Letter to the Editor: What did you do during the madness?

 

The 47^th President of the United States stormed in the White House and fired the first shot over the bow his first day in office, and over the next 80 days he never once let up.  Among his early targets were Air Force Lt. General Charles Q. Brown Jr., Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, federal prosecutors and agents who had investigated the president and his allies, 12 inspectors general Congress designated to expose abuse and illegal activities in federal agencies, several senior F.B.I. officials Trump deemed suspect, the nation’s head archivist at the National Archives, keeper of our country’s history and records, and thousands of transgender military service members, be they privates, tough sergeants, F-18 fighter pilots, doctors, linguists, and software engineers, all were informed in his angry executive order they would be booted out, that there was no place for their kind in his military.

Was there any rhyme or reason for this dastardly first order of business?  Definitely. The President of the United States was posting his enemies list, and it was only a preview of a very long list. Everyone needed to understand things were going to be different this time around.

Was this how our president and Commander-in-Chief intended to settle old scores and rub his worst instincts in our faces? Yes, it was.

Unfortunately, he was still obsessed with personal slights, rejections, and insults, and a litany of wrongs that include perceived phony indictments and impeachments, phony convictions, rigged court orders, and sleazy and incompetent government and private sector lawyers and fancy law firms, and reporters and TV networks out to get him. He could go on nauseum

Could it be that a troubled Captain Queeg from The Caine Mutiny, but one far more dangerous and sporting an orange/peroxide pompadour, had walked out a New York City courtroom a free man only to end up months later, his wildest dreams come true, in the oval office at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue?

This angry president still needed constant attention.  He still craved and pursued attention and adulation every day.  He would make his nasty enemies heed; he bragged how they would come to him on bended knees. Some saw his ugly spectacle as revenge by a small man.  Most Republicans approved.  After all a lot of those people and institutions the president had fingered needed a good comeuppance, and there was the matter of those big, beautiful tax cuts still needing congressional approval. Those tax cuts were desperately needed

The president didn’t attempt to disguise what he was embarking upon. He would use the extraordinary powers of the most important political office in the world and the bountiful purse of federal funding and rich contracts to threaten, reward, and settle his petty scores. He said he was cleaning up a big Biden mess, and creating a beautiful new culture and America would love it.

And then he and the Ship of Fools he had personally selected for his cabinet set out to threaten or declare war against elite universities and colleges, major corporations and their CEOs and employees, leading research hospitals, foundations, nonprofits, big city white-shoe law firms, and numerous federal agencies and their programs.  With a mix of derision and delight he singled out cultural institutions such as the Kennedy Center and several Smithsonian museums, including the National Museum of American History, and the African American Museum, to name a few, all located on the mall in Washington D. C., and all receiving some federal funding.  The president called out his targets in Executive Orders he issued, often with fanfare and delight from the White House and on his social media postings. For some tasks, the president deployed one of his key so-called agents of change, Elon Musk and his reckless Doge team to close or cripple agencies, hand out pink slips to stunned government employees, and gain access to secured private data without authorization.  It happened swiftly and without much coordination and thought, and there was little resistance.  The chaos and confusion and harm done didn’t seem to register with the president.  Anxiety about Medicaid and Social Security and Veterans checks didn’t concern the president and Musk.  After all the whole idea was to get this business accomplished before his henchmen were stopped by Congress which had authorized and funded most of the agencies and programs.

The cowardly Republican Congress without fuss quickly went MIA; they did nothing to halt the illegal White House scheme.  In fact, they rolled over and allowed the legislative branch of government to become groveling flunkies of the Executive.

No one knows what, if anything, the Judiciary will do to stop this Trump White House.  It may be that Chief Justice Roberts, and his colleagues will eventually do their jobs and restrain a president running amok.

Perhaps the President’s bizarre press conference last week in the White House Rose Garden complete with middle school charts announcing his tariffs, coupled with Wall Street’s reaction and dive over the next four trading days which took us briefly into a 20% bear market decline, frightened enough people to wake up and ask two fundamental questions:  Is our president well?  What can I do?  It looked like Americans around the country were doing that over the weekend in their homes, out on the streets in big cities and small towns, and in their coffee shops.

And, in a less visible way, but perhaps equally dramatic, some alarmed CEOs of major corporations were spotted in Washington early this week attempting to persuade Republican senators to wake up; a few CEOs were seeing cabinet officials, and a couple business Titians were attempting to speak directly with the president.

If corporate America is this anxious about the president’s erratic, unpredictable behavior and judgement you know this is a very perilous hour for our nation and our pocketbooks.  Monday the president told us repeatedly he will not do a deal on tariffs.  The next day the president’s press secretary Karoline Leavitt suggested the president is telling his aides to get ready to deal on tariffs.  Which is it?  I wonder if the president was in class at the Warton Business School the days his professors underscored how much markets appreciate and reward for predictability and consistency.

Aubrey Sarvis

Army veteran, former corporate officer, and former

Executive Director of Servicemembers Legal Defense Network