Trump is remaking the government and the country in his image

Donald Trump is rapidly remaking the federal government in his image. To a remarkable degree, virtually every aspect of his personality is being reflected and magnified in the policies and conduct of his administration. As a result, it can feel like the country is becoming a bizarro world facsimile of itself: a morally shriveled place where racism and cruelty are state-sanctioned, might makes right, incompetence reigns, knowledge and expertise is mocked, and our democracy and the rule of law that sustains it is attacked on a daily basis.

The indisputable facts prove this. Trump, and now his administration, is:

Tyrannical

As a private citizen, Trump repeatedly expressed his admiration for dictators and strongmen who were unconstrained by the rule of law. As president, he asserts that the Constitution gives him the right to do “whatever [he] want[s].” His administration has put that belief into action by running roughshod over the Constitution: it punishes people for exercising their First Amendment rights, imprisons people without due process, grabs for itself powers reserved to Congress (such as the fundamental powers to declare war and impose tariffs), and claims to have unilaterally abolished the constitutional right to birthright citizenship.

Cruel

Trump was found liable by a jury for sexual assault. He regularly degrades women and mocks injured and disabled people. That cruelty has metastasized throughout his administration into something far more sinister and lethal. The dismantling of the U.S. Agency for International Development has already caused the needless deaths of hundreds of thousands of children under five. The so-called Department of War gratuitously and intentionally kills dozens of civilians on the high seas and jokes about it.

Violence Loving

Trump encouraged his supporters to beat up non-supporters and asked his Secretary of Defense why protesters couldn’t just be shot. ICE now inflicts terror on an industrial scale through their well-documented use of excessive force, including roughing up peaceful protesters, pepper-spraying them, and smashing car windows.

Racist

Trump’s virulent racism is so well known it literally has its own Wikipedia entry. His administration recruits ICE agents by using a white supremacist slogan (“We’ll Have Our Home Again”) and posted an AI video featuring the Obamas as apes.

Ignorant and Hostile to Science

Trump has derided climate change as a hoax for many years. That denial of reality – rooted in ignorance and contempt for science – is now official United States policy, as evidenced by the EPA’s rescinding of its landmark finding that greenhouse gases harm public health. According to the esteemed science writer Bill McKibben, that decision “has to rank as one of the signal moments in America’s descent into idiocracy.”

A Bully

As a businessman, Trump routinely took advantage of those less powerful than him, including contractors whom he regularly stiffed. His administration now bullies nations, blue states, and corporations, as exemplified by his threats to invade Greenland if Denmark (a NATO ally for 80 years!) doesn’t hand it over.

A Malignant Narcissist

Trump used to slap his name on everything from buildings he didn’t build to casinos that went belly up to failed ventures like steaks and vodka. Now his administration unfurls 40-foot banners of his face on buildings that belong to the American people, places his signature on U.S. currency, and has desecrated the Kennedy Center – a public memorial to a fallen president, just like the Lincoln Memorial – by adding his name to the building.

Incompetent

Trump declared bankruptcy for six of his businesses after running each one into the ground. His administration’s handling of the Iran war – from killing scores of schoolchildren based on outdated intelligence to failing to prepare for the closing of the Strait of Hormuz to having no plan for the evacuation of stranded Americans in the region – is just the latest example of its systemic, and deadly, incompetence.

It’s as if the worst features of humanity have been concentrated in a single individual, and that individual — who by a ghastly coincidence happens to be the most powerful person on earth — has infected our country with those features. As a result, our country is now facing its gravest danger since the Civil War.

As that war was drawing to a close, Lincoln stated in his Second Inaugural Address that “it may seem strange” that anyone would support the abomination that is slavery. It may similarly seem strange that anyone would want to live in a country remade in Trump’s image. But as Lincoln went on to state in that Address, in words that apply equally today, “let us judge not that we be not judged.” Instead, let us embrace the growing number of people (as shown in poll after poll) who are deciding that living in such a country is not what they signed up for. And let us together fight for our very different vision of America.

James Speyer is a lawyer and a volunteer for Lawyers Defending American Democracy. He lives in Sharon.