Donald Trump sits in the Oval Office wearing pins of a fighter jet and the American flag.
I had planned to write today about a video the President of the United States posted Monday night on his social media account. I was going to warn you again that our major news outlets have gotten so used to terrible behavior like this that they barely cover it anymore — and that’s even worse than the disgusting videos themselves.
By letting a clearly unstable man broadcast offensive and misleading images to millions of people worldwide, without loudly pointing out how fake and grotesque they are, the media is failing at its most important job: telling the truth and holding the powerful accountable. They don’t even pretend to do that anymore.
I’ve told you before to seek out the truth wherever you can find it and share it widely. I hope this space is one of those places. But in this case, about this awful video, I’ll let one of America’s great historians, Heather Cox Richardson, explain it. I first saw the clip in one of her “Letters from an American” newsletters early Tuesday morning. (And if you’re not reading her work, you’re missing some of the clearest and most honest writing about these troubling times.)
Trump’s account posted a fake, digitally altered video of Democratic leaders Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries speaking to reporters. In the video, Mexican music plays as Schumer talks, while Jeffries is shown wearing a colorful sombrero and a cartoonish mustache. It’s meant to be a racist joke.
The fake Schumer in the video says things like: Democrats have no voters left because of their “woke” policies, that even Black and Latino voters hate them, and that Democrats need to “import” new voters by giving “illegal aliens” free healthcare so they’ll vote for them. He says immigrants “can’t even speak English” and calls Democrats “woke pieces of sh*t.”
This is the kind of childish, racist, and repulsive content the President of the United States is spending his time on. It’s something you’d expect from a spoiled five-year-old, not the leader of the country.
We’ve never had a president who constantly shares disgusting, dishonest things like this. That alone should make it major news. But when I look at the front pages of The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Associated Press, there’s no mention of this video. It’s as if it never happened. Yet millions saw it. We should all be outraged — not only at Trump but at our media for failing to see the danger.
In the same newsletter, Richardson also pointed out another huge story from Tuesday. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth spoke at Marine Corps Base Quantico in Virginia to a room full of our top military leaders. Hegseth is widely known as a liar and a drunk, and yet even he was overshadowed by his boss, Donald Trump, who turned the event into another display of ego and spite.
It’s also shocking that they gathered the president, the defense secretary, and nearly all of America’s top generals and admirals in one room. From a security perspective, that’s one of the dumbest and riskiest moves imaginable. It’s even more reckless than the time Trump reportedly shared war plans with a reporter. But nothing matters when you have a president obsessed with showing off, feeding his bloated ego, and playing “tough guy” in front of actual tough people.
I could fill pages describing the nonsense that came out of Trump’s mouth on Tuesday, but here’s one example: He suggested using “dangerous” U.S. cities as training grounds for the military. Yes, the cities he’s talking about are in the country he’s supposed to lead. Nothing excites him more than attacking America itself.
He also called people who protest him or disagree with his policies “the enemy within.” He’s talking about American citizens. He’s calling *us* the enemy.
As someone who served my country, I find that infuriating. Trump, a man who dodged the draft, calling Americans the “enemy” is beyond insulting.
On Tuesday he rambled from topic to topic like a clueless dictator, and any senior officer who wasn’t disturbed or insulted by his speech should consider resigning and go work for Trump directly instead.
But while the event may have let Trump feel like a “real man” for an hour, its real purpose was much darker: to remind the military leadership that their loyalty should be to *him*, not to the Constitution or the country. From the beginning, I warned that Trump would try to use the military for his own purposes. Keeping it loyal to him personally is a key part of authoritarianism.
Once you understand that Trump will use his presidency to settle scores, reward corrupt allies, and prepare for payback, you can see what’s coming — and it won’t be good. You can’t say you weren’t warned.
Nothing Trump does with the military will be to protect the American people. Everything he does with it will be to protect himself *from* the American people. His real enemy is the truth, and anyone who dares to speak it.
As I finish writing this, Republicans are trying to shut down the government. Our military is being used domestically. Critics of the president are being prosecuted. The FBI is purging “disloyal” people. And our very right to vote is under attack.
