If the rest of the current Trump term continues along the paths already entered early on, clearly Mr. Trump will not endanger his position on the very bottom of the list of 45 people who have previously been POTUS thus far. Mr. Trump, whose administration is now and will apparently continue to be, in court defending (and mostly losing) the legitimacy of many of his executive orders and other actions, is apparently presenting to both the U.S. and the world a “Wreck-It-Ralph” persona.
As a reminder, “Wreck-It-Ralph” is a still-very-popular video game character known for being the oversized ham-fisted (sometimes dim-witted) video-game bad guy with a heart, who knows how to mash and crash things but has zero finesse and even less common sense. As a lovable oaf, he smashes through virtually every video environment and lets other characters live with the consequences of his bold, crude and virtually always destructive behavior and decision-making. Wreck-It-Ralph, as a very important video game character, usually mushes and mashes things first, and lets others deal with the consequences. A public planner and strategist, he is not.
Enter Mr. Trump’s second term and he’s come in like a wrecking ball, as the song says, trampling over the established legal rights and pay schedules of federal employees to show who’s boss, threatening hellfire tariffs on nations both friend and foe, and ordering the cut-off of federal payments for state disasters (he recently ordered the Army Corps of Engineers to interfere with carefully designed California state water distribution to demonstrate to Gov. Newsom that he, the POTUS, knew more about how to protect California from wildfires than the state officials do). Though there currently seems to be a temporary bit of calm right now in his hurricane-frenetic posturings , it is very clear to anyone paying attention that big trouble for Mr. Trump and for us as a people, is definitely looming.
Already citizens are rapidly forming protest groups and public legal challenges to many of Mr. Trump’s first Wreck-It-Ralph initiatives, like his latest threat to fire all FBI agents who participated in the investigations of the January 6th attack on the Capitol, and the expectations are that he will simply throw more muck against the wall as courts order many, if not most, of his first offensive decisions to be halted because they are illegal.
Very recently, to show he is not afraid of being corraled, he boldly announced to the world that the U.S. government was going to seize the control and administration (annexation) of the Gaza Strip, to force a Trumpian solution in that Middle Eastern cauldron once and for all. Meanwhile, his minions were going to summarily close down the USAID process, fire all the administrators and pause Medicaid and Medicare benefits until further notice.
Wreck-It-Ralph, indeed !! Mr. Trump is becoming like a very large bill that keeps showing up in the mail every month no matter how many times it is paid. Lord help us all !! Wreck-It -Ralph is in season, and apparently intends to be an evergreen ! American government might not ever be the same, no matter who is next elected.
Professor David L. Horne is founder and executive director of PAPPEI, the Pan African Public Policy and Ethical Institute, which is a new 501(c)(3) pending community-based organization or non-governmental organization (NGO). It is the stepparent organization for the California Black Think Tank which still operates and which meets every fourth Friday.
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