Thanks to the rapid-fire chaos of the first month of the Trump administration, it is easy to see both the intent of the Trump administration and the strategies it uses to advance its goals.

 It is abundantly clear that Trump only values loyalty to him personally as a qualification for any role in government service.

Those deemed disloyal are called “The Deep State” (meaning professional, skilled federal employees or various political interests) and must be fired, retired or simply removed from public service.

Eviscerating professional government service in favor of blind loyalists seems reasonable to the Trump folks and necessary if the goal is for Trump to hold absolute power.

Undermining the rule of law is also essential when the rule of law, a founding principle of the United States, stands in the way of absolute power for the president. So pardoning the violent insurrectionists who invaded the Capitol and attacked the Capitol police, while seeking to harm our elected officials, is all good because it not only undermines our entire legal system, but also empowers those violent criminals to feel free to continue to do violence on behalf of their president.

Likewise, Trump personally ordering the Department of Justice to drop charges against New York City Mayor Eric Adams is a blatant demonstration that this DOJ is in no way operating independently of the executive office. 

Instead, as the pardoning of former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich, convicted of attempting to sell, to the highest bidder, the U.S. Senate seat vacated by Barack Obama, shows, it is about Trump openly demonstrating that he alone can ignore the courts and juries and impose his version of justified corruption with impunity.

So, we know that our president is willfully undermining the administrative state, firing experts and replacing them with loyalists. And we know that Trump is attempting to undermine the rule of law by rejecting DOJ actions, demeaning the FBI, firing professional FBI attorneys, setting aside convictions by judges and juries and, just this week, suggesting that judges should have no role in restricting his actions to destroy the institutions that undergird the American nation.

On the international stage, Trump is asserting his personal dominance over other nations. He attacks Canada, perhaps our most loyal and trusted partner and one of our most valued trading partners, on false premises of imagined fentanyl movements. He threatens Greenland and Panama with violent attacks on their sovereignty, posing the U.S. as no different than Russia invading Ukraine because it wants to.  These are actions of Trump’s personal power, Trump the individual, asserting that he can make war for no reason at all.

And that is what we now know about Trump 2.0. This Trump embraces the folly of tariffs, not because they work, but because he can impose these trade punishments on nations without any limits upon his power. Trump is now posing as the international bully on the block, standing in juxtaposition to all established American values, all historical relationships with other democracies and all past signals of American exceptionalism broadcast to the world.

This is our president, a dangerous narcissist, a power-hungry leader lacking a moral compass and the leader of a cult of followers whose loyalty to Trump transcends their loyalty to the nation.

We cannot expect our Republican friends to stand up for the nation, they will not. We must expect our courts to stop the insanity and protect and preserve the Constitution. They are the final stand against a government that would turn against our foundations.

 And then, there is only us, We the People. It is time to shout loudly that we will not accept this attack upon our values.