During the 2016 election campaign, Donald Trump infamously asserted, “I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody, and I wouldn’t lose any voters, okay?”
That he could murder without consequence was hypothetical at the time, but now it’s all too real as he orders boats suspected of carrying fentanyl blown up off Venezuela.
The doomed crews may well be trafficking in drugs, but the idea of due process in a court of law is anathema to a president who has licensed himself to indiscriminately slay anyone he brands a ”terrorist.”
It’s interesting that under federal law, trafficking in fentanyl is not a capital offense. Depending on the amount being transported, penalties can range up to life in prison, but in 2024 the average sentence was six-plus years.
So it’s not a reach to conclude that President Trump and his “Secretary of War,” Pete Hegseth, are self-appointed executioners.
A sardonic aside: Drug trafficking experts say Venezuela produces no significant amount of fentanyl and that most of it comes to the United States from Mexico.
Meanwhile, we are dragged to exhaustion by Trump’s pandering to murderous foreign autocrats; his corrupt personal enrichment; his ICE band of family-rending thugs; his destructive tariffs; his disdain for allies; his equal disdain for scientific fact; his misogyny and anti-equality policies; his tax protection for billionaires; his attacks on political opponents; his inattention to lowering prices; and his heartless support for cutting Medicaid benefits.
His insults to those who oppose him grow ever louder and coarser. He recently called Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz “seriously retarded” and Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker “a big fat slob.”
His contempt for the press, especially when reporters ask probing questions, flares most when the queries come from women. He recently dismissed one as “Piggy,” another as “stupid,” and still another as “ugly inside and out.”
Trump’s evil administration has oozed so far into government that even the Coast Guard recently had to walk back new policy wording that would have no longer classified the swastika and the noose as hate symbols.
The Coast Guard answers to the Department of Homeland Security, led by Kristi Noem. Earlier this year she became a poster child for this malignant administration when she posed in front of a cell crowded with half-naked men deported to an abusive Salvadoran prison.
The abhorrent photo-op should stand forever as testament to what Trump is savaging in our land: justice, morality, equality, mercy, and human decency.
Let’s put the truth out there for what it is: Donald J. Trump is turning our United States of America into a nation that condones the intolerable, indulges the unacceptable, and gives cruel, lawless voice to the unspeakable.
The further truth: This deranged and vile president will not stop until he tosses the bones of our democracy into the bonfire he is constantly feeding.
Gerry Goldstein (gerryg76@verizon.net), a frequent contributor, is a retired Providence Journal editor and columnist.