A regime of hate and division

Bob Sheak, July 8, 2025

Trump has a great capacity for expressing hatred for his opponents. He is anything but a “unifier,” which he often falsely claims to be.

Here are 5 examples.

#1 – Hatred of Democrats

He has called his political opponents “vermin.” (https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/trump-compares-political-opponents-vermin-root-alarming-historians). This was published on Nov. 13, 2023.

Leigh Kimmins reports on Trump declaration of hatred for Democrats (https://thedailybeast.com/trump-kicks-off-celebration-of-america-by-declaring-his-hatred-for-democracy). The article was published on July 5, 2025. Here’s some of what Kimmins writes.

“President Donald Trump declared his hatred for his political opponents during a supposedly bipartisan celebration of the 250th anniversary of America’s independence.

“Taking to the lectern behind thick bulletproof glass in Des Moines, Iowa, on Thursday, Trump immediately started firing off political potshots. ‘They wouldn’t vote only because they hate Trump, but I hate them, too, you know?’ Trump said, referring to Democrats who voted against his “Big Beautiful Bill, which the House sent to the president’s desk after a tight vote.”

“I really do. I hate them. I cannot stand them, because I really believe they hate our country.”

“With all of the things we did with the tax cuts and rebuilding our military, not one Democrat voted for us, and I think we use it in the campaign that’s coming up the midterms, because we got to beat them,” he said.

“We’ve saved our country,” he boasted as his favorite MAGA singer, Lee Greenwood, pumped out his campaign anthem “God Bless the U.S.A.”

“‘We got great marks in the first term, and this is going to blow it away,’ Trump said at one point, ignoring a recent AP-NORC poll showed that six in 10 Americans disapprove of Trump’s performance as president and other surveys showing him with negative approval ratings.”

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#2 – Targeting opponents

Trump is not just talking. Tom Dreisbach and Inskeep report for NPR that “Trump has targeted more than 100 opponents and institutions for retribution in his second term (https://npr.org/2025/04/29/nx-s1-5379979/trump-has-targeted- more-than-100-opponents-and-institutions-npr-analysis-finds). The reporters write

“During that campaign, critics and supporters alike warned that it’s wrong for a president to go after people he doesn’t like. So Trump downplayed his promise, saying his retribution would merely be success. Now Trump is president. In his first 100 days, the president has ordered the U.S. government to target his personal political opponents, as well as law firms, universities and others. An NPR analysis finds Trump has taken action against more than 100 people and institutions.”

For example, DREISBACH points out the following. “Well, we found the administration using more than 10 different agencies in various ways, not just the Justice Department, which we should say is also announcing criminal investigations into the Democratic governor and attorney general of New Jersey over immigration policy. Trump has also pulled secret service protection for two of President Biden’s children, Hunter and Ashley. Media companies that Trump dislikes are facing investigations from the FCC. That includes NPR, we should say. Universities are facing investigations from the Department of Education, international students who protested the war in Gaza have also faced ICE detention and deportation.”

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#3 – He is relentless in going after “enemies”

David Smith considers this issue (https://theguardian.com/us-news/article/2024/jun/02/trump-social-media-threats).

Smith refers to “Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington” which has documented even before he was re-elected. The organization analyzed “more than 13,000 messages published by Trump on his Truth Social platform and found him vowing revenge, retaliation and retribution against his foes.

“The presumptive Republican nominee has threatened to use the federal government to go after Biden during a second Trump administration 25 times since the start of 2023, the study found. These threats include FBI raids, investigations, indictments and even jail time.

“He has also threatened or suggested that the FBI and justice department should take action against senators, judges, members of Biden’s family and even non-governmental organizations.

“‘He is promising to go after what he perceives to be his political enemies,’ said Robert Maguire, vice-president for research and data at Crew. ‘He is promising to essentially weaponize the government against anyone he sees as not sufficiently loyal or who is openly opposed to him.’”

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 #4 – Politicizing the F.B.I. and making Americans Less Safe (https://nytimes.com/2025/07/05/opinion/trump-fbi-politics-safety.html).

The editorial board is a group of opinion journalists whose views are informed by expertise, research, debate and certain longstanding values. It is separate from the newsroom.

“Only 11 days after President Trump was inaugurated for a second term, his administration began a purge of the F.B.I. that now threatens some of the bureau’s most important missions. His appointees ousted eight of its most experienced managers, including the division heads overseeing national security, cybersecurity and criminal investigations. Several had worked on prosecutions of Jan. 6 rioters or had assisted in the various investigations of Mr. Trump, and Emil Bove, then the acting deputy attorney general, said they could not be trusted to carry out the president’s agenda.

“That was just the beginning. Over the past five months, many F.B.I. agents, including other top managers and national security experts, have been fired, pressured to leave or transferred to lesser roles. Hundreds have resigned on their own, unwilling to follow the demands of the Trump administration. Their absence has left a vacuum in divisions that are supposed to protect the public. These losses have “obliterated decades of experience in national security and criminal matters at the F.B.I.,” Adam Goldman of The Times wrote.

“Mr. Trump’s playbook for the F.B.I. is plain to see. He is turning it into an enforcement agency for MAGA’s priorities. He is chasing out agents who might refuse to play along and installing loyalists in their place. He is seeking to remove the threat of investigation for his friends and allies. And he is trying to instill fear in his critics and political opponents. Among his many efforts to weaken American democracy and amass more power for himself, his politicization of the F.B.I. is one of the most blatant.”

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#5 – The “big beautiful bill” represents “a massive transfer of wealth upward”

This is the title of an interview of John Nichols on Democracy Now (https://democracynow.org/2025/7/7/trump_spending_bill). Nichols is the national affairs correspondent for The Nation.

Amy Goodman, the host of the program, offers these highlights of the Trump/Republican bill.

“President Donald Trump and his allies are celebrating the passage of his sweeping tax and spending bill, which he signed into law on July 4 after a monthslong effort to shepherd it through Congress. Ultimately, just three Republicans in the Senate and two in the House voted against the legislation. The so-called Big, Beautiful Bill includes about $1 trillion in federal cuts to Medicaid and could kick 17 million people off their healthcare. It makes the largest-ever cuts to food assistance benefits, could cause the closure of nursing homes and rural hospitals across the country, raises housing and energy costs, and supercharges the Trump crackdown on immigrants — all while delivering massive tax benefits for the wealthiest people in the country. ‘This is the most massive transfer of wealth upward in American history,’ says John Nichols, national affairs correspondent for The Nation.

“President Donald Trump signed his sweeping tax and spend bill into law on July 4th, after a monthslong push that saw just three Republicans in the Senate and two in the House break away to oppose how it slashes the social safety net while extending tax cuts to the rich and ballooning the deficit. That left room for the measure to pass with the final vote mostly along party lines.”

And yet, this is the bottom line: In states across the country, not according to liberal Democrats, not according to progressive think tanks, but according to Republicans who are on the ground in these states, and one Republican in the U.S. Senate, Thom Tillis, this is going to have a devastating impact on Medicaid, on access to healthcare, so that we will get to a point where roughly 5% of Americans are at threat of losing their healthcare. That’s a massive, massive shift. In addition, you’ve got roughly 11.8, 12 million people at risk of losing SNAP anti-hunger benefits. And when we look at all the numbers here, because of the way the tax cuts are massively weighted toward the wealthy, you have members of Congress, who are pretty serious analysts of all this, telling us that roughly 40% — going to underline that, 40% — of Americans will end up worse off under this. They won’t get a significant tax cut. They will lose health benefits. They will lose anti-hunger benefits and a lot of other benefits, as well. This is the most massive transfer of wealth upward in American history, and yet it’s designed to create a circumstance where Republicans can run in 2026 and claim that they didn’t do the damage.

“I’ll give you one more set of facts that are just useful. This comes from Governor Andy Beshear in Kentucky. Kentucky is a state that votes quite Republican in federal elections. Beshear is a Democrat, but he’s had to work with a Republican Legislature. He’s a very kind of facts and numbers guy. He says this is the worst piece of federal legislation in his lifetime. He says that 200,000 Kentuckians — this is just one state — 200,000 Kentuckians will lose healthcare, 20,000 healthcare workers will lose their jobs, and as many as 35 rural hospitals are now in danger of closing in that one state. And that doesn’t even take in the devastating impact to nursing homes, especially in small towns.”

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Concluding thoughts

This is a time in US history that democracy is under assault

From what we know, Trump and Republicans in Congress areusing their power to advance their own anti-democratic interests and doing harm to  the country (See Marjorie Cohn’s article (https://truthout.org/articles/by-ruling-against-nationwide-injunctions-scotus-affirms-the-imperial-presidency).