OP-ED: We expected the worst. Trump has delivered.
Much of America was well aware of the danger of electing Donald Trump as president prior to his victories in 2016 and 2024. We expected the worst and he delivered, being even more outrageous and out of control than we could have envisioned, particularly throughout the first weeks of his second term.
Trump swept into office with a stated desire to expand U.S. territory, and to do so by force if necessary. Look out, Greenland, Panama, and Canada: all of you are in the sights of our madman “leader.” His latest conquest is to seize the Palestinian homeland of Gaza, which he would like to refashion as a version of the French Riviera. If and when Vladimir Putin attempts a takeover of Poland, China’s President Xi moves against Taiwan, and Kim Jong Un attacks his neighbor to the south, the United States can have no complaint and must remain silent. Those nations will be taking their cues from our imperialist president.
The man of tens of thousands of lies told us that he knew nothing about the formation of Project 2025 and that he disapproved of it, yet he appointed some of its authors to prominent positions in his administration. Russell Vought, one of the most involved authors of Project 2025 now serves as Director of the Office of Management and Budget. He is notorious for having said that he wants federal workers to be traumatized and to feel that they are villains.
Trump is removing career government workers and attempting to erase the longstanding civil service protections many of them have enjoyed, replacing them with loyalists who will do whatever he commands without regard to whether it is legal.
Through urging federal workers to quit their jobs and threatening others with termination, the administration has managed to anger and destroy the morale of a workforce composed of people who did nothing to bring this about. The effort to thin the federal workforce extends even to air traffic controllers despite a shortage of thousands of them nationwide. How stupid.
Trump nominated individuals to key posts this time around that he would not have had the audacity to select in his first administration, and he dares Senate Republicans to defy him, threatening them with a primary election opponent who will be well-financed by Elon Musk if they dare to display any independence.
Pete Hegseth, Kash Patel, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., and Tulsi Gabbard round out the list of grossly unqualified, radical choices for critical jobs. Matt Gaetz was so laughably inappropriate a choice to be attorney general that he did not even make it to a Senate vote, dropping out early in the process in disgrace.
Does anyone think freshman Pennsylvania Republican Sen. Dave McCormick will buck the man who is responsible for his election? You can bet your bottom dollar that he will not. He cares more about pleasing Donald Trump than looking out for the interests of Pennsylvanians.
The number one issue for Trump voters was inflation, for which they placed sole or primary blame on President Joe Biden. What is Trump doing about it? Not only is he doing nothing, but he is acting so as to reignite inflation by threatening and imposing massive tariffs, promising huge tax cuts on a host of fronts and targeted to those at the top, and mass deportations of those who do work for which we need them and who are contributing tens of billions of dollars per year to government coffers.
Deportation threats have inflicted terror on communities of legal immigrants as well as upon those who are undocumented.
Trump’s revenge is demonstrated through removing security details from former officials who have received death threats, and stripping others of security clearances: all for spite.
Unelected de facto Vice-President Elon Musk, the wealthiest man in the world, is delighting in the unprecedented access he has been given to Trump and to sensitive government information, and he relishes being cruel, e.g., his efforts to quash foreign aid which has helped save countless lives and bought our country goodwill throughout the world. No wonder China and Russia are delighted that the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) has been decimated.
The administration has used its push for budget cuts to attempt to justify cutting off individuals and organizations that are dependent on federal funding, using a sledgehammer rather than being judicious and cautious.
In his effort to ignore climate change that is triggering more and more serious lethal and destructive weather events, the administration is seeking to stamp out environmental initiatives undertaken by the Biden administration. Automakers have invested billions of dollars for a future in which electric vehicles will dominate. What are they to do as the administration seeks to turn the country away from any consideration of the consequences of our longstanding burning of fossil fuels?
Perhaps the worst thing Trump has ever done, which is saying something, is the blanket pardons and commutations he issued to violent criminals who attacked police officers on our modern day of infamy, Jan. 6, 2021, causing scores of injuries, permanent disabilities, and multiple deaths, including several officers by suicide after that hideous day. Trump will cry crocodile tears over the atrocity that took the life of beautiful young Georgia college student Laken Riley, but he will never care about or utter the names of the officers who were injured and those who died, with the blood being on his hands. U.S. Speaker of the House Mike Johnson said that he “is not going to second-guess” the president’s freeing of the hoodlums. How do Republicans look in the eye those who protected them on that day?
Trump believes what he said previously, “I can do anything I want as president,” hence he has issued orders which violate the law and the Constitution. Republicans in Congress yawn, yet we know that they would be demanding the impeachment of a Democratic president who similarly acted as if he was king. My U. S. representative, Guy Reschenthaler, has sunk so deeply into Trump cultism that he has pushed for Dulles Airport to be renamed for his savior. That’s sick.
Trump has unwisely withdrawn the United States from the World Health Organization and the Paris Climate Accords.
Donald Trump’s time in office is characterized by his hallmarks: hatred, division, revenge, and chaos. It is an era in which thoughtful and decent Americans feel that we owe an apology to the rest of the world for the actions of our bull-in-the-china-shop president on a rampage. He is likely to find that any short-term gains he is able to achieve for our country will be blunted by long-term negative consequences as the world discovers that the United States is not the nation we were once thought to be: not a nation of honor and decency nor one whose word is its bond.
Oren Spiegler is a Peters Township resident.