Trump Has Dragged the Nation to a Point So Low It's Hard Fathom

How did we get to the point where the president can say and do things that put our culture and democracy at risk, and it’s just shrugged off as if it were normal?

In social media posts and unscripted press comments he uses language that would have been unimaginable coming from a president in any other period of American history. In just the past few months, Mr. Trump: was photographed making an obscene gesture and mouthing a vulgarity at a demonstrator; demeaned a popular TV personality who had just been murdered; called a Somali American member of Congress garbage, adding that all Somalis were garbage; called the Governor of Minnesota “retarded,” an especially hurtful slur as that governor has a son with a disability; and insulted women reporters who asked him challenging questions, calling them “ugly,” “obnoxious,” and “stupid.”

Parents wouldn’t tolerate this from their children and yet here we have a president of the United States demeaning his office by speaking in such a deplorable manner.

It’s not just the president’s speech that has been so “unpresidential.” Mr. Trump’s need to gratify his ego has led him to make exaggerated false claims about his grievances and his successes. He claims that he has been attacked by media, Congress, and law enforcement agencies like no other president in history. At the same time, he boasts that he has improved the economy and made our cities safer than they have ever been. None of this is true.

In an effort to impose his will and worldview, he has surrounded himself with White House staff and Cabinet that not only heap praise upon him and carry out his every whim, but also support his efforts to silence and intimidate those whom he has denounced as critics.

Herein lies a fundamental difference between President Trump’s first and second terms. In the former, some senior members of his staff and Cabinet served as a check on his behavior. Many were fired and replaced. He began his second term with a detailed plan to transform government, and with a more compliant senior leadership (e.g., the Department of Justice and FBI are willing to order investigations of his critics).

This combination of unchecked power, the president’s need to have his every ambition fulfilled, and his disrespect for law and precedent has led to actions that are illegal. In the first few months, his administration put in place a program to remove over 300,000 government employees. He shuttered USAID, the Voice of America, and the US Institute for Peace—all illegal actions as these were congressionally created and funded entities. He later reopened the Institute for Peace as the Trump Institute for Peace; renamed the nation’s premier center for the arts The Donald J Trump, The John F Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts without any authorization; and had the White House’s East Wing torn down to be replaced by another vanity project—a massive ballroom—which no doubt will also bear his name in the near future.

Conceivably the most dangerous of President Trump’s moves have been the dramatic expansion of ICE—the immigration enforcement entity—and its unleashing in US cities, posing a direct threat to American democracy.

In recent weeks Mr. Trump sent a massive contingent of ICE agents to Minneapolis, Minnesota ostensibly to root out illegal immigrants, while attempting to embarrass that state’s Democratic governor and to target one of Mr. Trump’s new favorites, Minnesota’s large Somali community. As expected, ICE’s arrests have been indiscriminate, detaining many legal residents and citizens, and their behavior unacceptably brutal. As seen in other cities, ICE behaviors have provoked widespread protests. In one horrifying incident, a member of an observer team monitoring ICE behavior was shot and killed through an open car window by an ICE agent.

The shooting was filmed from multiple angles, establishing that the victim posed no threat to the ICE agent. That didn’t stop the president and other administration officials from propagating a lie about what had transpired. They called the murdered woman a domestic terrorist, saying she’d threatened the life of the ICE shooter. Unwrapping this murder is instructive on many levels.

First, with the enormous budget appropriated for ICE expansion, that entity now has over 10,000 armed agents. The rapidity of its growth has led to inadequate vetting and training. More dangerous still is how ICE has recruited agents: at gun shows and right-wing events, and targeted advertisements on right-wing radio shows. The White House appears to be forming an ideologically cohesive national police force that is anti-immigrant and violence-prone and has been told by the administration that they can act with impunity.

This incident also points out the extent to which the White House is capable of fabricating a storyline that will be echoed by other leaders and their supportive media outlets. The impact is clear. A recent poll showed that, by a wide margin, most Americans believe that the woman’s killing was wrong, but more than three-quarters of Republicans believe the president’s narrative that the murdered woman was a threat to the ICE agent and her killing was justified.

So, how did we get to this point? The answer is clear. A president who says whatever he needs to say to justify his position, officials around him and a supportive media who vociferously agree with him and threaten those who disagree, and a cult-like movement of partisans who will believe what they are told even when the facts speak to a different reality.