It’s Christmas and that can only mean one thing: The inauguration of Donald Trump we prayed would never happen again is just a few weeks away. To add insult to injury, it’s on the MLK holiday.
Yes...we’re facing the reality of another four years with Trump in the White House despite our most sincere hopes that we’d be rid of him forever. But since he’s coming back, we should keep our eyes and ears open because we don’t know just how spiteful he might be. Here are five things he’s said so far that we should take seriously.
“Our military knows and our president knows. And for some reason, they want to keep people in suspense.”
This is in reference to the drone sightings over New Jersey, including his Bedminster residence. It’s weirding everybody out, and nobody really knows where they’re coming from but Trump is insinuating a tinfoil hat conspiracy theory that the government is behind it all. He’s already pledged to usurp law enforcement and this is a clue that he’ll use nutty things like this as a reason.
“We have to straighten out the press.”
A president using lawsuits against a media that is critical of him probably has no respect for the First Amendment. It’s no secret that he’s spent eight years railing against journalists, both liberal and conservative as “fake news” and now feels he’s in a position to intimidate the press. That ABC News pledged $15 million to him in a lawsuit settlement likely leaves him thinking he can threaten the media at will.
“We’re going to stop the transgender lunacy”
This is especially dangerous. He is targeting a group of people based on identity and appearance and nothing else. This is essentially no different than what Hitler did in Germany in his disdain of LGBTQ people along with Jews and people of color. If he can scrutinize that community, you can best believe he will do it to others.
“The enemy from within…should be…handled by the military.”
Neither Trump nor his supporters minced words showing how irritated they were at demonstrators protesting police violence against Black people. He first used his “enemy within” reference during his campaign at the “radical left,” but left it vague. But it’s a pretty good bet that he would like to unleash the military against anyone the far right doesn’t like including civil rights activists, Democratic politicians and voting rights advocates.
“We’re gonna have to get it (birthright citizenship) changed.”
Birthright citizenship is guaranteed in the 14th Amendment. So there’s no way Trump could legally do anything to someone who is born in the USA. But in his immigration policy, he wants to haphazardly eliminate millions of undocumented immigrants who he thinks are criminals. So he would easily target people of color, having them think they don’t have rights, and that includes our West African, and Caribbean communities. Funny thing is that none of this rhetoric is ever targeted at people who descend from Europe.
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Madison J. Gray is a New York-based journalist. He blogs at www.starkravingmadison.com.