[Note: this post was supposed to go up yesterday. I aim at at least three and usually four substantial posts a day, but this week I have lost control of my schedule, my routines are shot, and I have been squeezed regarding my time, research and energy. A lot of what’s going on is important, some of it is lucrative, and all of it is exhausting, but that’s my problem, not yours. I am trying to get back on track.]

Dana Milbank is in a perpetual dead heat with Phillip Bump for the title of most unethical, dishonest and biased Washington Post columnist. He’s an embarrassment, frankly; the fact that Jeff Bezos allows him to continue to have a platform for his partisan attacks should be sufficient to assuage the anger of the Post’s almost entirely biased staff and readership. I decided to ignore Milbank years ago, because in addition to being intellectually dishonest, biased and none-too-bright, he’s a flaming asshole, as his most recent diatribe demonstrates.

Its title is “Trump is wrapping up 100 days of historic failure: America has seen ruinous periods, but never when the president was the one knowingly causing the ruin.” Punditry like this isn’t worthy of publication, and responsible journalistic publications, if there were such things anymore, would never permit such garbage to see the light of day except on an obscure blog—you know, like mine. If someone has made up his mind that everything a President says or does is wrong no matter what it is, that individual obviously is incapable of fair analysis: this essay might as well consist of 750 words-worth of “I hate him I hate him I hate him” repeated over and over.

To begin with, such a column. ethically conceived, must begin with a framework of evaluating a President’s “success” on that POTUS’s own terms. If a knee-jerk Democrat and progressive believes that every policy Trump supports is reprehensible, even Trump’s achievements are automatically failures through that jaundiced eye. The other obvious flaw in a column like this is the absurd assumption that the ultimate success of policies and measures initiated in a mere hundred days will be evident immediately. This has been a theme of the news media’s efforts to knee-cap Trump Presidency 2.0 the way it hobbled his first term. Democrats have adopted this tactic for morons from the beginning of Trump’s second term: on my Facebook page, the Deranged were quoting the Democratic talking point that the price of eggs was still high before January 2025 was through.

Naturally, Milbank doesn’t mention the most notable of Trump’s accomplishments: he’s exposed the hypocrisy and ethical bankruptcy of the Democratic Party for all to see, and, amazingly, has sent it on a trajectory to permanent minority party status. Stat maven Nate Silver claims that at this moment Rep. Ocasio-Cortez is the most likely Democratic Party nominee for the 2028 Presidential race, which shows that the party may be determined to relive the disaster of George McGovern’s run in 1972. The party continues to insist that half of the electorate is sexist and racist because they wouldn’t vote to put a babbling idiot in the White House. Trump’s policies have persuaded the Angry Left to behave like children in the U.S. Capitol, to weep for illegal immigrants and gang members, to encourage domestic terrorism, fight for government waste and corruption, and openly support censorship. From a political perspective, this is spectacular success for President Trump. The mask is off of the Democrats, and the face beneath is horrifying.

Milbank disqualifies himself throughout the screed.For example, he appeals to the authority of “his favorite historian,” Douglas Brinkley. Brinkley is so far from being an objective historian that I don’t think he qualifies as a historian at all: he’s the one that went on national television on election night 2016 to lie to viewers in order to rationalize Hillary Clinton’s loss. That was signature significance: nobody should care what Brinkley says or says he thinks. He’s a hack, just like Milbank.

Here are a few other rotten cherries I’ll pick from the cluster:

• “Even his few ‘successes’ amount to less than meets the eye. Border crossings are down from already low levels, but despite all the administration’s bravado, there’s little evidence of an increase in deportations.” Comment: The success is that finally the United States is sending the clear message, a vital one, that illegal immigrants are not welcome. That, all by itself, is fixing the problem. “Already low levels” is despicable spin, but typical for Milbank.
• “He has displayed gratuitous cruelty in the treatment of migrants and government workers alike” Comment: It’s cruel to enforce the law, and to reduce a bloated workforce. Sure.
• “He has upended global structures that kept the peace for generations. He has aligned America with the world’s despots.” Comment: No facts to support these claims, of course. As a Trump Hater, a reader is just supposed to believe Milbank. How can anyone say that the world has had “peace for generations”? How has Trump “upended” any “global structures”? How is America “aligned” with despots? How does Milbank distinguish between good despots and bad despots, especially since his party has been sucking up to China? Zelenskyy has used the war with Russia to settle in as a permanent head-of-state, suspending elections. He’s not a “despot” because the Left supports him.
• “He has slashed the federal workforce and impaired the government’s ability to collect taxes, administer Social Security and fund medical research, among many other things.” Comment: to statists like Milbank, cutting the bloated bureaucracy is a bad thing. He doesn’t know that Trump’s cuts  “impair the government’s ability to collect taxes, administer Social Security and fund medical research,” he just says so without evidence. “Among other things”equals “Yada yada yada.”
• “He has abused his power in startling ways, using the government for personal vengeance and retribution against perceived opponents, harassing law firms, universities and the free press with an authoritarian flourish” Comment: Milbanks is upset that Trump has learned from the obstruction he received during the first term and taken responsible measures to hobble the foes of democracy by separating them from levers of influence and power. Why should Hillary Clinton have security clearance, for example? As for “harassing” law firms, universities and the free press, all three have abandoned their professional standards to ally themselves with the totalitarian Left. Naturally Milbank can’t bring himself to be honest about that.
• “And he has left a large number of his countrymen angry and frightened.” Comment: A single sentence that proves Milbank’s astounding dishonesty. Those “countrymen” (it’s countrypersons, Dana) were told repeatedly by Milbank’s fellow propagandists in 2024 that Trump was literally Hitler and would begin sending progressives to concentration camps after declaring martial law. Now the same Axis agents are claiming that American citizens will be deported because a single illegal immigrant was sent to the wrong country. And in what world hasn’t every President who set out to change the opposing party’s policies left people “angry and frightened’?

The single valuable takeaway from Milbank’s hysteria is that President Trump will have to try to accomplish his agenda in the face of furious disinformation, bias and hate from journalists and pundits. Just like the first time.