President George H. W. Bush called for “a kinder, gentler nation.” His son, President George W. Bush, claimed to be a “compassionate conservative.” Comes now President Donald J.Trump, who pushes plutocratic policies that are not kind, gentle or compassionate, and that can scarcely be called conservative. Traditional conservative Republicans at least paid lip service to ideals like personal responsibility, respect for the rule of law and conservation of America’s natural beauty. Today, just a month after regaining the White House, Trump and his fawning followers are delivering not conservatism, but chaos.
At his Jan. 20 inauguration, Trump mentioned the attempt to assassinate him during his 2024 campaign. “My life was saved for a reason,” he declared. “I was saved by God to make America great again.” Trump’s claim of being spared by divine intervention begs the question of why two other people were wounded and one was killed during God’s supposed thwarting of Trump’s assassination.
Just hours after he claimed to be spared because God was looking out for him, Trump issued pardons and commutations for more than 1,500 members of his MAGA mob who stormed the Capitol Building on Jan. 6, 2021 in an effort to derail the results of the 2020 election. Among the Jan. 6 insurrectionists now back on the streets are leaders of the Proud Boys brawlers and the Oath Keepers paramilitary militia. Like the gangs of thugs who attacked opponents of Hitler and Mussolini as fascism took over in Germany and Italy, the Jan. 6 convicts are now free to do the bidding of their MAGA master, President Trump. Republicans who claim to support the police looked the other way as Trump lionized and pardoned his supporters who had attacked and injured police on Capitol Hill four years ago.
Trump’s first month as president is a portent of more chaos to come. “We are in the midst of a constitutional crisis right now,” said Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of the University of California, Berkeley, law school on Feb. 7. “There have been so many unconstitutional and illegal actions in the first 18 days of the Trump presidency. We have never seen anything like this,” he told The New York Times.
Indeed, in his first days back in the White House, Trump has pushed the boundaries of the presidency and aimed his arrows at targets ranging from Army generals to transsexuals and from immigrants to FBI agents. On Jan. 23 Trump said that California should not receive federal aid to fight wildfires until the state changes its environmental policies to suit Trump and his billionaire buddies.
On Jan. 24 Trump ended security protection for Anthony Fauci, the former public health official who had angered Trump supporters during the COVID pandemic. Instead of supporting scientists like Fauci, Trump is backing anti-vaccination conspiracy pusher Robert Kennedy Jr. to oversee America’s health care. Just four days later Trump canceled the security detail guarding Gen. Mark Milley, who is on a hit list for Iranian assassins. In a petty and puerile move, Trump also had photographs of the general removed from the Pentagon where Milley had served as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
When a helicopter and plane collision claimed 67 lives in Washington in late January, Trump turned national grief into personal grievance when, without evidence, he blamed the tragedy on diversity in hiring and on the policies of his predecessors, Joe Biden and Barack Obama.
As February began, Trump said he would “like to see Canada become our 51st state” and that the United States should take over war-ravaged Gaza, oust its population of two million Palestinians, and transform it into “the Riviera of the Middle East.” Meanwhile, Trump and his wrecking crew gutted the U.S. Agency for International Development.
On Feb. 7 Trump fired Colleen Shogan, head of the National Archives that preserves and protects America’s history and records. That same day Trump announced that he would appoint himself as chairman of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington.
In just a month in office Donald Trump is showing the truth of words written by caustic columnist H.L. Mencken decades ago: “When fanatics are on top there is no limit to oppression.”
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