How Trump Has Damaged the American People
A reader asks: What act by President Trump do you consider to be the most damaging to the country and its people? (Not COVID handling please.)Here’s a list of things off the top of my head. Trying to name the most damaging really isn’t possible, if only because in most cases their consequences are very long-term, and it’s impossible to know how all of this will ultimately play out.
One way of breaking this down is to divide the list into two parts: a) criminal and b) despicable, but probably not prosecutable.
Criminal
Much has been written about how the federal and state justice systems will go after Trump when he leaves office, charging him with some array of felonies, likely prioritizing those that can be proven most quickly and easily, and are hardest to defend. Perhaps this will be fraud, tax evasion, violations of the emoluments clause, the Hatch Act, or campaign finance laws, witness intimidation, obstruction of justice, extortion of Ukraine–who knows?
Though the Trump administration’s abuse of asylum seekers at the southern border constitutes clear violations of both domestic and international law, it’s extremely unlikely to result in criminal prosecution. It has, however, earned us global condemnation.
Despicable, but not Prosecutable
Trump has normalized pathological lying on the part of the U.S. president. Yes, all politicians lie, but Trump lies constantly, even when the truth would have done just as well. Nobody cared how many people were at his inauguration. There are people who have spent much of the last four years counting his lies and deliberately misleading statements, and they claim Trump is on track to top 25,000 before he leaves office, adding an average of 50 each day.
Dismantling the post office so as to slow the arrival of mail-in ballots.
Encouraging violence and racial hatred.
Destruction of rule of law as exemplified by politicizing the Department of Justice, e.g., what Barr did to lessen Roger Stone’s sentence and drop the case against Michael Flynn.
Making the U.S. the laughingstock of the world; now we’re a country that narrowly avoided the end of its republic / representative democracy and became a banana republic where elections, if they are held at all, have ceased to matter, and the powers of the leader are absolute.
Rolling back more than 100 environmental regulations that formerly protected our atmosphere and waterways so as to please large corporate donors.
Looting the Treasury to provide tax breaks, 82% of which went to the ultra-rich and large corporations.
For some reason you don’t want to discuss the COVID handling, but withholding what he knew about the severity of the disease so as to improve his chances for re-election–let’s just say–wasn’t very nice. Fair enough?
If I were a Republican, I’d be furious that my party is now regarded as some blend of criminality, cowardice, cruelty, racism, and incompetence–and that it will takes decades to repair this damage, if it can be done at all.
Again, we’ll see where all this goes; it will be a very long time before all this is behind us.
