Donald J. Trump: the worst of the worst
OPINION - George Fenichel
FLANDERS - After losing the 2019 U.S. presidential election to Joseph R. Biden by more than 7 million votes, lying prolifically about his devastating loss, and inciting a violent attack on the nation’s capitol in attempt to prevent the lawful transfer of power that injured 140 law enforcement officers and resulted in five deaths, the convicted felon and adjudicated sexual assailant Donald J. Trump was elected to the U.S. presidency in November of 2024.
Claiming that he won by a “landslide” and entered the White House with a “mandate” from the American people to carry out his xenophobic, misogynistic, White Supremacist policies, Trump in reality won just 49.8% of votes cast, earning only the 7th highest share of the popular vote for the nominee of a challenging party since 1932, while his initial job approval rating of 47% according to a Gallup poll was the lowest of any elected president going back to 1953.
That’s right: riding a wave of popularity among rank-and-file Republicans and some independents generated in large part by lying extravagantly to them for four years, Trump returned to the White House and thus managed to escape two federal criminal trials—on felony charges related to his efforts to interfere with the lawful transfer of power to Joe Biden following the 2019 election and related to refusing to return classified federal documents. Upon his arrival in the White House, Trump immediately began repeating his old lies and telling new ones.
But the damage that candidate Trump has done to the fabric of American civil society—and the insult that his very presence in the White House inflicts on the dignity of the U.S. presidency and on America’s reputation around the world—is surpassed by the clear and present danger that Trump’s second term presents to every human being on the planet.
Trump’s endorsement and material assistance of Israel’s ethnic cleansing and genocidal acts in Palestine will spur even greater lawlessness and depravity around the globe.
Immediately upon taking office, Trump issued a flurry of executive orders, many of which were swiftly challenged on various legal grounds, with several of them blocked by federal judges. Perhaps most notable in terms of its expansive impact on human rights prior to January 26, 2025 was Trump’s attempt to end birthright citizenship—which U.S. District Court Judge John Coughenour, who found Trump’s January 20, 2025 executive order to be “blatantly unconstitutional.”
However, on January 26th, Trump publicly endorsed the removal of all Palestinians from Gaza, notwithstanding the manifest intent of non-Jewish Palestinians displaced by Israel’s bombing and military occupation to return and rebuild their homes, businesses, hospitals, schools, and mosques destroyed by Israel since October 7, 2023.
Incredibly, instead of decrying and immediately moving to prevent Israel’s attempts to frustrate the efforts of Palestinians to rebuild their devastated homes and destroyed infrastructure pursuant to the recent ceasefire, the Trump Administration responded by resuming shipments to Israel of 2,000 lb. American-made bombs—which numerous experts, such as U.S. Air Force Lt. Gen. David Deptula (Ret.), have publicly stated have no legitimate use in densely-populated areas like Gaza, calling their deployment by Israel “shocking.”
Then on February 5th, Trump declared to the evident delight of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that the U.S. would “take over” war-ravaged Gaza and “own it”, refusing to rule out the deployment of U.S. Armed Forces to achieve that end. Trump has thus not only endorsed Israel’s ethnic cleansing of Palestinians but made it clear that he believes the U.S. should play an active role in assisting Israel to complete its immoral and illegal plot to expand its territory by the application of murderous force, mass starvation, and deprivation of healthcare.
Trump’s statements and his Administration’s actions are significant for several reasons—not least of which is that Trump surely has been advised by White House counsel and Pentagon officials that ethnic cleansing is not just immoral but illegal. Many years before Trump’s first term as President, in a May 27, 1994 letter to the President of the UN Security Council, Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali famously defined ethnic cleansing as “… a purposeful policy designed by one ethnic or religious group to remove by violent and terror-inspiring means the civilian population of another ethnic or religious group from certain geographic areas.”
Secretary General Boutros-Ghali further emphasized that acts in furtherance of ethnic cleansing can themselves “constitute crimes against humanity and can be assimilated to specific war crimes” and, critically for Trump and the U.S., that “such acts could also fall within the meaning of the Genocide Convention.”
Over a decade later and years before Trump’s first term, President Jimmy Carter famously responded to criticism of his book, "Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid,” by insisting that “Apartheid is a word that is an accurate description of what has been going on in the West Bank, and it's based on the desire or avarice of a minority of Israelis for Palestinian land.”
It is therefore plain that, pursuant to the UN Security Council’s longstanding definition of ethnic cleansing and President Jimmy Carter’s famous characterization of Israel as an apartheid regime, the Trump Administration has deliberately encouraged and enabled Israel’s decades-long, concerted effort to ethnically cleanse Palestine of its non-Jewish population—contrary to international law and definitions of universal human rights forged in the wake of the strikingly similar oppression and ethnic cleansing of Jews in Nazi Germany less than a century earlier.
It is also important to note, however, that any competent White House counsel or Secretary of State would have immediately alerted Trump that his undisciplined public remarks, in combination with his official acts and his Administration’s policies, may have made himself and the U.S. complicit in Israel’s commission of prosecutable war crimes.
Article 1 of the International Law Commission’s Draft Articles on Responsibility of States for Internationally Wrongful Acts 2001 (ARSIWA) states that “Every internationally wrongful act of a State entails the international responsibility of that State.” Israel’s military campaign and deliberate denial of food and medical aid to Palestinians—together with the deliberate targeting of hospitals, schools, and vital civilian infrastructure—almost certainly constitute genocidal acts. However, the Israelis rely overwhelmingly on American funds, munitions, aircraft, military vehicles and targeting data to prosecute those genocidal acts. Therefore, the Trump Administration’s provision of that money and materiel—and especially 2,000 lb. bombs with no legitimate use in Gaza—comprises evidence material to violations of Articles I and III of the Genocide Convention.
It is also critical to recognize that Trump’s official acts as President may be attributed to the U.S. if they comprise “conduct consisting of action or omission” of U.S. ‘state organs’ (Articles 2 & 4, ARSIWA). The Trump Administration’s conduct may also constitute a material breach of U.S. obligations under the Article II (b) of the Genocide Convention.
As to intent, under Article 16 of ARSIWA, the U.S. could be held responsible for aiding or assisting Israel in the commission of a wrongful act if it provided munitions, aircraft, military vehicles, or targeting data with “knowledge of the circumstances of the internationally wrongful act” (Article 16(a)), and the “act would be internationally wrongful if committed” by the aiding or assisting state itself (Article 16(b)). In its commentary to the ARSIWA, the ILC stated that “knowledge of circumstances” means that the aiding or assisting state must be “aware” of the “circumstances making the conduct of the State internationally wrongful[.]” Notably, the ILC added a condition requiring that “the aid or assistance must be given with a view to facilitating the commission of that act, and must actually do so.”
In view of the conclusions of military experts such as Lt. Gen. Deptula (ret.) that 2,000 lb. bombs have no legitimate use in densely-populated areas like Gaza, because the U.S. has repeatedly established and then refused to enforce so-called “red lines” beyond which Israel’s acts would result in cessation of military aid—and especially in light of Trump’s explicit commitment to actively assist Israel to remove non-Jewish Palestinians from Gaza against their manifest will to return to their homes and land—it is almost certain that the U.S. may be found to not only have “knowledge of the circumstances” surrounding Israel’s ethnic cleansing and genocidal acts, but that the U.S., the Trump Administration, and indeed Trump himself fully intended to facilitate them.
The Trump Administration’s evident goal to transform the U.S. Government into an elite kleptocracy benefitting a fawning court of corporate and banking billionaires, an obscenely profitable American military-industrial complex, and an increasingly prostrate and corrupt U.S. Congress has further imperiled the lives and collective future of 2.3 million non-Jewish Palestinians. But Trump’s public endorsement and offer to assist Israel’s ethnic cleansing and genocidal acts, and his Administration’s provision of still more 2,000 lb. bombs to Israel—which has used them to indiscriminately slaughter civilians and destroy infrastructure indispensable to sustaining human life in Gaza—have dramatically increased the likelihood that the U.S. and Trump himself will be found complicit in Israel’s ethnic cleansing of non-Jewish Palestinians and related genocidal acts and omissions.
If left unchecked by the U.S. Congress and federal courts, the Trump Administration’s material support of Israel’s apartheid regime in Palestine—together with Trump’s explicit encouragement and offer to assist Israel’s unlawful occupation and murderous ethnic cleansing in Gaza—will not only irrevocably harm millions of non-Jewish Palestinians but will destroy America’s reputation in the world community and spur further lawlessness and depravity by other would-be despots around the globe.
The Trump Administration is intent on accelerating global warming, needlessly dooming future generations of children in the U.S. and abroad to lives of suffering, desperation, and despair.
There is unanimous agreement among the world’s reputable scientists that large swaths of human civilization—primarily in poorer, developing nations—face an increasingly imminent and existential threat from global warming. Just as undeniable is that the world’s wealthier countries are by far the largest producers of greenhouse gasses by both per capita and absolute measures. Among those “super polluters” in 2023 were China, the United States, India, the EU27, Russia and Brazil.
The UN warned in 2023 that the world will soon face mass exodus “on a biblical scale” due to rising sea levels caused by global warming. Indeed, the manifold emergencies caused by global warming have already become so dire that a body of traditionally circumspect U.S. insurance commissioners has endorsed an internationally recognized climate-risk disclosure standard for insurance carriers. Predictably, in light of that development, U.S. insurance carriers are fleeing states like Florida and California—one of the world’s largest economies with 5.4 million registered Republican voters—leaving Americans of every political affiliation without vital protection for their homes and belongings.
Yet despite the increasing alarm of insurance carriers and the conclusion of virtually every government and NGO in the world that climate change presents a clear and present danger to human civilization, Trump throughout his campaign declared his forthcoming Administration’s intent to actively thwart domestic and international efforts to reverse global warming. Within just hours of Trump’s inauguration, the Trump Administration began furiously dismantling, discrediting, and sabotaging the painstaking efforts of government leaders at home and abroad to create a sustainable world for their constituents—and for the children and grandchildren of the very U.S. Republican congresspersons who have enthusiastically supported Trump’s efforts.
Indeed, candidate Trump declared his intent to not only withdraw the U.S. from the 2015 Paris climate accord—repeating a similar action he took during his first presidential administration—but to do everything in his power to reverse efforts by the U.S. and state governments to incentivize corporations to shift to more affordable, reliable, and relatively benign, renewable energy technology.
Together with his Administration’s impending withdrawal from the international Paris climate accord, Trump’s declared intention to reverse a host of government incentives and regulations designed to reduce U.S. dependence on fossil fuels will predictably supercharge the occurrence of environmental degradation, crop failure, drought, and economic disruption in the United States, together with mass famine, the needless suffering of billions of innocent children, and the forced displacement of populations around the world.
It is abundantly clear that the Trump Administration is deliberately and methodically engaged in a course of action that will negatively impact the health, safety, and material prosperity of generations of children around the globe—including the children born to his own base of Republican voters—perhaps irretrievably.
The Trump Administration’s demonization of undocumented immigrants is UnAmerican, immoral, and disastrous for the U.S. economy.
An inescapable consequence of the Trump Administration’s effort to undermine domestic and international measures to combat climate change is that it will accelerate environmental degradation and with it, repeated and more severe drought, the mass extinction of a multitude of interdependent species, global economic disruption, the increasing incidence of crop failure leading to mass famine, needless suffering, and the forced displacement of populations around the world. That, in turn, will exponentially increase the economic and human resources required to manage the resulting waves of desperate immigrants seeking refuge in the U.S. and other wealthy countries.
However, far from anticipating how to avoid or manage these predictable exigencies in ways aligned with the values enshrined in the U.S. Constitution and Universal Human Rights, Trump has ordered his Administration to begin the mass deportation of undocumented immigrants and has ordered the reopening of the infamous Guantanamo Bay prison camp to hold what he claims will be large numbers of criminals among their ranks.
Yet, even in the case of the most notorious, alleged criminals held at Guantanamo Bay since the September 11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center in New York City, only a tiny minority have ever been charged, let alone convicted of crimes—and thus are to this day presumed innocent under U.S. federal and state criminal law. Trump’s decision to hold immigrants accused—but not yet convicted—of crimes at Guantanamo Bay therefore raises serious concerns about the deliberate proliferation of violations of the Fourth and Eighth Amendments to the U.S. Constitution that Trump swore to uphold and protect, which prohibit the unlawful search and seizure, and the infliction of cruel and unusual punishments, of persons, not just of U.S. citizens.
Yet perhaps most ironic given Trump’s campaign promise to immediately improve the economic situation of working-class Americans is that the Trump Administration’s mass deportation plans would cause catastrophic harm to the U.S. economy. The Democrats Joint Economic Committee (JEC) released a December 12, 2024 report detailing the unprecedented scope and scale of the devastation that Trump’s policies would inflict, which includes:
Reducing real gross domestic product (GDP) by as much as 7.4% by 2028;
Causing labor shortages in key industries, removing 225,000 workers in agriculture and 1.5 million workers in construction;
Pushing prices up to 9.1% higher by 2028; and
Costing 44,000 U.S.-born workers their jobs for every 500,000 immigrants who are removed from the labor force.
Unsurprisingly, the true beneficiaries of Trump’s election are therefore not Republican middle- and working-class voters but instead the world’s 10 richest individuals, who saw their fortunes spike immediately after the election, collectively adding a record $64 billion to their treasure troves in a single day. This, despite the fact that today’s real average wage—the wage after accounting for inflation—has roughly the same purchasing power it did 40 years ago.
Also unsurprising in view of Trump’s efforts to reverse women’s reproductive rights by appointing several of the Supreme Court Justices who recently overturned Roe v. Wade, working women will be hit particularly hard by the Trump Administration’s policies, which appear designed to effectively undermine longstanding efforts to secure equal pay and right workplace discrimination, increase women’s wages, provide affordable child care, support unions, and guarantee women’s reproductive rights.
Clearly, Trump’s “make American great again” slogan is a fraud on the hard-working American men and women he convinced to vote for him in November of 2024—and who, together with their children and grandchildren, will bear the brunt of his Administration’s ill-conceived, near-sighted, self-serving elitist policies for generations to come.
The Trump Administration’s abrupt dismantling of USAiD will gravely and needlessly harm millions of women and girls worldwide.
Candidate Trump declared in October of 2024 that he would "protect" women "whether the women like it or not[.]” However, far from protecting women, Trump was recently found by a jury of his peers to have sexually assaulted writer E. Jean Carroll in a public dressing room, finding him liable to her for damages of $5 million. At least regarding Trump’s personal predilections, this was evidently not an aberration, for in 2005, he famously boasted about groping women without waiting for their permission, stating that he liked to “grab em by the pussy,” which is essentially what a jury of his peers found that he did to Carroll—and for which unconscionable behavior it awarded her millions of dollars in damages.
Astonishingly, Trump’s record as an adjudicated sexual assailant did not deter a narrow majority of American voters from electing him to a second term—but one of Trump’s first acts as president was entirely unsurprising in light of the jury’s verdict and his own admitted predilections. Trump swiftly authorized his Administration to dismantle USAiD, which provides up to $8.2 billion annually for foreign humanitarian aid.
Critically, a significant amount of that aid is targeted to help vulnerable girls and women—for whose personal safety and emotional sanctity Trump has demonstrated utter disdain and disrespect—and whose economic prospects his Administration has worked to actively undermine as discussed above. Due to the Trump Administration’s abrupt cessation of foreign aid, an estimated 130,390 women each day will be denied access to contraception, with 11.7 million women impacted due to just the initial, 90-day pause alone. The result could be that as many as 4.2 million women will become pregnant contrary to their wishes, with more than 8,340 of them dying needlessly in childbirth.
The Trump Administration is clearly among the most harmful governmental regimes in the world to the health, human rights, personal safety, emotional sanctity, and to the livelihood and indeed the very lives of girls and women.
Simply put, no governmental leader in recorded history has exerted such a deliberate, calculated, comprehensive, and malignant impact on the immediate and long-term future of humanity on a global scale as has Donald J. Trump—and in only the first several weeks of his second presidency.