‘Trumpenfreude’—the joy of a Trump voter’s misfortune. 

Hey Wilson, have you ever heard this word, “schadenfreude?” It means taking pleasure or joy from someone else's misfortune.

For example: If your mean boss got a flat tire in the rain and showed up at work soaking wet, you would have to rush to the restroom to laugh your ass off. Or if Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem—aka ICE Barbie—was at a burger joint with her grandchildren, and if someone swiped her designer handbag with $3,000 in it, and the Democrats in the Senate cloakroom were overhead saying, “gee, that's terrible,” followed by a lot of snickering.

So anyway, a Smart Bomb confidant—aka Cat Woman—came up with a word for Trump voters who are getting screwed by his policies and budget reductions and who are really going to take it in the shorts: “Trumpenfreude.”

In Trump's budget, 8 million people will get kicked off Medicaid, the heath care program for people requiring financial aid. As it turns out, most Medicaid recipients are in the southern states that overwhelmingly voted for Trump. “Trumpenfreude” makes “I told you so,” look like sympathy.

Can you really take pleasure when 30,000 farmers are left hanging because Trump put a freeze on $20 billion promised to them under the Biden administration's “Inflation Reduction Act?” And yes, heartland USA was all in for Trump's “Make America Great Again.”

Or what about the people in West Virginia, Mississippi and Alabama, who depend on AmeriCorps to fill gaps in education, job training and disaster response. Trump just cut $400 million in AmeriCorps grants. The list goes on and on. Trumpenfreude anyone?

The 10 Commandments in Schools. What Could Go Wrong?
Thank God the 10 Commandments are coming to schools in Texas—God knows they need them down there. The Republican-controlled Texas House has given preliminary approval for a bill that would require public schools to display in a conspicuous place a 16-by-20-inch poster or framed copy of The 10 Commandments (the King James Bible version, of course).

The 10 Commandments that Moses carried down from Mt. Sinai were written in Hebrew, but that's another story. Of course, there is this little thing called the First Amendment: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.”

Separation of church and state? Well, down in the Lone Star State they do things their own way—“Thou shalt not kill,” notwithstanding.

“We should be encouraging our students to read and study their Bible every day,” Republican state Rep. Brent Money said. “Our kids in our public schools need prayer, need Bible reading, more now than they ever have.”

Yeah damnit, they got to get them some religion—some good Christian religion. Well Wilson, you're right, we do kinda wonder if Texas legislators read The 10 Commandments before they voted. We'll probably never know.

Woke Propaganda Tool Sesame Street Gets New Life
Those divisive characters Kermit the Frog, Elmo, Cookie Monster, Big Bird and the rest of the gang at Sesame Street are so heinous that the Trump Administration cut their funding. The 55-year-old children's television mainstay was headed to the DOGE Dumpster. Like many other nonprofit organizations, Sesame Street didn't anticipate the federal funding cuts.

The grants had come through PBS, which has been targeted along with NPR by the Trump administration. The program, with its iconic Muppet characters, debuted in 1969 and has run on PBS since 1970.

HBO bought the production rights for $30 million per year. But the HBO Max streaming service dropped it recently. What a coincidence. Good riddance to those cute rascals who taught kids to count and spell and be nice to one another—the worse kind of misinformation.

“These cuts should sound alarm bells for anyone working at the intersection of education, race and poverty,” said Erica R. Williams. “The loss of Sesame Street—even partially—would widen the opportunity gap. The show’s accessibility through public broadcasting has historically filled learning gaps for children without access to preschool or structured early learning.”

Darn the luck, Netflix has picked up the show and we can expect young children to continue to be proselytized by the Marxist left that's always trying to make people's lives better. Big Bird lives!

Postscript—That's going to do it for another weird week here at Smart Bomb, where we keep track of Bruce Springsteen so you don't have to. Well Wilson, Springsteen blasted Trump last week at his show in Manchester, England.

He didn't mince words: “And in my country, they are taking sadistic pleasure in the pain that they inflict on loyal American workers, they are rolling back historic civil rights legislation that led to a more just and moral society. They are abandoning our great allies and siding with dictators against those struggling for their freedom. They are defunding American universities that won’t bow down to their ideological demands. They are removing residents off American streets and without due process of law are deporting them to foreign detention centers and prisons. This is all happening now.”

Characteristically, Trump had a cow and promised to investigate the rock icon: “This dried out ‘prune’ of a rocker (his skin is all atrophied!) ought to KEEP HIS MOUTH SHUT until he gets back into the country, that’s just ‘standard fare.’ Then we’ll all see how it goes for him!”

Then, Neil Young took on Trump: “Bruce and thousands of musicians think you are ruining America. You worry about that instead of the dyin' kids in Gaza,” Young said. “That’s your problem. I am not scared of you, neither are the rest of us.”

Springsteen just released a six-tack EP that includes his speech, “That America is currently in the hands of a corrupt, incompetent and treasonous administration.”

You gotta love it, Wilson, when the rock stars take the gloves off and say what needs to be said. Maybe you and the guys in the band can take us down memory lane with an oldie from Bruce and the E Street Band:

Born down in a dead man's town
The first kick I took was when I hit the ground
You end up like a dog that's been beat too much
'Til you spend half your life just coverin' up

Born in the U.S.A
I was born in the U.S.A.
Born in the U.S.A
“Born in the U.S.A.”—Bruce Springsteen