Donald in the drink
47 speeds his own demise
"You want me to go swimming?" Donald Trump said sarcastically when asked if he would visit the site of a deadly air crash near National Airport.
Hours after the fatal collision between American Airlines flight 5342 and an Army helicopter over the Potomac River, Trump blamed diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs at the FAA for the tragedy without waiting for the National Transportation Safety Board to investigate. He said it was "common sense," a phrase people use to justify leaping to conclusions based on nothing but their own bias.
Trump caricatured DEI programs as if they mandate hiring mentally incompetent people as air traffic controllers. In fact, the people who hire air traffic controllers have far stricter standards than the voters who hired Trump.
President Ronald Reagan fired 11,345 striking air traffic controllers in August 1981. Five months later, Air Florida flight 90 crashed into the Potomac River shortly after takeoff. Democratic House Speaker Tip O'Neill responded with compassion for the dead and their families and avoided attacking Reagan.
Trump, in contrast, has no social filter. He spews lies and insults in every direction. But the qualities that aided his rise may speed his demise.
Contrary to Trump's claims, we are not facing an invasion from outside our borders. The harm is being done to us from within by people blinded by bigotry and determined to advance their own supremacy.
It is hard to keep up with the new administration's vicious nonsense. One example is Trump's executive order banning transgender service members based on the assertion that they lack the necessary "readiness, lethality, cohesion, honesty, humility, uniformity, and integrity." This from the most unfit and least civic-minded president in history.
Trump has built his political career on his skill at tapping into the ugliest parts of the American character. The spree of destruction with which he has started his second term is highlighted by illegal and unconstitutional acts. Federal courts have already intervened against him.
Trump told his followers during the presidential campaign, "I am your retribution." In fact, he is a pathological narcissist who is merely using them to get revenge against any and all who have tried to hold him accountable, including career civil servants who were just doing their jobs.
What makes one man's grievances so important as to justify destroying our republic in revenge? How does a child of wealth with several bankruptcies dare to question other people's job qualifications, especially after nominating a clown car cabinet?
If you were in his position and wanted to wreck the country, you could not do better than nominating Kash Patel as FBI director, Tulsi Gabbard as Director of National Intelligence, and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as Secretary of Health and Human Services. All three dodged senators' questions and took great offense at having their own well-documented (including videotaped) statements thrown back at them.
The pushback against this band of saboteurs will only increase.
One advantage we have in fighting back is Trump's massive overreach and divorce from reality. Another is that many of us see no other choice but to fight back. We are not about to praise him adoringly like North Koreans cheering their dictator, which has stirred Trump's envy. Our bloody-mindedness is our back stop.
Trump's MAGA hordes are avid collectors of fake fears and grievances. Few of them, for example, are as afraid of trans people as they pretend. But stirring up panic against minorities distracts attention from the real harm posed by the far right, just as questioning foreign aid is a diversion from Republicans' eagerness to run up huge deficits giving tax cuts to billionaires.
Most of Trump's attacks are projections. He loves accusing others of what he himself does. He is determined to weaponize government against his opponents, so he accuses Democrats of doing it. He was credibly suspected of never graduating from college, so he questioned Barack Obama's academic credentials. He nominated a raft of unqualified people to top government posts, so he suggests that Black people are unqualified "diversity hires."
Behind his trash talk, Trump is a quivering bundle of insecurities. His massive ignorance and need for attention make him hostile to all sources of expertise.
A nation's governance requires knowledge, respect, discipline, good character, and an even temperament. All our current president has are the performative skills of a playground bully. The more we stand up to him, the sooner his chicanery and recklessness will land his dictatorial ambitions in the cold, swift currents of the Potomac.
Richard J. Rosendall is a writer and activist at [email protected].
Copyright © 2025 by Richard J. Rosendall. All rights reserved.