This week on “What Makes this Regime Change Great!”
The regime is America.
The artist Donald Trump.
Coming up next….
—ADVERTISEMENT —
Would you like to finger bang your guitar like Eddie Van Halen? Buy my step-by-step guide, where, with my musical genius, you will finally find your guitar’s clitoris and make it sing like an exotic Brazilian bird at dawn.
—END ADVERTISEMENT—
Smells Like Dictatorship is the first track of Trump’s second album, MAGA just lost its V Plates Again. Dropped January 20, 2025—it went platinum, then ultra-platinum, then QAnon-certified. It was cowritten by the Heritage Foundation, Steve Bannon and ChatGPT hallucinations. Produced by Elon Musk and re-mixed by Cocomelon to reach the future Martian sand-fort stomper demographic.
How do I know all this? Because I have a fucking brain that works. I’ve listened to more regime changes than BAE Systems has made munitions. It’s a regime that radically changed the course of politics, and humanity’s vibe in general. And that’s why Trump personally tapped me on the shoulder to make this episode.
So… back in 89, I was working as a guitar teacher. I had a student from the south, big guy, broad shoulders, could have played quarterback for the Atlanta ICE Raiders. He comes in one day and wants to learn this new tune. I scruff his hair and say, alright knucklehead. He hits play and I’m like what on earth is this? It was angry, incoherent, like an overmedicated toddler with a bone to pick. So ahead of its time.
It was just this big, like huge tantrum—total wall of sound. I didn’t get it at the time, but I knew if this guy got so much as a soapbox to stand on it was over for democracy. (For the youngsters, before the internet, a soapbox was like a social media account, but you had to scream on the street to get attention.) I knew this was going to be big—like, usher in a-brave-new-era.
So I put on the album and I was like, “is this really what you guys are into?” You’ve got to remember I was in my 20s, jazz virtuosity was pumping through my loins. I was chasing dreams of growing a frizzed out shaggy mane and held a massive grudge against anyone who wasn’t a Charles Mingus fan. Then he put on “About a pussy” and I was blown away, total convert, bought a blow dryer and slicked back my hair immediately. It was like when Bob Dylan went electric. Everyone everywhere was talking about Trump blowing up.
Now let’s talk about the intro
(plays intro)
You’ve got this iconic disco-feel of being raided by the feds. Total backs against the wall, shotgun in mouth vibes. Kind of sloppily executed, like the feds had been pre-gaming at the bar for a while. Still no vocals. Then BANG BANG BANG BANG—that’s Steve Bannon with his heavy artillery foot and that ladies and gentlemen—that is the sound of America getting under a tyrannical groove. You can’t fight it, it pulls you in like a vortex. It’s visceral, it’s anti-establishment, but with the back beat from a guy in his 70’s raging against his nurse holding the remote control. Totally wild.
(plays verse)
OK, so now we have some vocals. It’s grunge, mmhhh, grunge-adjacent. I’d call it gold plated grudge actually, like someone walking down Fifth Avenue wearing a Che Guevara shirt with the price tag dangling in the wind. It doesn’t make sense, even if he’d written down his manifesto. But listen to that power. With that energy, he could power a fleet of Tesla Panzers and take out Mexico.
(Stops track)
So one thing you’ve gotta know about Trump is he’s a master of dynamics. It’s partly brain damage from hugging his Dad mid-TheraGun massage. The other part is 100% genetics, and a lifetime of reading his tweets. Say what you will, this guy is a true original.
It’s a signature move of the Trump regime, and regime changes in general. You hit them with the Bannon cannon, and then it washes out into almost nothing—opening up all this space. Like a full moon over a calm sea, revealing all the washed up bodies—so haunting. And Steve Bannon’s drums, where he goes ‘dagger dagger dagger dagger’, is so in sync with the Heritage Foundation’s stabbing guitar line, total night of the long knives feel. After the crescendo, Bannon closes the hi-hats and pulls it in nice and tight. Like damn—how many body bags you squeezin’ into that pocket?
(plays chorus)
Still no discernible words—not that they would add much. The band is doing the heavy lifting here.It starts off with a major Stars and Stripes feel, then dissolves into complete nuclear apocalypse—classic Heritage Foundation. The crescendo delivers all the world-class cameos you’d expect: China, Russia, Israel, Iran, France, the UK—even Pakistan, and India blast in at the end. Trump sets it up, but it’s those heavy hitters that bring the house down.
(Isolates track)
Hear that? That’s a flute! You wouldn’t know it in the original mix, but it’s right there! The Pied Piper melody—classic call back to a guy down on his luck who lures the town’s kiddos into the woods with no map or compass. Not even a trail of candy. Nothing—just a flute and a dream of cutting a deal.
That’s it for today.
Next week on What Makes This Regime Great—Attila the Hun and his revolutionary hit, Scorched Earth—after all these years, still number one, according to many historians.