The order went into effect immediately, and hundreds of innocent travelers were unexpectedly detained at airports because of their religion or nationality. According to the Huffington Post, customs officials initially refused to obey a court order to allow the detainees access to a lawyer. According to Business Insider, those detained illegally for between twenty and forty hours included a five-year-old child and a couple in their eighties. The Independent reports that the five-year-old is an American citizen who lives with his Iranian-born mother in Maryland. When asked why the boy had been handcuffed, Trump's press secretary replied that he was a "security risk."
The New York Times told the story of some of the innocent people unlucky enough to be in transit when Trump issued his illegal order.
Trump subsequently fired Acting Attorney General Sally Yates for refusing to enforce said illegal order.
According to Slate Magazine, multiple court orders soon struck down Trump's Muslim ban as unconstitutional.
In June 2016, the Supreme Court upheld a watered-down version of Trump's Muslim ban.
- Sidd Bikkannavar is an American-born U.S. citizen, and works for NASA's jet propulsion laboratory. He was returning from a vacation in Chile when customs officials ordered him to give him his phone and his pass code so they could copy all the data. Aside from the fact that government agents were asking him to surrender his phone on American soil without a search warrant, his superiors at NASA had ordered him not to allow anyone else to access it. Forced to choose between arrest and losing his job, he let the customs officals have the data.
- In February 2017, they detained Australian author Mem Fox, a 71-year-old writer of children's books. She has visited the United States over a hundred times without incident, but this time she was interrogated for nearly two hours before being released. She will not visit America again.
- Muhammad Ali, Jr., son of the famous athlete, was detained for two hours when returning from a Black History Month event in Jamaica. He's a Philadelphia-born U.S. citizen and has no criminal record. The customs officials questioned him about his religion.
- Henry Rousso is a French citizen and is ethnically Jewish. He was traveling to deliver a lecture at Texas A&M University when customs officials detained him for ten hours. Only a last-minute intervention by the University president prevented him from being deported back to France.
- Celestine Omin, a Nigerian software engineer, arrived in the United States on business after a 24-hour flight. The customs officials refused to believe he worked in software and told the sleep-deprived programmer to take a test. The Independent reported: "One of the officers then presented him with a piece of paper and a pen and told to answer these two questions to prove he is actually a software engineer: 'Write a function to check if a Binary Search Tree is balanced.' 'What is an abstract class, and why do you need it?'
"Omin... thought the questions could have multiple answers and looked to him like someone with no technical background Googled something like: 'Questions to ask a software engineer.' After spending about 10 minutes working on them, he handed in his answers only to be told they were wrong." After a wait, the officer reappeared, told Omin he'd verified his story with his employer, and said "Look, I am going to let you go, but you don’t look convincing to me." - In March 2017, customs officials detained a retired police chief from North Carolina because of his Arabic-sounding name.
"'I was taken to a back office which looked to be a re-purposed storage facility with three desks and signs stating, 'Remain seated at all times' and 'Use of telephones strictly prohibited' -- —my first sign that this was not a voluntary situation and, in fact, a detention,' Chief Aden wrote.
"Aden said that he was not allowed to leave or contact his family.
"'He had the audacity to tell me I was not being detained. His ignorance of the law and the Fourth Amendment should disqualify him from being able to wear a CBP badge—but maybe fear and detention is the new mission of the CBP and the Constitution is a mere suggestion... I certainly was not free to leave... I spent nearly 30 years serving the public in law enforcement. I interface with high level U.S. Department of Justice and Federal Court officials almost daily. Prior to this administration, I frequently attended meetings at the White House and advised on national police policy reforms. ...If this can happen to me, it can happen to anyone with attributes that can be 'profiled.' No one is safe from this type of unlawful government intrusion." - Zubaidah Alizoti, an American teenager from Tennessee who was raised Muslim, was barred from boarding her flight home after vacationing in Saudi Arabia. She was stranded in Turkey for five days before she was allowed to come home.
- According to technology website Gizmodo, film maker Akram Shibly - a native New Yorker - was stopped by border agents when returning home from Canada in January. "He was allegedly told that if he had 'nothing to hide' that he wouldn’t object to allowing border agents to search his phone. Fearing that refusing their demands would result in his indefinite detention, he complied.
"But three days later, he was detained again on the same bridge and declined to hand over the device that had just been searched. 'When I refused, three agents used force against me,' he said. 'One agent grabbed me by the throat and began to choke me while another wrapped up my arms and legs. The third agent reached into my pants pocket and took my phone, all while I was in severe pain and fearing for my life.'"
Gizmodo also detailed the unethical treatment of Professor Diane Maye, a retired US Air Force captain whose laptop and phone were searched.
Gizmodo also relates the story of Nadia and Ghassan Alasaad, whose phones were confiscated while they waited at the Canadian border. Their eleven-year-old daughter was ill, and the border agents made the parents choose between waiting indefinitely for their phones' return or taking their daughter to the hospital. The family decided to abandon their phones. They eventually got their phones back, only to discover the border agents had deleted the video of their daughter's graduation. - Dennis White is an American-born U.S. citizen and veteran of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. He and his wife were on vacation in Vermont when they were accosted by the border patrol and accused of entering the United States illegally. "I got you on camera illegally entering the United States, and you are lying to me, and that is disrespect, and you are being detained," one agent said. A second agent ordered him "to admit to illegally entering the United States." The Whites had never left the United States. Luckily, they were only detained for 45 minutes.
- In August 2018, three European artists -- from Austria, France, and the Netherlands -- arrived in Seattle to attend a gaming conference. They were detained by Immigrations and Customs Enforcement, who told them their electronic visas we not valid. According to The Mary Sue, "all three were pulled out of customs and questioned by immigration officials for hours. When it was determined that they wouldn’t be allowed to enter the country, it was 3AM and there were no more flights out until the next day. Not allowed to sleep at the airport, the artists were handcuffed and taken to a separate ICE detention center."
One of the artists described what happened next: "...We were booked and checked into our jail cells. These are, as you can imagine, austere and not comfy. There were no beds but we were given a blanket and some sanitation utensils. We would spend 11 hours here, we were fed and had access to water. To me, the whole experience was very traumatizing.
"In the morning we were cuffed, put into transport and escorted back to the airport where we would wait in uncertainty about our flight status... After that, we were escorted by police to our gate for our flight and our stuff would be returned to us upon arrival." The three were then deported.
The Mary Sue concluded: "I suppose we can all rest easy knowing ICE is out there protecting us all from the real national threat: creative nerds." - Andreas Gal is an American citizen who works for Apple. In December 2018, he returned to the United States from a business trip to Europe and described his treatment at the hands of Customs and Border Patrol agents. "I quickly found myself surrounded by three armed agents wearing bullet proof vests. They started to question me aggressively regarding my trip, my current employment, and my past work for Mozilla...
"The agents proceeded to search my belongings and demanded that I unlock my smartphone and laptop... My phone and laptop are property of my employer and contain unreleased software and proprietary information. I’ve signed a non-disclosure agreement promising not to give anyone access.
"Because I was uncertain about my legal responsibilities to my employer, I asked the agents if I could speak to my employer or an attorney before unlocking my devices. This request seemed to aggravate the customs officers. They informed me that I had no right to speak to an attorney at the border despite being a U.S. citizen, and threatened me that failure to immediately comply with their demand is a violation of federal criminal code 18 USC 111...
"I wasn’t sure what the legal definition of an unreasonable search and seizure was, but three armed men detaining me, threatening me, and refusing to allow me to consult with an attorney definitely felt like one.
"I declined to answer any further questions, and continued to ask to speak to an attorney instead. The interrogation and threats continued for some time, which I endured silently. Despite initial threats that they would keep my devices if I didn’t unlock them, I was eventually permitted to leave the customs area with my devices. The customs agents did however keep my Global Entry card as a punishment for not complying with their demands.
"If the government intended to scare me, they certainly succeeded. Ever since, I travel in fear. I’ve reduced my international travel and my heart pounds every time I go through U.S. customs. I will, however, not be silent." - In March 2019, Julia Amparo Medina -- a 9-year-old American citizen -- was returning to the United States from Mexico when customs officials detained her for 36 hours. The customs officials refused to believe she was the girl in her passport photo and pressured her to "admit" that she was someone else. Ironically, the girl was reunited with her family when her parents called the Mexican consulate for help.
- According to The Guardian, Trump cost the travel industry $185 million during his first month in office because foreign tourists are too scared to visit the United States. A year later, NBC News reported that Trump's bigotry has cost our economy $4.6 billion and put 40,000 people out of work. Tell Congress to repeal Trump's ban.
In March 2017, TSA officers at Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport singled out a 13-year-old boy and his mother, holding them for 45 minutes and causing them to miss their flight. They patted down the boy using methods too disgusting to relate here. The TSA later defended the officers' behavior in writing.
![[Trump Triumphant by David Horsey]](./jpg/horseybw.jpg)
In September 2017, BuzzFeed reported that the Department of Homeland Security plans to start monitoring the social media accounts of immigrants -- including naturalized American citizens -- starting in October. This surveillance would include anyone who interacts with immigrants -- including other Americans -- and violate their rights under the Fourteenth Amendment to due process and equal protection. If the Homeland Security Department can play "Big Brother" and monitor innocent American citizens, they won't stop with American citizens who weren't born in this country. They can do it to any of us.
Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell spent all eight years of George W. Bush's presidency voting to increase the federal government's budget deficits by cutting taxes for rich people. McConnell then voted to borrow over $1 trillion to fund Bush's disastrous invasion of Iraq, sending the government deep into debt. The moment Barack Obama was elected, McConnell changed his tune, blaming Obama for the Bush-era debts and condemning deficits in the strongest language. "At what point do we anticipate getting serious here about doing something about deficit and debt?" McConnell asked in 2012. In 2013, McConnell said: "the transcendent issue of our era... is deficit and debt. Until we fix that problem, we can't fix America and we cannot leave behind for our kids the kind of America our parents left behind for us." After Trump was sworn in, McConnell showed his true colors once again and pushed the Ryan-Trump tax bill through the Senate.
The Washington Post predicts the Ryan-McConnell-Trump tax law will increase the deficit by a minimum of $1.4 trillion, and possibly up to $2 trillion. (The Post's predictions turned out to be too conservative. In 2020, Newsweek reported that the national debt increased by $5.2 trillion during the first three years of Trump's presidency.)
McConnell's supposed horror at deficit spending was a sham. He doesn't care about deficits, and never did. The Senate Republican Leader's obsession with cutting taxes for rich people like himself is itself the largest obstacle to leaving "behind for our kids the kind of America our parents left behind for us." If McConnell truly wished to pay the government's debts and eliminate the deficit, the best thing he could do is resign.
McConnell's supposed horror at deficit spending was a sham. He doesn't care about deficits, and never did. The Senate Republican Leader's obsession with cutting taxes for rich people like himself is itself the largest obstacle to leaving "behind for our kids the kind of America our parents left behind for us." If McConnell truly wished to pay the government's debts and eliminate the deficit, the best thing he could do is resign.
Mother Jones explains that while most Americans get small tax cuts, wealthy Americans get huge cuts. "In 2018, 80 percent of American households across all income levels are expected to get an average tax cut of about $2,100, according to an analysis by the Tax Policy Center... But there are stark differences in how much taxpayers take in, depending on their income. Households earning less than $25,000, for instance, would get an average tax cut of $60, and middle-class households would get $900. Meanwhile, the top 1 percent of households would receive a cut of $51,000. Over time, that disparity gets even worse.
"At the end of 2025, most of the individual tax cuts expire while corporate tax cut provisions remain. That year, the top 1 percent would still receive a larger share of tax benefits than the bottom 60 percent of Americans combined. In 2027, low-income households will see their taxes rise by $30 in 2027 as compared to what they’d pay under current law. The top 1 percent, on the other hand, would still get a tax cut of $20,660."
According to CNN, the Ryan-McConnell-Trump tax law doubles the standard deduction but eliminates personal exemptions. This penalizes families with three or more children, as the increased standard deduction doesn't offset the exemptions for more than two children. It cuts taxes on corporations from 35% to 21%. It also contains huge giveaways to millionaires. Under the former law, no one had to pay estate taxes if they inherited less than $5 million. Under the new law, no one has to pay taxes on inheritance unless they receive more than $11 million.
The Huffington Post points out that the corporate tax cuts are also designed to benefit the wealthy. "The vast majority of money saved in taxes will be distributed instead as dividends to shareholders or used to buy back stock, which increases the value of the remaining shares. And because the wealthiest 10 percent of Americans own more than 90 percent of all stock, they will be the overwhelming beneficiaries of the corporate tax cuts."
The Ryan-McConnell-Trump tax law also cuts taxes for businesses whose profits are taxed as individual income. This is the corporate model used by Donald Trump and his family. The Ryan-McConnell-Trump tax law means the Trumps and their in-laws won't have to pay $4 million in taxes that they would be paying if Trump hadn't become President.
According to Reuters, within a week of Trump signing the Ryan-McConnell-Trump tax bill into law, the dollar dropped to its lowest level since 2003.
TruthOut points out that the Trump Administration legalized cheap health care plans that only accept healthy people. This has increased overall health care costs so much that the tax cuts won't matter anyway.
In February 2018, Trump said that anyone who did not applaud him had committed treason against the United States of America.- As everyone in the world now knows, a coronavirus not prevously seen in humans appeared at the end of 2019. A cousin of SARS, this coronavirus causes a respiratory illness called COVID-19. (The virus is SARS-COV-2: Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2. COVID stands for Coronavirus Disease.) Humans have no immunity to it, and it is highly contagious. Unlike SARS, it can be transmitted by people showing no symptoms. In early 2020 it became a pandemic. Those most vulnerable to the disease include the elderly and people already living with health problems. Those who survive the disease can be left with long-term health challenges, including heart disease, strokes, lung disease, and brain damage. (According to Newsweek, 78% of the people who survive the disease are left with permanent heart damage.)
- According to the Washington Post and the New York Times, American Intelligence agencies warned Trump in early January that the disease posed a dire threat, but Trump refused to do anything. Instead, Trump called the coronavirus a "hoax" and spent over two months golfing, holding campaign rallies, and telling everyone that everything was fine.
- Elizabeth Neumann, a lifelong Republican who worked at the Department of Homeland Security, told MSNBC that Trump ordered the federal government to stop fighting the pandemic. While doing this, he told journalist Bob Woodward that he knew the coronavirus was much deadlier than he would admit in public. Trump thought fighting the pandemic would be bad for his re-election campaign, so he decided to ignore it instead.
- In Italy, the number of COVID-19 patients overwhelmed hospitals in early March. The American federal government still did nothing. By the middle of that month, most States -- along with many other countries -- realized the only way to stop the disease from spreading was a quarantine. As many residents as possible were ordered to stay home. (In May, a Columbia University study determined that 36,000 lives could have been saved had the federal government quarantined the nation one week earlier. Starting the quarantine two weeks earlier would have saved 54,000 people.)
- According to the NewsHour, by the time Trump finally started paying attention to the problem in mid-March, "hospitals in several states were treating thousands of infected patients without adequate equipment and were pleading for shipments from the Strategic National Stockpile... [but] federal officials waited to order [more] medical supplies until stocks were running critically low." According to the New York Intelligencer, when States ordered more supplies, the federal government stole them.
- Trump then put Vice President Pence in charge of the federal government's response to the pandemic and forbid the CDC from talking about it without Pence's approval. For the record, Pence doesn't think smoking is unhealthy, and as Governor of Indiana his anti-abortion policies helped spread HIV. True to form, Pence then claimed -- falsely -- that the chances of contracting the contagious disease were low. (To his credit, Pence initiated rapid development of a vaccine, but made no plans to produce or distribute it.)
- Trump later said that he consulted the nation's top expert in contagious disease, and then did the opposite of anything the expert recommended.
- As the pandemic spread, Trump continued pushing the courts to overturn the Affordable Care Act and kick millions of vulnerable Americans off their health insurance. Trump marked a day in late June -- when the State of Florida reported 9,000 new COVID cases -- by asking the Supreme Court to strike down the whole law. This would immediately cancel the health insurance of 23 million Americans and jeopardize the health care of 130 million more. The group most affected would be people with pre-existing conditions, i.e. those most vulnerable to the pandemic. Trump then claimed he would "ALWAYS PROTECT PEOPLE WITH PRE-EXISTING CONDITIONS, ALWAYS, ALWAYS,ALWAYS!!!" He made this bogus claim the same week he told the Supreme Court to take away their health care. His ALL-CAPS TWEET was a cover-up intended to conceal what he was really doing.
- According to MSNBC, Trump began holding press conferences in March where he announced "cures" that wouldn't work and said that help was on its way when it wasn't. For the next month, Trump used the press conferences to spread disinformation. For instance: Trump falsely claimed that he always took the coronavirus' threat seriously and denied ever calling it a hoax. He falsely claimed that anyone who wants to get tested could be, when in real life the demand for tests far exceeded the number of tests available. He falsely claimed the disease would miraculously disappear all by itself. (It would be nice if that were true, but that is not how pandemics work.) He falsely claimed a vaccine would be available soon.
- As the crisis continued, Trump falsely claimed the quarantine would be over by mid-April. Trump recommended sick people take drugs that would make them sicker. Trump then claimed a vaccine isn't necessary, then claimed testing isn't necessary.
- Trump's lies are far too numerous to list here. The Huffington Post and Mother Jones compiled timelines of the disease and the Trump's ludicrous response to it. The Washington Post evaluates Trump's mistakes (and lies) concerning it. The Atlantic details how Trump responded to the crisis the way he responds to everything -- by lying about it and blaming everyone but himself.
- Even if Trump hadn't thrown away the manual on how to deal with a pandemic, there are countries that have coped successfully. As The Nation reports, "South Korea, Taiwan, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Iceland, New Zealand, and Norway have all had commendable success in protecting their people." What did they do?
"In Norway, testers and tracers were on the job from the start.
"Systematically, Norway would test all its returning travelers (every one of them!), then track down all the contacts of those who had tested positive and test them and their contacts as well, and so on down the line. Working with remarkable speed, the tracers used immediate test results - a tool apparently available in the United States only to the rich and famous - to track the trajectories of the virus as it spread. When cases began to multiply without known contacts, the tracers knew that the virus had begun to hitchhike through an unwitting community and were quick to surround it and shut it down.
"In response to the pandemic, the government gradually closed down the capital and other centers of contagion... Universities and schools moved online, while offices of all sorts soon followed suit. Restaurants and bars shut their doors. By March 12, only two weeks after the first reported case, the capital and much of the country had closed down.
"By mid-April, some five weeks after the shutdown went into effect, the government began to open up public life again, proceeding carefully step by step. Toddlers were the first to return to their preschools on April 20, with grade schoolers to follow. By April 30, Norway had administered 172,586 tests and recorded 7,667 positive cases of Covid-19, 2,221 of them in Oslo. The dead numbered 207, suggesting a per capita mortality rate lower than that of any other European country and far from America's tragic loss of life. But how to explain this Norwegian record?
"Experts attribute it to the government's early and deep preparations, enabling it to respond immediately to the very first case to appear in the country, and to its quick, unrelenting testing and tracing of the contagion. This painstaking effort, backed by Norway's universal health care system, enabled the state to get ahead of the virus, save lives, and stop the pandemic short."Instead of doing what works, Trump decided to undermine and end the quarantine without enough testing or medical supplies available. As Gizmodo pointed out in May, that was catastrophic. On May 5, "2,746 people died of covid-19 in the U.S., the highest daily death toll recorded since the first confirmed deaths on American soil in February... This is, in a word, horrific. But the Trump administration and its backers from conservative media to the small but vocal 'reopen' movement are trying to convince people it's not only normal but worth it... There is nothing acceptable about 3,000 people dying every day from coronavirus." That's like having a September 11th-style terrorist attack every day for months.
Other countries showed us how to beat the pandemic: shut down, stomp out the virus, then re-open safely. All we have to do is follow their example -- but Trump won't do it. Instead, he insists on re-opening with no preparation. - According to a Vanity Fair investigation, Trump's son-in-law and senior advisor, Jared Kushner, was put in charge of formulating a national testing strategy. Kushner is a realtor who knows nothing about public health, and neither did any of the people he appointed to his team -- but at least they came up with something. Then they scrapped the whole plan and decided to leave testing up to individual States. Why? Democratic-leaning States tend to have larger populations, and the pandemic hit them first. "Trump... feared that more testing would only lead to higher case counts and more bad publicity... Most troubling of all, perhaps, was a sentiment the expert said a member of Kushner's team expressed: that because the virus had hit blue states hardest, a national plan was unnecessary and would not make sense politically. 'The political folks believed that because it was going to be relegated to Democratic states, that they could blame [Democratic] governors, and that would be an effective political strategy,' said the expert."
- Forbes reported that Trump delayed medical aid to Michigan and Washington to punish their governors for criticizing his erratic response to the coronavirus crisis.
- As the crisis worsened, Trump started referring to the coronavirus by the racist terms "Chinese virus," "Wuhan virus," or "kung flu." Influenza, or "flu," is a different disease caused by a different virus. Business Insider points out that Trump's use of these racist terms is a diversion. Trump wants people to focus on his racism (which is so well-known that it's no longer newsworthy) instead of his incompetent response to the pandemic.
- The Democratic political action committee Priorities USA produced a 30-second attack video contrasting Trump's lies with what was really happening at the time. Though the video is biased, the facts are accurate.
NBC produced a more complete six-minute video comparing Trump's lies with what was really going on. Ironically, neither montage includes the clip where Trump laughably declared himself a medical expert while continuing to lie about the pandemic.
As the crisis continued, the anti-Trump Republican group The Lincoln Project produced a similar video. - As the pandemic worsened in April, Trump cut funding to the World Health Organization (WHO). This is illegal -- the President cannot withhold funds that Congress has approved.
According to FactCheck.org and Mother Jones, Trump justified freezing WHO funds by falsely accusing them of downplaying the danger posed by the coronavirus -- at the same time he'd been doing exactly the same thing. Trump also falsely accused the WHO of taking the Chinese government's word about the coronavirus' danger at face value -- when he himself was doing exactly that. Notably, "US officials did not believe the Chinese efforts to downplay the severity of the outbreak in Wuhan and, beginning in January, warned the president the virus would have a severe impact on the US. Trump, however, dismissed these warnings, in part because he apparently accepted assurances from Chinese President Xi Jinping." When Trump's advisers told him that China was not telling the truth about the number of people who had been infected or had died, "Trump ignored them and publicly praised China." Trump wrote: "China has been working very hard to contain the Coronavirus. The United States greatly appreciates their efforts and transparency. It will all work out well. In particular, on behalf of the American People, I want to thank President Xi!" Two months later, Trump accused the WHO of "praising China for its so-called transparency."
By blaming the WHO, Trump is trying to divert attention from his own failure to take the disease seriously. - Meanwhile, the pandemic hit the United States Postal Service hard, and they need additional funding from Congress. Trump vowed to veto any bill providing the Post Office with extra funds. Instead, he wants to bail out the oil industry -- the richest companies in history.
- As no cure for COVID-19 exists at this writing, a quarantine, social distancing, face masks, testing, and contact tracing are the only defenses we had against the disease for all of 2020. Most States instituted quarantines, and many required residents to wear masks in public. In mid-April, though, Trump urged his supporters in three States to defy the public health order and mocked people wearing masks. (Trump admitted to Woodward two months earlier that he understood the coronavirus was airborne and wearing masks would help stop the disease from spreading.) Some of his advisors took Trump's advice, exposing themselves to -- and spreading -- the disease.
- In late April, Michigan -- like most States -- extended the quarantine through the end of May. Fringe protesters in Michigan carrying guns and waving Nazi symbols defied the quarantine and held a rally, demanding the Governor allow businesses to re-open despite the health risks. Though everyone has the right to protest, these protesters were highly irresponsible to risk their own health and the health of anyone they came in contact with by gathering in groups and refusing to wear masks during a pandemic. According to The Hill, Trump's response was to tell Michigan's governor to "cool it" in her efforts to protect public health. He then urged her to compromise her efforts to save lives and "make a deal" with the swastika-bearing protesters.
- In May, the Trump Administration fired Dr. Rick Bright, the government scientist in charge of finding a cure or a vaccine for COVID-19. According to Dr. Bright, he was pressured to rush access to Trump's supposed cure for COVID-19 -- the anti-malaria drug hydroxychloroquine -- even though hydroxychloroquine isn't effective against COVID-19. When Bright refused, he was reassigned to another department. "I believe this transfer was in response to my insistence that the government invest the billions of dollars allocated by Congress to address the Covid-19 pandemic into safe and scientifically vetted solutions, and not in drugs, vaccines and other technologies that lack scientific merit," Dr. Bright wrote. "I am speaking out because to combat this deadly virus, science -- not politics or cronyism -- has to lead the way." The Office of Special Counsel agreed that Bright's removal was political retaliation and urged that he be reinstated.
- In the spring, Congress passed (and Trump signed) an emergency relief package to keep the economy afloat during the quarantine. According to The Independent, most taxpayers received $1200. Thanks to an obscure loophole, the government paid 43,000 millionares $1,700,000 each. These 43,000 millionares got 82% of the money from the relief package -- more than the hospitals got. (Some Democrats have since called for repealing the loophole. Though this is obviously the right thing to do -- the emergency relief money should go to hospitals, not people who are already rich -- the Democrats should have read the bill in its entirety before voting for it.)
- As noted above, countries such as South Korea and Norway stopped the COVID-19-causing coronavirus from spreading with a quarantine, then slowly reopened with testing and contact tracing firmly in place. In the summer of 2020, the United States began to re-open without testing in place, and the number of new cases skyrocketed. Trump thought the rising number of cases made him look bad, so he told people to stop testing. (The Washington Post pointed out that's like saying you won't get cavities if you don't go to the dentist.) Trump then cut funding for the tests -- and later that week, 45,000 new cases were reported in a single day. Testing, contact tracing, social distancing, masks, and quarantines are the only defenses we had against a deadly disease, and Trump tried to stop people from using them.
- In late June, Trump ordered the National Institute of Health to cut funding for coronavirus research and defunded thirteen testing sites.
- In July, the Washington Post reported that "Trump reiterated his belief... that the virus would simply 'disappear,' despite new daily infections surpassing 50,000 for the first time last week and more than 127,000 Americans dying from the disease." As Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman wrote,
"I'm feeling more and more as if we're all trapped on the Titanic - except that this time around, the captain is a madman who insists on steering straight for the iceberg. And his crew is too cowardly to contradict him, let alone mutiny to save the passengers...
"Daily new cases of COVID-19 are running 2 1/2 times as high as in early June, and rising fast... A normal president and a normal political party would be horrified by this turn of events. They would realize that they made a bad call and that it was time for a major course correction; they would start taking warnings from health experts seriously. But Trump... seems completely untroubled by the toll from a pandemic that seems certain to kill more Americans than were murdered over the whole of the past decade. And he's doubling down on his rejection of expertise, this week demanding full reopening of schools in defiance of existing guidelines...
"Trump and those around him don't care very much how many Americans die or suffer lasting damage from COVID-19, as long as the politics work in their favor." - Also in July, Trump insisted that everything was under control and announced "We're very much going to put pressure on governors and everybody else to open the schools" in the autumn, even though the CDC recommended against that. Trump later wrote that the federal government would withhold funds from schools that didn't re-open. (Fortunately, schools are generally funded by State and local taxes, so Trump's threat was mostly empty.)
The Huffington Post pointed out that "the virus spreads by people breathing and talking near each other for extended periods, [so] the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has said schools ought to try to keep students 6 feet apart." But: "most schools don't have enough space to do that." Instead of doing something to make the schools safer, Trump wrote that he disagreed with the CDC. At a time when over 9,000 American children had contracted the disease, Trump insisted that children are mostly immune.
Mike Pence echoed Trump. "We don't want CDC guidance to be a reason why people don't reopen their schools," Pence said. The White House press secretary agreed: "The President has said unmistakably that he wants schools to open... The science should not stand in the way of this." (Had President Obama said that schools should ignore CDC guidelines during a pandemic, politicians of both parties would have demanded his immediate resignation.) Even though the available data suggests COVID-19 symptoms tend to be milder for many children than they are for adults, this is not the case for all children, especially children with pre-existing conditions. (A potentially fatal COVID-related complication called MIS-C has struck 300 children in the United States.) Even asymptomatic children can carry the disease to teachers, parents, and anyone else they come in contact with. This is common knowledge and common sense, and Trump and Pence are perfectly aware of that. Instead of telling the truth, Trump claimed children "don't catch it easily, they don't bring it home easily." (One summer camp in Georgia opened with 300 children; they had to close after three days when people started getting sick. Over half of the children and adults attending were tested, and three-quarters of those tested had been infected with the COVID-19-causing coronavirus. Some colleges started classes as usual in the fall, only to close after a week.)
Schools must comply with the CDC guidelines. As George Orwell wrote, "We have now sunk to a depth at which restatement of the obvious is the first duty of intelligent men."
One of those intelligent men is MSNBC's Chris Hayes, who pointed out that we're in the middle of this disaster because Trump pushed the country to re-open without doing anything to make it safe for the country to re-open."He is doing the same thing with schools, right now. There are a... long list of problems that need to be solved in order to open schools safely." But Trump isn't interested in giving the schools the money they need to solve those probkems. Trump "just wants them open so people can go back to work... so he can get re-elected." Trump and Pence "don't want the guidance from the nation's top health protection agency about how to stay safe during a pandemic to be the reason why we don't send our kids to school while we are suffering from the worst outbreak in the world. So [Trump] will tell them to change the guidelines... just like he did back in April-May... when he pressured governors to ignore the guidance and re-open.
"The last person in the world you can trust with the safety of your kids is Donald Trump," Hayes finished. "He's willing to ignore or change scientific guidelines about how to keep Americans safe... Other countries suppressed the virus and have kept it suppressed. We never did that, and now we're trying to figure out how to live in a burning building as opposed to putting the fire out. It's not going to work."Politico reported that the Trump Administration pressured the CDC to change their guidelines to make it appear that children are at low risk from getting COVID-19. Trump then held a press conference announcing this -- when he knew perfectly well it wasn't true.
- Trump then ordered hospitals to stop reporting COVID-19 data to the Center for Disease Control. Instead, they were ordered to send data to the Department of Health and Human Services, where the information will be stored in a database not available to the public. The Trump Administration controls who -- if anyone -- gets to see the data. According to the New York Times, this "could affect the work of scores of researchers, modelers and health officials who rely on C.D.C. data to make projections and crucial decisions."
- By July, both parties in the Senate finally realized what the rest of the world had figured out in February: the only way we'll suppress this pandemic is through widespread testing and contact tracing. According to the Washington Post, the Trump Administration thinks we should not spend any money on this and wants funds for testing and tracing removed from the next emergency spending bill. Trump also wants to cut $10 billion from the CDC's budget.
Even though there are more Democrats in the country than Republicans, the Senate has 53 Republicans and 47 Democrats. With the support of this tiny majority, Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell changed Senate rules and effectively declared himself dictator of the Senate. McConnell then declared that the Senate will not consider any legislation without his approval. (This violates the spirit of the Constitution, which gives the President veto power, not a single senator.) Even though the House of Representatives passed a second pandemic relief bill in mid-May, McConnell refused to consider it. Instead, McConnell waited four months -- during which time another 100,000 Americans died of the disease -- then put forward his own stimulus bill. This was a token gesture that barely addressed fighting the disease and sustaining the economy. McConnell's proposal did not provide any relief for individual Americans, cities, States, or the Post Office. Among the things the bill would have done was provide tax breaks for private schools.
The Democrat-majority House and Republican-majority Senate weren't able to agree, so neither bill became law. Finally, the Democratic-controlled House passed a watered-down bill they hoped McConnell would accept. He refused, and negotiations continued into October. Finally, instead of passing another pandemic relief and economic stimulus bill, Trump told the Senate they should concentrate on confirming Judge Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court -- so the Court could strike down the Affordable Care Act. - Trump made no secret that he nominated Judge Barrett to the Supreme Court in order to strike down the Affordable Care Act -- a law the Court already upheld twice. (A plurality of Americans opposed Barrett.) If Trump gets his way, half the country could lose their health insurance in the middle of a pandemic. COVID-19 is considered a pre-existing condition, so insurance companies could refuse to pay for treating the disease. As noted above, millions of Americans who survived the disease have been left with permanent health problems, so the insurance companies wouldn't cover them, either. According to polling, 57% of Americans think the Affordable Care Act should remain law.
- In July, the Trump Administration passed on the option to pre-order 500 million doses of Pfizer's vaccine -- then under development. 500 million doses would be enough to vaccinate 250 million people. Instead, the Trump Administration only ordered 100 million doses -- enough to vaccinate 50 million people.
- Speakers at the Republican National Convention in August pretended that the pandemic was already over and that Trump had singlehandedly defeated it. In reality, 180,000 Americans had died from COVID-19 by the time of the convention. 1,000 Americans died of the disease every day that week.
- Shortly after the disease had killed 200,000 Americans and sickened nearly seven million, Trump told supporters it "affects virtually nobody." At the same time, Trump blocked the CDC from ordering everyone who rides public transit to wear a mask.
- As noted above, Trump refused to order the government to fight the pandemic, sabotaged individual State efforts to do so, and mocked and belittled people who took common-sense precuations. Newsweek, Politicus, and the Daily Beast agree that Trump committed criminally negligent manslaughter. Trump "purposely failed to act on several, months-long warnings from his own administration claiming thousands of Americans would die and the economy would face devastation without swift action to mitigate COVID-19's spread," Politicus writes. "Criminally negligent homicide... addresses situations where a defendant is aware of a situation, knows it's dangerous, but ignores a risk that results in a death of another. Trump's attempt to conceal the coronavirus' danger to American lives and the nation's economy, despite knowing how deadly doing nothing would be, resulted in mass deaths of American citizens as well as creating an economic catastrophe... Trump is guilty of criminally negligent homicide; not only by refusing to act immediately on learning of the threat to Americans, but also by eliminating agencies and processes created specifically to address a global pandemic..."
- After refusing to take basic precautions for months, Trump himself caught the COVID-19-causing coronavirus in October 2020. Trump went to a hospital's luxury suite, had the best medical care in the world paid for by American taxpayers, and returned to the White House on his own volition after a few days. "Feeling really good!" he wrote. "Don't be afraid of Covid. Don't let it dominate your life. We have developed, under the Trump Administration, some really great drugs & knowledge." As Kristin Urquiza wrote in the Huffington Post, that was easy for Trump to say when he had access to medicines not available to the general public and a team of doctors and nurses all to himself who monitored him 24 hours a day. In contrast, Ms. Urquiza's father died of COVID-19 after he was turned away from a hospital because they didn't want to risk him infecting other patients.
"...Not only does Trump get the best of everything, he gets to take the best of everything and then rub our faces in it and tell us that we shouldn't be afraid of the very thing that is not only attacking and killing us and our families and friends...
"Regular people, like my dad, who was a lifelong Republican and believed Trump and other GOP leaders who told him not to worry about COVID-19, didn't have access to the same medical care that Trump (or the countless others in his administration who have now fallen sick) do. Now he's dead. And he's not alone.
"Isabelle Papadimitriou... died on July 4, after battling COVID-19 for just one week. Isabelle was a health care worker and had spent nearly 30 years helping others breathe as a respiratory therapist. When she contracted COVID-19 from a patient she was working with, she didn't have the luxury of a hospital because Texas' system was overwhelmed.
"Juan Reyes... died on Sept. 4, after battling COVID-19 for several weeks. Juan was a Cuban refugee who endured torture in Cuba and escaped to the United States in the 1980s, where he became a citizen and proud member of the Republican Party. Juan, an independent and healthy 84-year-old, started feeling COVID-19 symptoms in August. He went into his Miami clinic for a test and was informed that he would receive his test results in 14 days. A week later, before the results had even returned, Juan was admitted to the hospital because he couldn't breathe." He died shortly thereafter.
"Isabelle, Juan, and my dad are among the 210,000 people and counting who have died from this virus. How many of them would be alive right now if they would have received even a fraction of the care the president or his cronies are receiving? ...How many of those 210,000 would have never been infected in the first place if over the last nine months they had received smart, cautious, science-based information from their leaders instead of... sloppy, conflicting reports?
"How many of those 210,000 would not have died if Trump and those who prop him up hadn't done whatever they could to pretend that this deadly disease wasn't a big deal so that they could keep the stock market soaring and could con us into reelecting him and his regime in November?
"Scientists at Cornell University last week published a scathing body of research that concluded the single largest spreader of misinformation on COVID was none other than Donald Trump. This man has done whatever he can to downplay the devastation this pandemic can and will continue to cause... He [doesn't] care how many of us die as long as he is president for another four years."
- By January 2021, the disease had killed 350,000 people in the United States -- one out of every thousand Americans. Trump's response? He claimed the CDC's numbers were wrong.
- Trump called the COVID-19 pandemic a hoax when he knew it wasn't, ordered the federal government not to fight it, insisted it would magically disappear on its own when he knew it wouldn't, said help was on its way when it wasn't, said tests were available when they weren't, told people to ignore doctors and health experts, discouraged his supporters from wearing masks when he knew doing so would help fight the disease, pressured governors to end the quarantine before it was safe to do so, delayed aid to States whose governors who weren't members of his political party, tried to cancel millions of Americans' health insurance, withdrew from the World Health Organization, recommended drugs that would make patients sicker, fired government scientists trying to find a cure, cut finding for coronavirus research, closed testing sites, told people to stop testing, said that vaccines weren't necessary, insisted things were getting better when they were getting worse, refused to pre-order vaccines, insisted that schools should open against the CDC's recommendations, falsely claimed children don't get the disease, falsely claimed children don't pass the disease to adults, ordered hospitals to send COVID-19 data to a secret database instead of to the CDC, tried to cut funding for testing, tried to cut the CDC's budget, held indoor campaign rallies when he knew they weren't safe, told people that wearing masks spread the disease, ordered the CDC not to issue public health orders that would help battle the pandemic, and claimed the death toll wasn't as bad as it really is. For all intents and purposes, Trump ordered the federal government to ignore the disease that (as of January 2021) killed over 350,000 Americans and left millions with permanent heart disease, lung disease, or brain damage. Future historians and doctors will look at Trump's response to the pandemic as the perfect example of what not to do during a public health crisis. If President Obama had done that, the Republican-controlled Congress would have impeached him.
In October 2020, a Columbia University study concluded that if the federal givernment had taken the same steps other countries did, we could have saved between 132,000-214,000 American lives.
Renowned journalist Bob Woodward said that Trump should have been impeached for dereliction of duty.
- Trump's lies have consequences. People who believe him when he calls the disease a hoax refuse to take common sense precautions -- then get sick and infect others. In November 2020, a nurse from South Dakota reported her day-to-day struggle with patients dying from COVID-19 who insist the pandemic is a hoax and the coronavirus doesn't really exist. "They tell you there must be another reason they are sick," Jodi Doering wrote. "They call you names and ask why you have to wear all that 'stuff' because they don't have COViD because it's not real. Yes. This really happens... [and] You just go back and do it all over again."
- Trump was so spiteful that he lost the 2020 election that he refused for three weeks to let the federal government's vaccine experts brief the incoming administration. Reuters reported: "Failure to promptly share critical COVID-19 data with Biden's team will cause needless, deadly delays in tackling the pandemic, leaders of the U.S. medical establishment said in a letter to Trump on Tuesday."
Trump doesn't want to protect Americans from the pandemic any more than he wants to stop foreign adversaries from manipulating our elections. His solution to both problems is the same: pretend they aren't happening.
In 2019, attorney George Conway examined the evidence that Trump is not only a pathological narcissist, but has antisocial personality disorder. Trump is a sociopath -- someone psychologically incapable of relating to what other people are going through. Trump doesn't care about anyone else. He only cares about himself. What's more, he only cares about what he wants in the present moment. He can't plan ahead.
Conway's detailed article is well worth reading. "Trump's ingrained and extreme behavioral characteristics make it impossible for him to carry out the duties of the presidency in the way the Constitution requires," Conway warned readers. "One of the most striking aspects of Trump's personality is his utter and complete lack of empathy.
The presidency "requires you to put someone else's interests above your own," Conway continued, "and Trump's personality makes it impossible for him to do that... For Trump, Trump always comes first. He places his interests over everyone else's, including those of the nation whose laws he swore to faithfully execute. That's not consistent with the duties of the president, whether considered from the standpoint of constitutional law or psychology." Conway explained how a narcissist's arrogance, need for adoration, and inability to tolerate criticism prevents them from acting wisely - even when it's in their best interests to do so.
Ten months later, journalist David Corn wrote in Mother Jones that Trump's only concern is re-election. Trump simply doesn't care about the 150,000 Americans who'd died of COVID-19 by that point, and is incapable of understanding why anyone else does. They're just numbers to him. "Trump is a narcissistic sociopath who cannot express an ounce of regret over the deaths caused by the virus. He has boasted about the swell TV ratings of his pandemic briefings; he has said almost nothing of those Americans killed by the pandemic.
"He has pushed to reopen state economies and schools before guideposts established by US government experts were met. He has politicized and, thus, discouraged the most basic practice to arrest the pandemic: wearing masks. Imagine being able to prevent tens of thousands of deaths of your fellow Americans with one easy action - and not taking that step. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the president of the United States.
"...What is surprising is that Trump, perhaps the most self-interested man ever to reside in the White House, cannot see that his own interests - notably, getting re-elected - are aligned with the public interest of curtailing the pandemic.
"...Trump's own inner compass is so broken that he could not even fake concern for his own political benefit. His deep-rooted pathologies - 'I know best', 'I can bullshit through anything' - blocked him from adopting simple measures that would actually advance his own personal agenda."
For example: Trump won Michigan in 2016, and winning the State again in 2020 is critical to his re-election campaign. However, Trump delayed coronavirus aid to Michigan because the governor had criticized his lackadaisical response to the pandemic. Trump betrayed his own supporters because of his obsessive drive to punish anyone who criticizes him. He couldn't help himself. "Why piss off Michiganders when you desire their votes?" Corn asks. "It's in Trump's nature... He placed his love of revenge over his own political survival.
"Trump's inability to make a simple calculation - I should heed the experts and implement the counter-pandemic fundamentals to save lives and (also!) win reelection - is stark and disturbing. It shows Trump cannot perceive or escape the vortex of his own self-destruction."
Trump's lack of empathy is so severe he can't even pretend to care. The simplest gestures would help his re-election campaign -- but Trump can't make them. Trump's presidency is going down in flames, and he's taking the country with him.
Conway's detailed article is well worth reading. "Trump's ingrained and extreme behavioral characteristics make it impossible for him to carry out the duties of the presidency in the way the Constitution requires," Conway warned readers. "One of the most striking aspects of Trump's personality is his utter and complete lack of empathy.
The presidency "requires you to put someone else's interests above your own," Conway continued, "and Trump's personality makes it impossible for him to do that... For Trump, Trump always comes first. He places his interests over everyone else's, including those of the nation whose laws he swore to faithfully execute. That's not consistent with the duties of the president, whether considered from the standpoint of constitutional law or psychology." Conway explained how a narcissist's arrogance, need for adoration, and inability to tolerate criticism prevents them from acting wisely - even when it's in their best interests to do so.
Ten months later, journalist David Corn wrote in Mother Jones that Trump's only concern is re-election. Trump simply doesn't care about the 150,000 Americans who'd died of COVID-19 by that point, and is incapable of understanding why anyone else does. They're just numbers to him. "Trump is a narcissistic sociopath who cannot express an ounce of regret over the deaths caused by the virus. He has boasted about the swell TV ratings of his pandemic briefings; he has said almost nothing of those Americans killed by the pandemic.
"He has pushed to reopen state economies and schools before guideposts established by US government experts were met. He has politicized and, thus, discouraged the most basic practice to arrest the pandemic: wearing masks. Imagine being able to prevent tens of thousands of deaths of your fellow Americans with one easy action - and not taking that step. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the president of the United States.
"...What is surprising is that Trump, perhaps the most self-interested man ever to reside in the White House, cannot see that his own interests - notably, getting re-elected - are aligned with the public interest of curtailing the pandemic.
"...Trump's own inner compass is so broken that he could not even fake concern for his own political benefit. His deep-rooted pathologies - 'I know best', 'I can bullshit through anything' - blocked him from adopting simple measures that would actually advance his own personal agenda."
For example: Trump won Michigan in 2016, and winning the State again in 2020 is critical to his re-election campaign. However, Trump delayed coronavirus aid to Michigan because the governor had criticized his lackadaisical response to the pandemic. Trump betrayed his own supporters because of his obsessive drive to punish anyone who criticizes him. He couldn't help himself. "Why piss off Michiganders when you desire their votes?" Corn asks. "It's in Trump's nature... He placed his love of revenge over his own political survival.
"Trump's inability to make a simple calculation - I should heed the experts and implement the counter-pandemic fundamentals to save lives and (also!) win reelection - is stark and disturbing. It shows Trump cannot perceive or escape the vortex of his own self-destruction."
Trump's lack of empathy is so severe he can't even pretend to care. The simplest gestures would help his re-election campaign -- but Trump can't make them. Trump's presidency is going down in flames, and he's taking the country with him.
People around the country, including other police officers, were horrified by Floyd's murder. It set off protests in all fifty States and the District of Columbia against racism and police brutality. The protests have mostly been peaceful, though there has been some looting. (Police and protesters agree that the looters had nothing to do with the protests. According to sources as far apart as CBS Los Angeles and NBC Philadelphia, the looters were ordinary criminals using the protests to cover for their crimes.)
- Though Trump expressed sympathy with the victim, he referred to the mostly peaceful protesters as "thugs" and threatened to send in the military. Trump tweeted: "Any difficulty and we will assume control but, when the looting starts, the shooting starts." That was a direct quote from Walter Headley, an openly racist Miami police chief in 1967.
- According to Politico, Gizmodo, and the Huffington Post, on June 1, Trump and Attorney General William Barr ordered military police to fire rubber bullets and use tear gas and flash-bang grenades to disperse a peaceful group of unarmed civil rights protesters outside the White House. They did this so Trump could walk to a church he doesn't attend and get his picture taken holding a Bible that wasn't his. This clearly violated the protesters' First Amendment rights to freedom of speech and "the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances." Trump's and Barr's order was illegal.
A reverend who works at the church said that they had no warning that Trump was coming. She was shoved out of the way to make room for him.
Barr later defended the attack, falsely claiming that the civil rights protesters weren't peaceful and falsely claiming they'd been ordered to disperse before the attack.
The police also attacked Australian reporters covering the protest. The cameraman captured the attack and it was aired on live television. CNN, Time, the Los Angeles Times, the Washington Post, and USA Today report that police (and some protesters) have attacked journalists covering protests all over the country. This is unconstitutional: the First Amendment guarantees freedom of the press.
Trump is not responsible for the actions of police officers that don't work for the federal government. However, Trump has spent his entire presidency slandering journalists, calling them "the enemy of the people," and claiming unflattering news stories are lies. - According to Forbes, police in New York, Ohio, Virginia, and Washington, DC arrested or pepper-sprayed elected officials who went to the protests in an effort to keep things peaceful.
- A few days later, Trump told a group of governors to respond to protests with force. "If you don't dominate, you're wasting your time. They're going to run over you. You're going to look like a bunch of jerks... You've got to arrest people. You have to track people, you have to put them in jail for 10 years, and you'll never see this stuff again." He said this a few weeks after praising his own supporters who had rallied in defiance of public health orders. Trump spoke out in support of the armed protesters, and ordered military police to attack the unarmed ones.
- In Buffalo, New York, police officers shoved a 75-year-old civil rights protester to the ground, causing him serious injuries. (At this writing, the protester is recovering from a fractured skull.) Buffalo police initially claimed the protester fell because he tripped over something, a story that was proven false when video emerged of the officers attacking him. Trump later libeled the protester by making the nonsensical and obviously false claim that he was trying to sabotage the police with some kind of super high tech tracking equipment. The behavior of Buffalo police isn't Trump's fault, but slandering an innocent person is.
- Blogger Libby Anne wrote a profound opinion piece pointing out that the United States stands for freedom of the press and freedom of speech, and we cannot champion our values abroad if we don't practice them at home.
- Adam Serwer wrote in The Atlantic that the so-called imposition of law and order without justice means there is neither law, nor order, nor justice.
"When the Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin dug his knee into the back of George Floyd's neck for nine minutes while Floyd pleaded for help, he was merely following the president's advice.
"'Please don't be too nice,' Donald Trump told an audience of police officers on Long Island in 2017, in a speech largely focused on the MS-13 gang. The audience laughed. 'When you see these thugs being thrown into the back of a paddy wagon, you just see them thrown in, rough. I said, 'Please don't be too nice.'
"Law and order, for this president, simply means that he and his ideological allies are above the law, while others, such as Floyd, are merely subject to it. The chaos sweeping across the United States has many causes, but the one over which the president has the most control is the culture of lawlessness and impunity he has cultivated and embraced. When you attempt to impose 'law and order' without justice, you get chaos.
"The moral core of the protests is a simple demand: that police who abuse their authority be held accountable, that black Americans be able to live free lives without fearing that they will be cut short by a chance encounter with law enforcement.
"Trump has few ideological convictions as consistent as his belief in the... power of state violence against religious and ethnic minorities.
"One of the first things Jeff Sessions did after being confirmed as Trump's attorney general was end the Justice Department's oversight of local police departments, declaring that such investigations 'undermine the respect for police officers and create an impression that the entire department is not doing their work consistent with fidelity to law and fairness.'
"If the Trump administration had not abandoned any effort at police oversight, it might have discovered that Minnesota police had rendered dozens of suspects unconscious with the same knee restraint that killed Floyd." - NBC News reported that Trump has no interest in addressing the racism and police brutality that led to the murders of people like Breonna Taylor and George Floyd. Regarding the civil rights protesters, he told his aides "These aren't my voters." Trump has no interest in being President of the United States, and never has. All he cares about is being President of the minority who voted for him.
- In July 2020, Trump sent the Border Patrol to attack peaceful civil rights protesters in Portland, Oregon -- an impeachable offense.