Pay Attention to Trump’s Every Cruel and Crazy Syllable

In the wake of Joe Biden’s debate performance last month, it’s easy to lose sight of Donald Trump’s marked surge in extremism, vindictive cruelty, and contempt for democracy. The presumptive Republican nominee has also demonstrated a marked decline in mental acuity more alarming than Biden’s slowness during the debate.

Let’s look at just a few recent examples.

1) Trump wants to make poor migrants fight each other for sport. At a meeting with so-called Christian conservatives in Washington, D.C., Trump recalled a proposal he made to UFC President Dana White to make migrants fight each other and UFC champions for sport. The 45^th President of the United States said, “Why don’t you set up a migrant league of fighters and have your regular league of fighters? And then you have the champion of your league…fight the champion of the migrants. I think the migrants’ guy might win; that’s how tough they are.”

This “idea” distills so much of what animates Donald Trump: ignorance, cruelty, racism, and glitz. He is ignorant of the desperation of most migrants to the U.S., while his bigotry leads him to see all immigrants as henchmen, which he wants to prove via blood sport. The 78-year-old’s predilection for sleazy TV ratings makes him think immediately of dehumanizing his victims on camera, and the whole combination suggests a sundowning American Caligula. Conservatives love to compare America to ancient Rome as a society in moral decline. They are wrong—but if there is any truth to their contention, Trump’s bread and circuses and the base instincts of his movement are indicators of such depravity.

2) Trump wants to ban electric cars because someone in an electric boat might get eaten by a shark. Watch the whole statement to get the full measure of the GOP nominee’s meandering disconnection from reality, but it begins with Trump talking about how supposedly smart he is because his uncle went to MIT, then continues with this bizarre rant: “I say, ‘What would happen if the boat sank from its weight, and you’re in the boat, and you have this tremendously powerful battery, and the battery’s now underwater, and there’s a shark that’s approximately 10 yards over there?’”

Where does one begin? Electric motors reduce air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions—and they are more powerful, faster, more fun to drive, and require far less maintenance. Conservatives hate them because red-state oil barons make money pumping and selling gasoline. Many believe that Republican Jesus will rapture them before climate change can turn their communities into parched deserts or flooded swamps, and they like making liberals upset more than they care about their kids getting to breathe clean air. Donald Trump has instincts in all these directions—but he’s also the sort of addled mind who genuinely thinks that his fear of sinking in an electric boat and getting eaten by sharks is a valid way of determining public policy. He’s also talked about electric planes dropping out of the sky, unaware of batteries.

3) Donald Trump wants to ban all vaccine mandates in schools, which would include polio, measles, etc. This is not a joke—he has said it repeatedly. While his campaign stated months ago that this only applied to COVID vaccines (bad enough), Trump himself refuses to clarify the distinction on the campaign trail, even as the anti-vaccine coalition on the far right grows to oppose vaccines of all kinds. With the aid of a pliant federal bureaucracy under Project 2025, he could do it, exposing millions of American children to easily preventable deadly diseases. Trump has distanced himself from the project, but the claim seems risible.

4) Trump wants to end meaningful elections in the United States. In a speech to the Faith and Freedom Coalition in Washington, D.C., Trump said about the 2028 presidential election: “In four years, you don’t have to vote, ok? In four years, don’t vote, I don’t care. But we’ll have it all straightened out, so it’ll be much different.” What does Trump mean by “all straightened out” and “much different”? Why would it not be important to vote? Well, Trump has also said he vows to “be a dictator on day one” in the White House. In 2018, he said that having a “president for life” like China’s Xi Jinping would be “great” and that “maybe we’ll have to give that a shot someday.” Trump refuses ever to acknowledge that Democrats win elections fairly, and the last time he lost, he instigated a violent insurrection and attempted coup against the United States.

If Trump gets his way and the power of the Oval Office, he will inevitably do everything he can to prevent the public from having a democratic say in the country’s direction after he leaves—if he leaves.

5) Trump thinks the end of Roe v Wade was “amazing” and brags that he was “able to kill Roe v. Wade.”

Donald Trump’s Supreme Court nominations ended the guarantee of reproductive rights in America. While some voters believe that Trump himself is a moderate on abortion, and bizarrely, polling suggests that almost 1/5 of American voters blame Biden for the end of Roe, Trump proudly takes credit for it.

Moreover, under the conservative movement’s plans under Project 2025, Trump could effectively pass a national abortion ban without even the approval of Congress by telling political appointees in the FDA to falsely label abortion drugs as “unsafe” or by misapplying the Comstock Act executive authority to prevent them from being transmitted by mail. This is not a joke or an exaggeration.

Covering Donald Trump has always been a challenge for the political press. The draft dodging playboy turned real estate con artist turned reality show star turned populist politician has always been a carnival barker’s love for attention combined with a snake oil salesman’s loose regard for the truth. To cover his every utterance with breathless attention makes him the center of the universe as he desires. But to ignore him allows his lies to remain unchecked and his cruel extremism to inspire sadistic glee in his base.

Take Trump, his statements, and his frame of mind literally and very seriously, deserving of the scrutiny of n’s every syllable. His second term would likely be far worse than his first. This is something to remember as Democrats lurch toward the party’s.

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