The longest decade of our lives

Donald and Melania Trump

(REUTERS)
D. Earl Stephens
November 01, 2026 | 08:09AM ET

So now that I’ve told you how I see the critical midterm races going on Tuesday, I want to take a few minutes to tell you what I think about you …

There’s no reason to duck.

When I typed earlier this week that, “the past two years have been the longest decade of my life,” it seemed to resonate with many of you good people, who have been brave enough to care about their faltering country since the orange devil came along dragging his racist stench behind him.

When America did the unimaginable two Novembers ago, and voted to put this bigot and proven enemy of our country back in our White House, it was just too much to process for any sane person who really does care about the United States of America.

I became dizzy as I watched the results roll in on Election Night 2024. The PTSD from the 2016 November Nightmare washed over me as the numbers relentlessly poured in from those must-have districts dotted across the country, and were delivered in a gory shade of blood-red.

I’d seen this horror movie before, and at 11 p.m. CST, I turned my TV off and sat quietly in a complete state of shock.

It was official: We could no longer trust far too many of our friends and family, who believed a narcissistic, racist, America- and woman-attacking maniac belonged in the most powerful job in the world inside our White House.

I didn’t stir until 4 a.m.

I considered how I would tackle the next four years, while rewinding what had gone so terribly wrong the previous four. When I had worn myself out and the smoke stopped seeping from my ears, I drifted off.

When I emerged from those three-hours of hard-fought sleep, the shock had still not subsided, and I typed a very raw, and righteous piece, HURT, for all of us:

“If the majority of my country is OK with an America-attacking, vulgar racist, whose only true talent is the ability to somehow always go lower, I find it terribly, terribly sad and wildly dangerous.
This does not make me a better or worse person than anyone else, it just makes me, me, and I am very proud and comfortable with that. And if you stood for what is good ... and right … and decent, you should be plenty proud of yourselves, too.”

Three days later, anger had replaced my melancholy, and I had a message for Trump and his morally busted voters:

“To Trump supporters I say this: If you have somehow twisted yourself into some self-righteous pretzel to justify your vote for a violent, racist, election-denying fascist YOU are the problem in this country, not us. This has happened many times before over the centuries with your type to no good end. If you would read even ONE history book your party wants burned you’d be forced to understand this, and maybe even deal with it. Oh, and here’s a dirty, little secret: The elites who run your abhorrent party fully know all this, and are using you for their terrible devices. As long as you support this, there is nothing you can say that I will ever listen to. You are a complete moral wreck. A mess. A five-alarm fire. You say you want cheaper gas and eggs, but fawn over the horrible man and circumstances that helped lead to their high cost in the first place with his subhuman response to a once-in-a-century pandemic that killed hundreds of thousands of us needlessly. Even wearing masks to help prevent the spread of this invisible killer was too much to ask of you. Seriously, go straight to hell.

I reintroduce those pieces today, because I think it is instructive to see where we’ve been, and what we’ve been through. It was going to be a long four years, but we had each other to lean on, and as long as we stayed together, we would continue to be a force to be reckoned with.

After all, we have been right about everything since the initial blast on Nov. 8, 2016 ...

We told anybody brave enough to listen to the truth who the grotesque Trump was, and what he was capable of, and on Jan. 6, 2021, when he leveled the worst attack on our Capitol since 1812, he proved us right.

He rallied his racist Orcs, turned them loose in our capital city, and did nothing for three-plus hours but root for his attack’s success. He didn’t bat an eye when they came for his Vice President or the Speaker of the House, or while overmatched law enforcement officers were kicked into the curb and beaten with flag poles. Finally, when order was slowly being restored and the attack had failed, he took to the airways and grudgingly ordered his attackers to go home, but not before telling them that he loved them …

He told them that he loved them.

That nothing was done about the attack still burns holes in our stomachs. We voted for change in 2020, yes, but also voted for justice that was never delivered.

I will speak for myself here, but I will never forgive Joe Biden or his attorney general for this. There is nothing you can tell me that will quash my rage. For four years, I wrote endless pieces, and implored Merrick Garland TO DO SOMETHING, because if he didn’t the lawless, dead-inside Trump would emerge stronger, and set his beady eyes on getting even with the patriots who had the audacity to stand up against him and his odious party.

Nothing was done, and once again we were right: The 300 lb. cockroach survived and emerged from the corner of his garish country club in Florida to finish us off.

When Biden welcomed Trump back to our White House in front of that crackling fire just one week after the 2024 election, I never wanted to lay eyes on him again. He pardoned his family, and left the rest of us to fend for ourselves.

I shake typing that, I really do.

Since that sinful day, we have done what we can, while every awful thing we said would come to pass — and more —has played out in front of our tired eyes.

We watched as Trump attacked our government and gorged himself with our money …innocent people were rounded up and murdered in our streets by masked men … troops were sent off to die for his profit … landmark voting legislation was incinerated by his bought-off Supreme Court … our air, water and animals were purposely poisoned just to make another buck …

But we are still standing.

We did not submit.

We rolled out of the rack each day, rallied, and did what little we could do to keep the fire burning, and hope alive.

We are the true patriots in America and would have voted every single Republican out Tuesday whether gas prices were $2 a gallon or $5 a gallon ... Whether we were in some dangerous, idiotic war with Iran or not … Whether our healthcare benefits were in jeopardy or not …

We understand right from wrong.

We are the people who are not ready to move on from Donald Trump’s attack on our country January 6, 2021, and all the harm he has done to this nation, and never will be.

This is not about the price of eggs, it is about the terrible price we will continue to pay, if we can’t put down this fascist regime.

We will not quit fighting, raging, and working until freedom rings, because by God, THIS WILL HAPPEN.

A slow death is too good for Trump. I want to see him beaten. I want to see the fear in those beady eyes when he has nowhere to run and nowhere to hide but that dirty country club corner.

This can only happen if we prevail at the polls on Tuesday.

We have been through a helluva lot, because we have allowed ourselves to feel all of it. We have not backed down. We have not tuned it out. We have served our country like very few generations before us, by fighting a dangerous, homegrown enemy of America who aims to end us.

No matter what happens Tuesday, and I do believe we are in for a historic night, I want you to know this, my fighting friends:

You were on the right side of the fight.

I can pay you no higher compliment.

Now let’s go win this thing.

D. Earl Stephens is the author of “Toxic Tales: A Caustic Collection of Donald J. Trump’s Very Important Letters” and awarding-winning journalist, who headed newsrooms, and worked as a reporter in the newspaper business for decades. You can find all his work here.