Daniel Pritchett is a resident of Dover.
It is a sad state of affairs if anyone can contend, as I do, that we are now living under the worst president, the worst Congress and the worst Supreme Court in the history of our American republic — all at the same time. But I believe that is the case.
In the interest of space, I will not discuss the latter two; the most urgent problem is, obviously, the man who, God help us, lives in the White House — or is it now the Gold House?
Why is he the worst? For starters, he is, of course, the only president who refused to accept defeat in a reelection campaign and instead plotted to overturn the election by instigating a violent effort to prevent a transfer of power to the winning candidate. Such a person should never have been entrusted with power again.
And our country is now paying the price for it.
How are we paying the price? Let me count the ways:
And the joke is on us.
He has, in a blatant violation of constitutional principles, unilaterally assumed the authority to raise taxes — which is constitutionally the power assigned to Congress — by declaring the imposition of tariffs on imports from other countries (including our best friends and allies!), thus raising the cost of living for the American people, who actually have to pay for the imposition of import fees.
He dismantled and destroyed the U.S. Agency for International Development, the one part of the U.S. government that had been, over the past several decades, saving millions of lives by helping alleviate problems of hunger and disease around the world, thereby generating immense goodwill toward the United States, since it confirmed that the richest country in the world did care about the poorest and most vulnerable. The best estimates are that at least 600,000 people have died since Elon Musk, who for a time was the unelected assistant president, used his “chain saw” to cut down this agency. Both of these two have blood — and a lot of it — on their hands.
President Trump has attacked and attempted to destroy the very institutions that made the United States the true envy and model for the world: our great universities, which were leaders in groundbreaking research and education; the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the National Institutes of Health, which were the world’s gold standard in medical discoveries and lifesaving practices; and the most successful military alliance of free and democratic nations in the history of the world, NATO, which he has singlehandedly and deliberately crippled in a few months, even though it had a sterling record of strengthening our influence and power, and helping keep the peace between the great powers for 77 years. He has now done by himself what Vladimir Putin has only been able to dream of. And any president who rolls out the red carpet for Putin, a cruel dictator and indicted war criminal — while consistently insulting and undercutting Volodymyr Zelenskyy — is a disgrace to us all.
Instead of focusing on the needs of the American people, the president has instead actually made all our problems much worse. In an era of massive inequality of wealth (the worst since at least the 1920s, on the eve of the Great Depression) — as well as real problems in the affordability of basic needs for so many — he and his party in Congress pushed through their “Big Beautiful (ugly) Bill,” which continued tax cuts skewed toward the wealthiest (who obviously didn’t need them) but cut health care subsidies and Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits for those who desperately needed them. As a result, millions of our fellow citizens are going to lose their medical insurance coverage (with many dying unnecessarily), and even more will now face increased hunger, including millions of children.
Instead of leading us toward a better future — with cleaner energy, new jobs and with hope to save the planet from a climate catastrophe — he has endeavored to destroy that effort and instead hang on to coal and oil. This means that the United States is turning its back on the future and ceding it to our greatest economic rival — China. This is what Xi Jinping has dreamed about for decades, and he couldn’t be happier. Trump has virtually assured that the rest of the 21st century will be the “Chinese century,” not the “American century.”
Most appallingly, and quite predictably, Donald J. Trump has not attempted to lead the American people; he has continued to “divide and conquer” us by appealing to hate and fear, attempting to turn us against each other. He blames immigrants — focusing on people of color — for our problems. His administration tells lies about everything: the economy, our allies, his redecorating plans, his approval ratings, his political opposition — which he sees not as his fellow Americans but as “leftist extremists,” “communists” or “domestic terrorists.”
The latter designation has even been used to justify killings, as we have seen in Minneapolis.
The Big (ugly) Bill, by the way, tripled the budget for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which is going to be bigger than the FBI and is now recruiting thousands of new agents to enforce Trump’s virulent assault on our constitutional right to not be harassed, assaulted or perhaps even killed by our own government. ICE is now effectively a masked and badged version of Trump’s mob of five years ago. He is threatening to invoke the Insurrection Act, so he can send the military into American cities, not to preserve law and order but as an occupying force, just as British soldiers were in Boston in 1770. If this continues, we will soon be living through a new “Jan. 6” every day. The locations will vary, and the violence and killing will be directed not at the police but at the American people.
And none of us will be safe.
Reader reactions, pro or con, are welcomed at civiltalk@iniusa.org.
