How did we get to the point where a US president can say and do things that put American culture and political system at risk, and it’s just shrugged off as if it were normal?
In social media posts and unscripted press comments, Donald Trump 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 female 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 the US President 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 American cities safer than they have ever been. None of this is true.
In an effort to impose his will and worldview, Mr Trump has surrounded himself with White House staff and a 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 Mr Trump’s first and second terms. In the former, some senior members of his staff and Cabinet served as a check on his behaviour. Many were dismissed and replaced. He began his second term with a detailed plan to transform government, and with a more compliant senior leadership. For example, the Department of Justice and the FBI are willing to order investigations of Mr Trump’s critics.
This combination of unchecked power, the President’s need to have his every ambition fulfilled, and his disrespect for law and precedent have led to actions that are illegal.
In the first few months, his administration put in place a programme to remove more than 300,000 government employees. He shut down USAID, the Voice of America broadcaster and the US Institute for Peace – all illegal actions because 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 centre for the arts The Donald J Trump, The John F Kennedy Centre for the Performing Arts without any authorisation; and had the White House’s East Wing torn down to be replaced by another vanity project – a massive ballroom – that no doubt will also bear his name in the near future.
Conceivably the most dangerous of Mr Trump’s moves have been the dramatic expansion of ICE, an immigration enforcement entity, and its unleashing in US cities, posing a direct threat to American democracy. In recent weeks, Mr Trump sent a large contingent of ICE agents to Minneapolis, Minnesota. This was done ostensibly to root out illegal immigrants while attempting to embarrass that state’s Democratic governor and to target one of Mr Trump’s new favourites, Minnesota’s large Somali community.
As expected, ICE arrests have been indiscriminate, detaining many legal residents and citizens. Agents’ behaviour has also been unacceptably brutal. As seen in other cities, ICE actions have provoked widespread protests. In one horrifying incident, a member of an observer team monitoring ICE agents was shot and killed through an open car window.
The shooting was filmed from several angles, establishing that the victim posed no threat to the ICE agent. That didn’t stop the President and other administration officials from propagating an untruth 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 more than 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 through targeted advertisements on right-wing radio shows. The White House appears to be forming an ideologically cohesive national police force that is anti-immigrant, prone to violence and that has been told by the administration that it 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 killing of Renee Wood – the woman killed by ICE in Minnesota – was wrong, but more than three quarters of Republicans believe the President’s narrative that she 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.
