TRUMP IS MAKING AMERICA…WHAT? ANYTHING BUT GREAT
Dr. Common Good
Let’s review some of the key actions and decisions by the Trump administration over the past few months. Every single one of these actions has contributed to an America that has trampled its own values, forfeited any claim to world leadership in anything, turned the office of the presidency into a cheap, tin-pot grift, gutted our once-admired institutions of research and learning, and shredded any sense of fairness and justice for Americans at home. To wit:
- The consequences of Trump/Musk’s DOGE and continued cuts is a complete sham, and is a litany of wasteful, wanton destruction, ruining the lives and work of thousands of dedicated American public servants, and the functions of key organizations and agencies that actually did make America great, and that helped other people in need throughout the world (including USAID). As Bill Gates said, speaking of Musk, “the richest man in the world has killed the poorest people in the world.” Trump and his minions have been more than happy to gift the greedy and wealthy, at the cost of taking away basic food aid, health care, help for students with special needs, and many other supports for American people.
- It could easily be said that Trump is in fact “making China great.” With the elimination of USAID and resulting pullout of the global USAID presence, guess who steps in? China. With the abandonment of a green energy agenda and reversing of support for green energy development provided by the Biden administration, guess who steps in to ramp up their domination of the green energy market? China. And when the vaunted US strength in research and academic institutions is thrown to the wind under the ridiculous logic of “anti-wokeism” or “anti-DEI,” who benefits? China and everyone else.
- Tariffs – Oh, how Trump and his minions lie about this! Once again, tariffs do not take money from the country that is the supposed target. They are extracted from whoever imports anything from that country. So, if I am a manufacturer and I import some of my parts from China, or from Europe, I will pay the tariff, not China or Europe. It is without question a tax on the manufacturers. Part of Trump’s big lie here? He and MAGA claim they are reducing taxes on businesses. Well guess what, it is in fact just a game of “robbing Peter to pay Paul.” Lower taxes, but raise tariffs. Either way, manufacturers pay more. Ford, for example, just announced that they expected to lose $2 billion in tariff costs – they have already lost $800 million. A second part of Trump’s Big Tariff Lie is that they are meant to penalize countries that have “treated America badly.” That’s a head-shaking fish story! Trump recently placed an additional 40% tariff on Brazil (for a total 50% tariff). Why? Because they had the decency to put former president Jair Bolsonaro on trial for staging an attempted coup after he lost the last election. Trump doesn’t like that, since Bolsonaro was one of his buddies in autocracy, and, well, because Trump himself fomented a coup after he lost in 2020. As is plainly evident, that is about Trump and his whims, not about US trade at all.
- Trump is assaulting science and general truth in a way no American president ever has. In the name of eliminating “woke ideology” he has directed the National Park Service (NPS) to scrub any references to slavery or anything else he deems a less-than-rosy picture of US history at NPS sites. He has even directed the Smithsonian to scrub references to his two impeachments in an exhibit about presidential impeachments. His administration has decimated university research funding, blocked international students, and his HHS head RFK Jr. has fired the expert CDC vaccine advisory panel and is now considering dismissal of the US Preventive Services Task Force. These are non-political, top-level scientific advisory bodies. His EPA, under Lee Zeldin, is seeking to reverse the finding that greenhouse gases are a threat to public health, which is stunningly ignorant and serves only the short-term interests of oil and gas producers. On August 1, Trump fired the Commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, because the jobs report that came out this week reflected poorly on Trump’s economy. He then, with absolutely no evidence, accused the Commissioner, a veteran public servant who had served administrations of all parties, of politically manipulating the numbers. All of this is an Orwellian atrocity. And for those who echoed Trump’s allegations of “communist” and “socialist” with respect to Democrats, there is no more communist dictator-like action than to erase truth in favor of ideology, or in favor of self-serving lies.
- Trump and his administration are fully complicit in the horrendous starvation and genocide in Gaza, and the intensified settler violence against innocent Palestinians in the West Bank. His full support of Netanyahu and his right-wing zealot allies is unconscionable, along with his parallel effort to quash any dissent or objections to that policy in the US under the spurious, and cheapened, guise of antisemitism (using a definition of antisemitism that is ambiguous in referring to criticism of Irael as antisemitic). It is also a slap in the face to the long tradition of Jewish social justice and the real efforts to stop antisemitism – which, by the way, Trump does not actually care about, having supported and catered to antisemitic groups and individuals since day one.
- Especially in this second term, Trump has engaged in corruption at a wild, unprecedented and public level: A few examples: 1) The doling out of pardons to criminals who managed to pay, or have someone pay for the million dollar a plate dinners at Mar a Lago; 2) The creation of a bitcoin scam operation which is essentially a pay to play scheme, using the presidential office to enrich himself – a cryptocurrency auction for an audience with the president; 3) Accepting the gift of a 747 plane from Qatar, in full violation of the Constitution’s emoluments clause, and stealing more than $900 million from funds intended to repair and upgrade our nation’s aging nuclear missile infrastructure to outfit it for his use – and, yes, it is for his personal use. He will keep that plane after his term, under the fraudulent ownership of the “Trump Library” (What library, one might ask? He does not read, and he does not write); 4) Opening the Executive Branch club in Georgetown, at a price of $500 million for membership, essentially a “pay to play” forum for wealthy individuals who want access to Trump; 5) He is now building a $200 million “ballroom” addition to East Wing, which he claims will be funded only by private money. In return for what? Why not take that money and use it to help with health care and food for the millions who will need it now that Trump’s budget has taken that away?
- Add to that list the absolute corruption of the judicial system via Attorney General Pam Bondi and her cast of loyal Trump acolytes, who have been using the Justice Department as a personal tool to go after Trump opponents. This is not what the Justice Department is for, and Bondi’s claim to be reversing the “politicization” of the Justice Department under Biden is a cynical fantasy for public consumption by the uninformed. And on top of that, the Trump “Justice Department” has skirted the normal and required Senate approval of US Attorneys by exploiting a loophole. The trick is to put in a loyalist acting US attorney, who does not need Senate confirmation (as acting), then when the legally allowed 120 day term for an acting US attorney is up, make that person the Assistant US attorney. When a new US attorney is nominated by the state courts, Trump fires that one, making the Assistant (and once Trump-loyalist) acting US attorney again. It is pure manipulation and corruption of the system. The confirmation of Emil Bove as a Circuit Court judge is another case – he was Trump’s personal attorney who committed numerous, documented violations of legal practice, and engineered the Mafia-esque deal with New York mayor Eric Adams to let him off the hook for corruption charges if he followed Trump’s anti-immigrant agenda. Bove also lied, flagrantly, to the Senate Judiciary Committee about these violations, a perjury offense in itself. Finally, Trump moved convicted sex offender Ghislaine Maxwell to a minimum security prison just days after she spoke with Trump’s Deputy Attorney General and former personal attorney Todd Blanche. She is under a 20-year sentence and was not eligible for such a move. What back-door deal was made here?
- In short order, Trump has laid waste to the critical network of global alliances that has helped keep America safe and strong since at least WWII. He has done this through his outrageous “tariff wars” even to our greatest friends and allies, by threatening to take over Greenland, Panama, and Canada), and by a moral and political reorientation of US support in favor of dictators like Putin, bin Salman, Nicholas Orban, and others, staining whatever claim the US has made to be the world’s strongest supporter of democracy and human rights. This disgraceful pattern is exemplified by Trump’s ignorant and malicious abandonment of Ukraine, which has not changed much even though Trump – for reasons of his own ego – has recently soured on Putin.
- The thuggish, illegal, and capricious deportation of immigrants using masked shock troops and throwing due process to the wind. Despite Trump’s promised focus on immigrants who committed crimes, more than 70% of those detained have no criminal record at all. Many are legal US residents, who have contributed to this country and paid taxes for years. It is a public show of hatred and intimidation, masterminded by the ugly, power-drunk Stephen Miller, who has demanded that ICE deport 3,000 people a day, and has flooded the media with patently false claims about immigrants as criminals.
I could easily go on, and I will do so in continued posts. But I ask, what about any of this has anything to do with making America great? Trump likes to call everything that paints him as a villain a “hoax.” Well, here you go, folks. The biggest hoax of all is the Trump and MAGA claim to be “making America great.”