The Destructive Terrorist in the White House
Philip Kotler
Nine years ago, I published an article in Medium magazine called Terrorism in the White House. I was terrified about the damage that President Donald Trump was doing to our democracy. I detailed the attacks he was making on our institutions, specifically on our press, judiciary, electoral process, free speech, intelligence community, immigration system, civil rights, women’s rights, public education, arts, public broadcasting, environmental regulations, ethical practices, public lands, labor unions, and our allies.
I warned that we are witnessing the birth of Authoritarianism and Dictatorship. I wondered why the leaders of the Republican Party didn’t see that Trump was creating a monster that would unleash a Reign of Terror. We had more fear from inside our country than from any force outside our country.
Republican silence was deafening. The American Dream was dying. If Americans want democracy, they better move to Canada.
The Situation Today is Infinitely Worse than Nine Years Ago
With the second term of Donald Trump in 2024, we knew that he would return to the same reign of terror. What we didn’t know is that he would go considerably further. He would destroy every program and policy that Americans voted for and respected. He might even wage an illegal war against Iran.
Consider the following actions that Trump instituted in the first year of his second presidency:
1. He cancelled our major Green Environment movement to ensure clean air, water, and soil.
2. He cancelled our programs to produce energy from solar and wind power and replaced them with coal, oil and other fossil fuels. As a result, the earth is moving inevitably toward warming temperatures
3. He threatened to privatize programs such Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid which serve the interests of the poor, in order to increase the wealth of the rich. He opposed raising taxes on the rich, allowing income inequality to balloon further.
4. He banned all programs of DEI (Diversity, Equity and Inclusion).
5. He favored ICE (immigration and customs enforcement) raids capturing illegals, imprisoning them without any civil rights, and ultimately shipping them abroad.
6. He made it personally dangerous to exercise free speech, assembly and protests.
7. He sought to erase any traces of American slavery in American institutions and let more anti-racist groups thrive.
8. He defunded popular public programs such as PBS (Public Broadcasting System and NPR (National Public Radio) and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.
9. He fired thousands of federal workers who worked for the public good, including firing many Internal Revenue Service (IRS) workers who enforce fair tax payments.
10. He turned our best country allies (such as Canada, Mexico, Japan) into recalcitrant high tariff paying countries.
11. He attacked American universities and their freedom and imposed penalties. He cancelled or postponed scientific programs that would have advanced our understanding of various illnesses. Over 10,000 federal scientists left the U.S. government in 2025.
12. He has steadily attacked the human rights of LGBTQ people and marriage equality.
13. He cancelled millions of dollars of foreign aid.
14. He appointed cabinet and other officials on the basis of loyalty to him rather than on having expertise in their appointed area. The most incompetent members are Robert F. Kennedy to head the health department, Pete Hegseth to head the war department (formerly defense department), Pam Bondi to head the Department of Justice, and Cash Patel heading the FBI.
15. He launched a war against Iran without Congressional approval. Launching a war will enable Trump to cut out the mid-term elections on the grounds that we are at war.
Trump has managed to reduce all basic policies and programs that made America special and great. The irony is that MAGA drew millions who followed Trump to make America great again and now we lost our greatness as a country.
