The NY Times Patrick Healy asked Michelle Goldberg to discuss an issue or person or moment that she believes defines “how Trump has used power during his first 50 days.” Her answer left me shaken:
Michelle Goldberg: Sure. There’s a few, but one that stands out for me is the gutting of U.S.A.I.D., because it’s illegal and because it’s so flagrantly immoral and utterly self-destructive.
During the first Trump term, I would sometimes have to catch myself because even though I thought and think that Trump is uniquely despicable and dangerous, the fact remains that if you just want to look at the number of lives lost and global damage done, George W. Bush really outstripped him. Trump is maybe a worse person, but the damage that he did in his first term was much more contained.
I think that in the second Trump term he’s changed that very quickly. Not just by taking America’s soft power and setting it on fire in all sorts of ways, but really making these abrupt decisions that are going to kill hundreds of thousands and maybe more than a million people and he’s doing it in this incredibly arbitrary, careless way.
And I just want to say something really quick before we get to Frank: I have a 12-year-old son who, as he learns more about various kinds of dark chapters in American history, can get really down on this country. So I often find myself in the strange position of trying to talk up American greatness because I don’t want him to feel despair about the country that he’s growing up in. It’s occurred to me that every single thing that I have pointed out to him as a sign of American greatness or goodness, whether that be foreign aid, whether that be our support for Ukraine, our success in welcoming immigrants and refugees, or scientific pre-eminence, everything that I thought was best about America, Trump has either destroyed or tried to destroy in less than two months.
I don’t know what to say to kids about all this. But I despair for them.