There's one thing no one knows about Trump

Every day, it seems, we see or hear about another way in which Trump and his lickspittles in Congress and the various federal agencies are tearing down our country, weakening our defenses, pitting Americans against each other, looting our government, and making life harder for everybody except the morbidly rich.

The question nobody seems to have an answer to is, “Why?”

• Is it that, as Craig Unger seems to suggest, that he’s been a Russian agent for decades and is setting us up to lose to the newly-forming Axis of Russia and China?
• Is it that he spent so many years burning with rage and embarrassment at not being accepted by New York high society that he’s just come to hate America?
• Could it be that America-fearing foreign powers that have poured literally billions of dollars into the Trump family are paying him to tear us apart so they’ll never again have to endure the humiliation of having their human, civil, and women’s rights records called out by a future administration?
• Is it possible it’s all just to pay for tax cuts for billionaires?
• Or are his, JD Vance’s, and Elon Musk’s white supremacist, Christian nationalist, libertarian, and/or neo-Nazi ideologies so intense that they’re willing to essentially burn the country down just to expel people of color, elevate the rich, and re-subordinate women?

These are serious questions for which I can’t find credible answers that explain the entire spectrum of their behavior. Why would Trump and the GOP:

• Condemn 12 million Americans to sickness and early death by gutting Medicaid?
• Destroy American soft power by killing USAID, thus condemning millions to death?
• Fire so many workers at the Social Security Administration that just getting through to sign up or get help has turned into a multi-day slog?
• Gut the State Department at a time diplomacy is most needed for world peace?
• End food assistance (SNAP) for millions when one-in-five American children experience hunger?
• Refuse to enforce laws and rules that allow workers to form unions in their workplaces?
• Propose forcing all new Medicare recipients onto Medicare “Advantage” corporate scam plans?
• Refuse military aid to Ukraine for seven long months and then give Russia 50 days to finish off their genocidal job?
• Stop the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau from going after fraudsters and banks when they rip people off?
• Eliminate a major NOAA program designed to warn communities about the dangers of flooding and other extreme weather crises?
  
• Politicize the FBI, the Department of Justice, and the Federal Election Commission?
• End net neutrality so none of us are safe online?
  
• Shut down anti-cyber-warfare operations in the federal government?
• Defund university research that leads to innovation and saves lives?
  
• Cut unemployment insurance benefits across Red states?
• Terminate support for people with student loans and gut scholarship programs?
• Slash Affordable Care Act outreach budgets and allow junk insurance plans?
• Reverse over 100 environmental rules, including those on clean air, clean water, and chemical safety?
  
• Weaken Dodd-Frank, including gutting oversight of “too big to fail” banks and stress tests for mid-size financial institutions?
• Dial back OSHA workplace safety standards and inspections?
• Cut taxes to rich people while raising them via tariffs on working class folks?
• Change the Federal Trade Commission to allow more monopolistic, rip-off corporate behavior?
• Make it harder to vote and harass Blue states by demanding their voter information?
• Work to prosecute women who have miscarriages or abortions?
• Make it harder to qualify for Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) and Supplemental Security Income (SSI)?
• End auto emission standards and increase our reliance on fossil fuels?
• Pack the courts with judges the American Bar Association says are “unqualified”?
• Destroy our faith in our elections and set up election workers for harassment?
• Fire the Inspectors General (who find waste, fraud, and abuse) across multiple federal agencies?
• Weaken whistleblower protections?
• Put the military on the streets of our cities in violation of Posse Comitatus?
• Use state power to punish political opponents and those who’ve investigated Trump’s crimes, alleged Russian collusion, and corruption?
  
• Create a network of concentration camps across America?
• Allow a shadow cabinet of billionaires and theocrats via Project 2025?
• Attack judges and prosecutors, leading to violence and threats of violence?
• Foment violence (like on January 6th) as a political strategy?
• Destroy our asylum and refugee systems?
• Pardon insurrectionists, rapists, cybercriminals, and other wealthy criminals?
• Defund the IRS so they can no longer audit the morbidly rich, leading to the loss of hundreds of billions in federal revenues?
• Ban books and censor libraries?
• Criminalize trans and queer people?
• Roll back gun safety measures?
  
• Defund the arts, humanities, and public media?
• Gut vaccine and other programs that keep Americans healthy?
• Nakedly politicize the military?
• Expand federal surveillance powers while kneecapping oversight?
• Criminalize free speech, particularly on college campuses?
• Attempt to revoke birthright citizenship?
• Attack press freedom and bar the Associated Press from the White House?
• Sabotage the US Postal Service?
• Undermine the census?
• Scale back civil and women’s rights enforcement?
  
• Normalize autocratic language like “vermin,” “scum,” and calling immigrants “animals”?
• Expel millions of brown-skinned immigrants who’ve already gone through the legal process to get work permits and are on a path toward citizenship?
• Create international fiscal chaos with an on-again, off-again TACO tariff policy?
• Cancel the suicide hotline for queer kids?
  
• Gut our national parks and sell off our federal lands to wealthy friends of the administration?
• Create a vast, secret, unaccountable police force with masked officers whose identity is concealed?
• Allow the president to accept hundreds of millions in obvioius bribes from foreign powers in violation of the Constitution?

And this, of course, is just a partial list of the ways Trump and the GOP have weakened our nation, reduced our standing and prestige in the world, corrupted our government, and immiserated working class families.

Many of the theories about why Trump and the GOP would enthusiastically do so much damage to our people, our military, and our democracy contradict others.

For example, why would billionaires want tax cuts at the expense of damaging the economy that made them rich? Why would we promote a muscular military policy like bombing Iran while simultaneously destroying morale within the ranks and kneecapping our intelligence agencies?

“Something is happening here but you don’t know what it is,” sang Bob Dylan back in the 1960s.

Today, we’re there.

Why do you think Trump and the GOP are working so hard to ruin our country?