“Upside down. Boy, you turn me inside out, and ‘round and ‘round,” from Diana Ross’s hit written by Nile Rodgers and Bernard Edwards.
By Christopher Young,
Contributing Writer,
It’s easy for shock and disbelief to be replaced by frustration and anger. The noise each day is deafening. The onslaught of egregious statements and actions is unceasing. We’re not even half-way through, and Constitution or not, you know he’s scheming to have his presence at the controls last even longer. What he has done to America and Americans in these 570 days defies description. Unless something happens to him sooner, we still have a minimum of 890 days left. His willful carnage is stunning – like a tsunami – but that so much of it is supported by the Republican members of Congress and Republican leaders across the country is devastating.
As we draw closer to mid-term elections in November, it bears a review of the record, separate from the fierce noise that numbs so many of us. Let’s start with unilateral actions – the Executive Orders. This time around, his pace averages 179 per year. In his first term, before he lost to President Biden, it was 55 per year. Biden’s average per year was 41, President Obama’s was 35, and President “W” Bush was 36 a year, all per Pew Research.
The wrecking ball becomes acutely personal for those that cross him, disagree with him, or vote against him. Following January 6, 2021, when he incited a crowd of insurrectionists to storm the U.S. Capitol to stop the certification of election results – which would show that he lost by over 7 million votes to Joe Biden – there was a vote to impeach him and 10 House Republicans voted to do so. Eight of those ten were forced out of Congress by primary defeats or forced retirement (rather than face a blistering primary challenge). Seven Senate Republicans likewise voted to impeach him, and five of those seven met the same outcome, per New York Times and CBS’s Face the Nation. This year alone he has successfully gone after those not aligned with him. They include Republican Senator John Coryn, Republican Representative Thomas Massie, Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensberger, and five Republican state Senators in Indiana went packing as well, all per PBS.
Back to January 6th for a moment. A Government Accountability Office Report indicated the comprehensive bill for the insurrection is $2.7 billion, and on Day 2 of his second, non-consecutive term, he pardoned over 1,500 of the rioters. ‘The hours-long assault injured more than 140 police officers, in one of the largest-ever mass attacks on law enforcement officers in U.S. history,” per National Public Radio. All pieces of American history that can never be rewritten.
He has stripped traditional merit-based Schedule F career protections, making civil service employees “at-will” workers that can now easily be fired. The Project of Government Oversight estimates that 317,000 workers have left or been forced out in the first year of his second term. He has placed entry restrictions (travel bans) on people of 39 countries, 37 of which have overwhelmingly Black, Brown or other non-white populations, per the New York Immigration Coalition and CNN. Yet he has made the immigration path easier for White residents of South Africa – Afrikaners – citing unfounded systemic violence and racial discrimination, per DW.com and PBS.
His verbal assaults, often inside the Oval Office, on foreign leaders is without comparison – numerous times having dignitaries kicked out of the White House. His attacks on members of the press is well known and continues. Calling veteran journalist’s “a horrible person” or “a terrible person,” because they ask questions he doesn’t want to answer, like about his involvement with Jeffrey Epstein. Just three months before the election he berated a panel of female journalists when appearing at the annual convention of The National Association of Black Journalists. At the event he also falsely claimed that Vice President Kamala Harris “happened to turn Black later in her political career,” per WHYY and Maryland Matters.
His focus on his personal wealth continues, as Americans are suffering. Gas, food, childcare, healthcare, housing, energy and utilities are all up considerably in his second term. His policies on import and food tariffs, manufacturing and goods, housing materials, Affordable Care Act subsidies, Medicaid rollbacks, and Medicare Part D subsidies are the main causes, and along the way he has gutted consumer protections where in the past government oversight was used to pressure large corporations from price-gouging.
Unlike Diana Ross’s “Upside Down,” the biggest hit of her solo career, this presidency is not about a love affair with America – it’s about power and perceived greatness of one man. A Recent CNN poll found that “73 percent of Americans believe that Trump is not focused on the critical issues facing everyday citizens.” He has referred to Democratic and Independent voters who oppose him as “vermin” or “enemies of the state,” per The Hill. Americans know deep down that he is not making America great again. The BBC reports that primarily through outside ventures he has amassed $2.2 billion in his first eighteen months back in office.
From statements during COVID, that no one could ever forget, to the current push for a Department of Justice Anti-Weaponization Fund to provide compensation to his January 6th rioters, to an attempt to shield himself and his sons from past and future IRS audits, to installing loyalists to slow-roll the full Epstein file disclosures, he has no regard for the rule of law – the bedrock of America’s Constitutional Democracy – all while claiming that no President has ever been treated so unfairly. Each new day the wrecking ball continues to swing.
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