While former President Obama lifted us with “The Audacity of Hope”, tragically today, we are witnessing daily the audacity of evil. While none should find it difficult to recognize the conduct of my fellow Republicans in Congress as self-preserving cowardice, and the conduct of wealthy MAGA supporters as greedy, the conduct of President Trump seems to be in an altogether different class.
Given the preponderance of callousness, cruelty and vindictiveness President Trump exerts daily, it has become difficult to characterize much of his conduct as anything but evil. Evil isn’t just selfishness or greed, hyper-competitiveness, or hardball negotiating tactics, but acting with depraved indifference, malevolence.
Tragically, audacity is often comingled with ill intent. Audacity often dominates the psyche of thugs, bullies and authoritarians, who think they are smart enough and strong enough to get away with whatever they want. Sadly, few gave much weight to Donald Trump when mocked a disabled reporter, or when he bragged, “I could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue and wouldn’t lose any votes”.
Outside of war, it’s hard to remember a modern American President, other than President Trump, regularly practicing cruelty. It showed itself in President Trump’s first term, when he chose to deter illegal immigration by separating migrant children from their parents. Another example was when President Trump asked if “we could just shoot protesters in the legs?”
Tragically, President Trump’s second term, took off literally with a vengeance. He immediately withdrew protective services from Biden Administration officials that were critical of him. He immediately stopped all payments to USAID, which shutdown programs that fed and provided vaccines to millions of destitute women and children. “Senior USAID leaders warned Trump appointees of hundreds of thousands of deaths from closing the agency”, but Trump staffers swiftly closed it anyway. Since then, the Trump Administration has been in the process of dissolving USAID and transferring some of its functions to the State Department and eliminating others.
In addition, the Trump Administration has been significantly cutting back on benefit assistance staffing that serves Americans. Staffs that help people struggling to access VA benefits, Social Security benefits, Medicaid and ACA benefits, are not just being trimmed, but chain-sawed off. This is occurring while proof of eligibility requirements have increased and aggressive Social Security clawbacks threaten to bankrupt thousands of seniors.
Beyond sad, Trump’s Budget Director, Russell Vought is executing his stated intention to impound funds appropriated by Congress and “inflict trauma” on federal employees. Tragically for all, Musk and Vought’s rash, uninformed, slash and burn approach to improving efficiency is not only traumatizing federal employees, but seriously damaging programs and services that millions of people need.
Another demonstration of cruelty is how the Trump Administration is deporting immigrants. Instead of expanding the use of immigration judges to adjudicate immigration cases, the Trump Administration fired twenty immigration judges and pressed ICE agents into indiscriminately arresting and deporting immigrants, and terrorizing immigrant communities, and college students.
Lastly, the Trump Administration has had the audacity to engage in constitutionally questionable conduct by firing inspector generals, military lawyers, and trying to intimidate and undermine federal judges, law firms, journalists and news outlets.
Given so great a preponderance of grossly callous and cruel conduct, hopefully it is clear to all that the Trump Administration isn’t trying to be ProLife, or reduce the cost groceries, or improve the efficiency of our government, but establish a largely authoritarian state and punish anyone who gets in its way. As a lifelong conservative, let me remind us that we are not a callous or cruel people. Americans have been standing up to bullies since our inception, and just because one man managed to con his way into the Oval Office, doesn’t mean we shouldn’t stand up to him too. If ever there was a time to stand up and defend America, defend our democracy and thwart gross callousness and cruelty, it is now.