A Vicious, Vengeful, Vindictive, Volatile President
“Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely,” English politician and historian Lord Acton wrote in 1887.
Almost a century and a half later, we have the perfect fit for Acton’s famous quote: President Donald Trump, accompanied by a fully compliant Congress and a knee-bending Supreme Court.
Trump’s second term in the White House is off the charts in his misuse and abuse of the immense (and ever-growing, thanks to the Supreme Court) powers of his office. Trump is using the presidency as a vicious, vengeful, vindictive, and volatile weapon to pressure, bully, and attack his perceived enemies.
Trump the Vicious
Trump’s attack on President Obama this week accusing him of “treason” is a bald-faced, vicious lie.
Trump’s insane claim has all the markings of a cornered rat trying to escape from his past friendship with pedophile Jeffrey Epstein, who described himself on tape as “Donald’s closest friend for 10 years.”
The “treason” claim isn’t new for Trump. He has suggested that former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Mark Milley face execution for treasonous acts and that the entire House Jan. 6 Committee be prosecuted for treason. These and other vicious, unhinged attacks by Trump are dangerous. As the Jan. 6 Capitol attack showed, Trump’s words have a habit of encouraging his extremist supporters to violence.
Trump the Vengeful
Through April 25, according to National Public Radio, a vengeful Trump has targeted more than 100 of his perceived enemies.
Trump has said that President Biden should be jailed and has revoked security details for Biden’s children.
Trump had the security protections revoked for former high-level members of his first Administration who later criticized him, including his former Secretaries of State and Defense and former National Security Adviser. Trump also called for former Rep. Lynn Cheney, Vice Chair of the House Jan. 6 Committee, to face a military tribunal and revoked her security clearance. He attacked a judge who ruled against his Administration and called for the judge to be impeached.
Trump has overseen the firing of numerous prosecutors who investigated his coup attempt and took part in criminal cases against him.
Trump the Vindictive
The Trump Administration has blocked or slow walked disaster assistance to “blue states,” in addition to other states he seeks to punish. Since February, he has denied six out of 10 major-disaster requests from states with Democratic Governors, while approving 14 out of 15 requests from Republican Governors, according to an analysis by NPR affiliate KUOW.
(He also threatened to withhold wildfire disaster assistance to California unless the state adopted legislation that experts argue would cause voter suppression.)
Trump has used executive orders to go after law firms. A number of firms have given in, while others have fought back, successfully blocking the orders in court. He has gone after universities, making Harvard his number one target, blocking research grants and taking action to bar foreign students. He has strong-armed media outlets and businesses, and threatened to revoke the citizenship of people who speak out against him.
Trump the Volatile
Through June 1, Trump posted 2,262 times on Truth Social, more than three times the number of posts he made during his entire first four-year term.
His posts range from bizarre to absurd to ludicrous to outright lies. He has posted that Biden was executed in 2020 and replaced by a clone. He falsely claimed that Canada was considering his offer to become the 51st state. He posted an AI-generated scene of President Obama being arrested by the FBI.
Trump’s delusional mindset is highlighted by the preposterous comments he made at the Justice Department earlier this year in which he, according to The Atlantic, “described his adversaries as ‘scum,’ ‘savages,’ and ‘Marxists,’ as well as ‘deranged,’ ‘thugs,’ ‘violent vicious lawyers,’ and ‘a corrupt group of hacks and radicals within the ranks of the American government.’”
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President Trump is operating as if he has absolute power, while Congress and the Supreme Court, so far, refuse to prove him wrong.
Only the lower courts are regularly challenging and rejecting Trump’s illegal and unconstitutional actions. But the Trump Administration is ignoring many of their orders. Of the more than 160 lawsuits challenging the Administration in which there has been a substantive ruling, the Trump Administration has ignored one-third of them.
Trump’s vicious, vengeful, vindictive, and volatile behavior is a clear and present danger to our democracy.
He is closing in on Acton’s absolute power, but he is not there yet.
This grade-school bully must be stopped, and our democracy must be protected. As Acton also warned, “Everybody likes to get as much power as circumstances allow, and nobody will vote for a self-denying ordinance.” Trump will keep grabbing for more power until he is checked. And if our institutions continue to refuse to act, citizen vigilance and fearless resistance must take on the burden.
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Fred’s Weekly Note appears on Thursdays in Wertheimer’s Political Report, a Democracy 21 newsletter. Read this week’s and other recent newsletters here. And, subscribe for free here and receive your copy each week via email.
