution like a used napkin at a Mar-a-Lago buffet. The recent 'news conference'—a term used loosely here, as one might use the word 'gourmet' to describe a gas station hot dog—was less an exchange of information and more a desperate, sweating séance where the President attempted to summon his own relevance from the ether of a declining empire. The media, ever hungry for the clicks that desperation provides, circled the event like vultures over a dying rhinoceros, waiting for the inevitable stumble that would fuel another twenty-four-hour news cycle of performative outrage.

The first takeaway from this multi-hour excursion into the subconscious of a megalomaniac was the expansion of his so-called 'Board of Peace.' The name itself is a triumph of Orwellian branding that would make Big Brother blush. To the current occupant of the White House, 'peace' is not the absence of conflict or the presence of justice; it is the silence that follows the complete capitulation of one’s enemies. This board, ostensibly designed to mediate global disputes, is in reality a vanity project for a man who views international diplomacy as a series of lease negotiations where the other party doesn't speak the language of 'winning.' It is a bureaucratic sinkhole designed to house loyalists whose only qualification is their ability to nod in unison while the world burns. The idea that this administration could facilitate peace is as absurd as asking a pyromaniac to lead the fire department. But of course, the Right will hail it as a masterstroke of 'unconventional' leadership, while the Left will write fourteen-page white papers on its 'problematic' optics, and neither will realize that the entire thing is a hollow shell built of hot air and insecurity.

Then we have the perennial grievance: the Nobel Peace Prize. It is the itch he cannot scratch, the one gold-plated trinket that remains outside the reach of his tiny, grasping fingers. During the press conference, the President’s frustration boiled over like a cheap kettle. He spoke of the prize with the bitterness of a high school quarterback whose homecoming crown was given to the captain of the debate team. The absurdity here is twofold. First, the Nobel Peace Prize has long been a joke, a participation trophy handed out by a committee of self-important Scandinavians to people like Henry Kissinger or Barack Obama for simply existing in the vicinity of a drone strike. Second, the President’s desire for it is so nakedly transactional. He doesn't want peace; he wants the medal. He wants to see his name etched in gold, a final validation that he is, in fact, the 'best' at not being a warmonger, even as his administration flirts with every geopolitical disaster available. It is a pathetic spectacle: a man with everything, crying because he wasn't given a blue ribbon by people he claims to despise.

But the absolute nadir of this performance—and indeed, of modern political discourse—was the handling of Renee Good’s killing. To watch a leader take a human tragedy and reshape it into a monument to his own perceived victimhood is to witness the final death of empathy in the public square. He didn't speak of her life, or the loss felt by her family; he spoke of how the event reflected on him, how it justified his rhetoric, and how the media was using it to 'unfairly' target his genius. This is the hallmark of the modern grifter: the world is merely a stage, and every death is just a plot point in their personal biopic. The Left will posture with 'thoughts and prayers' and calls for systemic change that they have no intention of implementing, while the Right will use the tragedy as a cudgel for their latest culture war. Both sides treat the deceased as a statistic, a tool, or a talking point, while the man at the podium treats her as a footnote in his list of grievances.

The conference was described as 'rambling,' which is the media’s polite way of saying it was the incoherent barking of a man who has lost the thread of reality. But the media loves this. They thrive on the 'chaos.' They need the 'takes.' Without the orange-hued circus, the cable news networks would have to report on actual issues, like the crumbling infrastructure or the fact that most Americans are one medical bill away from indentured servitude. Instead, we get five takeaways from a fever dream. We get a play-by-play of a narcissist’s breakdown. The sheer length of the event was a psychological attack on anyone with a double-digit IQ, an endurance test of how much nonsense a human brain can process before it simply shuts down in self-defense.

This is the state of the union: a theater of the absurd where the actors are morons, the script is written in crayon, and the audience is too busy screaming at each other to realize the theater is on fire. It is exhausting, it is pointless, and it is exactly what we deserve for letting politics become our primary form of entertainment. We are trapped in a loop of narcissism and incompetence, where the only thing being 'served' is the ego of a man who thinks the world revolves around his golf handicap. If this is the 'Board of Peace,' I shudder to think what war looks like. Probably much the same, but with fewer cameras and more direct honesty about the destruction being wrought.