Op-Ed: Trump’s Failing Veins, Coca-Cola, And Burning Food

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In a week that perfectly captured the chaos of authoritarian decline, Donald J. Trump made headlines for three surreal and deeply telling reasons: his failing veins, his bizarre claim to have changed Coca-Cola’s recipe, and his administration’s decision to incinerate hundreds of tons of taxpayer-funded emergency food meant to feed starving people abroad.

First, the body betrays the man. Trump’s recent diagnosis of chronic venous insufficiency—where blood pools painfully in the legs due to poor circulation—might sound like a mundane health issue. But under the weight of his own policies, it reads like karmic poetry. This is the same man who, during both of his presidencies, gutted Medicaid, slashed healthcare protections, and tried to dismantle the Affordable Care Act. These are actions that have left millions of Americans one diagnosis away from disaster. Now his own blood refuses to circulate, even as he continues to block others from receiving care.

While his ankles revolt, Trump turned attention to his latest messianic claim: that he personally convinced Coca-Cola to return to using cane sugar instead of high-fructose corn syrup. The claim, unverified and absurd, plays directly into authoritarian fantasy where control over something as small as soda becomes a symbol of total dominance. It’s delusion dressed up as dietary reform, and yet another example of Trump rewriting reality to suit his own ego.

But perhaps most evil of all is the revelation that his administration destroyed more than a million pounds of lifesaving nutritional food. Foreign aid workers lobbied for weeks to save it. But in true Trumpian fashion, political optics took precedence over human lives. The food was burned and bulldozed, at a cost of over $100,000 to U.S. taxpayers, so Trump could send a message to his base that “wasteful foreign aid” was over.

This wasn’t about expiration dates. It was about exerting power through destruction. About proving that he can starve the world and still sleep at night. This is famine as flex, hunger as policy, and authoritarianism in a red tie sipping Diet Coke while the world burns.