Alan Zendell, July 5, 2025

I am both puzzled and flattered by the number of people who ask my opinion about our quixotic, terrifying president. I don’t have any sources of information that they don’t have, and no one from the White House calls me with the latest gossip. I guess it’s just peoples’ mindsets. What I hear most often is, “How did this happen?” or “I never thought this could happen in our country.”

Much of this apparent confusion, the millions of people wandering around with dazed expressions like those deer caught in your headlights, is a direct result of Donald Trump’s deliberate approach to politics, business, and personal relationships. He learned from our most unscrupulous and successful criminals. Lie, cheat, steal, occasionally throw in a truth or two, the overall intention being to create chaos and keep everyone else back on their heels.

“How does he continually get away with it?” I’m asked, and all I can say, is find a good book on human nature. Donald Trump understands some things very well: greed, intimidation, fear, insecurity, and his own narcissistically driven lust for power and dominance. He has an instinct for other people’s weaknesses and vulnerabilities, and he manipulates them ruthlessly. It helps that he possesses not a shred of moral conscience. He’s a sociopath.

And now, he’s decided that his next achievement will be the Nobel Peace Prize. Let’s examine his second term, so far. His huge push on immigration is insensitive, racist, and downright cruel, with its primary goal having nothing to do with immigrants. Rather, the point is to rally those parts of his base who believe his lies about people who flee here from poverty and tyranny, or those who are too lazy to learn the facts for themselves. To them, he’s a hero. To the rest of us, he’s simply a disgusting human being.

The same goes for his Big Beautiful Bill, which he passed through intimidation by his billionaire friends who want everyone in Congress to believe that their money can defeat them when they run to keep their seats, which only works because they are as craven as Trump himself is. The bill was just another example of trying blow up the established order so his henchmen can rush in and steal what they want while changing the rules to favor them in the future.

About that Peace Prize. This is classic Trump. He has encouraged Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to do whatever he wanted to in response to the October 7, 2023 attack by Hamas. Let me be clear: Hamas is a terrorist organization of the most despicable kind. I have no sympathy for them, and as agents of murder and destruction, they deserve everything they get. But just as the rest of the world doesn’t blame 300 million Americans for Trump, despite the fact that we elected him, we must be cognizant of the death, maiming, and starvation of thousands of civilians in Gaza. Yes, two million Palestinians chose Hamas to lead them, but they were subject to even more hate propaganda than Trump’s base was.

The only reason Trump is in a position to broker a cease fire is that he made Israel totally dependent on being re-supplied as the war ground on. Trump couldn’t care less how many Palestinian children are killed or have the rest of their lives ruined. If he threatens, now, to withhold weaponry that would allow Netanyahu to continue his war, he’ll probably get his ceasefire, but he will also have been the one who allowed the humanitarian catastrophe to get to this point by ignoring everyone else’s pleas for restraint. Trump is as responsible as anyone for creating the disaster that exists today in Gaza, much of which has little to do with Hamas. Threatening to turn off the flow of weapons does not make him a peacemaker.

His actions with respect to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine have been far worse. The war has raged for more than three years mostly because Trump has winked at Putin, letting him know that he will do nothing to stop the invasion even if it means the dissolution of NATO, if only Vladimir will show him the love and respect he craves. The destruction of Ukraine’s beautiful cities, the diaspora of millions of innocent civilians fleeing Russian bombs could have been stopped long ago, if Trump cared about anything but himself.

Does this man deserve a Nobel Peace Prize?

What he deserves is to be held accountable for his crimes, among which is the attempted overthrow of our Constitution. Let’s not forget the lengths Trump has gone to to stay in power. His is the most immoral administration of my lifetime, and Trump himself is the most dangerous person on Earth.