By Michael Randall
Much of Donald Trump’s political rise is due to his shameless cunning. As any budding dictator knows, Trump had to create specific targets of hatred for “his people” to focus their loathing on. That is, he knows his base, and they (he calls them “my people”) are gullible, too easily led by his disgusting falsehoods about undocumented immigrants being “criminals,” “rapists,” “enemy invaders,” “terrorists,” and “vermin” who are “poisoning our country’s blood.” In a 2024 interview, Trump said, “They’re not humans. They’re animals.”
His mass deportation plans reveal and excite his people’s grinding resentments and frustrations,” even though his detention and deportation methods (carried out by ICE) ignore the US Constitution and are illegal. “His people” do not worry that the personal consequences for them might later be painful. If they themselves are ever properly or improperly detained, will they also be denied their right to “legal due process?”
Trump knows “his people.” Apparently, they do not care that he has stopped virtually all lifesaving aid from the USA to help the world’s war refugees, pogrom escapees, famine victims, and disease sufferers. Because of Trump’s astonishingly cruel orders and actions, thousands of such people are dying as I write this. This makes Donald Trump and his former lap dog, Elon Musk, personally responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of children, women and men in the coming weeks and months.
The ruthless cruelty Trump exhibits will have to be owned also by “his people,” many of whom claim to be Christians, whom Jesus directed to “love thy neighbor as thyself.” Maybe one actually has to live in their neighborhood to receive their love. Or, maybe, they just care more about his bogus promises to reduce food costs than they do about his killing of people already victimized in foreign lands by gang violence, war, famine and disease.
Trump also likes to use the power of his office to humiliate people, some of whom are only too willing to abase themselves, to bend their knee before him, kiss his ring and buy his ridiculous meme coins. His well-calculated creation of meme coins (they have no intrinsic value or merit) has caused “his people” (individuals, businesses, foreign governments) to buy these “instruments of nothing” to show support for his policies, curry favor, or gain access to him. How humiliating for them.
Trump has no shame, no sense of honesty or integrity. Since his January inauguration he and his companies have made hundreds of millions of dollars in meme coin trading fees. This blatant corruption encourages others to do the same whenever they can. Do “his people” hope to encourage their own kids in that direction? You know, as a good career move?
It is embarrassing to see so many powerful people and organizations here and abroad humble themselves in this fashion for the sake of protecting themselves or their business interests from Trump’s anger, while feeding his sense of domination. He recently addressed a group of Republican donors about world leaders who call to plead with him about the pain his tariffs will impose on their countries. He said, “These countries are calling me up, kissing my ass. Please, please, sir, make a deal. I’ll do anything.” Does his bragging (and his mountain of lies) make “his people” proud?
Is it possible that “his people” actually are enjoying these unfolding events, feeding their own resentments and revenge fantasies, like Trump is doing? Do they feel good about the meme coin corruption, the humiliations imposed, the damage and deaths inflicted on other people by their “great leader?” They must feel good about it, because none of them seem to be complaining about Trump’s brutal cruelties inflicted on so many of our fellow humans.
But if “his people” are Christians, they should pray continually for forgiveness.