Submitted by Dan Quigley, Greenwich
The United States of America, long the world’s pre-eminent symbol of freedom and democracy and the pillar of global stability for almost a century has rapidly metamorphosized into the neighborhood thug. Since his inauguration one year ago, President Trump has sewn chaos and disorder throughout our government weakening our institutions and using threats to browbeat those who oppose him in order to consolidate his grip on power and advance his administration’s profoundly radical agenda. In this regard, the president has assumed the role of Al Capone and his cabinet that of Capone’s “Chicago Outfit” of the 1920’s, running the most powerful nation on earth like a mafia boss.
The list of those in the president’s line of fire is as diverse as it is long.
Domestic law firms, universities, corporations, news organizations, journalists, Democrat run states, government workers, government institutions, Greenland, Venezuela, NATO and on and on. Of these, only the crooked Venezuelan regime stands out as a worthy of the ire of the White House. Some, have opted to make financial settlements with the president in order to avoid protracted and perhaps costlier legal battles. ABC News, a handful of Ivy League universities and several major law firms come to mind. Many others (including European leaders, FIFA and Nobel Prize winner Maria Corina Machado) have either tried flattery by lavishing him with awards and accolades and in Ms. Machado’s case presenting him with her own Nobel Peace Prize. Groveling has proven to be both an ineffective and humiliating option.
In the rare cases that someone has stood up to the president, punishment has been swift. Take for example, Exxon Mobil CEO Darren Woods who referred to Venezuela as “uninvestable” at a White House meeting with oil executives. That solicited this reply from the president who said he “didn’t like Exxon’s response” and that he will “probably be inclined to keep Exxon out” of any future opportunities in Venezuela. When Jamie Dimon, CEO of JPMorgan made comments supportive Federal Reserve independence, it prompted Mr. Trump to announce that he would soon be suing JPMorgan “for incorrectly and inappropriately DEBANKING me after the January 6th Protest” – a protest the president called “legitimate” because “The Election was RIGGED!”
The case of Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell is an even more flagrant example. Mr. Powell, a longtime target of the President Trump (who appointed him) for not having buckled to his orders that the Fed lower interest rates, now finds himself the subject of a criminal investigation by the Justice Department related to testimony he gave regarding the renovation of the Federal Reserve building in Washington, DC. To his credit, upon learning that, Mr. Powell immediately issued a video statement calling out the investigation as being part of a broader pressure campaign by the White House to force the Fed to lower rates. It is a tall task to make a buttoned down banker like Mr. Powell into a heroic figure, but by standing up to the president he has distinguished himself and garnered strong public support because of it.
Donald Trump has also prosecuted his war of retribution targeting Democrat run US cities either by withdrawing federal funding for important programs or increasing the deployment of masked Federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents to their cities. We have all seen the violent and disturbing scenes of ICE officers asking people for their “papers,” dragging some from their vehicles and arresting people at schools or even at mandatory immigration hearings. According to the non-partisan group TraceReports.org more than 73.6% of all deported immigrants by the Trump administration have no criminal records. What was a campaign promise by then candidate Trump to rid the country of undocumented immigrants with criminal records has become something broader in scope and more sinister in purpose.
Respected political scientist and historian Robert Kagan (a former Republican political advisor) believes that the recent transformation of ICE into a pseudo paramilitary arm of the White House serves a greater, more menacing purpose for the administration. As Kagan put it, “What comes next is perfectly clear. What we’re seeing in Minnesota is both a dress rehearsal and an effort to desensitize the country to the idea of using overwhelming force by the federal government to effectively invade states, especially Democratic states and to ultimately take control.”
Kagan contends that it is naive to think that the president will allow his party to lose the 2026 midterm elections. This would render him politically neutered and would be a direct threat to his ability to enact his agenda. To ensure that doesn’t happen, Kagan argues that Mr. Trump will deploy ICE to “provoke riots through their brutal behavior” in turn providing a phony justification for invoking the Insurrection Act possibly leading to “the seizing of ballots, which is what he (Mr. Trump) wanted to do in 2020” but could not.
Considering that after the tragic shooting death of Renee Nicole Good by an ICE officer, the administration immediately labeled her a “domestic terrorist” and doubled down on its offensive in Minneapolis. It does not take a leap of credulity to view this scenario as not only plausbile, but perhaps likely.
The Trump administration has also diluted the White House press corps, replacing legitimate news organizations with more favorable conservative outlets and pod casters. Whereas his predecessors understood the importance of a free press even though they may not have always liked it, Mr. Trump has the luxury of an obsequious, if not supportive White House press pool. If a reporter asks a question he doesn’t like, they are immediately demeaned and discredited on the spot. At a recent White House Press Conference, Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt responded this way when asked a question about ICE by veteran reporter Niall Stanage calling him a “biased reporter with a left wing opinion… Because you’re a left wing hack.”
Needless to say, none of the journalists at the briefing came to Mr. Stanage’s defense.
With regard to foreign policy, the president’s posture was described perfectly by a French member of the European Parliament who said that President Trump “acted weak with the strong and strong with the weak.” In the case of America’s primary adversaries (Russia and China), they have had little reason to worry. China just posted its first ever Trillion dollar trade surplus and Mr. Putin’s invasion of Ukraine continues with little American opposition. Instead, the Trump administration has aimed its sights on some of our closest allies. The case of Greenland stands out as a singular example.
To be sure, Greenland is of strategic geographic importance to the United States and the West. At one time the US military had 10,000 troops stationed there along with 15 strategic military bases only to have reduced its presence after the end of the Cold War. However, existing agreements between the US, Greenland and Denmark allow for America to expand its military footprint there if necessary. Instead of working within the existing framework with Denmark and our NATO partners the president has instead chosen to threaten our allies with an impossible ultimatum – “We will either take Greenland the easy way, or the hard way.” One can draw their own conclusions as to what that means.
In order to coerce our NATO allies into caving in on Greenland, the president announced 10% tariffs on 8 NATO member countries (which will increase to 25% on June 1st if they do not bend the knee to his demand to take Greenland). Trump administration officials call this a “negotiation tactic”. It isn’t. It is an act of economic warfare. In a disgraceful text message to Danish President Jonas Gahr Store, President Trump wrote; “Considering your Country decided not to give me the Nobel Peace Prize for having stopped 8 Wars PLUS, I no longer feel an obligation to think purely of Peace, although it will always be predominant, but can now think about what is good and proper for the United States of America.”
On Tuesday, Danish pension operator AkademikerPension sold its $100million dollar stake in US Treasury Securities. Although this amount on its own is inconsequential, it could be a canary in the coal mine.
Since the end of the second world war, the pendulum swing of American democracy has remained steady. Though administrations may have differed on policy, they remained committed to the rules based system of the post-World War II international order and our presidents always appealed to our better angels when domestic turbulence occurred at home. Allies remained allies, alliances and Treaty obligations were honored and the lives of marginalized Americans continued to improve. Now, the rules based order which provided decades of stability is being threatened by the very country that was both its architect and greatest advocate. On the home front our divisions are being inflamed, not healed. The pendulum swing of American democracy has begun to oscillate in a more chaotic and unpredictable manner, making America and the world a far more dangerous place.
Our democracy is on a slippery slope and our elected politicians do not inspire confidence that they are up to the task of stopping its trajectory. For far too long House and Senate Republicans have demonstrated a embarrassing lack of spine and total subservience to Donald Trump. As bad as that is, national Democrats have distinguished themselves as politically inept and lacking leadership. It was the failures of Democrats that opened the door allowing Mr. Trump to regain the White House and it is Republicans who bear the full brunt of the blame for indulging his unmoored autocratic tendencies once he regained the presidency.
Our government institutions have been weakened or dismantled without any serious resistance. The Justice Department has been fully weaponized by this White House for the purpose of punishing its enemies. The newly minted Department of War has put US military troops on notice for deployment to Minneapolis and NATO is facing an existential crisis due to President Trump’s actions. I am an optimist by nature, but I fear that America has crossed the threshold into darkness. The evidence is laid bare every day and the tremors of discord are appearing with more frequency and greater strength. Last September in a speech to hundreds of American military leaders, the president referenced the plight of US cities by saying “we should use some of these dangerous cities as training grounds for our military”. The mood in the room was uneasy. At the time, the president’s comments were laughed off by his supporters as “Trump being Trump”. They aren’t so funny anymore.
Reference Material:
The Polical Scene Podcast
https://open.spotify.com/
TraceReports Immigration Facts
https://tracreports.org/immigration/quickfacts/