A nation changed: the decline of basic human decency under Trump | Opinion
Although there is much to lament in the unconstitutional and illegal policies of the Trump administration, not enough has been said about its lack of compassion and basic human decency. How does it change us as a nation to witness countless acts of cruelty by our government? How does it change how we talk in our society to see a president refer to other nations as “shithole” countries or to tell a female reporter, “quiet, piggy”?
On an almost daily basis, we read stories unlike anything we have ever seen in this country. We see masked U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents pulling people off the streets. We learn of individuals going for their final hearing for a green card and being apprehended and deported. There was recently a horrifying image of a young teenager being pinned to the ground by ICE agents as her mother was apprehended to be deported.
There was also the story of a 4-year-old boy with Stage 4 kidney cancer being deported without essential medications; the 10-year-old United States citizen with brain cancer who was deported to Mexico after being apprehended with her family in Texas while they were on their way to receive medical care; and the 19-year-old college student apprehended on her way home for Thanksgiving and deported to Honduras.
The Trump administration sent people to a maximum-security prison in El Salvador where they were tortured and then claimed that no American court could provide relief even if an individual was wrongly deported there. The government has put people in deportation camps in the United States that are desperately overcrowded and have shockingly poor conditions.
Even during the first Trump administration, ICE agents would not go into schools, churches or hospitals. But that policy has been revoked. Now, parents are afraid to send their children to school; people are afraid to worship; and many will not seek needed medical care, even when they have communicable diseases that can infect others.
The sheer lack of compassion from the Trump administration is reflected in their plan to allow millions of individuals to lose their medical care coverage. The Republican’s “big bill” passed last summer will likely cause between 10 million and 15 million people to lose their Medicaid benefits. Additionally, the loss of health care subsidies — which Democrats shut down the government to preserve — will cause millions of people to be priced out of insurance or medical care. There is no sense that the Trump administration cares.
The elimination of the U.S. Agency for International Development and its critical international assistance will lead to countless deaths in foreign countries due to lack of critical food and medicine.
The big bill also cut federal food assistance within the United States: The Congressional Budget Office estimates that over 3 million people (which may be a low estimate) will lose food assistance in cuts to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, the largest food assistance program. Many children will go to bed hungry and be malnourished because of this cut.
As a country, aren’t we better than this?
A president’s rhetoric is a model for how people speak to one another. But President Donald Trump’s does not express compassion or empathy. After director Rob Reiner and his wife, Michele Singer Reiner, were murdered, Trump said that Reiner “was deranged” and “very bad for our country.” When criticized for this inappropriate response to a tragedy, Trump repeated his insults.
Trump wrote on Truth Social that New York Times reporter Katie Rogers is “a third rate reporter who is ugly, both inside and out.” When ABC reporter Mary Bruce asked a question he did not like, Trump said that she was a “terrible person” who worked for a “crappy company.” He called Congresswoman Ilhan Omar, the Minnesota Democrat, “garbage” and described people from Somalia with the same word. He called Illinois Governor JB Pritzker “a low-IQ person” and “a fat slob.”
How will we teach our children not to talk this way when the president constantly does so?
Then, after “No Kings” protests across the country that attracted millions of attendees, he spread A.I. generated images of himself dress as a king and a military pilot bombing protesters with excrement. When I first heard of this, I thought it was an episode on South Park — not something done by the President of the United States. Earlier, he released A.I. images of former President Barack Obama being taken into custody in handcuffs.
I and others have extensively written about the assault on the rule of law. But we have not spoken enough about the war on compassion. We are better than this as a country and must demand better from the president.
This is not about ideology or politics. It is about basic human decency.
Erwin Chemerinsky is dean and professor of law at the UC Berkeley School of Law.