Trump is Evil

It is time we stop lying to ourselves about the threat we face

We do not negotiate with terrorists.

Unless, apparently, those terrorists are the leadership of the Trump Administration.

They have sent an army of lawless, violent, masked thugs into our cities with the primary purpose of terrorizing the population into silence and compliance. Yet, the response of many Democrats remains to see if we can’t cut a deal with the terrorist kingpins. Even when it is clear that the vast majority of the U.S. abhors the actions of Trump and his extremist network, even when their actions are so reprehensible that they are forced into small retreats, the approach of many in the alleged “opposition” is to float proposals that will ensure that further greater abuses by the President take place.

This is due to one critical error in the calculus of many who oppose Trump: The failure to acknowledge the current U.S. president and his agenda are evil.

Yes. They are evil. Not just political positions. Not just misguided. Not just incompetent. Not even just criminal or corrupt.

They are the acts that actively reject even the most broadly accepted moral and ethical foundations of our society…or of any society.

Dictionary definitions of evil include “morally reprehensible,” “arising from actual or imputed bad character or conduct,” “morally bad, cruel,” and “being morally wrong in principle or in practice.”

The debate over the nature of evil and even whether it truly exists is robust. Some tie evil to the supernatural or to religion. There are (as the link in this paragraph describe) broad and narrow definitions of the term that serve different purposes and trigger differing debates from philosophers. There is a school that argues it is an antiquated or less-than-useful concept. Others, like Hannah Arendt, in her work about the work atrocities of humankind feel the term is essential to describe a uniquely atrocious set of behaviors that violate values with such contempt that demand responses that acknowledge that moral-based arguments are likely to be ineffective or unpersuasive to the perpetrators of such acts. She explicitly refers to the dehumanization of people so that one can eliminate or torture them outside any rules of behavior that might govern human interaction.

Transgression

It is this transgression against moral, ethical and legal norms that lies at the heart of the concept of evil. Indeed, the word “evil” is derived from an old English word “yfel” which means to “exceed proper boundaries.”

Some argue that if an actor does not know they violating boundaries then they are not actually committing evil. An animal that kills another is an example of this behavior. So too, is the behavior of an individual who is mentally ill and thereby does not know or cannot discern the difference between right and wrong.

None of those loopholes exist for the president and those around them. Daily they are presented with an avalanche of views—in courts, in the media, perhaps periodically within their own discussions—which make very clear the legal and moral lines they are crossing. They may have rationalized why they take the action they take but that does not let them off the hook. Individuals cannot establish their own value systems or definitions of good and bad. Indeed, attempting to do so is the first step on the slippery slope to the commission of evil.

Think of Harry Lime’s famous “cuckoo clock” speech in “The Third Man” to hear what that sort of rationalization sounds like.

Those who do evil, in fact, often do so after creating arguments to give themselves permission to act—to stop the threat posed by an “other,” for example, or by a “non-believer.” Such arguments—like the explanations Stephen Miller or J.D. Vance might give as to why immigrants or non-Christians or liberals or dissenters are a threat to “true American values”—do not excuse their actions or make them somehow in-bounds and okay. Indeed, the fact that they conjure such twisted rationales for clearly immoral or illegal behavior is, in its own way, a kind of admission of guilt that they understand just how wrong what they are doing is. Or that they are sociopaths, blind or insensitive to the feelings of other humans or civilization as a whole.

The core reason to engage in such analysis or to make such an argument about Trump goes back to the point that Arendt was seeking to make—certain human acts are so egregious and reveal so much about the danger posed by the people behind them that we need to treat them differently, respond to them differently.

You don’t negotiate with evil. You don’t compromise with evil.

You must stop it altogether. Where possible—difficult in this world though it may be—you must try to eradicate it.

If individual people are involved, they must be held to account and their punishment must reflect the toll taken as a result of their actions but also the threat that their rejection of law and morality poses to society at large. Let them off, meet them halfway and you invite more of that which threatens you now.

Alex Pretti was a Hero

That choice was made painfully clear this past weekend when a gang of Trump’s masked thugs attacked and killed 37-year-old Alex Pretti, an ICU nurse who was in the streets of Minneapolis to show solidarity with his community and to come to the aid of neighbors in need. As the second cold-blooded murder of an innocent resident of Minneapolis in weeks, it made clear that if the terrorist tactics promulgated by Trump and Miller and Kristi Noem and Tom Homan and Greg Bovino were allowed to continue there would be more bloodshed—not purely as a result of the defective character or training of CBP or ICE agents but because brutality and contempt for the law were their marching orders from their masters, because they were there to implement a plan that was not just flawed but was, at its heart, driven as it was by racism, nationalism, and disregard for our Constitution and the values underlying it, evil.

That in the wake of Pretti’s death Trump and Vance and DHS sought to smear Pretti and justify their own actions with lies…and that those lies were quickly exposed because videos existed of what actually happened…just made the threat they posed clearer. Rather than apologize or express regrets or even the most basic human emotions they sought to justify what happened and even to use the events as a warning to other Americans—speak out against this administration, dare criticize Trump and his policies, and you too would be fair game for the murderous creeps this federal government was deploying against its own people. Indeed, the quick response of people like Secretary of Defense Hegseth and Miller made it clear that they were itching to deploy more men with guns into the streets of America to advance their white Christian nationalist authoritarian agenda.

They did make a mistake, however. The act was so horrific and their lies were so transparent that some of their base began to distance themselves from Trump. Further, when Noem and Bovino and FBI Director Kash Patel started to use Pretti’s possession of a licensed, holstered gun as a reason to justify his execution, they inflamed a core part of the far right base that views any limitation on the ability of Americans to carry weapons as sacrilege.

The result was Trump backtracked, reassigned Bovino, and sent Tom Homan to Minneapolis to clean up the mess. Democrats, who had shown a little spine by saying they would not support a pending funding bill for DHS, saw this as a victory and began to enumerate a few other points they would like to see in their “deal” with Trump. These points included having CBP stay (per their mandate) within 100 miles of the border, cooperation with state probes into legal violations by federal officers, warrants for arrests, use of IDs and bodycams by ICE and CBP and keeping ICE out of schools and churches.

Never Compromise with Evil

While all these would be positive steps, they reveal the problem with negotiating with folks like Trump, Miller & Co. For example, two-thirds of the U.S. population lives within 100 miles of our borders. So…many will remain in ICE and CBP cross-hairs. “Cooperation” is a relative term especially given the track record of gross failure to cooperate with the courts of this administration. Similarly, much damage can be done while following the other elements of such an agreement…especially if the people in charge of these programs and the goals of the programs do not change. Further, by negotiating such a deal it gives the Trump Administration the ability to say “see, we were working with the Congress but the threat from insurrectionists remained and so we will take other Draconian measures…like invoking the Insurrection Act…which we all know is on the agenda for between now and the election for voter suppression reasons.)

Further, if such a deal frees up full funding for DHS as requested, Trump will be able to continue a military build-up targeting Americans with a force that is better funded than all but a couple of the world’s great militaries. And as he is closer to being a lame duck or is more challenged by losing control of Congress or as he grows more erratic or as Miller and company feel more threatened by the prospect of losing power, much more destructive actions are not only possible but they are likely.

That is why the positions of Democrats need to be not those of an opposition minority party but rather those of a resistance who recognizes that their opponent is actually malevolent. There should be no further funding for ICE. Period. ICE should be broken up. Miller, Noem and Homan must go. Further, they must be investigated for their abuses. It must be made clear that further assaults on the rights of Americans will not just be challenged in the courts but will result in major investigations and impeachments from a new Congress. Foreign allies should be encouraged to sanction American officials who violate human rights.

Not all of these things will be achieved. But unifying around them, linking up to major national resistance movements, strikes, demonstrations, that redouble opposition to deployment of federal officers and troops and in our streets, that promise to respond to every abuse with quantum increases in the number of protestors and the actions of governors and mayors to reject terrorist occupation of our communities, will make a difference and change the tone. It will delegitimize. It will stop the sanewashing and both sidesing of the press…or it will make it much harder to do.

Further, unless the message is that MAGA must go, go for good, be erradicated, it will survive. I’m quite sure that white Christian nationalist MAGA under J.D. Vance would be even worse than what we’ve got now. It must be made clear…as it was to fascists and Nazis at the end of World War II…that there is no room in our society going forward for anyone sharing their despicable, destructive agenda.

Zero tolerance. That is what evil demands.

One last point, for those of you who might ask, why is Trump different, why do you consider him especially evil, I’d like to offer a couple of points.

First, we do have trouble accepting the role genuine evil has played in American history. The nation’s hands are not clean. Our histories have been distorted. The genocide against indigenous peoples, slavery, institutional racism, exploitation of the poorest Americans by the richest, wars of conquest, using the atom bomb…all of these were acts of evil and need to acknowledged as such. Failing to acknowledge these things is one of the reasons we are where we are. The message has been sent to MAGA, we can rationalize any sort of hideous act if we prop it up with jingoism and wrap it in the flag.

Second, other U.S, presidents have done bad things and some have committed evil acts. See the above list. But in our own lifetimes, we have seen George W. Bush oversee a completely illegal and unjustifiable invasion of Iraq that cost hundreds of thousands of innocent lives and we have seen presidents of both parties approve military actions or support the military actions of our allies that have also had a high and indefensible toll.

Orders of Magnitude Worse

But Trump is different by orders of magnitude in terms of the damage he and his team have done and is doing and in terms of its failure to ground its actions in anything like justifiable behavior. Scientists estimate that hundreds of thousands of Americans died needlessly during COVID because of incompetence and anti-scientific and politically motivated actions of Trump. But he was only just getting started. By the end of last year it is estimated that over 600,000 people died worldwide due to DOGE cuts to USAID…with two thirds of those being children. The Lancet has estimated that by 2030 the death toll associated with those cuts could be as high as 14 million worldwide.

Stop. Think about it. It seems far away. But each one of those 14 million…or the 400,000 dead babies and little kids last year…was a Renee Nicole Good or an Alex Pritti.

Thousands upon thousands more will be die because of reckless anti-scientific purely politically motivated actions taken by Trump’s Department of Health and Human Services. Others are dying right now because of cuts to funding for cancer research and other medical research programs desperately needed…and known to be of great life-saving value to many in desperate need. Others will die because of ideology and retribution and corruption motivated changes to U.S. environmental laws…or cuts to FEMA…or cuts to aid to blue states…or penalizing blue states for adopting policies that Trump does not like.

All of this is the context of the most corrupt administration in history. It is an administration in which the primary motivation for many domestic and international actions is the enrichment of Trump or his family or members of his cabinet or their families or his friends and donors. The NY Times reports than an eye-watering $1.4 billion has gone into Trump’s pocket in year one of his second term—despite clear Constitutional prohibitions for this behavior. Some drug lords are rewarded with freedom (if the right palms are greased), some innocents are accused of trafficking drugs and blown out of the water in their small boats. Armies of thugs who attacked the capital are freed and some are offered places in Trump’s glorified DHS militias. White collar criminals are buying freedom from prosecution…and from having to pay restitution to their victims…each month.

In area after area, this administration has shown absolute contempt for the law as well as for any measure of decency or morality. Indeed, they are almost pathological in their desire to violate laws whether they be U.S. or international, physical or biological. If Trump could violate the law of gravity he would, by virtue of the flaws baked into his character, seek to do so.

Now, Trump is waging a terror campaign against the American people. He is strengthening our enemies internationally by destroying our most valued alliances and betraying our friends. He is supporting our enemies in every way he can. He is destroying international institutions and the international system we created even as he guts and undermines and in some cases obliterates core institutions of our own government.

He has said and he has shown that he will destroy our democracy. He has shown he has no respect for fundamental human rights.

What would we call such a man were he in any other role but our president?

What would call someone who has actions have produced such a death toll, so much suffering, who has done so much damage to the institutions and communities we value? What would we call someone with so much open disregard and active contempt for our laws and morality?

There is only one term for it: evil.

There is only one response to it: to fight it with every fiber of our beings and to defeat it as completely and as quickly as we can.