So what did I miss?

Ten months ago, I went on a sabbatical of sorts. The Washington Post Opinions section, my home for the previous 16 years, was dismissing its liberal columnists. Even before this disaster, I had concluded that, after a decade writing about the Trump era, I needed a mental health break.

I therefore moved to the Post newsroom, where I set off on a new exploration of how we might reconnect with nature and restore our humanity. I loved it — and I will continue to write about my misadventures on the old farm I’m rehabilitating in Virginia.

But I increasingly missed political writing, and many readers urged me to return to the fray. So I leaped when I heard that Robert Allbritton was building a new publication that would cover local Washington news and sports while expanding the national political offerings of NOTUS. I’m refreshed and ready, and when The Star launches the first week of June, my political column will return.

During my time in exile, I unplugged from politics as much as possible. Now, as I reacclimate to my native habitat, I’m experiencing a Rip Van Winkle effect. My first impression: Nothing has changed. My second impression: Everything has changed.

Donald Trump is still governing with the same signature blend of bluster, grift, bumbling and authoritarian aspirations. But if the president hasn’t fundamentally evolved over the last 10 months, we have. The biggest difference between now and then is that the country and the world are no longer cowering and no longer as susceptible to his flimflam.

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In the weeks before I disengaged last June, I wrote about Trump bombing Iran, brushing off Americans’ economic worries, hatching new schemes to enrich himself, abusing his office to go after political opponents and producing a series of bizarre statements that led people to question his cognitive functioning. His administration engaged in so much bungling that a headline atop one of my columns asked: “Could incompetence save the Republic?”

And what have I seen since I’ve reengaged over the last few weeks? Well, Trump has been bombing Iran, brushing off Americans’ economic worries, hatching new schemes to enrich himself, abusing his office to go after political opponents and producing a series of bizarre statements that led people to question his cognitive functioning. Specifically, he has attacked the pope, portrayed himself as Jesus and threatened that “a whole civilization will die tonight.”

As for competence, he has lately parted with three Cabinet members: his attorney general (botched handling of the Epstein files), homeland security secretary (botched immigration crackdown) and labor secretary (alleged affair with a subordinate and personal use of government funds). Still proudly serving the American people are Trump’s FBI director (who is disputing The Atlantic’s report of “conspicuous inebriation” and “unexplained absences”), defense secretary (who seems to have done Bible study with Quentin Tarantino) and health secretary (who apparently has an interest in raccoon penises).

It’s enough to make me want to join the Treasury secretary for a few Straits of Vermouth — shaken with an Isthmus of Gin.

Trump has arguably become even more vainglorious and dangerous over the last 10 months, demolishing the East Wing of the White House, slapping his name on the Kennedy Center and the U.S. Institute of Peace, sending the Marines and National Guard into American cities and dispatching ICE to Minneapolis, where federal agents terrorized the citizenry and killed Renee Good and Alex Pretti.

But any claims that he has lost his marbles start with the faulty premise that he had a full collection in the first place. The man I see today — with his let-them-eat-cake thoughts about inflation, his self-dealing, his extra-legal instincts and his penchant for buffoonery — is very much the same man I saw 10 months ago.

Back then, Trump was dismissing the idea that Americans would feel pain from his tariffs, saying, “Children will have two dolls instead of 30 dolls.” Now, he’s dismissing the pain of high gas prices (“They’re not very high.”); high housing costs (“We have other things we’re pushing that are bigger, and right now more important.”); and shrinking federal assistance (“We’re fighting wars. We can’t take care of day care.”).

Back then, Trump was being showered with a $400 million “flying palace” from Qatar to be used as his Air Force One, approval of a new Trump Tower and golf course by Vietnam, and $5 million super-PAC contributions given in exchange for one-on-one conversations with him. Now, Trump’s IRS is in talks to settle a $10 billion lawsuit brought by Trump, who wants compensation from his own government for the leak of his tax records during his first term.

Back then, Trump arranged for himself a Bastille-Day-style parade, with a massive show of military weaponry to celebrate the Army’s 250th birthday — and by coincidence his 79th. Now, Trump is planning an “Arc de Trump,” complete with an enormous, winged Lady Liberty and a pride of golden lions, to tower gaudily over the Lincoln Memorial and Arlington National Cemetery.

Back then, Elon Musk’s DOGE operation, which had promised to cut federal spending by $2 trillion, ended up producing cuts of $9 billion — while increasing red tape. Now, we’re learning that, despite Trump’s campaign pledge to deport 15 million to 20 million people and the mass disruption caused by Immigration and Customs Enforcement, ICE managed to deport only 442,637 in fiscal year 2025 — about 171,000 more than in the previous year.

Back then, Trump was trying to lower interest rates by calling Fed Chair Jerome Powell “not a smart person,” a “stupid person,” “too-late Powell” and a “FOOL.” Now, Trump’s Justice Department is harassing Powell with a dubious criminal investigation, and Trump is threatening to fire him if he remains on the Fed’s Board of Governors after his chairmanship — even though Powell’s term runs through January 2028.

Back then, the administration demonstrated its competence by producing: a homeland security secretary who liked to dress up in full tactical gear but didn’t know what habeas corpus meant; a 19-year-old known as “Big Balls” who played a major role in the DOGE effort; a White House trade adviser who promised “90 deals in 90 days” but negotiated only two; a “Make America Healthy Again” report that appeared to be full of AI hallucinations; a list of “sanctuary jurisdictions” containing places that were not actually sanctuary jurisdictions; and an attempt to impose tariffs on an island inhabited by penguins but no people.

Now, Big Balls is gone, but the first lady is still on hand. Melania Trump, apparently without the knowledge of her husband, called reporters over to the White House to complain about unspecified “false smears” connecting her to Jeffrey Epstein — a baffling statement that only served to kindle interest in what these smears might say.

Still, the most erratic figure in the administration remains the man at the head of it. At a Turning Point USA rally last week in Phoenix, Trump boasted, twice, that he banned “transgender mutilization,” whatever that is. He once again announced that “we will pass the great health care plan,” although he gave no indication it has advanced beyond the concept-of-a-plan phase.

He complained that “it doesn’t make sense” that he’s facing a grim midterm election because “I’m doing the best job.” For example: In this time of war and high gas prices here on Earth, he is delivering on his promise to provide Americans with more information about extraterrestrial life. Trump told the crowd that his administration would soon release “very interesting documents” about UFOs. Perhaps he hadn’t heard that JD Vance had already spilled the beans, disclosing that space aliens are in fact “demons” launched into orbit by Satan.

This week, in a CNBC interview, Trump asserted that he would have won the Vietnam War “very quickly” — although he’s having trouble enough putting an end to what he called a “little excursion” in Iran. Trump also dubbed Hakeem Jeffries a “low IQ person,” extending to the House minority leader an epithet he has frequently bestowed on Black Democrats: Kamala Harris, Al Sharpton and Reps. Maxine Waters, Jasmine Crocket, Ilhan Omar and Al Green.

This all tracks closely with the Trump behaviors I was covering in the weeks before my departure from politics last year: confronting the South African president in the Oval Office with images of a fake mass grave that Trump apparently thought was real; proclaiming that Joe Biden had “Stage 9” cancer; dropping an f-bomb on the White House lawn; telling Tehran’s 9.7 million residents to “immediately evacuate”; talking about Al Capone and “trophy wives” in a West Point commencement speech while wearing a MAGA cap; and spending 45 minutes admiring and extolling the “magnificent” flagpoles he installed at the White House.

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But if Trump is still very much Trump, the world he inhabits has become far less impressed with his shtick.

When I went into the wilderness last June, the proportion of Americans disapproving of Trump hovered around 50%. In an NBC News poll released Sunday, disapproval had jumped to 63%, including 50% who disapprove strongly. Other polling shows that Trump’s support among young men and Latinos, thought after the 2024 election to be evidence of a major political realignment, has shriveled.

Democrats, though also unpopular, have prevailed in a string of special elections and have a strong lead in the polls ahead of November’s midterms. Millions of Americans took to the streets to protest against Trump in “No Kings” rallies in June and October last year and again in March.

Trump’s erratic behavior has 48 percent of Americans, according to an Economist/YouGov poll from last week, believing that he has suffered cognitive decline (only 32 percent believe he hasn’t). And a number of leading MAGA figures have turned on him. Candace Owens recently called for invoking the 25th Amendment, labeling Trump a “genocidal lunatic” and saying “we are beyond madness.”

Trump responded that Owens is “Really Dumb and mentally ill!” — but the disillusionment with Trump is widespread among the MAGA faithful. At the Turning Point rally, Trump confronted empty seats and a lukewarm reception, just three days after Vance was heckled at another Turning Point event.

Courts have rejected Trump’s vengeful prosecutions of his critics, including James Comey, Letitia James and six members of Congress, while a senior career prosecutor withdrew from the investigation into John Brennan because she doubted the credibility of the case. Even the Trump-friendly Supreme Court has checked his overreach on tariffs and using the military to police Americans — and is expected to do the same on his attempt to rewrite the Constitution’s birthright citizenship clause.

Trump’s ideological friends overseas, meanwhile, are distancing themselves from him — or paying for their friendship. Voters ousted Hungary’s strongman, Viktor Orban, after Vance and Marco Rubio both flew to Budapest to campaign for him and Trump repeatedly endorsed him. That followed electoral setbacks for other right-wing populists in France, Italy and the Netherlands, while far-right parties in Germany and elsewhere are running from Trump. “We need to keep our distance,” France’s Marine Le Pen reportedly told her party last week.

U.S. allies are finding new strength to defy Trump. Before I left the political beat last year, NATO’s secretary-general, Mark Rutte, referred to Trump as “daddy.” Now NATO allies, after refusing to join the attack on Iran, are meeting without U.S. participation and discussing plans for European security that don’t involve the United States. (Trump brands the military alliance “absolutely useless.”)

And in Canada, Prime Minister Mark Carney informed his people on Sunday that Canada must disconnect from the United States: “Many of our former strengths, based on our close ties to America, have become weaknesses — weaknesses that we must correct.”

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Carney’s call to cut ties with the U.S. came just two days after Trump’s commerce secretary, Howard Lutnick, said this of Canada at a public forum: “They suck.” Lutnick’s spokesperson helpfully clarified that Lutnick meant “Canada sucks off” from the U.S. economy.

I can’t imagine why that didn’t assuage Ottawa.

What really sucks, of course, is that we have an administration telling a stalwart ally of two centuries that they suck. It sucks, too, that we have a president who, as Peter Baker recently recounted in The New York Times, “wanders off into odd tangents — an eight-minute ramble at a Christmas reception about poisonous snakes in Peru, a long digression during a cabinet meeting about Sharpie pens, an interruption of an Iran war update to praise the White House drapes. He has confused Greenland with Iceland and more than once boasted of ending a fictional war between Cambodia and Azerbaijan, two countries separated by nearly 4,000 miles.”

No doubt, such lunacy is here to stay as long as Donald Trump is president. And it would be foolish to claim that the danger he poses has subsided. But the political environment does feel more hopeful now than it did when I went into exile 10 months ago. The nation and the world, it seems, have got his number.

It’s good to be back.

Dana Milbank recently joined NOTUS after 26 years at The Washington Post.