daze

(make someone unable to think or react properly; stupefy; bewilder.)

It’s the strategy of President Donald Trump in evaluating his second First One Hundred Days in office. 

The president would daze Americans with claims of his greatness, claims that it is Biden’s fault and claims that all the polling on the planet is a massive conspiracy to lie about his perfect performance.

When polling results report that Trump has the lowest ever support ratings this early in any administration, Trump says, in a social media post, that they are “fake polls,” “they are sick,” that “these people should be investigated for election fraud” and his old tried and false “They are the enemy of the people.”

Sigh.

No, Mr. Trump, the truth (not that truth exists in your Neverland of Lost Boys and Girls, loyal to you instead of the Constitution) is so much simpler. 

Your tariff plan is disrupting the world economy and leading the U.S. economy into a recession with your first quarter performance paving the way downward.

Your inattention to the economy has resulted in higher prices, with more on the way as the new tariff-laden goods hit our shores next week. 

Your disregard of the rule of law is offensive to the Constitution you swore to defend. Your chaotic approach to everything you touch undermines our equity markets and drives consumer confidence down.

In three short months, you have personally managed to destroy the world’s best-performing economy, with 2.8 percent growth for 2024, and the largest GDP for any nation by far. 

Your results for the 1st quarter of 2025? A resounding -0.3 percent.

But you should not worry at all, Mr. President, for if we turn on the local AM talk radio station, we are likely to hear praise of your successes and confidence that only you can save America from this (wholly imagined) inherited disaster.

And should we turn on Fox News, we might hear how well the incompetent Pete Hegseth is doing managing the dystopia that has become the Pentagon. Or we might listen to how Attorney General Pam Bondi is brilliantly excoriating all judges to not stand in the way of Mr. Trump’s assault on due process.

Yes, all is well in Trump’s Neverland, where truth and facts are insults to True Believers, and conspiracy theories are embraced by the president and left to smolder in social media with the leader of misinformation, Elon Musk, providing space for all things false.

For those who would take hope that Neverland is indeed an imaginary place meant only for the submission of truth and the glorification of fantasy, take hope and refuge in the actual facts. 

Facts like 64 percent of Americans, according to the Washington Post/ABC News/Ipsos poll, disapprove of Trump’s tariff policy, and 62 percent think Trump has little or no regard for the rule of law. 

You are not imagining these problems that undermine the very foundations of any democracy and risk the world order of trade; you are the realists of the day, and your voices are needed now.

For now, today, we are slip-sliding away from our historic decency, our compassion to help the Other, our national character that binds us together as a people, and our conviction that it is the rule of law, not the slavish devotion to a failed leader, that makes America great. In this moment, we need you, each of you, to not be a silent American but a defiant American, speaking to all who will listen about the path back to our history and our hope.

Jim Crawford is a retired educator and political enthusiast living here in the Tri-State.