The Broken Left

President Trump’s continued success has decimated the left, and now they’re grasping at straws

POLITICS: By Walter Curt

Over the long weekend, the professional outrage industry produced its Mona Lisa: a Politico headline that read—without irony—“Trump denies he’s dead.” It wasn’t a parody account, and it wasn’t the Onion. It was a straight news item with three bylines, the kind of team you usually assemble for a corruption scandal or a war, not for confirming that the president is still among the living. In saner times, that would have been handled with a phone call and a minute of common sense. But common sense left the building around the time the left turned “wishcasting” into a beat.

The rumor-mill excuse this time was that the president hadn’t been on camera for a day or two. That’s it. Not a doctor’s note, not a report, not a family statement. Just the digital equivalent of staring at the White House feed like it’s the groundhog and if he doesn’t pop out on schedule we get six more weeks of conspiracies. Meanwhile, the “corpse” was reportedly golfing and then telling reporters he’d been “very active.” Translation: the man took a breath from the cameras, touched grass, and the internet set itself on fire.

The funniest part? While the morbid crowd demanded “proof of life,” Trump was posting on Truth Social in between swings, doing exactly what he always does—flooding the zone with updates and jabs. At one point he even posted, in that unmistakable all-caps flourish, that he had “never felt better.” This is not the behavior of a deceased man, unless the afterlife includes push notifications. And yes, that’s on the record.

Of course, the broken-brain brigade didn’t stop at “Is he dead?” They rolled out the usual menu: body doubles, Walter Reed closures, and “enhanced” photos that looked like they’d been edited on a toaster. It takes a special kind of certainty to declare a stroke based on a pixelated screenshot and a rumor thread. It also takes exactly zero evidence, which is coincidentally how much they had. Local outlets and international press alike swatted the whole thing down once he was seen out and about, but by then the narrative had its own momentum—because that’s what happens when people prefer dopamine to data.

Politico’s pièce de résistance crystallized the moment: three reporters, one headline, and a nation told—solemnly—that the president is not dead. To their credit, they even chronicled the online ghoulishness and admitted the speculation was driven by people who desperately wanted the opposite to be true. But it’s telling that this industry now treats the president’s routine absence as a Watergate sequel. The same press that could watch Joe Biden disappear to the Delaware shore for stretches and call it “a lid” now insists that two quiet days mean we need a wellness check and a forensic team. (Yes, that’s a joke—if you believed the memes, Biden “died” of beach cancer sometime in year two and kept returning like high tide. Our media betters never noticed.) The double standard is so obvious it no longer even needs explaining; it just needs a laugh track.

It would be easier to take the pearl-clutching seriously if it stopped when facts arrived. But it never does. Even after the weekend nonsense, the president reappeared at work and made actual news—announcing the relocation of U.S. Space Command to Alabama—and the response from the rumorsphere was not “ah, so he’s fine.” It was to move the goalposts and psychoanalyze his gait. That’s not journalism; it’s tarot with bylines.

Let’s be honest about what we’re seeing. This isn’t concern; it’s coping. The left’s old playbook—investigations, impeachments, indictments, late-night monologues—hasn’t delivered the fantasy ending they rehearse every morning in the mirror. The economy isn’t collapsing on cue, the border fights are being waged on policy terrain they don’t like, and the regulatory bonanza is getting rolled back piece by piece. When you can’t beat the man at governing, you start praying to actuarial tables. That’s why “Is Trump dead?” trends the moment he skips a photo-op. It’s the last refuge of a movement that can’t imagine persuading a country it doesn’t bother to understand.

Meanwhile, the president seems to relish their confusion. (He would.) There’s a kind of slapstick to it: the more they insist he’s a hologram, the more he pops up in the Oval Office, at the podium, or on the front nine—followed by a fresh string of posts that read like a drumroll. If this were a Marx Brothers routine, he’d be Chico counting the headlines: “Trump denies he’s dead… again!” And somewhere a junior editor would be assigning a third rewrite, just to make sure.

The lesson here isn’t about health; it’s about health of mind. A healthy political movement disagrees, argues, wins some, loses some, and builds for the next inning. A broken one stares at grainy photos, invents strokes, and needs a newsroom SWAT team to confirm that the guy sending Truth Social posts is not, in fact, broadcasting from beyond the veil. If we’ve reached the point where “alive” is a multi-sourced scoop, maybe the diagnosis isn’t about Trump at all.

So yes, Mr. President, we see you. We also see the media complex that has turned its professional skepticism inward and its partisan wishes outward. If the press wants a headline worthy of three reporters, try this: “Trump denies surrendering to the narrative.” He’s not going to give them the obituary they keep drafting. And judging by their latest masterpiece, that may be the one thing they can’t forgive.