What Voters Think After Trump’s First Month

Posted on February 22, 2025 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, February 22, 2025

Because he has dominated our media and our attention for almost ten years, it feels like Donald Trump has been president forever, although in this incarnation it’s only been a month. The only president in the modern era who had a first-hundred-day agenda as aggressive as Trump’s was Franklin Roosevelt in 1933. FDR inherited a nation drowning in the throes of The Great Depression, but he never used phrases like “Make America Great Again.” He simply did it because America was in grave danger of collapsing, and the rest of the world was spinning out of control due to the rise of Communism and Fascism. Trump’s motivations are greed, megalomania, and avenging personal grudges.

Another thing about FDR, from Trump’s point of view, is that it was his being elected four times that resulted in the 22nd amendment that limits a president to two terms. Trump has been publicly salivating about repealing the amendment, ignoring it, or finding a loophole around it. One idea floated by MAGA extremists is having someone else run for president in 2028 with Trump as his running mate. If they won, the new president would resign, and Trump would again be elevated to the presidency. The 22nd amendment only specifies that someone may only be elected to that office twice.

Before we begin anointing Trump to a Putin-style imperial presidency, let’s not forget that contrary to MAGA claims, America does not have rigged elections. Voters can be slow to realize the true nature of a politician, but they eventually get it right. There are many reasons Trump won in 2024, but the mandate he claims to have received doesn’t exist. He won primarily because America is not ready to elect a woman as president, especially a woman of color. Kamala Harris received fifteen million fewer votes that Joe Biden did in 2020, running on a platform very like the one Biden used to revive our economy, return inflation to acceptable levels, and reduce unemployment to its lowest rate since WW2.

A month into Trump’s second term, we’re starting to see polling results about how the voters perceive his words and actions. Addressing Republican governors last week, Trump asserted that he had “unheard of” approval ratings of 69% and 71%. Whether that’s a lie or a delusional fantasy, those numbers are false. The most respected polling organizations have now released his voter approval/disapproval ratings after one month in office. According to NBC News, the results are:

To place these numbers in perspective, Trump’s approval numbers were initially higher than in the first month of his first term, but they are the lowest any president has had since 1953  by an average of fifteen percentage points. In late December, Americans felt optimistic about Trump’s return to power by 52%-48%. After a month of watching his actions in office, they are now pessimistic by 54%-46%, a six point drop in less than two months.

There are more specific polling results that show, after a month in office, Trump is underwater with voters in several key areas. They fear his aggressive attempts to increase his own power and disregard Congress. They feel lied to about inflation, which he promised he would reduce to pre-pandemic levels (they had already dropped to pre-pandemic levels under Biden.) Majorities of polled voters are afraid of Elon Musk’s influence on Trump and oppose the politically motivated shutdown of federal agencies with the loss of hundreds of thousands of jobs, a large percentage of which are held by veterans. Voters oppose abandoning NATO and Ukraine, and a significant majority oppose Trump’s plan to take over Gaza and relocate 2.2 million Palestinians.

An issue that could dominate polls in coming months is a growing awareness among average voters that Trump’s tariffs are primarily a back-door to increasing taxes on low-income Americans, while Republicans work to extend and expand tax cuts for the wealthy. Changing the tax code to increase the burden on lower income Americans requires the approval of Congress. But tariffs have essentially the same effect, and Congress has ceded most of the authority to issue them to the Executive Branch of government.

Given the extreme political polarization that exists in America, today, a six point drop in overall approval in one month is virtually unprecedented. It’s too soon to assume that Trump’s policies are in trouble, but if this trend continues, it won’t be long before Republicans in Congress start worrying about re-election next year and begin distancing themselves from Trump.

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Trump and Ukraine

Posted on February 19, 2025 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, February 19, 2025

Avoiding the temptation to respond to every salvo MAGA sends up, I will focus on Ukraine, today. It’s a problem Trump promised to fix “on day one” and one that poses the greatest existential risk to the western alliance that has averted nuclear war for seventy-five years.

One aspect of the Ukraine problem is the ongoing battle between truth and fiction that has been the hallmark of Trump’s ten-year political career. Trump spent his life treading the fine lines between fraud, slander, libel, and free speech. That sometimes cost him huge fines resulting from lawsuits, but his calculation was that knowing how to play our legal system allows him to win more often than not. He has applied the same strategy to governing.

Trump’s problem with Ukraine began when he tried to strong-arm Ukrainian President Zelensky to frame Hunter Biden, with the sole intent of weakening Trump’s then strongest rival, Joe Biden, resulting in Trump’s first impeachment. Trump has a virulent grudge against Zelensky, and as we have seen since his inauguration, his personal grudges significantly affect his decisions. Our transactional president is driven by three things: increasing his own wealth and power, doing harm to everyone he perceives as an enemy, and fulfilling his fantasy of being lauded as the hero who saved America.

The Progressive approach to diplomacy in the 20th century included the notion that countries whose economies are inextricably tied together don’t nuke each other. But engaging economically had its pitfalls, like giving up much of our country’s manufacturing base to China and other Asian countries. It also raised the question: is it morally acceptable or strategically smart to forge economic alliances with countries that don’t respect the sovereignty of others? That’s where we are with respect to Ukraine. Russia is attempting to convince Trump to release all sanctions placed on it by Presidents Biden and Obama as punishment for invading Ukraine in 2014 and 2022.

Vladimir Putin’s decision to seize Ukraine was also motivated by three things. One was the likelihood, that Ukraine would be invited to join NATO. Putin’s fear of facing NATO countries along Russia’s entire western border with Europe was understandable, if misplaced. NATO is a defensive alliance shaped by the realities of the Cold War. There has never been any reason to believe that NATO had aggressive designs on the former Soviet Republics. The Soviet Union’s aggressively expansionist philosophy made the West’s highest priority avoiding another world war.

The decision by Trump to negotiate with Russia to end the war in Ukraine, leaving out both Ukraine itself and our NATO allies had two purposes. One was to continue his tough guy act, making sure our allies understand who is really in charge. The other was revealed by the inclusion in the negotiating team by Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov of Kirill Dmitriev, the head of Russia’s sovereign wealth fund. Dmitriev’s role under Putin is to develop economic opportunities for Russia.

Today, The New York Times reported that Dmitriev shared his negotiating pitch with their reporters. He told American negotiators that America lost $324 billion by curtailing trade with Russia. Lavrov echoed this by stating after Tuesday’s meetings in Riyadh, that “there was great interest” in the room “in removing artificial barriers to the development of mutually beneficial economic cooperation” — a reference to lifting American sanctions.

Russia will end the war in Ukraine if Trump restores its status as a full trading partner, something Russia’s economy desperately needs. But Russia has no intention of giving up Crimea, the warm water port that connects through the Black Sea to the open ocean. Nor will Putin withdraw his claim on the industrial provinces of Eastern Ukraine that border Russia, many of whose citizens are ethnic Russians.

Putin’s pitch to Trump is: formally concede Crimea and the eastern provinces of Ukraine that our forces presently occupy, remove all sanctions, and open up all your markets to Russian products, primarily oil and natural gas, and we’ll stop bombing Ukrainian cities and infrastructure. Not incidentally, Trump and his associates would all have preferential status for doing business with Russia. They can all become as wealthy as Elon Musk if they simply sacrifice Ukraine. That’s the secret deal Trump negotiated behind the scenes, running a shadow foreign policy during the Biden administration. If it came to pass, America would effectively tell the world that the values expressed by our foreign policy are a sham; in the final analysis, our leaders are as greedy and immoral as those we revile as enemies.

There’s a hint of good news. Today, two prominent Republican Senators, Roger Wicker of Mississippi and John Kennedy of Louisiana, spoke out forcefully against siding with Putin, “a war criminal who should spend the rest of his life prison.” With Mitch McConnell (R, KY) showing animus for Trump’s extreme views, and Majority Leader John Thune and Texas Senator John Cornyn having signaled that they will not roll over to Trump’s demands, he may not have the Senate majority he needs to pull off his Ukraine deal.

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Appearances Can Mislead

Posted on February 15, 2025 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, February 15, 2025

Scan any news site, today, and you’ll get the same impression from all of them. The only difference is that the pro-MAGA sites are mocking the opposition’s apparent lack of defense, while the progressive sites seem to be describing a horror show. So far, Trump’s promise to dismantle the federal government and America’s treaties and alliances, and remake them in his image is going according to plan.

That’s where you might be fooled. To all appearances, Trump seems to be having things all his way, so far. His shock and awe approach to governing seems to have the Democrats and everyone else who believes in our Constitution and position in the world running for cover. All the noise is coming from Trump, and some of it is shocking. Taking Greenland away from Denmark, relocating 2.2 million people from Gaza so Trump can develop a resort, annexing Canada?

Rather than falling for the MAGA trap – trying to address every outrageous thing at the same time – I will focus today on Vice President J. D. Vance, who is quite capable of creating a global horror show on his own.

Vance joined the Marines out of high school, a fact he repeats whenever he can, along with the fact that he served a deployment to Iraq. What he doesn’t mention is that he was a Marine journalist, and his time in Iraq never took him close to combat. He earned a law degree from Yale, after which he worked for Senator John Cornyn (R, TX) for a year. He tried his hand at venture capitalizing, but both of his capital ventures failed without accomplishing anything. His memoir, Hillbilly Elegy, which described eastern Kentucky as a place with few educational opportunities and a culture based on coal and drug addiction, was characterized by Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear as insulting and offensive to real Kentuckians.

When Vance, who strongly opposed Donald Trump in 2016, became a loud anti-immigration advocate and began supporting right-wing political parties, he gained Trump’s endorsement in the 2022 Ohio Senate race. His outspoken support of Trump’s policies, and his loyalty pledge to Trump are the reasons he is now our Vice President. He is an accomplished speaker who is skilled at manipulating truth and graying the lines between fact and fiction, and seems fearless when addressing massive gatherings of powerful people.

Thus, it was Vance who Trump sent to the Munich Security Conference this week, a top level gathering of our European allies. The Conference had been led to believe that Vance was there to brief them on Trump’s plan to end the war in Ukraine. Instead, however, they received a lecture on how to run a democracy. In political and diplomatic terms, Vance is a young pup with no relevant experience. It was no surprise, then, that his remarks to European leaders were met mostly with stone-faced silence.

He was arrogant and offensive addressing people with far more experience and understanding than he possesses. He accused Europe, particularly its most powerful and influential nation, Germany, of allowing immigration to destroy their countries and demonizing legitimate far-right political parties. By Vance’s definition, that’s a violation of free speech, and he opined that suppressing far-right opinions was a greater threat to Europe than Russia and China.

Whether he failed to recognize that Europe’s history with Fascism made his remarks both insulting and inappropriate, or he just didn’t give a damn, his diatribe in Munich did not go over well. It’s not clear whether Vance showed poor judgment or whether he simply bought into the Trump approach of attacking everyone who disagrees with him. Especially after touring Dachau and telling the  press he was grateful for the experience, he apparently missed the point of all the signs loudly declaring: “NEVER AGAIN!”

Vance aimed his remarks primarily at German Chancellor Olaf Scholz. But Scholz did not respond the way most American politicians have to Trump and Vance. Scholz spoke sharply about Germany’s 80-year commitment to never allowing Nazism to rise in Germany again. Germany, in fact, defends its refusal to work with right-wing parties that spout Nazi slogans and policies, and has passed a law enabling its courts to outlaw such parties when their speech or actions appear to openly support Nazi power. Scholz accused Vance and Trump of interfering with German democracy. The pro-Nazi Alternative for Germany party is running second in the polls in next week’s election.

Vance’s alienation of European leaders coincided with Trump demanding that every member of NATO contribute five percent of its GNP to defending the alliance, a sharp increase from the two percent that he previously agreed upon. It also coincided with Ukrainian President Volodymir Zelensky’s appeal for a European army to help him oust Russian invaders from his country, as Europe’s leaders conclude they can no longer rely on America’s support.

Vance did exactly what Trump wanted him to, but I doubt that Trump expected the kind of unified rejection he elicited.

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The World’s a Stage

Posted on February 12, 2025 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, February 12, 2025

Sometimes it feels like we’re living in someone else’s dream or that we’re puppets in a game being played by superior beings. Once computers were in general use, writers began drafting stories about loss of free will and people living like sentient props trapped in a simulation. Those notions arise when we feel the world we live in changing faster than we’re prepared to deal with, when events seem to be swirling out of control, or when we’re trapped in a sequence of events we feel helpless to influence.

That’s how the first month of Trump Administration 2 feels. The script for all of 2025 was written long before Trump was re-elected and described in more than 900 pages of detail in Project 2025. Taken together, the policies and actions laid out in that manifesto amount to a coup. We normally associate coups with secret plots, conspiracies, and violence, but this one is happening in plain sight and moving with the inexorable predictability of a slow-motion avalanche.

The surprise to me is that so many people are surprised that it’s actually happening. What we’re witnessing is like an epic war movie with thousands of people on each side lined up and ready to create mayhem with their spears and swords, except that this fight will be bloodless. Instead of killing and maiming their opponents, the new Trump team will attempt to destroy careers, threaten civil and criminal actions, ban books, lie, and slander. It’s an all-out unabashed attempt to re-write our Constitution and turn the clock back to a time when women were subservient, minorities knew their place, and our government was driven by an unholy alliance between demagogues, corrupt churches, and wealthy industrialists.

What’s occurring is a clash between two subcultures, two versions of America that have existed side by side for decades without acknowledging each other. After World War 2, America became schizophrenic. On one hand, the forces of progressivism, equality, and human rights were changing our nation into one that looked more like what Thomas Jefferson projected in the Declaration of Independence and what Abraham Lincoln, who turns 216 today, enacted into law. Simultaneously, we became embroiled in both the Cold War and several ill-advised hot wars in a worsening existential standoff between nuclear powers that shaped a whole generation of Americans.

Everything might have changed when the Soviet Union collapsed just after Christmas in 1991. But on both sides, the forces of reaction were working to re-establish the old pre-war order, and China was quietly becoming a major economic power. America had a choice: continue to build trade and military alliances to avert war, while defending future generations against the real threat to humanity – climate change – or revert to greed, isolationism and a massive power grab by wealthy individuals and corporations.

That’s where we are today. The battle lines have been drawn, left versus right, progressive versus reactionary, with the vast majority of Americans watching like Romans at a gladiator match. This is a full-frontal assault on the twentieth century interpretation of our Constitution and our democracy. Both sides have been preparing for this since the Reagan administration, and we’re about to witness an epic battle of ideologies. The scripts have been written, and the actors are already playing their roles. The war will occur on dozens of fronts, because the side trying to overthrow the established order understands that chaos is their greatest weapon.

That this war will be fought will Executive Actions, lawsuits, and court injunctions makes it no less deadly than an armed revolution. We all have front row seats, but unlike a movie, we won’t all see the same version. Our broadcast and social media, constantly being hacked and influenced by bad actors, will continue to spin their versions of the truth, and the battles will progress through the courts.

We all have a choice between now and the 2026 midterm elections. We can choose to treat the future of our nation as a stage play and sit quietly in the audience watching it unfold. Or we can recognize that this is really serious, and the outcome will determine how our grandchildren live, and whether the America they mature in will look anything like the one we grew up in.

Instead of allowing these events to determine our futures, we can each take a stand and defend what we believe in. The dissolution of our government will not only affect those vying for power. It is already affecting millions of Americans in jeopardy of losing their livelihoods, and the attempt to obliterate institutions that don’t mesh with MAGA values is already underway.

We can be spectators, or we can choose sides. It’s up to us to defend what we believe in, or one day in the very near future we won’t have a choice.

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Prelude to a Year of Chaos

Posted on February 5, 2025 by alanpzendell

ALan Zendell, February 5, 2025

Sixteen days after his inauguration, Donald Trump has given us a roadmap for how he will govern. Nothing about it is surprising. Everything Trump has done was telegraphed well in advance. His friends even published a thousand-page book that described in detail.

If Trump gets his way, his administration will come to be known as The Great Purge. Before his first day in office had passed he had begun purging immigrants from our population. Trump himself and his surrogates who wrote Project 2025 made it clear that they believe America should be a nation of white Christians in which women are dominated and controlled by men. In their view, immigrants, especially brown, black, and yellow ones, have no place in America unless they happen to possess necessary skills we’re short of. No matter if, like Dreamers, they’ve been here for years, going to school, working, paying taxes, and raising families.

Next came Trump’s lust for revenge, which has him targeting 5,000 FBI agents and DOJ personnel who worked on the federal indictments concerning his mishandling classified documents and the January 6th insurrection. He has also floated the idea of criminal charges against members of Congress who voted to impeach him. And his ideological quest to purge America of horrors like gender and racial equality, diversity, and women’s right to control their own bodies is an attempt to re-write the Constitution by brute force.

Perhaps even more significant is his vision of a government run by oligarchs. To accomplish that, he will have to widen even further the huge income gap that exists between classes in America. There is no upper limit to the wealth he believes his billionaire friends should control, which means that his two priorities this year will be extending and expanding the 2017 tax cuts and greatly reducing federal spending by taking the axe to federal agencies he doesn’t approve of.

His first three targeted agencies were those in charge of foreign aid, education, and protecting the environment, all of which exist because of laws passed by Congress. The president who campaigned on jobs and prosperity for his middle and working-class base, had no problem with eliminating the jobs and careers of tens of thousands of federal workers and a comparable number of private sector employees who support those agencies. Could his approach be any more cynical?

If he’s allowed to get away with actions that are likely illegal and unconstitutional, Trump will accomplish, with a few strokes of his pen, what five decades of right-wing extremists have been unable to. He will divert trillions of dollars into further tax cuts that will fill the pockets of the Elon Musks of the world, while isolating us from both our allies and our adversaries and handing China a free pass to expand its sphere of influence. If children in some states are poorly educated or greenhouse gases continue to increasingly upset the balance of life on our planet, that won’t be a problem because the billionaires will be safe and secure in their insulated fortresses.

And now, we’ve gone from the merely cynical to the absurd. Trump wants to expel two million Palestinians from Gaza so he can build a new Riviera in the Middle East. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was all smiles sitting beside Trump at the White House when the president floated the idea. Netanyahu’s own extremist supporters have advocated throwing Palestinians out of Gaza so Israel could take it over for years.

Trump’s plan to deport two million Palestinians and send them to Egypt and Jordan is being bashed by both our European allies and leaders in the Middle East. It would be equivalent to evacuating Cincinnati and relocating all of its residents across the Ohio River in Kentucky so Trump can build a theme park. But like much of what Trump has done in his first sixteen days, it’s not possible to tell what he’s serious about and what is just chaff thrown up to confuse his opponents’ defenses.

The game plan is clear: go after everything in sight that might weaken Democrats or the constituencies he’s attacking. Whether his actions are legal or constitutional is entirely beside the point. The first test was to see who was willing to stand up and fight, and so far twenty-one states have sued to reverse some of Trump’s Executive Orders, and two federal judges have issued injunctions to prevent Trump from usurping the functions of Congress. This was all anticipated by the far right. The drill is to move upward through the court system until Trump’s pet Supreme Court gets to weigh in.

This entire year is going to be one protracted legal battle after another, with the fate of our Constitution and our nation hanging in the balance. Our founders were pretty smart, but they never anticipated a Congress that crawled sheepishly into Trump’s pocket and a Supreme Court put in place solely to do his bidding.

1,445 days to go.

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Aiding Others in Need

Posted on February 3, 2025 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, February 3, 2025

The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) is an independent agency of the United States government that is primarily responsible for administering civilian foreign aid and development assistance. With a budget of over $50 billion, USAID is one of the largest official aid agencies in the world and accounts for more than half of all U.S. foreign assistance…Congress authorizes USAID’s programs in the Foreign Assistance Act.

Yesterday, Donald Trump said USAID is run by “a bunch of radical lunatics.” His new best bud, Elon Musk, said USAID is nothing but a ball of worms. That’s the MAGA/Project 2025 point of view Trump disavowed throughout the 2024 election campaign. Here’s another. 

On January 31st, I received a letter from a young cousin, a desperate call for aid, for her, her colleagues, and the people they have spent their careers trying to help. She’s a wife and mom who has spent her twenty-year professional life meeting the health care and nutritional needs of millions of people around the world.

What is at stake is the future, not only of her clients, but of the existence of the foreign aid apparatus of our federal government. The latter includes thousands of Americans employed by both the private and public sectors, who dedicated their lives to making the world a safer, healthier place. What most struck me about her letter was that although she has been furloughed along with thousands of others by Trump’s Executive Orders, it focused not on her job or loss of income, but on the harm Trump is causing to America and people who might die or suffer serious harm from them.

Canceling America’s aid to other nations is part of Trump’s massive plan to remake America in his own image – our narcissistic president whose only motivations in life are his own greed and lust for power, wants the world to perceive the United States in the same terms. To Trump, America First means Trump and his wealthy friends first, and the hell with everyone else. We’re all collateral damage.

While Trump views aid to others as a waste of resources, my dear cousin sees such aid as the true meaning of America First. She sees it as a bridge between peoples, of the Haves reaching out to the Have Nots. But it’s not just charity. By relieving hunger, curbing the spread of AIDS, and improving the general level of health in poverty-stricken countries, she believes we create a bond that enhances our national security and eliminates the main causes of wars, revolutions, and terrorism.

Thousands of Americans are employed in our foreign aid program, which Trump is attempting to eliminate with the stroke of a pen. That means thousands of American families will have their livelihoods stripped away without warning, this from a president who has promised jobs and prosperity for everyone. Personally, I have a problem understanding how this fits any rational definition of America First.

Aside from caring deeply about the people she serves and works with, the thing that motivated my cousin to reach out was the way Trump has chosen to govern in his first two weeks. It’s typical of the way he has approached things all his life. He starts hundreds of fires, sowing chaos and confusion everywhere, knowing that his opponents only have sufficient resources to fight a small fraction of them. They have no choice but to triage their defenses. Consequently, only the hottest fires with the loudest, most numerous victims have any chance of garnering support and defending their interests.

It’s classic Trump, Blitzkrieg politics, designed to overwhelm and smother all opposition. It’s what the MAGA movement has tried to do since Trump inspired it, and it’s the only way a small, determined minority of zealots can impose their will on 350 million Americans. It’s also the polar opposite of what our Constitution and Declaration of Independence from Britain intended. Democracy and majority rule are a sloppy, inefficient way to run a country, but they defined America for 240 years until Trump came along.

Thus, dedicated people like my cousin, who care deeply about their country, their jobs, and the people they serve must reach out and make us hear their voices. Their base of support isn’t large enough to survive triage. This is a prime example of Trump’s sledgehammer approach to governing. If we don’t speak up to counter it, he will be successful in dismantling most of what we built in the years since World War 2.

My cousin wants people to study our foreign aid program and see for themselves that preserving it is very much in America’s interest. If we agree with her values, the next step is contacting our federal Representatives and Senators. Otherwise, these programs will die.

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Responsible Governing

Posted on January 23, 2025 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, January 23, 2025

It has been responsibly reported that Trump’s decision to pardon or commute the sentences of all the January 6th perpetrators who were convicted of crimes was not analyzed or deliberated over, but was an impulsive decision made by him alone, designed close the issue. It was a terrible decision, as hundreds of very dangerous and well-armed people who openly threaten civil war are back in their communities angrier than ever. Worse, Trump’s action has clearly inspired them to keep up their fight to overthrow the government with even bolder actions.

I have to ask: what’s worse, a president who makes bad decisions because either he is not competent or unwilling to listen to expert advisors, or one who acts irrationally without regard to consequences? This is an urgent matter for all Americans. People guilty of insurrection, murder, and assault will be freed because an angry narcissist who is unable to control himself wants the support of these extremist militias. We’ve seen what they are capable of. Imagine if they attack the Capitol again, but this time they have more allies than adversaries within the Trump administration.

It’s appalling to me that my country could have placed its future in Trump’s hands again after seeing what he did during his first term. In 2016, people frustrated with the government could be forgiven for being taken in by his lies and delusions. It was also not unreasonable for them to hope that President Trump would behave differently than either candidate Trump or businessman Trump, but that hope is no longer credible. As President, he showed the same disdain for laws, rules, and appropriate behavior that he always had in the past. And he proved that George Orwell had been correct when he predicted that the more outrageous the lie, and the more often it’s repeated, the more likely people are to believe it.

The truth that the world witnessed with its own eyes and ears is that Trump was willing to put the entire nation at risk because his ego couldn’t accept defeat in the election. Anyone who thinks the radical right-wing militias he pardoned aren’t serious about their threats of revolution and civil war needs to wake up and smell the roses. They are dangerous and they are angry as hell. If you’re not convinced, ask why state and federal law enforcement won’t enter places like the northern Idaho panhandle or the Siskyou mountains along the western border of California and Oregon. I’ve seen it with my own eyes, and it’s real.

Given the callous disregard Trump displayed in forgiving the crimes of the insurrectionists, why would anyone expect any of his other present and future actions to be different? He knows perfectly well that America became great on the backs of immigrants, and the overwhelming majority of them are hard-working honest people who are grateful to be Americans. For every drug dealer who slips through our border there are thousands of decent people just trying to raise their families in peace.

So, why slander them? Why tell America that they’re all murderers and rapists, as he famously did on his escalator? I’m not a fan of undocumented people entering our country, but the reality is that the economies of at least half our states depend on them. If our immigration system is broken, and it is, it’s because of greed and corruption within our own borders. Too many people profit from the work done by undocumented workers, including Trump’s own family, for them to change the system. The reason Trump slandered and degraded immigrants is simply because his lies resonated with his base.

Now it’s the turn of scientists, health care researchers, teachers, and every Democrat. Trump is angry because he seriously mismanaged COVID and cost the lives of at least a half million Americans. President Biden, before leaving office, thought it necessary to issue pre-emptive pardons to people like Anthony Fauci and the entire Centers for Disease Control, because they spoke the truth in the face of Trump’s lies.

The strangest irony in all this is that Trump has surrounded himself with some of the smartest, wealthiest and most successful people in the world because he has always believed that wealth and power are the only things that matter, which actually boils down to just wealth, since power can be bought. But all is not well in Trump’s fantasy oligarchy. It’s clear that his billionaire supporters like Elon Musk have little or no respect for him, but he promised them all the one thing he’s sure to deliver with a Republican Congress. They’ll never have to be burdened with taxes again.

So far, this administration is looking like a bunch of loose cannons all firing at random, as often as not at each other. Only 1,458 days to go.

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Trump 2’s First Two Days

Posted on January 22, 2025 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, January 22, 2025

A presidential term lasts 1,461 days. If, like me, you’re concerned that Donald Trump is capable of permanently harming our country, knowing there are 1,459 days left in his term isn’t reassuring. But realistically, he only has about 600 days to solidify his agenda before the mid-term Congressional races heat up in 2026.

Ever since then Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell announced, the day after Barrack Obama was inaugurated, that his mission was to assure Obama was a one-term president, the role of Congress has changed from seeking common ground to obstructionism. To be fair, though, the credit for that change should go to Newt Gingrich. Even with Republicans in control of both houses of Congress, 600 days is not a huge amount of time, and we’re already seeing Democrats and Democrat-controlled states attempting to slow down the Trump train.

The Trump administration’s strategy is to hit the ground running and start so many fires in week one, the opposition won’t have the resources to fight them all. Thus, an aggressive release of Executive Actions on day one, followed immediately by lawsuits from most of the blue states. Trump demonstrated the power of delaying tactics over the past four years, tying up criminal and civil cases that stalled prosecutions for his most serious alleged crimes. Those tactics are now fair game to try to prevent Trump from making harmful permanent changes before voters have a chance to weigh in in the midterms.

The first thing Trump did supports the claim that his two main reasons for running for president again were to kill the criminal indictments he was facing and once elected, to use the presidency to enrich himself. He began that process with a bang that will be difficult or impossible to counter. He launched his own cryptocurrency, which means that anyone who wants something from Trump can get his attention by making deposits into his crypto account. Such deposits are not tracked by any regulating agency and are not required to be disclosed under current ethics rules. Some critics view this as a massive billion dollar bribe machine. Trump was reported to have increased his net worth by $60 billion on the launch of his cryptocurrency.

Trump’s cryptocurrency neutralizes the emoluments clause of the Constitution, which prohibits a sitting president from receiving gifts from foreign governments. Walter Schaub, who headed the Office of Government Ethics during Trump’s first term described the whole thing as corruption and naked profiteering. But while the crypto launch seemed to fit into a gray area of law with few precedents, the slew of Executive Actions released immediately after Trump took office are clearly aimed at undermining present laws and regulations and challenging critical guarantees in our Constitution.

If you’re all in on MAGA, the Executive Actions are exactly what you wanted Trump to do. Pardoning and commuting the sentences of people convicted in connection with the January 6th, 2021 insurrection at the Capitol, especially those who assaulted law enforcement, offended 70% of people polled, but Trump understands that pumping up those in his base like The Proud Boys has a more lasting impact than whatever negative reaction he gets. We know from experience, that feeble retorts by people like Susan Collins (R, ME) are largely for show. She’s probably forgotten about it by now.

Trump wasted no time withdrawing us from the World Health Organization and the Paris Climate Accords, two actions that are unpopular with well-informed Americans, but they reveal much about Trump’s real agenda. They make no logical sense, but both of Trump’s targets offended him by being smarter and obviously more in touch with the needs of people than he is, so in typical Trump fashion, he declares them bad for America and moves on.

One of his Executive Actions directly challenges the validity of the Fourteenth Amendment, which grants American citizenship to anyone born in the United States. Whether he’s serious about this isn’t clear. Trump loves to fire up salvos of missiles, most of which are chaff designed to distract from things he really wants done. With Democrats controlling half the states, deleting an amendment is a monumental effort, and one that entirely affects Dreamers, who have the support of a majority of Americans. It’s likely that this is just noise, surely not something that can be done before the midterms. Likewise, his absurd promise to deport millions of undocumented aliens. (Does he think we’ve been invaded by Martians?) Now, it’s clear that all he intends to do is deport illegals who’ve been incarcerated for committing crimes. After the low hanging fruit is gone, this too will pass.

Perhaps the scariest thing about the new administration is that Trump now claims he’s a messenger from God, who wants America to change to a Christian Nationalism form of government. Normally, I’d assume that’s another of Trump’s lies, but it’s entirely possible that his narcissistic personality disorder and his obviously declining cognitive functions have made him delusional enough to believe it.

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Will Trump 2 Be Softer and Gentler Than Trump 1?

Posted on January 9, 2025 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, January 9, 2024

There has been much speculation about what a second Trump term would be like. His ardent MAGA supporters fervently believe in Project 2025, the extreme right-wing manifesto to transform America into a “Christian Democracy,” which of course, would be neither.

Rather, it would be a white-male-dominated society in which humans come in only two flavors, people of the same gender may not love each other, and the nation’s wealth is concentrated even more than it already is in less than one percent of the population. Every government program perceived as an entitlement would be stripped to its bare bones, and health care benefits would be chipped away one piece at a time. There would be no restrictions on gun ownership, America would withdraw from its alliances and international commitments to become an isolationist nation, immigration would be limited to people with necessary skills, and the Constitution would be stripped of its protection against autocratic rule as checks and balances are ignored or eliminated.

Throughout the election campaign, Trump distanced himself from Project 2025, muddying the waters for anyone who wanted to know how he intended to govern. It was clear that the MAGA base had bought into it hook, line, and sinker. But did Trump really support all that fascist-sounding rhetoric or was Project 2025 just a masterstroke of political tactics designed to win the election? Conventional wisdom had it that Trump’s primary goal was to stay out of prison, and that having won the election, all he really cared about was getting even with everyone who opposed him. After almost ten years of Trump’s politics, do you really have to ask?

The only thing about which Trump has been consistent is always acting in his own self-interest. We can be certain he will stop short of destroying the country completely because that would bankrupt him along with everyone else. Similarly, he will bend the Constitution to his will, but not break it completely. He will make a loud splash, raiding a few workplaces to round up undocumented workers, but he knows America’s economy depends on those desperate foreigners, so mass deportations are out of the question. And prices? Anyone who thinks Trump gives a damn how much eggs cost is beyond reasoning with.

He will do his best to undermine NATO and Europe, but there are enough real Conservatives in Congress to stop that from happening. He’ll rattle his saber at Canada and Mexico, but neither neighbor will be intimidated, and Mexico won’t pay a dime toward extending the border wall. He will deny what every sensible scientist warns us about climate change and polluting our environment, but storms will get worse, fires will ravage entire communities, and countless plant and animal species will continue their trek toward extinction.

Anyone who expects Trump 2 to be kinder or gentler than Trump 1 is deluding themself. He demonstrated that yesterday, as fires ravaged Los Angeles County, destroying whole neighborhoods indiscriminately. Nature doesn’t play favorites, so stars and celebrities lost their homes along with thousands of average Californians. President Biden stood with Governor Newsom and promised whatever aid the state needs to recover. President Elect Trump took the opportunity to invent an absurd scenario in which Newsom’s lack of support for pumping water southward hundreds of miles from northern California was responsible for the out-of-control fires. That’s idiotic, but it gave us a look at Trump 2’s priorities.

He couldn’t care less about the loss of thousands of homes and countless billions in small businesses, incomes, and commerce. The only thing that mattered was attacking Newsom who strongly opposed him politically. And Californians? They mostly voted for Harris, so to Hell with all of them. Trump had an opportunity to appear magnanimous and demonstrate that he intends to govern the entire country even-handedly. What he actually demonstrated was that he has no interest in governing at all. He told us his second term would be a revenge tour, and now he’s showing us he meant it.

People like Trump never change their stripes, and at 78 years old, he’s likely to get even meaner and more self-absorbed than ever – that’s how aging and cognitive decline work. Now that it’s no longer an election issue, get ready. We’re going to see more of it every time Trump opens his mouth.

We’ve seen presidents evolve into their jobs in the past. Dwight Eisenhower and Lyndon Johnson took office as Conservative Republicans, but each turned out to be as progressive as the FDR Democrats in meeting the needs of a rapidly growing nation, while Democrat Bill Clinton passed a remarkable welfare reform bill and balanced the federal budget. Are we likely to see any change in Trump 2? Don’t bet your mortgage on it. My guess is that he’ll be worse until a bipartisan coalition forms to stop him.

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Something Feels Off

Posted on January 8, 2025 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, January 8, 2024,

This isn’t about politics. We’re way past the point where politics is the issue.

It’s fair to say that Donald Trump has profoundly changed America’s norms and values, or at least shined a light on changes that had brewing beneath the surface for decades. Change is natural, and normally I would try to embrace it and find a way to grow from it. But this feels different. This doesn’t feel like growth. It feels like decadence, dissolution, and decay, what it feels like when we’ve ignored all the slippery slope warnings and finally begun an irrevocable slide downhill.

MAGA  began as a cult consisting of a small number of ambitious people who believed they could benefit from other people’s gullibility and misfortune, and grew as millions of malcontents and poorly informed people were drawn in. The thing about cults is, they never last, but they can do terrible damage while they function. MAGA will ultimately fade into history, either because people suddenly wake up and realize how destructive it is to our society or because it will actually destroy us.

Look what it has brought us so far. The thing I most notice and fear is the corruption of truth. Kellianne Conway defended that as considering “alternate facts, but that is utter nonsense. A fact is a fact, and a lie is a lie. It’s really that simple. A democratic society cannot function that way for long before it dissembles into chaos. A Constitution cannot be disregarded and undermined without rendering it useless. An autocratic society, however, thrives on malleable facts, fear, lawlessness, and divisiveness.

In twelve days, we will have a president who was convicted of thirty-four felonies and indicted for very serious crimes, including an attempt to overturn a legal, fair election, incite an insurrection at the Capitol, and disrupt the peaceful transfer of power. But his money and an army of MAGA lawyers demonstrated that no matter how serious the crime, it’s possible to avoid accountability if you’re sufficiently wealthy, venal, and immoral. We will have a president who promotes misogyny, xenophobia, racism, and white supremacy.

Some MAGA supporters I know dismiss this as either purely hypothetical or simple showmanship. How many times during the 2024 election campaign did we hear a Trump supporter say, “He doesn’t really mean all that stuff he says?” That’s mind-boggling. If they see Trump as nothing more than a reality television show, what the hell were they voting for? My favorite post-election interview with a Trump voter had a reporter ask if Trump’s clear desire to govern like an autocrat troubled him. The voter’s answer was, “What’s an autocrat?”

Has our education system really declined that much? Have Americans become so intellectually lazy that they let influencers do their thinking for them? The mere fact that MAGA influencers have been able to establish the idea that influencing is a respectable profession is horrifying. It goes hand in hand with Kellianne Conway’s justification of corrupting truth. When VP-elect J. D. Vance was accused of lying about immigrants eating their neighbors’ pets, he said – of course I lied, but I made my point and people believed me.

An objective observer might easily look at the results of the election and conclude that Americans find sexual assault acceptable, they are racists, they have no respect for science, and they believe that crimes of business fraud and acts that smack of treason are not disqualifying for the highest office in the country. They might also conclude that we’re pretty damn stupid, and by extension, that America is not to be either respected or feared. They would surely conclude that the American dream is on life support.

Almost out of thin air, we will soon have a president who considers Canada our enemy and is willing to threaten a NATO ally, Denmark, because he decided we should control Greenland. He also has no problem ignoring Panama’s sovereignty and taking back the Panama Canal based on some unproven notion that such an action is vital for America’s economic security, regardless of the 1977 Panama Canal Treaty which guaranteed that full control of the canal would revert to Panama at the end of 1999. That shouldn’t surprise anyone, because it’s the same twisted logic Vladimir Putin uses to justify his war in Ukraine.

And now, the piece de resistance! We’re going to rename the Gulf of Mexico and call it the Gulf of America. That should solve all the world’s problems. But wait – do we have the right or authority to rename anything outside our borders? Next, Trump will want to build a hotel in Antarctica and rename the South Pole a tropical paradise. And this is the most powerful leader in the world!

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