The Most Destructive Presidency in US History – Leadership by Fear, Cruelty & Hallucination

The Most Destructive Presidency in US History: Leadership by Fear, Cruelty & Hallucination

"America is not just an idea… It is a group of people with a shared history and a common future." 

JD Vance speech at the conservative Claremont Institute, where he denigrated post-Civil War immigrants as not being part of our mainstream culture.

“We are using this [AI] technology already at HHS to manage health care data, perfectly securely, and to increase the speed of drug approvals.”

HHS Head RFK, Jr testifying before the House Energy and Commerce Committee in June.

The United States is now defined by a President addicted to lies, blame and denial, one who has embraced the cruel underlying White Christian nationalist policies of firebrand idealogue Stephen Miller over any other advisor, now caught in the web of Trump’s own past. MAGA sycophants are livid at his deflection of his promise, illustrated by his prior support of QAnon deep state conspiracy theories, but finally unwilling to produce the “liberals as pedophiles” evidence his followers expected. Unable to shake the rising ire of his supporters, Trump has been forced to rely on his Congressional enforcer and shameless lackey, House Speaker Mike Johnson (R/La), to take a bill off the House floor, until September at the earliest, that would have compelled release to the public of potentially incriminating files relating to Jeffrey Epstein. A Trumpian cover-up?

The above photo of Johnson bowing to his King is all you need to know about Trump’s hold on his GOP majority in Congress. Trump’s efforts at distracting his base failed. “Trump has attempted to clean up the mess by implicating MAGA's favorite targets like former President Barack Obama and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. The administration also tried to pass off the blame by saying the conclusion was reached by the FBI and DOJ… But the slight admission that the administration reviewed the files could land the president in hot water with his base, many of whom are foaming at the mouth over the decision not to release the tapes.”

Trump 2.0 is the presidency of whim, chaos, inconsistency and fear. Despite plunging national polls on almost every major Trump issue, Republicans fearing his wrath at the upcoming pre-midterm election primaries, are whipping back and forth between their furious MAGA supporters and their hastily concocted explanations of why they accept and justify Trump’s inconsistences at every (numerous) turn. Texas and Ohio are just two red states seeking to gerrymander enough Democratic seats out of Congress to force continuation of GOP control.

Trump’s domestic policies – from the roiling economic destruction of programs intended to benefit his base but in fact are cut to support tax cuts that mainly benefit the rich to his massive immigration deportation scheme that hardly is removing hardened criminals from the county but instead are aimed at simply “volume deportation quotas” where hard working innocents are really those who face the cruel deportation – are increasing viewed as overkill, ineffective, decimating communities and small businesses. His TACO tariff announcements have just begun to increase consumer prices, even as very few tariff agreements have been set.

Americans are beginning to realize that the latest numbers from the Congressional Budget Office will generate $3.1 trillion in non-offset deficit increases that will require taxpayers to pay some of the highest interest rates (on the supporting treasury bonds) in our history. Budget busters The hard dollars needed to cover all sorts of medical and food insecurity needs are vaporizing; the staffing needed to service the targeted demographics… gone. DOGE did eliminate many programs for Veterans; our former fighting forces are the sacrificial lambs… still the VA costs us 25% more.

That DOGE pledge of using AI to replace warm bodies, reinforcing the notion that the federal government does not need remotely the government staffing of old, is crashing and burning in a world of over-promising and under-delivering. For example, the FDA’s approval of new medications was supposed to accelerate with AI. As the above RFK, Jr quote states, this AI software (“Elsa” is the name) was supposed to analyze the submitted research, seek out readily available supporting or detracting data, and produce FDA approval presentations for formal approval. Thus, the staff cuts that DOGE implemented were fully justified.

But as has been the case in numerous other attempts to substitute AI for expert staff, the relevant AI systems have done what AI is famous for in legal pleadings filed in cases by lazy lawyers: hallucinating (fabricating non-existent studies and research), requiring a vastly more labor-intensive, cite-by-cite vetting. But those staffs are seriously thinned out, as the Supreme Court has allowed the Trump administration to fire hordes of federal workers under his purported aegis.

Inexperienced idealogue Pete Hegseth has purged woman soldiers from military service and ripped away symbols of racial minorities in their heroic contributions to the wars we have fought. He has also participated in the “glorious” announcements of our “obliteration” of Iran’s weapons-grade nuclear enrichment capacity… as Iran remounts its nuclear efforts and resumes funding its regional terrorist groups. National security has also been compromised under his “leadership.”

Our foreign policy has played into China’s hands. As undistributed USAID foodstuffs either rot away or are burned, as medical programs (from AIDS and malaria treatments) are shut down, millions around the world will die. Trump’s failure to see what almost everyone the world already knew, Vladimir Putin’s ambitious land grab applying maximum cruelty, only recently reversed. As 25 nations demand a full ceasefire in Gaza, hundreds (including children, even volunteer staffers) are now starving to death as food deliveries remain stalled under Israeli orders. China is building new bridge and making new inroads to replace American “soft power” wherever it can.

As Trump’s recent legislative “victories” come online, the only people that will be better off are the richest Americans… the Bombastic Billionaires Benefitting by that Big Beautiful Bill.