Jimmy Kimmel delivers the opening monologue of the 2024 Oscars awards show in Los Angeles.

In light of the recent suspension of late-night host Jimmy Kimmel and the president’s threat to strip broadcast licenses from any networks that criticize him, I’ve decided I greatly admire Donald Trump and wholly believe he is Making America Great Again.

While that opinion might fly in the face of everything I’ve ever written about Trump, shut up. This is a column about looking forward, not looking back to past errors, or to a time when I was suffering from woke-mind-virus-induced brain fog.

I see clearly now. And as someone with a mortgage and two kids in college, it’s clearly in my best interest not to foolishly criticize a president whose genius I’m not fit to comprehend.

Trump smartly suggests ridding the world of his critics

Aboard Air Force One on Sept. 18, Trump handsomely said of U.S. television networks: “They give me only bad publicity or press. They’re getting a license, I think maybe their license should be taken away.”

My formerly liberal self would’ve raised some stupid point about the First Amendment and noted that silencing dissenting views is Page 1 in the authoritarian’s handbook. That now-vanquished version of myself might have incorrectly called Trump a sensitive, thin-skinned buffoon whose fragile ego shatters at the slightest critique. But that was before I realized the First Amendment had become modifiable.

The new and improved version of me has to learn how to type while clapping at the always-correct things Trump is doing and saying.

President Trump is amazing – and if you can't see that, you're fired

I’m assuming this is what the people want. I mean, President Trump, according to President Trump, is incredible and has turned America into the hottest country in the world. So who am I to question someone so wildly beloved, as long as you ignore polling, which I no longer believe in because I hope to keep receiving a paycheck.

I once used this space to make jokes about the president and hypocritical Republicans. But now that I’ve learned jokes are a fireable offense, I realize how unfunny I’ve been. Shame on me. Just because a person acts in contradiction to his or her stated beliefs – like by clamping down on free speech after years of claiming to be a champion of free speech – does not make that person a hypocrite.

And just because the Merriam-Webster dictionary defines "hypocrite" as “a person who acts in contradiction to his or her stated beliefs or feelings” doesn’t mean I have to trust a liberal dictionary and risk having the government pressuring my employer to fire me.

No, I’m going to give the American people what President Trump tells me the American people want: uncritical adulation of the government.

Surely most Americans want the media to laud the president 24/7

Readers, I’m sure, will never tire of me telling them grocery prices are at an all-time low, despite what they experience at the grocery store.

Phrases like “Trump was right to fire the cast of ‘The View’ and replace them with his own children” and “Liberals should be grateful they get free trips to reeducation camps” will resonate with the audience far more than the critical, fact-based slop I’ve written in the past.

Yes, this is the way. And I’m proud to play a small part in the lavish-Trump-praise industry formerly known as the news media.

I just hope the president himself reads some of my new pro-Trump takes and feels pleased by them. Like any good journalist, I will gladly amp up my admiration of his flawless and powerful presidency if he wants.

Heck, I’ll do anything, as I’m sure full subservience is what the public wants. Where shall I kick myself, sir? In the groin area, perhaps? It shall be done.

Meet the new pro-Trump columnist, not the same as the old columnist

I am a journalist transformed, sir. I am at your service. My sense of objectivity is entirely dependent on your whims. Consider me not the Fourth Estate but YOUR Estate. Let my words be the comfortable pillow you rest your magnificent and perfectly tinted head on.

This is the world you demand, the world in which critics like me get in line – or else.

Time for the public to see what that’s really going to look like.

Follow USA TODAY columnist Rex Huppke on Bluesky at @rexhuppke.bsky.social and on Facebook at facebook.com/RexIsAJerk

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Why this anti-MAGA liberal is now pro-Trump | Opinion

Reporting by Rex Huppke, USA TODAY / USA TODAY

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