It's hard, as each new week goes by, not to get distracted by all of the chaos emanating from Washington. This week, we're going to begin by connecting a few dots that really need connecting, and (so far) haven't gotten enough attention (in our humble opinion).

Before Donald Trump became president again, both he and his MAGA choir spent a lot of time decrying "censorship" and wailing about their "free speech" being somehow suppressed. This was largely due to social media sites policing their allowable content, and occasionally removing objectionable or flat-out false posts and even kicking people off their platforms.

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We aren't even three weeks in to the administration of President Elon Musk, and already he has instituted an ideological purge the likes of which America has not seen since the time of Senator Joe McCarthy. Except this time they're not rooting out communists (or suspected communists, or communist sympathizers) but instead just "people they don't like." Or maybe "people who have pissed off Elon" -- that's probably closer to the reality of it.

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President Donald Trump and his "first buddy" Elon Musk have moved swiftly to precipitate more than one constitutional crisis during the first few weeks of the new administration. The two are running roughshod over the basic separation of powers in American government, aided and abetted by the Republicans in control of Congress. Which leads to a serious question -- how long will it be before they just wash their hands of all pretense of power and formally hand it all directly to Trump?

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This is what having "no adults in the room" looks like. This is what a president surrounding himself with yes-men (and a few yes-women) while firing anyone who tells him "No" truly looks like. Donald Trump is president, but it now appears he doesn't just want to be a king, he wants to be an emperor. He wants to revive the American empire worldwide by the addition of several properties (by force, if necessary). His new bright idea was unveiled last night -- he now wants to own the Gaza Strip. It wouldn't become the 51st American state, but more like the 54th (behind Canada, Greenland, and the Panama Canal, assumably). This idea is so bonkers it staggers the imagination just to even consider it. But, because the president of the United States introduced it, people now have to think about it.

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Secretary of State Marco Rubio made his first visit abroad this week. He went to Panama and reportedly pushed them to do something about the Panama Canal, in order to somehow appease President Trump's obsession with it. So far, they've refused to do so. Perhaps this is all just as performative as Trump's now-you-see-it-now-you-don't tariffs on Canada and Mexico -- perhaps Trump will find some way to declare victory and move on to other strange obsessions. Panama could, for instance, slightly lower the rates for ships to pass through their canal, either just for American ships or for all ships. That would probably be enough for Trump to move on.

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We begin today with an apology and a solicitation for donations. Our apology is for perhaps not doing as thorough a job of reviewing the past week as we normally do, because last night instead of doing our homework we instead watched the FireAid benefit concert for the victims of the recent Los Angeles fires. If you missed it, at least check out the fireaidla.org site, where you can donate to the cause if you wish. It was quite a show, and well worth watching (note: this review contains only a partial list of the performers...):

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I begin today by doing something I don't believe I've ever done before. Perhaps this will prove to be uninformed, since I have no real way of knowing if someone else has previously said this (or something very similar). I could just be repeating it without realizing it's not my own original thought, I will fully admit. But in watching the immediate responses to the crash of a commercial jet and a military helicopter over the Potomac River in Washington D.C., I fear I may have stumbled upon a basic natural law (at least, in this country, at this particular time). Call it "Weigant's First Law of Finger-Pointing," I suppose. Here it is:

There is no tragedy that is so awful that it cannot be made much worse by politics.

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If President Donald Trump's agenda gets stalled in any way, it's going to happen because of dissent within his own Republican ranks. And one week in to Trump's second term, cracks are already appearing in the MAGA facade. How deep or wide those cracks may become is still an open question, but it certainly is interesting to see them appear so quickly.

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In just about every presidential election, the political punditry tries to frame what happened in it in the easiest possible way, sometimes pinning a win or loss on a certain demographic slice of the electorate (remember "soccer moms" and "NASCAR dads"?) and sometimes putting the focus on a single oversimplified issue. One of the big themes in this regard for the last election was the price of eggs. True to form, they even slapped a cutesy label on it: voters were angry about "eggflation."

Which is why we sincerely hope that Donald Trump is asked about it as often as possible -- say, once a week, at a minimum -- now that he is president again. Because for all his promises, eggflation is going to be a very tough problem for him to solve.

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Today is a federal holiday to honor the memory of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Junior. As I sometimes do, I thought today would be a good day to both reflect on King's life and what he stood for, while reading some of his own words.

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