Inside Trump's most pernicious legacy

Supporters of U.S. President Donald Trump pose for a photo before the start of a boat parade celebrating his birthday, which coincides with Flag Day, in West Palm Beach, Florida, United States, June 14, 2026. REUTERS/Giorgio Viera

Jimmy Carter’s campaign motto in 1976 was “Why Not the Best!” declaring everywhere he went: “I want to see us once again have a nation that’s as good and honest and decent and truthful and competent and compassionate and filled with love as are the American people.”

Dictator Donald Trump wants the opposite and is bringing the worst out of America. Here are a few of his metastasizing initiatives:

1. Championed the worst forms of energy – coal, oil, and gas – and depressing solar energy and wind power with restrictive policies, and even paying ongoing wind project companies nearly a billion dollars in your tax dollars to stop construction! Also, he is using many billions of your tax dollars to subsidize the failing nuclear power companies to build more expensive, unneeded, uninsurable, un-investable (by Wall Street), unsafe, boondoggles while his GOP takes large campaign contributions from fossil fuel and nuclear power corporate welfarists.

2. Encouraged the worst corruption of the Pentagon—more waste, contractor fraud and abuse—led by a foul-mouthed buffoon pushing illegal wars, mass deaths, and racism. Hegseth is despised by many high-ranking officers for his misogynistic firings and incompetence.

3. Brought out the worst from his toady Attorney Generals at the Justice Department—firing prosecutors and other lawyers for perceived vengeance. Trump gives orders directly to DOJ officials, thus ending any traditional arms-length independence at that Department. Trump has gotten his Attorney Generals to dismiss over 100 corporate crime cases, to decline enforcement of laws holding polluters and corporate criminals accountable, and made DOJ his personal law firm.

4. Encouraged the worst from the Environmental Protection Agency, whose puppet director believes that more methane, other greenhouse gases, motor vehicle gases, auto factories, and coal pollution are permissible for America’s children to breathe. EPA Director Lee Zeldin should rename his shattered agency and fired scientists “The Trump Anti-Environment Protection Agency.”

5. Suppressed or cancelled programs of scientific truth-seeking while publicizing pseudo-scientists who go far beyond healthy skepticism to peddle quackery about climate violence, pandemics, and vaccines that lead to distrust and disarray among vulnerable people wanting to protect their families. For Trump, climate catastrophes are “a hoax, a scam” and he is giving corporations the green light on dangerous pesticides (especially deadly to little children) which increase the risk of cancer and other lethal diseases. When you lie every talking hour of the day, as Trump does, the truth and facts have no relevance.

6. Trump is self-servingly wrecking the Internal Revenue Service (IRS). Further cutting its tight budget via the GOP in Congress, the IRS has a grossly inadequate number of experts skilled in detecting complex corporate tax schemes and evasions totaling hundreds of billions of dollars in TAX ESCAPES per year.

One of those Escapes is the coerced deal Trump imposed on the IRS to give him and his avaricious family immunity from past and contemporary audits and enforcement, worth a gold mine to the bragging tax dodger-in-chief. He has wrecked public trust in his politicized IRS, on which voluntary compliance by American taxpayers is based.

7. Trump has grievously brought out the worst from the Congress, finishing off what is left of the separation of powers, turning Speaker Mike Johnson into a panting lap dog and Senate Majority Leader John Thune into a more staid but ready heel-clicker. Trump has opposed any public hearings and investigative oversight of the Executive Branch, including an inquiry into his illegal firing of 17 inspector generals required to root out waste and fraud from their departments.

In his first term, Trump defied over 125 Congressional subpoenas – an impeachable offense if ever there was one.

8. Trump brings out the worst from major corporations. His dictates—allowing corporations to cheat, steal, harm, pollute, and violate with impunity almost any federal laws, most of which Trump has shelved by taking the federal cops off the corporate crime beat—could fill a large book.. This is especially the case in lifting controls over poisonous corporate pollution and letting large companies decide for themselves how little or no tax they pay to Uncle Sam from their massive profits. Why not? He preaches what he practices as he amasses an ever-greater personal wealth using the White House as a profiteering office for profiteering.

9. Worsening the architecture of the White House and nearby Washington, D.C., are major preoccupations of this egomaniacal dilettante. He illegally tore down the East Wing and is building, without Congressional permission, a huge, garish ballroom to go along with other planned desecrations, such as the 250-foot-high arch. As architect critic Philip Kennicott of the Washington Post writes, he has turned “the reflecting pool from a serene oasis to a police zone,” bungling millions of dollars.

Day after day, thousands of National Guard soldiers are wondering what they’re doing aimlessly patrolling downtown Washington to fill the whims of Trump’s false claims about their ending street crimes in the national capital.

10. The Trumpeteer has brought out the worst in the mainstream media, giving preferential access to uncritical reporters, and restricting or prohibiting access to reporters who are steadfast and straightforward. Trump maliciously sues to extort money from networks like CBS and ABC, while approving mergers and acquisitions of media properties by Trump funders and flatterers expected to censor in his favor.

11. From the people, he has celebrated vice over virtue, greed over charity, obscenity over decency, violence over peace, police and ICE brutality over more effective standards of prudence and restraint by law enforcers. As an open, brazen liar, a delusionary braggart, and peddler of empty promises, Trump has troubled parents who see their youngsters mimic his abuses and foul talk.

12. He pardons hundreds of convicted violent criminals and other fraudsters and says he will pardon more crooks, even urging them to continue their lawless ways because he will pardon them if they are caught. As a convicted felon himself, he knows a criminal when he sees one. .

13. Trump has violated seven of the Ten Commandments and is almost never seen in Church, yet Trump manages to bring out the most extreme hypocrites from the leadership of organized religion, who support his violent, aggressive wars and alliances of mass murder, larger military budgets, and his waiver of prosecuting corporate crooks, because they like his anti-abortion stance.

Twice, he has assailed Pope Leo, who is insisting that Christianity be a religion of love, compassion, and peace.

14. His most fervent mission is to provoke biases and bigotry against recent immigrants and asylum seekers among millions of his voters who believed his lies about these desperate people, fleeing with their children from oppressive regimes and oligarchies long supported by the U.S. government in Central and South America.

Using words like “invasion,” “rapists,” “criminals,” he succeeded in defaming the overwhelming law-abiding and hard-working people harvesting our crops, caring for our little children and elderly, and cleaning up after us every day to feed their families.

Largely unrebutted by a cowardly Democratic Party, Trump’s fabrications threw his MAGA supporters into a frenzy, which he fed daily, obscuring his own employment of hundreds of low-paid, undocumented construction workers in New York and his servants in New Jersey.

Every society has its cruel, greedy, and bigoted inhabitants. Trump grossly exaggerated troubled conditions in the US to embolden these miscreants, then heralded them, gave them access to the White House and Mar-a-Lago, helped them get media coverage, and sell their books. Trump then intimidated or prosecuted those who exercised their freedom of speech rights to criticize or counter Trump’s depraved and baleful lackeys.

He has regaled Silicon Valley’s corporate digital child molesters, taken their campaign donations, flattery, and investments at the expense of curtailing the daily harm they are directly marketing to tens of millions of vulnerable children.

Presidents of our country, with their “bully pulpit” and vast media coverage, set examples in many ways for families. They can bring out the kindness and idealism of many Americans, as did President John F. Kennedy in 1961 when he and Congress launched the Peace Corps. Or they can exhibit to the world the cruelty and viciousness of the Trump/Musk illegal rampage that started with closing the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). With the rupture of the flow of critical medicines, food, medical supplies, and clean water to those in need, the Trump/Musk Axis sealed the fate abroad of millions, mostly infants, children, and mothers, over the next several years, according to expert estimates. (See USAID shutdown has led to hundreds of thousands of deaths.)

Long after Trump is impeached and removed from office, his hateful, vengeful drive to bring out the worst from our country will linger and fester. Until, that is, the forces behind expanded goodwill and fair play, peace and justice manifest themselves at the polls, the civic and political arenas, and the civic education and experiences within our repurposed elementary and secondary schools.

History repeatedly teaches us that principles of peace, justice, and opportunity always enjoy overwhelming public support when polled compared to ideologies of corruption, violence, and greed.

So, it is entirely in our hands to bring these preferences into the daily reality of the people, their children and grandchildren, and future generations who deserve better.

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