“Trump Derangement Syndrome” is a valid and logical reaction to the deranged behavior of President Donald J. Trump. He is a dangerous buffoon and his second term in the White House may be worse than his first.
His clown-car cabinet suggests the cast of characters in the 2006 Mike Judge film Idiocracy, with unqualified and biased secretaries like Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., Pam Bondi, and Pete Hegseth chosen to do damage to Health and Human Services, the Justice Department, and the Department of Defense.
Already, in the early weeks of his second reign, Trump has attacked medical research, consumer protection, the Department of Education, LGBTQ+ rights, the FBI, birthright citizenship, humanitarian foreign aid, the Gulf of Mexico, paper straws, the media, the Department of Justice, FEMA, and the federal civil service in general.
His blitzkrieg of executive orders came after he pardoned more than 1,500 felonious Trump troopers who stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021 and tried to overthrow the government of the United States on Trump’s behalf. Some in the mob brought rope and chanted “Hang Mike Pence!”
Now, he has put them all back on the streets. Perhaps they will be joined by New York mayor Eric Adams, who just got a “stay-out-of-jail” card from Trump when Trump’s Justice Department unexpectedly stopped the corruption case against Adams.
But they could resume it at any time. With the mayor beholden now to Trump, what’s the quid pro quo here? Is it only to help Trump deport “illegal aliens” from the nation’s biggest city?
Unlike on Jan. 6, Trump’s putsch this time is not yet violent. But his mood is one of menace and vengeance. Consider his passive-aggressive ploy of withdrawing government protection for former top aides like General Mark Milley, Mike Pompeo, and John Bolton.
It sends a message to them and to everyone else: If you cross Trump or even disagree with him, he can make your very existence more dangerous. Nice lives you’ve got here, fellas. Be a shame if something happened to you. You want bodyguards? Go buy your own, bub.
Trump’s apologists argue he’s just keeping his campaign promises, but Trump never campaigned on appointing the billionaire plutocrat Elon Musk to the unelected position of Deputy President. And now Musk’s minions are bombarding career public servants with ultimatums and harassment, all designed to force them to quit and be replaced by Trump’s hacks.
Nor did Trump campaign on shoving more than two million Palestinians out of Gaza (if the war with Israel ever ends) and turning it into the Atlantic City of the Mideast. Maybe Trump can send those Gazans to Guantanamo with all the “illegal immigrants” he is promising to deport.
His idea is not quite “ethnic cleansing” — at least not yet — because that sometimes includes genocide. Trump is simply treating war-torn Gaza like a rent-controlled New York tenement and he’s the landlord who can make more money by tearing it down and building high-rise condos.
He’s determined to force neighboring nations to take in Palestinians even if neither side wants to do that. And Trump must be the bully at all times, dictating to friend and foe. He didn’t campaign on seizing Greenland from Denmark, taking over the Panama Canal, and conquering Canada by anschluss.
But that’s his foreign policy, thus far. Even if he is only bluffing to negotiate better trade deals with Canada by threatening tariffs, what good does it do Trump or the U.S. to aggravate and humiliate our closest neighbor and ally by threatening to make Canada the 51st state?
Preposterous as many are, Trump’s foreign policy aims are less sinister than some of his domestic goals which include deportation of millions of people (mostly Latin American) by his eager henchmen and the transfer of public education money to private and religious schools.
Leading the effort to break up immigrant families and disrupt the flow of labor in low-paid workplaces are top Trump aides Steven Miller and Thomas Homan. Watch them on television, especially on the right-wing propaganda fountains like Fox News Channel and Newsmax.
Their glee at disrupting lives jumps from their hard, mean faces through the hi-def screen. You think kids-in-cages seemed cruel last time around? Let’s see what these guys come up with this time.
As for “school choice,” it is a false “choice” because parents already have all the “choice” they need. If you will excuse the cliché, “school choice” is a euphemism for a wolf in sheep’s clothing.
You don’t need government money to send your kid to a private school or a religious school. All you need is your own gosh-darn money. Instead, advocates of “school choice” — Trump throws that term around a lot — want money to “follow the child.”
This is similar to the attempt decades ago to save Detroit’s neighborhood Catholic schools with “Parochiaid.” That campaign failed, but this philosophy is bubbling up again, this time blending into the “evangelical” movement toward White Christian nationalism that Trump has tacitly backed.
Funding private education with public tax money would weaken teachers’ unions and steer more money away from students who need it most. Moreover, it would blend church and state, in violation of the Constitution.
Unfortunately, the only people who can rule with finality on Constitutional questions like this are the nine justices on Trump’s Supreme Court. And, thanks to Sen. Mitch McConnell, Trump has packed that bench with religious fundamentalists who banned a woman’s right to choose abortion and may inflict further religious doctrine on issues of human sexuality.
Although lower federal courts are beginning to challenge some of the executive orders of Trump and Musk, the kangaroos Trump appointed to the Supreme Court will probably side with him, as they have in Roe, Dobbs, and other questions.
The Republican Congress, quivering in fear of Trump, is neither a check nor a balance against Trump’s executive power. So, what if Trump’s current momentum carries over to the mid-term elections in 2026? What if he threatens war, the way George W. Bush did toward Iraq in the 2002 mid-term campaign?
That’s one way to get the voters behind the party in power before the next election. That’s patriotism, and Pete Hegseth will drink to that. Thanks to retirements and term limits, Michigan’s mid-term elections next year will produce a new U.S. Senator, governor, attorney general, and secretary of state.
Currently, all those jobs are filled by Democrats. But that may change in a big way and this mess might get worse before it gets better.
