None of This Is Normal: A Documented List of Things We Cannot Allow to Become Ordinary
Let’s take a step back from the daily avalanche for a moment.
Because one of the most dangerous things that can happen in a moment like this one is normalization. The slow, grinding process by which extraordinary things become ordinary through sheer repetition. The way outrage fades not because the situation improved but because people simply ran out of the energy to sustain it.
So here is a list. A documented, verified, sourced reminder of things that are happening right now that are not normal. That have never been normal. That should not become normal no matter how many times they occur or how many other things compete for attention.
None of this is normal.
It is not normal for a president to travel to China for a high-stakes diplomatic summit and fill his delegation with tech company CEOs — Elon Musk was invited — while simultaneously his Defense Secretary was back in Washington canceling a 4,000-troop NATO deployment to Poland without notifying Congress, blindsiding the Army, and leaving troops and equipment that were already on the ground to come home. The co-equal branch of government responsible for authorizing military force found out about it in a hearing. The Republican chair of the House Armed Services Committee said he was "not happy" and that there had been "no statutory consultation." That is not normal.
It is not normal for the director of the FBI to respond to a published report about his alleged drinking habits by filing a $250 million defamation lawsuit against The Atlantic and the reporter who wrote it — and then, while that lawsuit was pending, to be reported by MS NOW to have ordered polygraph examinations of more than two dozen current and former members of his own security detail to find who had been speaking to journalists. Kash Patel denied ordering the polygraphs to target press leaks. What is not in dispute: The Atlantic subsequently reported that Patel travels with and distributes personally branded bottles of Woodford Reserve bourbon engraved with "Ka$h Patel FBI Director" and the FBI seal, with his preferred dollar-sign spelling of his name. No one has been able to produce photographs of any previous FBI director doing the same. Trump then publicly joked about Patel getting "too much publicity" at a law enforcement dinner. That is not normal.
It is not normal for a president to spend late-night hours repeatedly posting accusations of treason against former presidents on social media, resharing content from anonymous online accounts pushing conspiracy theories, calling a former president "the most DEMONIC FORCE in American politics," and demanding the arrest of his political opponents — while a war is actively being waged, a NATO alliance is fraying, and gas prices are above $4 a gallon. Snopes verified 55 posts in three hours on the night before a China diplomatic summit, allowing a maximum of 5.5 hours of sleep before meeting Xi Jinping. The Daily Beast found Trump got eight or more hours of sleep on only five nights in the entire month of April — during an active war. That is not normal.
It is not normal for a president to visibly fall asleep during public events. Video of what appeared to be Trump dozing at a White House ceremony circulated widely in May. His own generals excluded him from the command room during a sensitive military rescue operation in Iran because his impatience and temperament were assessed — by the people running his war — as threats to the mission. That is not normal.
It is not normal for a president to personally attack members of the media when they ask him questions he doesn’t want to answer. When New York Times correspondent David Sanger asked on Air Force One what purpose another bombing campaign against Iran would serve after 38 days of strikes had not produced the political changes Trump said he wanted, Trump called him a "fake guy," said his journalism was "sort of treasonous," and then said "I actually think it’s treason." Treason is a capital offense under federal law. The president applied the word to a reporter doing his job. That is not normal.
It is not normal for the Secretary of Health and Human Services to stand at a White House maternal health event and declare — as Robert F. Kennedy Jr. did this week — that "men had twice the sperm count as our teenagers do today" and that this constitutes "an existential crisis" for the country. Kennedy has also claimed that "an American teenager today has less testosterone than a 68-year-old man" — a statement multiple reproductive health specialists have called misleading or unsupported by available data. Dr. Mehmet Oz, head of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, used the same event to inform the gathered audience that "1 in 3 Americans are under-babied." Meanwhile the MAHA report released by HHS contained citations to studies that did not exist. That is not normal.
It is not normal for a president to repeatedly brag about his performance on cognitive screening tests — describing them as impressive, challenging, things he "aced" — when those tests are specifically designed to detect severe cognitive impairment and are not considered medically remarkable for people with no symptoms of decline. Bragging about passing the Montreal Cognitive Assessment is the cognitive health equivalent of bragging about passing a breathalyzer. The bar is whether you have dementia, not whether you are intellectually gifted. 59% of Americans now say they believe Trump lacks the mental capacity to lead the country, according to a Washington Post/ABC/Ipsos poll. 36 physicians and mental health professionals from Harvard, Columbia, Tufts, and George Washington University entered a formal statement into the Congressional Record on April 30th saying he is mentally unfit for office and calling for his removal "with the greatest urgency." That is not normal.
It is not normal for judges being considered for lifetime federal appointments to refuse, during confirmation hearings, to answer whether Donald Trump lost the 2020 presidential election. This is not a complicated question. It has a documented answer. It was adjudicated in more than 60 courts, confirmed by Republican secretaries of state, certified by Republican governors, and verified by Trump’s own Attorney General. Nominees for lifetime judicial appointments are refusing to state a verifiable historical fact on the record. That is not normal.
It is not normal for a president to publicly say he is not concerned with the financial struggles of American citizens. Trump said of Americans’ economic situation: "I don’t think about it." He said this in the context of ongoing tariff disruptions and economic uncertainty. That is not normal.
It is not normal for a president to continue claiming the economy is "better than ever" and in a "golden age" when essentially no economic metric supports that claim. 2025 was one of the worst years for job creation in recent memory. Inflation has risen to three-year highs. Gas prices are above $4 nationally due to a war he started. Consumer confidence is historically low. Unemployment hit a four-year high. The stock market has been volatile. The administration’s own tariff policies were struck down by the Supreme Court. Real wages for working Americans are being compressed by the same prices Trump claims don’t exist. That is not normal.
It is not normal for a president to justify an ongoing war — one he repeatedly claimed would be over in six weeks — by comparing it favorably to Vietnam, Iraq, and World War II. "We were in Vietnam for 18 years. We were in Iraq for many, many years. I’ve been doing this for six weeks," he told reporters. The war with Iran is now approaching its third month with no exit strategy, no defined objective that hasn’t changed, no congressional authorization, and no clear definition of what winning means. That is not normal.
It is not normal for the president’s hands to appear, in photograph after photograph across weeks and months of public events, to be heavily covered in what multiple observers have described as thick concealer over visible bruising and discoloration — while the White House simultaneously claims he is healthier than any president in history. The White House has attributed the marks to chronic venous insufficiency, aspirin use, and frequent handshaking. Independent physicians who reviewed photographs told CNN and other outlets that the bruising pattern raises questions that a transparent health disclosure would address. A Walter Reed medical examination is scheduled for May 26th. His last physical described him as in "excellent health." That is not normal — not the bruising, not the concealer, and not the gap between the visible evidence and the official characterization.
It is not normal for a president’s country to be in an active war that has driven inflation, spiked gas prices, killed 13 Americans, and damaged global standing — while that president attends golf courses virtually every weekend, commissioned a ballroom renovation, proposed a triumphal arch in Washington, and ordered the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool painted a new color. George W. Bush gave up golf for the duration of the Iraq War, saying it was wrong to be seen on a course while families received casualty notifications. Trump was on a golf course the weekend after the Iran strikes began. That is not normal.
It is not normal for the majority party in Congress to have completely abandoned any meaningful exercise of its constitutional role as a co-equal branch of government. The War Powers Act 60-day deadline passed on May 1st with no vote. The $10 billion IRS lawsuit-to-slush-fund arrangement was announced with no congressional action. The Poland deployment cancellation blindsided Republican committee chairs. The 1,500 January 6 pardons generated almost no Republican response. The seizure of the Touska generated no authorization vote. Congress has functioned, in practice, as the body Steve Bannon compared to Russia’s Duma — present, visible, and compliant. That is not normal.
It is not normal for a president to operate personal revenue streams — a branded Bible, a branded phone (deposits collected, delivery unconfirmed, terms saying no guarantee of delivery), a meme coin, a social media company, real estate deals with foreign governments, dinner access to the president at Mar-a-Lago for $1 million a plate — simultaneously with exercising the powers of the presidency over the same industries and governments paying into those streams. Trump’s financial disclosures show more than 3,700 stock trades in the first quarter of 2026 — over 40 per day — in companies including Nvidia, Microsoft, Boeing, Meta, and Goldman Sachs, all of which have significant dealings with his administration. His net worth has grown by over $2 billion since returning to office. That is not normal.
And it is not normal for a president to fire his attorney general — in part, according to CNN and multiple other sources, because he was frustrated she hadn’t investigated and prosecuted enough of his political opponents — and replace her with the man who served as his own personal criminal defense attorney. Todd Blanche, who spent years representing Trump across multiple federal criminal cases, is now the acting Attorney General of the United States, running the Justice Department that was investigating his former client. Blanche said at a press conference that nobody knows why Bondi was fired "except for the president." The Bondi firing also came as she was about to be deposed by Congress over the Justice Department’s handling of the Epstein files — an investigation that Trump’s own inner circle had been frustrated she was not advancing aggressively enough. That is not normal.
None of this is normal.
Not a single item on this list would have been treated as routine under any previous administration of either party. Every one of them would have generated weeks of congressional hearings, sustained media coverage, and serious political consequences in any previous era of American political life.
They are not generating those consequences now. In part because there are too many of them. In part because each new one displaces the last. In part because the institutions designed to respond have chosen not to.
The appropriate response to that is not to become accustomed to it.
The appropriate response is to keep saying, loudly and specifically: this is not normal, this has never been normal, and we will not pretend otherwise.
So consider this a reminder.
Filed for the record.
To be continued.
