Trump's Reign of Terror is a Sign of His Own Fears and Weakness

The crazier he gets, the clearer it is that he is nearing the end of his benighted reign

For those who thought that inciting a coup was the worst they might expect of Donald Trump, the past eight months must have been a grim revelation.

Nothing Trump did on January 6, 2021 or during his entire prior term of office ever matched in audacity, scale, or degree of lawlessness his power grab since returning to office in January.

No U.S. leader save the traitors who led the Confederacy during the Civil War ever showed such contempt for America’s Constitution, institutions or people.

Trump makes Richard Nixon look like Thomas Jefferson. His corruption makes the Teapot Dome scandal look like a tempest in a…well, you get the idea.

This is not mere politically-charged hyperbole. Facts are facts.

Trump has gutted the Congress like a fish, seizing its most important powers for himself. Before he even took office, he asserted he would ignore a law passed about the future disposition of TikTok. This week, he announced a “deal” that ignores further the provisions of that law.

Remember how the Constitution makes it clear that Congress is to control “the power of the purse?” No longer. Trump has said he will spend what he wants, when he wants, for what he wants. The Supreme Court’s extremist majority is even extending to him the power to do so.

He eliminates or renames or repurposes or downsize sfederal agencies when he wishes, as he wishes.

Who establishes tariffs now, which is to say, who is imposing taxes now? Who determines which treaties we will honor and how? Who has essentially sidestepped much of the Congressional process of advice and consent with regard to approving his nominees for high office?

Trump. He alone.

Having been granted kingly status above the law by his bought and paid for majority on the Supreme Court, Trump has gone further and asserted that he is, in fact, the law. The Department of Justice is not just his personal law firm, it is his cudgel. He is using it to attack his rivals and enemies without regard to legal code or ethics. In the same way, he has utilized the agencies to report to him to protect his friends and bury his own wrong-doing.

He has mobilized his own militarized police force and sent it into American cities despite legal prohibitions to the contrary. Today, Saturday, he ordered troops into Portland, Oregon and authorized that they use force, presumably against U.S. citizens.

(Let me stop for a moment to observe: This claim that Portland is a war zone and our armed forces must be deployed there is not just a fascist power grab although it is certainly that. It is frothing at the mouth, howling at the moon, eating bugs and bats for breakfast insanity.)

He has become judge, jury and executioner for anyone deemed entering this country illegally or even just suspected of smuggling drugs. He has dispensed with due process and effectively kidnapped and disappeared those that he and his people assert may be in the U.S. illegally even though it has been demonstrated repeatedly that grave errors are being made and lives destroyed in the process.

He has fired people he did not have the power to fire. He has empowered his team to systematically use the tools of government to infringe on the fundamental American right of free speech. He has taken to making law by fiat, by proclamation from his tackily gilded throne room in the West Wing of the White House. (He has even taken it upon himself to remodel the White House without having the authority to do so.)

He has illegally withheld funds from vital scientific and medical research. He has banished from government agencies those who do not accept his ideology or his world views despite the fact that many of those views are grounded in garbage science or utter ignorance.

He has enriched himself, his family and his friends by billions, turning the White House into his personal cash cow, a toll booth through which the world must pass if it wants the support or approval of the Trump Administration.

And yet…

And yet…

This has all happened within months without any opposition to speak of from within his own party. Opposition from Democrats has been sporadic, ill-coordinated and weak. From those in positions of power in American society, it has been largely non-existent.

Americans in positions of power have largely bent the knee before our self-crowned king.

Why?

The most common answer one hears is that Republicans and CEOs and media outlets and even many Democrats are…afraid. They fear Trump and his henchmen and the awesome power they seem to be able to direct to inflict pain and punishment on whomever they please.

To some degree, of course, given his behavior, this is understandable. He is using tools of government to squeeze and hurt and intimidate his foes and, more broadly, to bully public debate in the directions he wants it to go.

He’s doing what authoritarians do, not because he is like one but because he is one.

If he or those around him launch an investigation of a rival, whether they win or lose, it can cost that critic vast sums of money. He can destroy careers by making it clear hiring certain people will put their employers in jeopardy. I’ve known people to whom this has happened. Clearly, he can use the government to deny approval for deals business leaders might seek or to impose tariffs or penalties on those who do not dance to his tune.

Even as he himself deteriorates physically, he flexes the muscles of the office he holds whenever he feels it will benefit him…or enable him to channel one of his seemingly inexhaustible supply of grievances.

He is a volcano of grievances.

But is his power overstated? Are people unnecessarily afraid? Might his grip on what power he does have be transient? And are there hidden costs to placating him, to playing his game?

Beyond these questions, but directly related to them, arises the core issue: Will Trump’s actions and threats produce in us the fear he seeks, or the kind of fear that mobilizes us to save ourselves?

I still believe it is the latter. I still believe America will rise up and turn back this onslaught of lunacy, greed, incompetence, ignorance, and hate.

Yes, Trump has some among us quaking. Republicans especially have all had their spines surgically removed and worm around at his feet, accepting whatever he does and sometimes offering murmurs of praise for it from their tiny wormy mouths. Some in positions of power are either intimidated by him or feel the imaginative play is to go along with Trump as long as he is president, and then try to make the switch to whatever they think the Dems want if and when the Dems come back.

They do this even though we know from recent experience that every time anyone capitulates to Trump, he comes back wanting more. That he is disloyal. That giving in is a formula for further abuse. And that only those who stand up to Trump and his acolytes succeed.

However, increasingly, more and more of us are realizing that the latter approach is the only one that works. See the recent Jimmy Kimmel case as an example. Compare Harvard’s relative success to that of Columbia, the outcomes achieved by law firms or countries that have stood up to him versus the taint and the burden on those who knelt to kiss the hem of his garment.

Further, more and more of us are realizing that he is fading before our eyes, getting old, and losing his marbles. Undone by the prospect of even going up a flight of stairs or having to answer a hard question from a reporter who is not hand-picked and pre-screened by his staff.

He’s on his way out. He’s the lamest of lame ducks. Even as the Republicans try to put their finger on the scale to win upcoming elections, no one can defeat Father Time.

Trump’s a faltering old man.

Furthermore, Americans realize he is destroying the economy, trading their economic well-being for that of his billionaire buddies, sowing disaster with his tariffs. Poll after poll shows his popularity plummeting, shows him underwater and sinking fast.

Around the world, leaders are laughing at him behind his back. Our influence is plummeting. He is a laughing stock. And the world is moving on without him (and, sadly, therefore, without us.)

No matter what the GOP does in 2026—and that will undoubtedly include more efforts to intimidate voters with troops in our cities, with ICE raids that will increase as election day approaches to scare voters of color away from polling places, to strip away voting rights, and, generally, to try to steal the election—they will lose.

Democrats will regain the House. Trump’s legislative agenda will be dead in the water. Further, he is a dead certainty to be impeached for (at least) a third time. Because he should be. Frankly, he commits impeachable offenses daily, often several before breakfast and another batch after lunch.

Old. Unpopular. Politically less and less relevant. He loses more often than he wins in the courts. Dragged down by the incompetence of the sycophants with whom he has chosen to surround himself.

And most importantly, a man whose people realize that the secret to protecting and preserving their country and their way of life lies in not being intimidated by him.

I believe that although Trump is turning up the heat and those around him in DC are weak and complicit, the American people will ultimately reveal once again their true character and their historical contempt for tyrants.

The secret lies within each and every one of us. The secret is realizing Trump’s attempts at muscle-flexing are driven by the fears that reside within him, that he is growing weaker and weaker every day, that there are more of us who reject him and his policies and his criminality and his hatefulness than there are those who genuinely support him, and that the number of his supporters diminishes daily as his policies hurt them.

The president is waging a fear campaign against his own people. But he is the one who should be afraid. He will not only be defeated, but he will also be held accountable, as will all those who made the mistake of aligning with him. Their reputations will be destroyed forever, and they will be outcasts.

As they should be. (We have already paid the price for not holding them accountable in the recent past.)

There are more reasons not to fear Trump than to fear him, more reasons for him to fear the power of those of us who realize the truth about him than to count on the strength of the shrinking minority who remain bamboozled by his lies.

I believe it. I see it happening.

Indeed, I think the reason Trump will seek to find more and more ways to threaten us, his fellow citizens, in the months ahead will be the terror that lies within him…the recognition that finally, after a lifetime of crimes and abuses, that he will be undone, that the con will no longer work, that his bullying will ultimately come up flat.

And…

…it’s going to be a beautiful thing to watch.

You can make it happen. We can. We will.

All it takes is something he will never have or understand: Character…the courage of your convictions.