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ACCORDING TO LIZ - During the earlier reign of Prince Trump-in-the-Hole, he suffered the slings and arrows of overt criticism from experienced advisors within, and challenges to his policies without, by raging on social media. Ultimately, that was an ego-defensive mechanism with few teeth.
The past two-and-a-half months have demonstrated a pettiness unbecoming anyone, especially a president, as newly self-crowned king specifically targeted institutions against which he and his billionaire backers suffer lingering resentments.
Agencies that protect the American people against the predations of Big Business, against corporate profiteering, and those that, in his picayune cerebrum, appear as appeasers – that detract from his personal power through providing care. At home, and abroad.
He-Whose-Name-Should-Never-Be-Mentioned-In-Polite-Conversation has gone after counsellors and commanders, those who were part of the administration he inherited from Biden, and those who crossed him. Ever.
Gross intimidation of law firms and the judiciary, of universities and non-profits, of NGOs and other organizations protecting people from his malignant strategies and injudicious overreach.
Imposing economic sanctions upon all who did not pledge undying fealty to his self-serving ideologies, bullying business leaders that once took strong stances against the MAGA coterie’s illiberal antics.
The head of a legal firm that once fought him on separation of migrant families crowing it pledged “to protect the liberties and freedoms of the most vulnerable among us” went to Washington to eat crow himself last month after delving too deeply into the Trump family’s finances.
This capitulation to the Überlord, by promising to contribute $40 million in legal services to Trump-favored causes, has fertilized the ground for further abuses of presidential power.
And another, just announced, succumbed to presidential persecution by ponying up $100 million more.
On top of the administration stifling free speech and dissent, the coup of the federal government by Elon Musk is blatant corruption. Plain and simple.
Trump and the Eel are squeezing programs that fund the sciences and medical research, dismantling mechanisms that protect people from environmental disasters, and unknotting regulatory protections on safety issues across multiple industries… all the while watching their personal net-worths burgeon.
They are stealing the taxpayers’ money, screwing this country over, and padding their own pockets.
They are making the United States a pariah instead of a world leader.
With U.S.A.I.D. reduced to only the 15 legally-mandated positions out of the 10,000 people once employed, what is left to aid the Mandalay region of Myanmar in the wake of the 7.7-magnitude earthquake where there are over three thousand confirmed fatalities and thousands more missing and presumed dead?
A letter from the American Embassy in France ordered French firms that do business with the U.S. government to promise compliance with Trump’s anti-diversity policies within five days or else…
A recent presidential order calls for curbing curator independence in federally-funded museums, demanding they display “American greatness” – which would include whitewashing every instance of when the United States appeared in a poor light.
An onerous challenge given America’s sad history from slavery to the Trail of Tears and the Indian schools system, from the Japanese internment camps to My Lai, from J. Edgar Hoover to the consequences of the anti-abortion movement.
Last week the Teflon president fired almost all the employees at the U.S. Institute for Peace while refusing to consider the same for the extended Signal chat participants that put lives on the line and made them the butt of late-night lampooning.
Twenty-five percent tariffs as part of the cover-up of his national security team’s malfeasance?
How about instead imposing Single-Payer Health Care as fast as these yo-yos have torn apart the fabric of the federal government?
Without the built-in costs of providing health coverage which can run to 35% and more of company payrolls, American manufacturing can again become competitive.
Pitch it as a pro-business solution to avoid the business sector decrying it as socialism. But it would hit the ball out of the park in defending domestic jobs and rebooting the American economy.
With 10,000 more employees to be indiscriminately gutted from the Department of Health and Human Services bringing the total shafted there to 40,000 and 11 percent of our fellow citizens unable to pay for medication and medical treatment, we need to demand that DOGE flex its muscles and deliver something beneficial to Americans through this regime’s rampant capacity to rule by authoritarian diktat.
(Liz Amsden is a former Angeleno who now resides in Vermont and is a regular contributor to CityWatch on issues that she is passionate about. She can be reached at [email protected].)
