Illustration by Michael DiMilo
By Geoff Carter
At times, it’s difficult to see what’s right under your nose, or to see change happening over time, like when you haven’t seen a niece or nephew for a few months and are amazed at how much they’ve grown or to see how much a beloved uncle has aged in a few years. Slowly developing diseases sometimes escape our notice, too, until the symptoms are inescapable. And sometimes, we need time and space to really evaluate major events—especially trauma—in our lives.
How long will it take for us to get a true perspective of the vast criminal enterprise of Donald J. Trump? How long before history gives us an accurate picture of the scope of his greed, nepotism, criminality, brutality, and viciousness?
We’ve been living with Trump 2.0 for the past eighteen months and after being pummeled by his unpredictable, cruel, destructive behavior and malignant executive decisions, it’s difficult to fathom the true extent of the damage he’s done to this country.
DOGE, ICE attacks, Renee Good, Alex Pretti, the East Wing of the White House, massive governmental layoffs, his takeover of Social Security, the gutting of NOAA, the CDC, FEMA, and the Department of Education was only the beginning. A more comprehensive list of his evils is found on the American Oversight website. He even instigated a mob of his followers to attack the Capitol Building on January 6th, 2021, in an attempt to steal the 2020 election. He tried to stage a coup against his own country.
This short list doesn’t account for Trump’s disastrous foreign policy: his attacks on our European allies, his strange bromance with Putin—leading to his subsequent non-support of NATO, and the crippling tariffs he leveled against former allies. It doesn’t even begin to list the consequences of his disastrous Iran War which has humiliated our country on the world stage. It doesn’t begin to tally up the body count—over 500,000 children—resulting from his cruel refusal to fund USAID. It doesn’t mention the absurdities of his proposed takeovers of Greenland, Panama, and Canada.
A glimpse into what this country could be—and used to be—swept over us like a breath of fresh air during the opening ceremony of the Obama Presidential Center in Chicago. All living presidents—minus Trump—and other notable political figures attended as well as celebrities like Tom Hanks, Steven Spielberg, Oprah Winfrey, Steven Colbert, and many others. Thousands more watched the celebration on closed-circuit TV on the nearby Midway Plaisance. Millions more watched on television.
Bruce Springsteen, John Legend, Jennifer Hudson, Bono, Bruce Springsteen, and Stevie Wonder performed for the Obama dedication. The love, respect, and regard for this man, as well as for the values of this country, our democratic way of life, was evident. The open affection shown by his friends and families, both for him and for each other, resonated with an empathy and a humanity we all could relate to—and that we miss.
Compare this to the dozen or so people who came to Trump’s hastily assembled and shoddily built “America’s State Fair” in D.C., his salute to the country’s 250th birthday. Compare the anguish and anger caused by the damage he has done to our nation’s capital. The White House is in shambles, the Reflecting Pool is a mess and is fenced off from the public. The White House Lawn is all but ruined after Trump’s MMA cage match birthday party (which sounds like a theme for a middle school sleepover). The damage, and not just the damage to the veneer of our country but to the basic tenets of our democracy, is becoming exponential, almost incalculable.
Trump could not have done all this by himself. He doesn’t have the imagination, the shrewdness, the foresight, or the determination to mount such an attack on our democracy. No, he did not act alone. He had the help of the Republican Party. It took years, but these Republicans packed the Supreme Court with a majority of ideological zealots that has fostered a brand of rabid racism this country hasn’t seen for decades. They came up with Project 2025, a detailed plan to dismantle our democracy—the blueprint of Trump’s destructiveness.
We all saw signs of this while it was happening, but shrugged and looked away, just as we dismiss symptoms of a disease as something that will probably eventually go away. The rise of the Tea Party, the primarying of centrist Republican candidates, Mitch McConnell’s manipulation of SCOTUS nominations in the senate, and ultra-right conservative media like Fox News spreading misinformation and outright lies furthered the Republican agenda.
To gain perspective on any garden variety even, it would usually be necessary to take a step back. To gain perspective on who Trump truly is and what he has wrought on us, we may have step back more than a few steps—maybe a few miles. His criminality, his amorality, and his narcissism have permeated our sensibilities so deeply, it’s hard to remember what life was like B.T.—before Trump.
Besides all of the malignant policy decisions (and never mind his felony convictions, the sexual assault allegations, his association with master pimp and panderer Jeffrey Epstein, and shady business dealings), this president has used this nation’s highest office to enrich himself to the tune of $1.6 billion dollars. So far. We’re not even halfway through this term. His crypto scheming has swindled thousands of his own investors out of billions of dollars. His sudden tariff announcements have suspiciously coincided with stock deals.
Trump’s entire family is in on it, too. His son-in-law Jared Kushner is a negotiator in the Middle East who is also cultivating investors in that region of world. His sons and his friends have been handed sweetheart deals and no-bid contracts on everything from the disastrous Reflecting Pool remodel to the East Wing demolition and subsequent ballroom construction to ICE detention center contracts to private prison companies. The crime, the nepotism, the backroom dealings never seem to end.
Like the blind man trying to understand the nature of an elephant by examining its separate parts, we cannot fathom Trump’s evil by examining any single aspect of his malevolence. His greed, his cruelty, his misogyny, his criminality, his consistent lying, his vindictiveness, his immaturity, his complete disregard for the rule of, his disdain for the electorate—particularly the people who voted for him is staggering.
The most frightening aspect of this monster is that he likes being president. He loves being able to fleece the American people, to put himself on a pedestal (because nobody else will), to transform our democracy into an engine driving his single-minded desires.
We know what he’s going to try to do. He tried it once in 2020. Trump has already laid the groundwork to cast doubt on the 2026 election results. He’s been trying to lay groundwork to give himself a third term—never mind the Constitution. With the Supreme Court in his back pocket, that’s only a minor concern.
We may not have the big picture of the scope and breadth of this man’s corruption and malevolence, but we do know one thing. It’s going to get bigger, meaner, and uglier.
Notes
- https://americanoversight.org/investigation/the-trump-administrations-dismantling-of-federal-agencies-and-threats-to-important-social-services/
- https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/chikungunya/quick-takes-death-toll-usaid-cuts-withdrawal-chikungunya-vaccine-funding-updated-ebola
- https://www.today.com/popculture/obama-presidential-center-opening-guest-list-rcna350838
Comments