When America’s Jaw Breaks, It’s Pretty Obvious Why

It’s Boxing Day and even though fighting isn’t what the day is about, I still want to talk about it.

Last weekend, you could almost hear Jake Paul’s jaw cracking as Anthony Joshua threw a right hook into his bearded face in the sixth round of their Dec. 20 bout. Seen by everyone with a Netflix subscription, the MAGA-fueled pompousness of the YouTube star-turned-fighter shattered and fell off his face like a glass pitcher hitting the floor after being knocked off by a cat who didn’t care that he did it.

The fight was nothing for Joshua, who is  anticipating a real fight with Tyson Fury and perhaps an eventual title shot against current heavyweight champion Oleksandr Usyk. But this ain’t about pugilism. This is about Paul being knocked on his ass after swearing up and down he’d defeat Joshua after his win over a 60-year-old Mike Tyson in 2024.

The real issue is how symbolic this is when it comes to where politics in America is headed. Think about it: an influencer jerk who fashions himself as an All-American boy – buttressed by the far-right politics that have commandeered the political narrative over the past year – getting the shit kicked out of him by a Black man (a Black brit at that) who was actually laughing as he beat his ass.

Yes, Paul lost partly because of his arrogance, but mostly because there was no way in the world he was going to beat a real, experienced, time-tested fighter with only hubris in his gloves. This is what seems to be happening to the right wing as the cracks spread and could soon widen into gaps.

What Did He Expect?

First, at long last, the deadline came for the release of the Jeffrey Epstein files, which chronicle the encounters of the pedophile rapist and his wealthy friends with underage girls that he solicited. Among the names in the files, Donald Trump. The passages of what took place are so disgusting that I won’t even repeat any of them here. If you want to read about them, first take some anti-nausea medication then click here. The president is squarely in the middle of the mix with these and as much as the Justice Department is trying to redact information and stall so that they can redact more, it’s just making him look more guilty.

That is making his handlers in the administration increasingly nervous because while these files validate the existing 34 counts of felony that he was already convicted of but found a way to delay the sentencing while in office, it erodes his credibility. Despite claiming to have a bolstered economy, lower food prices, low unemployment, and a victorious war on immigrants, things are really fucked up and his poll numbers show it.

While ICE agents hunt down grandfathers who have spent decades working and providing for families,  only to be held them in internment camps before deportation or being banished to foreign gulags, Trump has not done much to garner popular support. That is, with the exception of white supremacists for whom he can do no wrong. The reality is his base is beginning to flounder because they realize, like Paul, what a glass jaw he has. He was all talk and now they realise it.

Take Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, someone who has made a career of backing Trump, spewing conspiracy theories, and generally saying a bunch of stupid shit. In something that wasn’t on my 2025 bingo card, she decided to side with the victims of Jeffrey Epstein and criticize Trump for not releasing the files, leading to not only a political split between them, but her decision to resign from Congress and not even serve out her term.

She’s one of 25 members of the body who are retiring or not seeking reelection in the 2026 midterms, leaving ambitious Democrats chomping at the bit to run for their seats. It is normal for the party not in power to gain seats in the midterm elections, but the one coming in November has the potential to be historic in the way MAGA Republicans and anyone with a connection to them could be booted out, provided that Trump does not either cheat or refuse to allow power to change hands. Which is a possibility because he’s that despicable.

Anyway, there is growing anger with Trump in Congress because his administration is falling over itself to protect him from being implicated with Epstein and doing an awful job to the point of Democrats and Republicans are readying themselves to impeach Attorney General Pam Bondi for it.

But the country itself is sick of this man and he should have expected it. Farmers whose deals with foreign buyers have collapsed because of tariffs, leaving them near bankruptcy, are saying that a $12 billion aid package announced by Trump will not be enough to bail them out. Many of these are the farmers who backed him, probably believing, among other things, that everyone in the country would be forced by presidential mandate to say “Merry Christmas” again. But I digress.

It seems there’s a coming storm that may be so severe, it could break everything, and that’s what will happen when Affordable Care Act (ACA) subsidies expire in less than a week, causing health insurance premiums to increase for 22 million Americans. Some likely in your own families. According to KFF Health News, with the enhanced premium tax credits gone, the cost of health insurance for a family of four with an annual income of $40,000 would increase to $840 per month. That income is above the Federal Poverty Level, but would be considered low income in most American cities. In short, it’s money most Americans cannot spare.

So what’s Trump’s response? He either wants to talk insurance companies into lowering their prices – something that won’t happen, or he wants to use money coming in from tariffs to fund a $2,000 payment to individuals so they can buy insurance on their own. For people who weren’t paying attention in class, tariffs are a tax that merchants pay for imported goods. Those costs are passed to consumers.

There is no guarantee that tariff revenue would be enough to give everyone $2,000 and it wouldn’t matter if it did because tariffs cost Americans between $1,600 and $2,600 a year per household. So nobody is gaining anything and the $2,000 would likely be considered taxable income so we’d wind up in the hole. Meanwhile, people who have real health issues to take care of and spend money to the tune of $4.9 trillion in America have to wait and see what will happen to the healthcare marketplace. Why? Because the Republicans hated Barack Obama for his signature presidential accomplishment and would do anything to extinguish it – even allowing Americans to die of preventable diseases as if they were in the “shithole” countries that Trump decries.

The Dildo of Consequences

It is unclear how many people will suffer as a result of ACA subsidies collapsing, or businesses and whole community economies going under because migrants are terrified to leave their homes, or because food prices are jacked up as a result. It is also unclear how many of those who suffer voted for Trump. But given more than half of all those who cast ballots did vote for him, that means many people who are taking gut punches thought Trump would be their saviour. But what they got was the Big Ugly Bill, which will likely only serve to disenfranchise them.

This means people who voted for him will lose their health care.

This means people who voted for him will lose their businesses and farms.

This means people who voted for him will be unable to pay their bills because of a stagnant job market.

This means people who voted for him will not be able to pay for increasing rents and will be unable to obtain mortgages to buy homes.

Only thing I can say to that is: Thoughts and prayers, muthafucka.

I’ve heard it said more than once that “the Dildo of Consequences rarely arrives with lubrication.” To put it in more Ice Cube-esque fashion, people who thought Trump would be the answer to their prayers are now getting fucked with a broomstick and “No Vaseline.” My apologies to those offended by rectal analogies, but you get the picture.

People swore that Trump would save the country from sinking into a pit of sin fueled by abortion rights and LGBTQ people existing along with immigrants living in the country with an agenda of fueling drug traffic while eating cats and dogs. It’s now becoming obvious that they were fine with Trump making the lives of people they hate miserable as long as they weren’t affected. But now that they are, they are complaining that somehow they didn’t realize what would happen, despite him saying nearly word for word what he would do.

Expect passages like this to continue for the foreseeable future.

A Semiquincentennial Slap in the Mouth

Fifty years ago, we celebrated the bicentennial in the shadow of Vietnam and the Watergate scandal. The country was a remarkably different place. Most young people could still afford to buy homes with their earnings. Food prices were still reasonable. We had far fewer students going into debt to pay for their educations. But that Ronald Reagan was trying to become president was the omen few of us could have understood at the time. We didn’t know the hell’s gate that man opened.

This coming year marks the 250th Anniversary of America’s founding. As part of the celebration, Trump says he’s going to have a UFC match at the White House as he constructs a very ill-planned ballroom, kinda like the Roman emperor Nero had all kinds of stupid, wasteful events at the Domus Aurea in the 1st Century A.D.

It will all be symbolic of just how far he has dragged this country down in the course of a year. A year of accomplishing nothing and creating chaos, while taking no accountability for it.

Personally, I’ll be celebrating the 50th anniversary of Stevie Wonder’s “Songs in the Key of Life,” arguably the greatest album of all time. It remains to be seen if there will be much more to celebrate given the future Trump & Co. have left for us. We can only hope that the resilience of Americans will become its true patriotism.

If the Joshua/Paul fight showed us anything, it’s that performative blathering will leave you with a broken jaw. Right now, it’s becoming more likely that the people who thought they would benefit from having “Mr. MAGA” as president are going to wind up sitting on their butts looking up at the arena lights and wondering in a daze…what happened?

Madison Gray is a New York City-based writer and editor whose work has appeared in multiple publications globally. Reach out to him at madison@starkravingmadison.com.