President Donald Trump has been working at breakneck speed to eliminate federal programs, prompting an opinion columnist with The Washington Post to ponder, "Is there anything Trump won't destroy?"
Columnist Dana Milbank used the metaphor of Trump wielding an ax to chop down not only a 200-year-old magnolia tree at the White House, but the very Constitution on which the United States was founded.
Trump announced this week that he was getting rid of the tree planted by Andrew Jackson because, he wrote, it had become “a very dangerous safety hazard.” Milbank conceded that the explanation was "plausible," but what was Trump's justification for paving the storied Rose Garden into a “stone surface”?
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"The same day Trump announced the execution of the Jackson magnolia, he swung another ax at the 237-year-old U.S. Constitution, this time maintaining that he’s 'not joking' about illegally seeking a third term," Milbank wrote.
He continued, "In a sense, it may be better that Trump thinks he can run for another term — because that might stop him from his breathtaking sabotage of the American economy." Trump managed to plunge U.S. trade and the stock markets into chaos this week by announcing sweeping tariffs on as many countries as possible, including one with only penguins as inhabitants.
On Friday, CNN's Harry Enten claimed that Donald Trump's economic policies have damaged the U.S. economy in "historically unprecedented" ways. Indeed, even Trump's Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent proved unable to answer the most standard questions about Trump's economic end game, and was reportedly "looking for an exit door" after just two months on the job.
"At the rate things are unraveling," Milbank wrote, "there may be nothing left for Trump to preside over during his third term."
Read The Washington Post opinion piece here.