Dictator Chic: From Covfefe and Parades to the Department of War

Introduction: The Age of the Unprecedented

If you feel like you have been living through a ten year fever dream, you are not alone. We used to think the crazy peaked when the leader of the free world tried to redirect a hurricane with a Sharpie or suggested we look into the benefits of drinking bleach. We thought the peak was a press conference held at a landscaping company between a sex shop and a crematorium. We were wrong.

The first term was the era of the Surreal, a time when policy was often secondary to the personality, and the chaos was delivered in 280 character bursts at 3:00 AM. It was a period defined by covfefe, paper towel tosses, and looking directly into solar eclipses. It felt like a reality TV show that had jumped the shark, but we were all stuck in the audience.

Then came the second term: the era of the Radical.

In 2025, the memes turned into mandates. The crazy became structural. We moved from Sharpie gate to the Department of War and the Gulf of America, from midnight tweets to the DOGE (Department of Government Efficiency) hacking away at Social Security. The man who once wondered if we could nuke a hurricane spent 2026 authorizing strikes on Iranian nuclear sites and trying to strike the 14th Amendment from the record on Day 1.

This zine is a chronicle of that shift. It is a look at the Greatest Hits of a decade where the word unprecedented lost all meaning. From the silly to the systemic, this is a record of the various crazy shit that defined the Trump years, and how we went from laughing at the absurdity to living in the upheaval.

Welcome to the timeline. Try not to look directly at the sun.

The First Term: The Greatest Hits of the Surreal

The Midnight Mystery: Covfefe

It was May 31, 2017, at exactly 12:06 AM. While most of the world was asleep, the President’s Twitter account fired off a fragment that would live in infamy: "Despite the constant negative press covfefe." For six glorious hours, the tweet stayed up. Instead of just saying, "Oops, I meant coverage and fell asleep," the White House leaned into the chaos. Press Secretary Sean Spicer told a baffled press corps, "The president and a small group of people know exactly what he meant." This was the birth of a strategy. It showed that the truth did not matter as much as the distraction.

The Man Who Stared at the Sun

On August 21, 2017, every scientist in the country spent weeks hammering home a single instruction: Do not look directly at the eclipse without protective glasses. Naturally, the President walked out onto the Truman Balcony, squinted, and tilted his head straight back to gaze at the burning orb with zero eye protection. As he stared upward, a White House staffer on the lawn was actually heard shouting, "Don't look!" It was the ultimate "I do what I want" hit. If scientists say the sun will burn your retinas, staring at it becomes an act of defiance.

The Map That Changed Itself: Sharpie gate

In September 2019, Trump tweeted that Hurricane Dorian was likely to hit Alabama, despite the National Weather Service stating clearly it was nowhere near the danger zone. A few days later, sitting at the Resolute Desk, Trump held up an official map where the cone of uncertainty had been crudely extended with a black Sharpie to include a corner of Alabama. It looked like a toddler had tried to help with the homework. He spent nearly a week defending a literal marker drawing, even as the storm actually hammered the Carolinas.

The Paper Towel Free Throws

In October 2017, while Puerto Rico was reeling from Hurricane Maria without power or water, the President arrived at a relief center and began picking up rolls of paper towels and flicking them into the crowd using a basketball shooting motion. While people were literally dying from lack of medical supplies, the optics of shooting hoops with cleaning supplies felt incredibly detached. He even told Puerto Ricans they should be proud they had not faced a real catastrophe like Katrina.

The Cleaning of the Lungs

In April 2020, after hearing how bleach can kill the virus on surfaces, the President suggested scientists look into hitting the body with a very powerful light or doing an injection of disinfectant, almost like a cleaning. The camera caught Dr. Deborah Birx sitting off to the side with a face that was a mask of frozen, professional horror. Within hours, the makers of Lysol had to beg people not to drink their products, turning a global pandemic into a Tide Pod challenge for adults.

The Landscaping Gaffe Heard Round the World

In November 2020, the campaign announced a big press conference at the Four Seasons. Instead of the luxury hotel, reporters pulled up to Four Seasons Total Landscaping, located in an industrial area between the Fantasy Island Adult Bookstore and the Delaware Valley Crematory. Rudy Giuliani delivered an impassioned speech about voter fraud while standing in a gravel parking lot surrounded by bags of mulch. It was the moment where the first term ended not with a bang, but with a press conference next to a porn shop.

The Second Term: The Radical Rebranding

The Day One Firestorm: Executive Order 14160

On January 20, 2025, Trump signed an order declaring that children born in the U.S. would no longer be considered citizens if their parents lacked permanent legal status. He targeted not just undocumented immigrants, but those on student or work visas. It was a move designed to collapse 125 years of legal precedent in a single afternoon. By April 2026, the case had reached the Supreme Court, with Trump becoming the first sitting president to attend oral arguments in person just to see if his plan would stick.

The DOGE Takeover

The Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, was staffed by 20 something tech workers from Elon Musk’s companies who were granted administrator level access to Treasury and Social Security databases. By late 2025, they were using algorithms to identify redundant employees, leading to the sudden firing of thousands of civil servants via automated emails. It captured the moment where the line between a private corporation and the United States government completely dissolved.

The Birthday Parade: Army 250

On June 14, 2025, Trump finally got his massive military spectacle. Thousands of soldiers and M1 Abrams tanks crushed the D.C. streets, requiring 16 million dollars in road repairs alone. While the Pentagon insisted there would be no Happy Birthday singing, the crowd chanted We love Trump as he sat on a fortified reviewing stand. It was a dictator chic backdrop that turned a military anniversary into a 79th birthday rally.

The Department of War and Other Names

On September 5, 2025, Trump renamed the Department of Defense back to the Department of War, arguing that defense was a woke word. Within hours, workers were physically swapping out signs at the Pentagon. He followed this on January 20, 2025, by ordering federal agencies to stop using the name Gulf of Mexico and start using the Gulf of America. To enforce it, the White House barred news outlets from briefings if they refused to use the new term.

The Death of the East Wing

In 2025, the administration demolished the historic East Wing to make way for a 300 million dollar, 90,000 square foot ballroom. The project involved clear cutting two acres of the White House grounds and sending decades old oak trees into woodchippers. While the administration called it an expansion, the plan was simply to build a glass walled party space capable of hosting 999 people for massive galas.

The High Stakes: From Epstein to Protests to Operation Epic Fury

The Epstein Files - The Terrific Guy Paradox

Long before the second term and the Department of War, there was the 1990s social circuit. Jeffrey Epstein was a frequent guest at Mar-a-Lago, and the footage of them laughing together at parties became a permanent part of the digital archive. In a 2002 interview, Trump famously called Epstein a terrific guy and a lot of fun to be with, adding that it was even said he likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side.

The "Crazy" Part: When Epstein was found dead in a jail cell in 2019, the relationship shifted from social curiosity to a massive conspiracy engine. Instead of distancing himself, Trump famously wished Ghislaine Maxwell well during a White House briefing while she was awaiting trial. By the time the second term rolled around in 2025, the administration used its new powers to seize control of the investigation files, placing them under the classification of the Department of War. Critics argued this was not about justice, but about holding the client list as a ultimate form of political leverage over the global elite.

The No Kings Movement

By March 2026, nearly 9 million people flooded the streets wearing No Kings symbols, crowns with red X marks through them. The movement was sparked by Trump firing leaders of independent agencies and replacing them with loyalists. The administration responded by invoking the Insurrection Act, deploying active duty military units to restore order in what Trump called lawless, loser cities.

The Greenland Purchase 2.0 and Arctic Blockade

In 2025, the Greenland joke became official policy. When Denmark said no, Trump suggested a real estate swap, offering Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands in exchange for the island. By late 2025, he ordered the Department of War to increase patrols around Greenland and threatened to pull all U.S. troops out of Denmark unless American companies were given exclusive mining rights. He called it a beautiful piece of ice waiting for a developer with vision.

The U.N. Eviction Notice

Trump formally proposed that the U.N. move to Geneva to make room for a luxury hotel and condo complex on the East River site. He framed the eviction as a way to save New York City from foreign bureaucrats who do not pay parking tickets. When the U.N. Secretary General refused to leave, Trump threatened to cut off the building’s water and power, leading to a standoff that required the National Guard to intervene.

The April 7th Ultimatum and the Taco Pivot

In the spring of 2026, Trump gave Iran until 8:00 PM on April 7 to reopen the Strait of Hormuz or face a strike that would decimate the country. On the morning of the deadline, he posted that a whole civilization will die tonight. Then, with just hours to spare, he pulled a taco move and suspended the attack for two weeks. The man who was ready to blast Iran into the Stone Ages at 10:00 AM was talking about a revolutionarily wonderful peace deal by 6:00 PM.

The Final Word: Surviving the Simulation

So, here we are. We have officially reached the part of the timeline where the President treats the end of the world like a season finale cliffhanger. We have seen a decade where the national weather map was corrected by a marker and the national budget was handed over to a guy who wants to put microchips in our brains.

But if there is one thing this zine proves, it is that we are still here. We are the generation that lived through the Great Paper Towel Toss of 2017 and the Great Iranian Pause of 2026. We have developed a collective immunity to the unprecedented.

The hope, if you can find it under the layers of gold leaf, is that absurdity has a shelf life. You can only rename so many buildings and threaten so many civilizations before the sheer weight of the crazy starts to buckle. We have survived the Sharpies and the Department of War. We have learned to laugh at the Four Seasons Total Landscaping of life while holding our No Kings signs high.

The world did not end on April 7, even though a Truth Social post promised it would. Instead, we got a two week extension on the apocalypse. That is the Trump era in a nutshell: a series of terrifying deadlines that usually end in a press release and a rebranding. Hang in there. The simulation might be glitching, but at least the memes are top tier.