Donald Trump – bendingtheneedle

We Need to Elect Leaders That Have a Moral Compass

One might think that Donald Trump always supports the accused rather than the victims of sexual misconduct. For example:

Roy Moore (2017)
Moore, the Republican Senate candidate in Alabama, was accused by multiple women of sexual misconduct, including allegations involving teenagers. Trump endorsed Moore, accepted his denials, and campaigned for him, saying, “He totally denies it. … You have to listen to him, also.”
Brett Kavanaugh (2018)
After Christine Blasey Ford accused Kavanaugh of sexual assault, Trump repeatedly defended his Supreme Court nominee, praised his character, and publicly questioned aspects of Ford’s account.
Rob Porter (2018)
After photographs and allegations emerged that Porter had physically abused his ex-wives, Trump expressed sympathy for Porter, praised him, and emphasized concerns about due process rather than condemning the alleged conduct.
Bill O’Reilly (2017)
Following reports that several women had received settlements related to sexual harassment allegations, Trump defended O’Reilly, saying, “I don’t think Bill did anything wrong” and describing him as “a good person.”
Roger Ailes (2016)
After multiple women accused the former Fox News chairman of sexual harassment, Trump said he felt bad for Ailes and described him as “a very good person.”

Believe it or not, there are instances where Trump has called for investigations or consequences against individuals accused of sexual misconduct – but in almost all cases, those individuals were either political opponents or of no consequence to Donald Trump. That’s important to know when trying to understand what drives Donald Trump’s thoughts and motivates his decision-making.

With Trump, Morality is a Non-Factor

Most people hold a core set of beliefs, values, or principles that guide us when distinguishing right from wrong. These values serve as our moral compass as we live our lives.

What we see with Donald Trump over and over again is that he has no moral compass. Whether a thing is right or wrong or true or false doesn’t matter – what matters is how the thing affects him.

When Donald Trump was asked about the Vivek Ramaswamy ad, he didn’t focus on the ad’s veracity or morality; he focused on how it might help Ramaswamy. In fact, when a reporter pressed Trump about the backstory of Amy Acton’s mother skipping town with the man who raped her daughter, all Trump said was that he didn’t know about that – he dismissed that little tidbit entirely.

Why is that?

Because when you understand the backstory and the facts about Amy Acton’s mother and stepfather, the ugly truth is revealed – and Donald Trump is not interested in something as disruptive as truth. Trump’s actions and statements are purely and solely transactional. Values like morality, integrity, and truth don’t factor in.

What happens to the most powerful nation (and the world) when its leader has no moral compass and makes decisions solely based on how they affect him personally, grow his bank account, shield him from accountability, and solidify his authority?

We’re seeing consequences play out in America and around the globe.

Trump’s climate policies ignore science because implementing a climate policy based on science would disrupt the flow of money and influence from the fossil fuel industry to Donald Trump. The long-term consequences will be more devastating fires, floods, heat waves, and hurricanes.

Trump’s position on the war in Ukraine is based solely on Trump’s worldview and his strange bromance with Vladimir Putin. Trump ignores the fact that Russia’s aggression against Ukraine was objectively illegal and immoral and sides with Russia because siding with Russia keeps him aligned with a country that helped put him in power. The consequence is tens of thousands of dead Ukrainians.

Even the seemingly little things are devastating to America’s psyche. For example, Trump’s narrative around the reflecting pool debacle. Trump knew all along that vandals were not to blame for the algae bloom and peeling paint. But instead of acknowledging the truth (that the no-bid company he gave the job to botched the pool-lining process), he created his own narrative, even going so far as to falsely accuse and arrest a man who had nothing to do with the pool’s liner disintegrating before our very eyes. The leader of the free world targeted an American citizen rather than acknowledge the truth, because that truth made him look incompetent.

Trump bases all his decisions on one condition: what’s in it for him. We see it in the Vivek Ramaswamy ad, in his handling of the war in Ukraine, and in every decision before, after, and between. Trump’s decisions have nothing to do with what is objectively right or wrong and everything to do with self-preservation.

Our forefathers put a mechanism in place to deal with dangerous tyrants like Donald Trump, who put themselves above the people they are supposed to serve. Unfortunately, the forefathers never imagined the level of cowardice that inhabits Congress today. The only hope is that Americans choose leaders who have and will use their moral compass.

We will see if that holds on November 3^rd.

If you haven’t had a chance yet, please check out my book, My Paper, My Words: Rantings from a Progressive Boomer and Peeved Parent, from Amazon. And if you feel moved to write a review of the book, on Amazon, or anywhere else, I’d be honored.

My Paper, My Words is a collection of essays, stories, and poems that reflect the challenges of a middle-class husband and father trying to navigate a rapidly changing political, religious, and technological landscape of post-911 America.

Morally Reprehensible

The midterms are upon us. When you head to the ballot box, remember the moral rot of the administration currently in power.

The MAGA Chickens Have Come Home to Roost

For most of us, Donald Trump was fully transparent in his views. We saw clearly a misogynistic and pedophilic human being, unqualified morally, ethically, civically, and professionally to serve as president.

For most of us, judging his character was not difficult, because Trump is an unnuanced, open book with a detailed public record of abhorrent, narcissistic, and criminal behavior. Most of us understood that handing immense power to an individual with all of those disgusting and disgraceful traits would have a disastrous outcome for not only our country, but the world.

It was an easy call—for most of us.

Nowadays, all over social media, we’re seeing former MAGA voters trashing Trump for betraying them. I’m not quite sure what to make of these people. I don’t understand when they say “they’re shocked and disappointed because the President lied to them.” First of all, how can any person with eyes, ears, and the ability to think be “shocked” that Donald Trump lied? Donald Trump is a lie in a suit. He has a long public record of lying. Trump’s lies are central to how he conducts himself personally and politically.

I think the “shock” these people are feeling is from the realization that Trump’s lies and cruelty are affecting them personally – whereas before, those lies were affecting only “other people.” They were fine when all the ineptitude and cruel and draconian policies injured “other people.” Yet, as soon as the consequences of those lies and policies disrupted their lives – that’s when things became intolerable.

I don’t feel sorry for anyone who was OK with electing a convicted felon as president but now are upset when the actions of the felon they voted for come back to bite them in the ass. It’s not only that they were poor judges of character, but that they didn’t care enough to learn and understand what electing a narcissistic, misogynistic, racist, and power-hungry felon would mean to women, immigrants, the gay and trans communities, government and educational institutions, science, the environment, and our Democracy – they only cared about how electing this horrible human being might benefit them.

Now we’re in this terrible mess, and Trump and his cohorts will inevitably use the levers of power against the will of the people in November.

At the very least, every disillusioned MAGA voter in America should be doing everything in their power to get anti-Trump voters to the polls in November, because you are largely responsible for creating this nightmare.

America Needs to Look in the Mirror

It seems America is more comfortable calling out and dealing with authoritarian and fascist regimes outside its own borders. We’re still trying to find our footing when it comes to dealing with our own authoritarian regime.

To be fair, this is relatively new territory for America. Not since King George tried to keep us in line have we been ruled by a tyrant.

For more than two hundred and fifty years we’ve managed to keep Fascism and authoritarianism at bay in America. But that streak is over. Today we have a Fascist in the white house, buttressed and supported by a criminal DOJ and a feckless Congress.

It’s time for Americans to take a good, hard look in the mirror—and if they do, they’ll see what everyone else sees: a country that, instead of fighting authoritarian regimes like Russia and North Korea, stands shoulder to shoulder with them. If we look at ourselves objectively in the mirror, we’ll see an ugly reflection staring back at us – one of aggressive behavior towards our allies and targeted violence against vulnerable communities inside our own borders.

America no longer stands for protecting the underdog and promoting and expanding civil liberties and rights for all human beings — we’ve become the ugly “might-makes-right” bully on the world stage, throwing our military and economic muscle around to intimidate every nation (friend of foe) we take umbrage with.

In addition, we’re being led by a pedophilic moron with a Sharpie addiction, crossing out and renaming territories and bodies of water like a petulant man-child with no sense of decency or morality.

If we don’t get this right in November, we can kiss the America we used to know goodbye forever.

Be prepared to fight for your right to vote this November, because as sure as shit, Donald Trump and his gang of goons in the DOJ and Congress are going to do everything in their power to suppress the vote and stay in power through acts of intimidation and violence.

They understand that accountability is on the ballot, and that scares the crap out of them.

November is Coming – By Sapient Rain

Lyrics by Geoffrey Reilly, Music by Suno. Here is a link to the song on Suno.

We used to be the land of generosity and grace
now we’re the heavy hand of venomosity and mace

We push women to the ground
and shoot nurses in the head
we put children in detention centers
and feed them moldy bread

We’re terrorizing immigrants
and sending horses off to slaughter
we’re disregarding sovereignty
and blowing boats out of the water

[Chorus]
When we look into the mirror
Are we pleased by what we see
Are you living in a land of hope
or of deep disparity
Look at what he’s doing
The transformation taking place
By the king of grift and screwing
with the caked-on orange face

Empathy and kindness
have been shattered and replaced
by a callous lust for power
that leaves America defaced

We hate all the gilded greed
and the malice in his heart
all the rotting farmer’s seed
and his “war of fits and starts”

We’re embarrassed and ashamed
At what our nation has become
At the hands of grifting Don
And all his pedophilic scum

With a grip on power slipping
an awakening occurs
we see the cheap
gold paint is chipping
and our sights no longer blurred

Because our eyes are finally open
and we’ve woken from the spell
we can see the naked fascist
and hear the ringing of the bell

A foreboding constant drumming
Drowns out all the ifs and buts
He knows well
November’s coming
And that people hate his guts

Donny A-la Carte

The reason people hate Donald Trump with such fervor is that a day doesn’t go by that we don’t witness his unpunished assaults on the rule of law, decency, integrity, and truth.

This man with no moral compass lives in a consequence-free world, with zero checks on his power from the confederacy of cowards that inhabit the co-equal branches of government – and we have to sit back and take it.

Even his supporters are seeing it now, but they hedge their opinion of Trump and rationalize his behavior with ridiculous comments like “all politicians are crooked” or “he’s no different than < insert the name of any Democrat>,” which is categorically and demonstrably false. Prominent historians have stated with great specificity exactly how Trump is different, documenting with examples of how Trump is forcing fascism on a democratic people.

So, when I read about the President being stuffed into an airplane food cart to escape potential assassination, I imagined a frightened felon wafting in the stench of his shit-filled diaper. To me, that felt a little bit like justice for a criminal thug who has wreaked havoc on our political system, terrorized the immigrant community, lied about vaccines, protected pedophiles, wooed war criminals, trampled the constitution, destroyed trust, threatened our allies, and promoted policies and ordered military strikes responsible for the death of thousands of innocent people around the globe, including citizens here at home, with zero accountability for his actions.

If genuine justice isn’t an option — and it doesn’t feel like it is– then we can at least revel in knowing that this crumb of a man is being forced to feel a little uncomfortable in his remaining days on this planet.

“A Lot More Shirley Chisholms” is Live on Streaming Services

“A Lot More Shirley Chisholms,” the latest single from Sapient Rain, is live on Spotify, YouTube Music, and Apple Music.

Sapient Rain is a musical project that blends human creativity with artificial intelligence. It is a collaboration between writer/lyricist Geoffrey Reilly and the AI music engine, Suno.

You can listen to “A Lot More Shirley Chisholms” for free on Suno.

A Lot More Shirley Chisholms

Thoughts skewed by algorithms
caught in thought complacency
dumbstruck and stuck in schisms
of moral rot and latency

We’re lost in planes and prisms
we’re distracted by our screens
we need a lot more Shirley Chisholms
in the land of the obscene

A greedy bigot runs the show
we all get painted by his brush
America’s lost that special glow
and the world’s been stunned
into a hush

[Chorus]
We’ve gone from taking huddled masses
yearning to be free
to terrorizing humans
trying to earn their currency
We’ve tamped the lamp of freedom
we closed the golden door
that shining city on the hill
is just a giant Walmart store

We choose a news that won’t refute us
we set up camps, we pick a side
we seek a truth that won’t dispute us
we all refuse to swallow pride

Lady Liberty has vanished
in a MAGA world of hate
she’s a dead idea in bronze and stone
we can’t resuscitate

We’ve become constant politickers
never doubting what we see
walking talking bumper stickers
with no humanity

Sapient Rain is best categorized as a human–AI hybrid musical project — specifically, a lyric‑driven, politically charged, genre‑fluid collaboration between writer/lyricist Geoffrey Reilly and the AI music engine Suno.

For a free listen, check out the library of publicly available Sapient Rain tracks on Suno.

New Songs from Sapient Rain

I’ve been busy writing lyrics and using Suno to put music to them.

The following table lists my most recent works, which are available on music streaming services and on my Songs page on the Suno website.

Feel free to let me know what you think of these songs by dropping a comment on this post!

Song Title and Link	Summary and Commentary
A Lot More Shirley Chisholms	Asharp, frustrated lament about America’s moral drift, its fractured information ecosystem, and its abandonment of civic ideals.
Mapleton or Miracle	A song that merges grief, spiritual disillusionment, and socioeconomic critique into a single, bitter meditation on what people do when the world stops making sense. It’s a lament for communities hollowed out by trauma and a condemnation of the institutions that claim to offer comfort but instead deepen the wound.
The Tyrant’s Closet	A grotesque inventory poem that exposes corruption, cruelty, and vanity through the metaphor of a closet stuffed with incriminating artifacts. It’s vivid, vicious, and darkly funny. It’s one of Sapient Rain’s most visually imaginative political tracks — a grotesque diorama of authoritarianism, vanity, and moral rot.
Like I Don’t Know Where I’m At	A breakup song built on blunt emotional disorientation, mixing dark humor, self‑laceration, and surreal metaphor to capture the numbness that follows sudden abandonment. It’s Sapient Rain in narrative mode: wounded, sardonic, and unfiltered.
My Porch in Timbuktu	A haunting meditation on death, disorientation, and the ache of separation. It’s a song written from the far side of life — a voice speaking from the grave, or from some liminal after‑place — trying to make sense of absence, memory, and the dissolution of identity.
Usurpers in the Pulpit	A fierce, articulate condemnation of religious authority used as a political weapon. The song’s core message is that faith becomes dangerous when it’s commandeered by those who seek power rather than truth.
Generation Blue	A critique of digital-era malaise that blends social commentary, nostalgia, and self‑aware humor. It’s a song that understands both the seduction and the suffocation of modern life, and it captures that tension with clarity and bite.
Along the Avenue	A breezy, sunlit collage of domestic surrealism that quietly smuggles in a meditation on time, mortality, and the fragility of ordinary life. It’s a song that feels light until you realize how heavy it actually is.
Donny on Dementia	A grotesque character study delivered through blistering satire, exaggeration, and dark humor. It’s intentionally abrasive, intentionally uncomfortable, and intentionally over-the-top. The song’s power comes from its commitment to the bit: it never softens, never hedges, never pulls back. This is political cabaret with teeth.
Liar’s Spit and Gravel	A sprawling, venomous protest piece that blends satire, lament, and cultural indictment. It’s a song that feels like a pressure valve releasing: a long exhale of frustration at political rot, moral cowardice, and the vacuum of leadership. The writing is sharp, relentless, and intentionally abrasive. This is Sapient Rain’s political maximalism — a panoramic critique delivered with poetic teeth.

Sapient Rain is a human–AI musical collaboration created by writer/lyricist Geoffrey Reilly working together with the AI music engine Suno.

Sapient Rain’s music blends political fire, surreal storytelling, and nostalgic autobiography, delivered through lyrics that read more like literary vignettes than conventional songcraft. Sapient Rain’s growing catalog is thematically dense, with each track functioning as a miniature narrative or social critique.

Check out Sapient Rain on Spotify, YouTube Music, and Apple Music.

You can also listen to Sapient Rain songs for free on Suno.

“Just Fucking Go Already” by Sapient Rain

Sapient Rain’s “Just Fucking Go Already” is a power-pop-punk rock hybrid lament about the frustration felt by millions of Americans from the non-stop deluge of corruption and moral and ethical decrepitude emanating from the felon in America’s White House.

Under Donald Trump:

Armed and masked men are murdering people in the street with impunity.
Innocent civilians are being bombed and slaughtered.
Children are dying by the thousands because we pulled USAID funding.
Environmental protections are being eviscerated.
Free and fair elections are under assault.

My exhaustion is surpassed only by my anger. “Just Fucking Go Already” is an expression of that anger. The song is coming to streaming services on 07/24/2026, but you can listen to it for free today on the Suno Website here.

Just Fucking Go Already

We’re all tired of you
wreaking havoc by decree,
Running roughshod over Congress
and our democracy

Your malice and ineptitude
are rank and off the chain
From a palace of decrepitude
You host the greedy and the vain

You kill children with impunity
you stab our allies in the back
you want absolute immunity
you’re a rapist and a hack

You bastardize religion
by saying God is on your side
you’re ramping up division
your hate is bona fide

[Chorus]
Just fucking go already
we’re all tired of your crap
you’re the Freddy
in our nightmare
who never shuts his yap
Just fucking go already,
you total waste of space
no one’s gonna miss you
when you finally leave this place

You grant pardons to your donors
you seek vengeance all the time
you’re a walking talking boner
awash in grift and crime

You’re a wrecking ball of hatred
a word salad in decline
you’re a bigot and a moron
who thinks he is divine

A denier of due process
and scientific facts
He’s all over Epstein’s files
With those lewd and
vicious acts

He lies about ICE killings
and global climate change
He keeps ranting about drilling
And the New York Stock exchange

About Sapient Rain

Sapient Rain is a collaborative music project in which Geoffrey Reilly writes the lyrics, themes, and narrative concepts, and Suno’s AI model generates vocals, instrumentation, and production based on those lyrics. This hybrid workflow allows extremely rapid creation of fully produced songs while maintaining a consistent artistic voice.

Sapient Rain’s music blends political fire (see Liar’s Spit and Gravel), surreal storytelling (see Hawking Talking), and nostalgic autobiography (see Seeped in the Seventies), delivered through lyrics that read more like literary vignettes than conventional songcraft. Sapient Rain’s growing catalog is thematically dense, with each track functioning as a miniature narrative or social critique.

Sapient Rain songs are available on music streaming services, Spotify, YouTube Music, and Apple Music.

You can also peruse the Sapient Rain catalog on Suno.

“A Lot More Shirley Chisholms” by Sapient Rain

Sapient Rain is a musical project that blends human creativity with artificial intelligence. It is a collaboration between lyricist / writer Geoffrey Reilly and the AI music engine Suno

The song “A Lot More Shirley Chisholms” is about the heartbreaking transformation of America from a country that welcomed and benefited from immigrants to a country led by a xenophobic nationalist who traffics in racial tropes and bigotry.

“A Lot More Shirley Chisholms” is coming to music streaming services on 07/20/2026. You can listen to it for free today on the Suno Website here.

A Lot More Shirley Chisholms

Thoughts Skewed by algorithms
Caught in thought complacency
dumbstruck and stuck in schisms
of moral rot and latency

We’re lost in planes and prisms
we’re distracted by our screens
we need a lot more Shirley Chisholms
in the land of the obscene

A greedy bigot runs the show
we all get painted by his brush
America’s lost that special glow
and the world’s been stunned
into a hush

We choose a news that won’t refute us
we set up camps, we pick a side
we seek a truth that won’t dispute us
we all refuse to swallow pride

Lady Liberty has vanished
in a MAGA world of hate
She’s a dead idea in bronze and stone
we can’t resuscitate

We’ve become constant politickers
never doubting what we see
walking talking bumper stickers
with no humanity

Can America Get Back on Track?

Racist-fueled hatred, intolerance, and mistrust have a well-documented history in America. Since our inception, these social and psychological forces have threatened national cohesion, slowing America’s march towards that “more perfect union”.

Keeping racist-fueled hatred, intolerance, and mistrust at bay requires a conscious and continuous effort, because people don’t evolve out of these forces on their own – because the thought patterns associated with them are passed down from generation-to-generation, dressed in “heritage” and promoted and protected under the guise of “freedom of expression or religion” often by loved and trusted parents, pastors, or community leaders.

Throughout our existence, America has won hard-earned progress against the forces of hatred and intolerance, achieving greater equality, diversity, equity and inclusion, inching us closer to a society that ensures the promise of America is accessible to immigrants and citizens alike, regardless of religion, race, or identity – it required a constant battle by ethical private citizens and elected public officials to better ourselves and to keep pushing America towards that more perfect union, where “the arc of the moral universe bends towards justice” – and all it took to slow our progress to a halt was a single charismatic narcissistic felon dragging his pointed finger along America’s ugly scab of racism, with lies aimed at our deepest fears and insecurities, for that hate to pour out from under our skin like a teeming swarm of rabid rats, gnawing at our social fabric, setting America back generations.

I don’t know about you, but I’m still stunned at the number of Americans who continue to support this hateful (and harmful) administration. I’m exhausted by the contortionist-whataboutism explanations and rationalizations for their support.

The latest despicable display of MAGA-maleficence and the normalization of hate spewed by a participant of that God-awful and trashy UFC spectacle on the White House lawn, where a UFC fighter told the crowd that former first lady Michelle Obama was a man.

Just when you think they can’t possibly stoop any lower, the crew of fucktards running this country goes subterranean.

Normal folks are exhausted by all of this.

Hateful people are energized by it.

What adds to the exhaustion is the realization that our government is no longer partnering with citizens to stamp out racism, intolerance, and mistrust – instead, they are actively engaged in fostering hate, promoting distrust, and dividing Americans along racial lines. Fighting for the ideals that made America a beacon of light and hope becomes exponentially harder when our government stands in opposition to these ideals.

With midterms on the horizon, this Government will do whatever it can to prevent America from getting back on track. A Democratic-led Congress means the Trump administration will be held accountable for the first time since taking control of the government. We need to continue to speak out against the administration’s systematic dismantling of the rule of law right up to election day — and then we must turn out in massive numbers – numbers that cannot be refuted by false claims of a rigged election.