The First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.” It is simple, to the point, and, has, more than any other single sentence, shaped the American experience for two and a half centuries.
Rachel Mills
Trump’s reaction, in a bizarre, part boastful part extraordinarily defensive, 500-word Truth Social screed, to a recent New York Times report casting doubt on the state of the MAGA leader’s health: “There has never been a President that has worked as hard as me! … In addition to all of that, I go out of my way to do long, thorough, and very boring medical examinations…After all of the work I have done with Medical Exams, Cognitive Exams, and everything else, I actually believe it’s seditious, perhaps even treasonous, for The New York Times, and others, to consistently do FAKE reports in order to libel and demean ‘THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES’… The best thing that could happen to this Country would be if The New York Times would cease publication because they are a horrible, biased, and untruthful ‘source’ of information. Thank you for your attention to this matter. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!”
How one tries to square this circle, it doesn’t work. As president, you can’t both swear an oath to uphold and defend the Constitution—which includes freedom of speech as a bedrock principle—and also accuse newspapers that runs stories you don’t like of being seditious and treasonous (a crime punishable by death, I should note).
If a student in my writing class handed in such poorly reasoned gibberish, I would demand that they attend office hours to discuss their methodology; would strongly suggest that they book some additional appointments with the learning center to go over basic rules of grammar and syntax that they had obviously missed out on during the K-12 education experience; would point out that putting THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES in parentheses simply reaffirms that he’s an air-quote, ersatz “president;” and would suggest that “Thank you for your attention to this matter” suggests a martinet used to issuing peremptory orders—in this case to everyone still following his mind-numbingly boring Truth Social account—rather than a person capable of partaking in the back-and-forth of democratic politics. I might also be tempted to contact the mental health department to let them know that I was worried about this particular student, that he seemed to be spiraling into paranoia, and that I would hope they could reach out to him and offer him some counseling services before he did something to hurt himself or others.
Normal adults, at least those who don’t consult fascist-leaning large language models such as Grok, don’t talk and write the way Trump talks and writes. I have interviewed thousands, probably tens of thousands, of adults over the years, people from pretty much every political and socio-economic and racial and geographic background. I can’t think of more than a handful who have been as crude, as coarse, as wantonly cruel in their words as is Trump. And the ones who were—I say in all seriousness—generally had extensive criminal justice system or mental health histories.
Trump’s noxious worldview is impacting every level of government.
Customs and Border Patrol recently announced it would be seeking to examine five years’ worth of social media postings for tourists seeking to come into the US from the 42 favored countries whose citizens can currently apply online for a US visa. They would be screened to make sure they hadn’t posted un-American content—and, if they had, their visa applications would stand to be denied. This was a follow-up to an Executive Order seeking to root out would-be visitors who demonstrated “hostile attitudes toward its [US] citizens, culture, government, institutions, or founding principles.”
One assumes that seeking to neuter the First Amendment would count pretty damn high on that list of no-no’s. One would assume, too, that gross racial generalizations would also be a red flag.
Yet, Trump recently denigrated the entire Somali-American population—more than quarter of a million people, more than 90 percent of whom are US citizens—as “garbage,” said that “we don’t want them here,” and that they should “go back to where they came from and fix it.” As he launched this extraordinary tirade, creepy-veepy Vance banged the table in encouragement, in some mad ritual of fascist obsequiousness. Also seeking to curry the boss’s favor, DHS Secretary Kristi Noem posted on X that “I am recommending a full travel ban on every damn country that's been flooding our nation with killers, leeches, and entitlement junkies.”
By their own metrics, the members of this Administration are, on an hourly basis, espousing the most un-American of views. Whether you are rightwing, leftwing or any other wing, surely we can all agree that this language debases some of America’s most important principles and ought to have no place in the halls of power in DC.
