In an unsparing column in the Washington Post, journalist Eugene Robinson accused President Donald Trump of being a self-centered bully whose governing philosophy can be condensed down to "cruelty for cruelty's sake."
According to the Pulitzer Prize-winning writer, Trump has no qualms about ripping immigrant children from the arms of their desperate parents or holding 800,000 federal workers hostage without paychecks -- or working for free -- in order to get funding for a wall that he believes will be his greatest achievement.
"Imagine going a month without a paycheck. Imagine lining up the bills and deciding which get paid and which don’t — mortgage or rent, electricity, heating. Imagine having to commute to work at an 'essential' government job and trying to scrape together enough money for gas or bus fare<" Robinson proposed. "All of these hardships, and many more, are being inflicted on hardworking public servants for no earthly reason."
"From the beginning, Democrats have taken a reasonable position: Keep the government open, and let’s have a debate and a negotiation about border security. Trump agreed — until far-right pundits accused him of abandoning his border wall, which everyone knows will never be built," he explained, before pointing out new revelations that the Trump administration's "sadistic policy of separating would-be immigrants from their children has been far more extensive, and more shocking, than anyone suspected."
Robinson then launched a full-out assault on Trump.
"Trump cruelly gives the cold shoulder to those around the world who advocate respect for human rights. Perhaps Trump thinks this is how his base wants him to act. Perhaps his own myriad insecurities lead him to falsely equate callous indifference with strength," he accused. "Such gratuitous cruelty is really this administration’s only consistent policy. Trump tried his best, for example, to destroy the Affordable Care Act, not because he had a better idea about how to provide health care but apparently because he can’t abide anything with President Barack Obama’s name on it."
"Why would Trump injure innocent consumers? Why hurt stockholders of companies led by chief executives he does not like? Why seek to deny desperately needed help to Puerto Rico, where some politicians have been critical of Trump?" Robinson asked rhetorically. "Why? Because he can."
"Like all schoolyard tyrants, he tries to project great strength to mask internal weakness," he summed up before concluding, "But remember the one universal truth about bullies: The bigger they are, the harder they fall."
You can read the whole thing here.