Commentary: Trump Is Waging War On Both America & Americans

By A. Scott Bolden

Donald Trump, the first convicted felon to serve as U.S. president, is ignoring laws and the Constitution as he wages a disruptive and destructive war against our government and the American people it serves. We should all hope for the success of the 37 lawsuits filed so far to stop Trump’s effort to give himself dictatorial powers.

Americans should contact our lawmakers in the House and Senate (especially Republicans) to demand they do their jobs and stop Trump and Elon Musk, the richest person in the world, from destroying our constitutional system of checks and balances. Our nation’s founders didn’t wage the Revolutionary War to replace King George III with King Donald.

Trump, Musk and other billionaires working with them are depriving federal employees and other Americans of their legal rights and denying vital assistance to people in our country and around the world. This amounts to a hostile takeover of the U.S. government staged by some of the richest Americans.

Trump is proving to be the best friend America’s foreign adversaries, terrorists and other criminals have ever had in the White House. He and Musk are a clear and present danger to our national security, safety, economy and health.

Trump has granted Musk – whose companies have received more than $15 billion in federal contracts – clearly illegal power. Musk is eliminating spending approved by Congress, working to close federal agencies and seeking to cut hundreds of thousands of federal jobs.

You can bet that Musk – who donated at least $260 million to help Trump get elected – won’t recommend cuts in federal contracts going to his own companies. In fact, Musk’s SpaceX could collect billions of dollars more because Trump has endorsed Musk’s goal of sending astronauts to Mars.

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But while Trump wants to spend billions on Mars exploration and cut government revenue by trillions of dollars in the next 10 years with tax cuts largely benefitting the rich and corporations, he and Musk want to slash vital federal spending here on Earth.

Efforts by Trump and Musk to cut the federal payroll by as many as several hundred thousand employees through firings and buyouts would cripple the government’s ability to administer programs that benefit Americans and make us far more vulnerable to foreign threats and crime.

A federal judge temporarily delayed the buyouts Thursday in response to a lawsuit by federal employee unions. More than 60,000 employees have accepted the buyouts so far.

Employees at the FBI, CIA and Justice Department are among those offered buyouts. In addition, many high-ranking FBI and Justice Department officials have already been fired, including those involved in the prosecutions of rioters who attacked the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021 in an attempt to overturn Trump’s 2020 election defeat.

Many thousands more career employees – including many FBI agents investigating the Jan. 6 riot and investigating Trump for his alleged crimes – could be fired under plans by Trump and Musk to shrink the federal workforce and replace some career employees with political appointees whose main qualification is loyalty to Trump. Unions and others are challenging these firings as violations of longstanding laws protecting civil servants from political purges.

Anyone who seriously believes terrorists and other criminals won’t take advantage of fewer and less experienced CIA officers and FBI agents on the job is incredibly naive. Trump is inviting another Sept. 11 terrorist attack or worse, and putting out the welcome mat for criminals.

Trump’s freeze on most foreign aid and his closure of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), eliminating thousands of jobs at the behest of Musk, makes America less influential around the world and strengthens Russia and China. Responding to a lawsuit, a federal judge said Friday he would issue an order temporarily blocking the government from placing thousands of USAID employees on administrative leave.

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The cutoff of funding for USAID’s lifesaving global health programs endangers over 20 million people. Many impoverished nations hit by these aid cuts are in Africa, a continent Trump once reportedly described as filled with “shithole countries.” American farmers and businesses sell more than $2 billion annually in food, goods and services to USAID.

Leaders of Russia and China would love to see Trump make good on his past threats to withdraw the U.S. from NATO and end military aid to Ukraine. This could lead to a Russian conquest of Ukraine and other nations, and lead China to invade Taiwan.     On top of this, Trump’s talk of U.S. takeovers of the Gaza Strip, Greenland (a territory of NATO member Denmark), the Panama Canal and even Canada is alarming nations around the world.

Trump’s new 10 percent tariff on imports from China – and his threat to impose 25 percent tariffs on imports from Canada and Mexico in March if new agreements on unauthorized immigration and illegal drug trafficking are not reached – have rattled the world economy and stock markets. He is threatening new tariffs on European Union nations.

Tariffs are paid by U.S. companies that import foreign products. These companies inevitably pass all or most of their increased costs on to American consumers by raising prices, thereby worsening inflation.

China has already imposed retaliatory tariffs on U.S. exports. Mexico and Canada say they will do the same if Trump imposes tariffs on them. Such retaliatory tariffs will reduce American exports and cause some American workers to lose their jobs.

Our economy would also be weakened by Trump’s promised deportations of millions of unauthorized immigrants. An estimated 45 percent of U.S. farmworkers are unauthorized immigrants, along with significant numbers of construction, service and factory workers. Deporting many of these workers would cause labor shortages and drive up consumer prices.

There are many more examples of harm the Trump-Musk cuts would cause. For example, their effort to eliminate the Education Department would deprive schools and students of needed aid, making America less competitive with other nations. Budget cuts to the Internal Revenue Service will result in government collecting billions of dollars less. Planned cuts to the Department of Health and Human Services and the U.S. withdrawal from the World Health Organization will inevitably bring about increased disease and deaths in our country and abroad.

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Rather than making American great again, as he has promised repeatedly, Trump is focused on making himself the most powerful and dangerous president in American history. While congressional Republicans seem too frightened to stop him, I hope our courts will halt his attempted coup against the Constitution that made America great in the first place.

A. Scott Bolden is an attorney, NewsNation contributor and former chair of the Washington, D.C. Democratic Party. He served on the finance committee for the 2024 Kamala Harris presidential campaign.