WASHINGTON — The goose is getting fat.

We wait for his date on the dinner table after the plague, when the war is over. If it’s over. This goose caused ravages in his riotous reign.

The goose’s days as boss in barnyard politics are numbered. In back of his feathery head, he knows it. His pal, a vulture named Vladimir, is raining war, breaking a fragile peace.

It’s no secret the goose and Vladimir were in cahoots. Now the world hates Vladimir. Honks about his savvy “genius” are gone from the goose.

Now you don’t talk so loud/now you don’t seem so proud.

Down south in Florida, where the goose is wintering, his troubles flew with him. They peck at his power.

It’s tragically beautiful to watch the bird being plucked. Tragic because it’s late in the day. The damage is done.

The metaphor fits Donald Trump, the former failed president who almost took democracy down. Not that he feels a pound of guilt in his folds of flesh. He just knows what he senses at any given moment in his coldblooded brain.

Right now, he feels his neck is in very real danger.

As president, Trump recklessly defied public health experts during the pandemic and inspired followers to do the same. Trump tore the social fabric apart (over masks) after COVID-19 descended in March 2020.

Most remember our last day before the public square went empty and silent. We mourn losses, little and large, in the saddest season.

While the nation’s pestilence waned, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine began. Yet justice for the Jan. 6 mob storming the Capitol is moving in the courts.

No other president pulled off all that trouble. Give the goose that.

Trump’s lasting legacies shook the foundations not only of American health and democracy, but of NATO, too. We are within miles — and days? — of entering armed conflict with Russia on NATO ground in member country Poland. The treaty organization is sworn to defend the club.

Isn’t that great? Like the Soviet Missile Crisis. That crisis was coolly handled by President John F. Kennedy while the world held its nuclear breath.

Trump’s courting Russian President Vladimir Putin led to the present moment. They hatched a plan to weaken NATO first and for the United States to pull out in Trump’s second term.

For his part, Putin hated the encirclement of small, new NATO countries near Russian borders. Albania, really? He viscerally rejected the idea that the large Ukraine, once part of the Soviet Union, would ever join NATO.

President Joe Biden and Western leaders refused to budge on that, leaving the door open to Ukraine joining NATO one day. That’s what the war is all about. Sure hope it’s worth it.

Emboldened or enraged, Putin invaded Ukraine. Possibly, he changed during the pandemic. Reports say he is isolated and irrational about restoring pieces of the old Soviet puzzle. The course of Russian history never did run smooth.

Ukrainian soldiers and citizens are facing or fleeing Russian bombs and tanks. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, whom Trump tried to bribe in exchange for military aid, addressed a joint session of Congress Wednesday from his besieged land. He is a young David-like biblical figure.

Back at Mar-a-Lago, Trump is honking about Mike Pence, his vice-presidential Brutus, who condemned “apologists for Putin.” That cut had to hurt.

Pence’s finest hour was refusing to preside over Trump’s scheme to undo the election on Jan. 6, 2021. When it counted, he saved American democracy from a violent overthrow.

There’s much more to anger and alarm Trump. The Jan. 6 House committee is investigating whether he incited a criminal conspiracy.

Trump’s accountants also disowned years of work for the Trump Organization. The New York attorney general is investigating its possible fraud. Candidates he’s endorsed for Congress aren’t sailing into the wind.

Steve Bannon, his inaugural advisor for the “American carnage” vision, goes on trial in July.

Having lost his potent political weapon, Twitter, Trump launched Truth Social. Only his most loyal disciples are talking it up.

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., the most brazen of the bunch, is unpopular even among fellow Republicans.

The Trump presidency is like a goose close to being cooked.

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Jamie Stiehm writes on politics and history. She may be reached at JamieStiehm.com

To find out more about Jamie Stiehm and other Creators Syndicate columnists and cartoonists, please visit Creators.com