Before Jan. 20, 2025, I lived under Presidents Kennedy, Johnson, Ford, and Obama, whom I admired, and under Nixon and George W. Bush, whom I detested. I wondered if Democrats could regroup, score some victories in the midterms, and settle on a strong candidate who could defeat JD Vance, the likely 2028 Republican presidential candidate.
I was expecting four more years of outrageous rants, half-truths, ad hominem attacks, and spats against multiple people. On the last day of the Biden administration, I downed a big slug of Scotch and faced the future.
I was totally unprepared for what transpired. On the first day of his second term, President Trump declared a national emergency at the border. I thought a national emergency was when local law enforcement couldn’t contain a riot, last used when President George H.W. Bush sent troops to halt a massive Los Angeles rampage that took 63 lives, injured more than 2,300, and caused more that a billion dollars in damages. Anti-ICE protests in Los Angeles, Washington, and Chicago weren’t in the same category as L.A. ’92 and didn’t require a military response.
Trump has pardoned thousands of criminals including those who invaded the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, Family members of some of those pardoned have given millions to Trump’s pet causes akin to selling indulgences during the Middle Ages.
Nixon notoriously kept a secret enemies list. Trump has dispensed with secrecy and publicly attacked members of both of his administrations. He has ordered the FBI and Justice Department to carry out reprisals. Trump fired more than a dozen experienced 4-star generals and admirals with whom he disagrees, making many Americans feel less safe.
Trump has bullied, pressured, and/or sued universities to halt their DEI programs. Trump has forced some major law firms to stop performing pro bono work that challenged his policies.
Trump has violated Congress’ constitutional powers by unilaterally imposing/revoking tariffs. His policies have caused importers complete havoc in pricing their products. Trump imposed America’s first export tax after pressuring Nvidia and AMD to give the Treasury Department 15% of its sales to China.
In line with pardoning of the Jan. 6 resurrectionists, Trump restored the names of Confederate officers to our military bases and authorized the restoration of the Confederate Memorial to Arlington National Cemetery, our nation’s most hallowed ground.
Trump has appointed Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a medically unqualified person, to lead the Department of Health and Human Services. Kennedy has implemented vaccine policies which will make children less healthy and championed ingesting beef tallow and raw milk, products not endorsed by most dieticians.
Linda McMahon undertook her role as Trump’s education secretary with a goal of eliminating her own department.
Trump has ordered the National Park Service to remove undeniable historical and scientific truths he didn’t like.
Trump settled his lawsuit against Paramount Global, CBS’ parent company, over the editing of a “60 Minutes” Kamala Harris interview. Afterwards, government permission was granted for the sale of Paramount Global to Skydance Media. Trump settled his lawsuit against ABC for reporting that he was found guilty of raping E. Jean Carroll. He had only been found guilty of sexually abusing and defaming her. CBS agreed to pay $16 million and ABC $15 million to a future Trump presidential library. Trump is currently suing the BBC for $10 billion over editing a documentary about the Jan. 6 insurrection.
Trump has lowered the dignity of his office by using foul language in public to disparage his enemies. Recently, he gave the middle finger to a Ford worker. He has used Truth Social, his bully pulpit, to attack his former political allies.
Trump, perceiving himself to be America’s premier arbiter of artistic taste, appointed new leadership at the Kennedy Center, which promptly renamed that formerly acclaimed institution the Trump-Kennedy Center.
Trump, in clear violation of international law, launched 35 strikes against alleged Venezuelan narco-terrorists killing 115, but sparing two. They miraculously survived and were returned to their homelands, not brought to America to face trial indicating that there wasn’t enough evidence of their guilt.
Trump has rewritten the rules for American diplomacy by feuding with multiple countries and threatening Canada and Greenland with invasion.
Championing fossil fuels, which further pollute the environment, Trump has eliminated subsidies for electric vehicles, wind turbines, and solar panels. To ensure the supply of more crude oil, he authorized the invasion of Venezuela.
After a full year of the second Trump administration, I’m not having a slug, but the whole bottle of Scotch as I shudder what more can he do over the next three years.
Newman is an amateur historian of African-American history. He’s working on a miniseries docudrama on the African-American civil rights movement of the first half of the 20th century.
