Trump has an ‘America first’ problem
On the sidewalk outside a Walgreens in Chicago, an agent of the federal government pinned a 21-year-old man to the pavement, while a woman screamed, “He’s a citizen! He’s a citizen!”
Pulling up a cloth mask to conceal the lower portion of his face, the agent, from Immigration and Customs Enforcement perhaps, screamed back, “Get the [blank] away from me! You don’t know what’s going on, so get the [blank] back!”
Suddenly, another officer began to shout at the woman and a small knot of spectators, one or two of whom recorded the episode for later public viewing. “Back up,” this agent ordered at the top of his voice. “Back the [blank] up! Back up!”
Another federal agent, on another recent day, handcuffed a news producer for Chicago TV station WGN while holding her on the ground. “Let [WGN] know,” the woman, who identified herself as Debbie Brockman, told a bystander.
The next bit of video shows Brockman being stuffed into a vehicle by a man whose uniform back was stitched with the words “Police/U.S. Border Patrol.” Chicago, it should be noted, is some 500 miles from the Canadian border, while Mexico is 1,400 miles away.
Brockman was later released without charges being filed; it’s unclear if the young man was adjudicated.
Press reports suggest these were not random occurrences or rogue agents at work. The New York Times’ Julie Bosman reported last week that federal agents “have roamed the city and suburbs making arrests, often pulling up to people walking along the street, stopping them and questioning them.”
Agents “repeatedly have been observed releasing smoke bombs, tear gas and pepper balls to disperse residents who gather or capture videos on cellphones,” Bosman wrote. “Chicago police officers, who have been called to the scene of some clashes, have been exposed to tear gas from federal agents twice in the last two weeks.”
A recent press photograph shows a Chicago police officer after one such barrage: bent at the waist, he’s washing out his eyes using a backyard water hose.
The Trump administration is on a rampage. Even citizens are in the crosshairs. Cities and states that regularly elect Democrats to office are clearly targets.
During the federal government shutdown, the Trump administration has, to date, frozen or outright terminated some 200 public works and infrastructure projects worth a combined $28 billion. This includes projects worth $738 million in Republican congressional districts.
The remainder – $27 billion – comes out of the districts represented in Washington, D.C., by Democrats.
New York City, with its battery of Democratic lawmakers, has lost $18 billion during the shutdown. Chicago’s losses amount to $2.1 billion.
President Trump has made his feelings clear. Last week at the White House, after returning from Israel and Egypt for the Gaza peace accord, the president announced he was ending federal funding for a new commuter rail tunnel under the Hudson River to New Jersey.
The existing tunnel, damaged by Hurricane Sandy in 2012, has been in use for the past 115 years. New York governor Kathy Hochal wondered why the administration was being so “shortsighted.” She noted a new tunnel is crucial to the economies of two states and the entire Northeastern United States.
In answer to Hochul, two names come to mind: Hakeem Jeffries of New York, leader of House Democrats, and Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer, also of New York.
Said Trump of the project’s cancellation, “It’s billions of dollars that Schumer has worked 20 years to get. Tell him it’s terminated.”
Schumer called Trump’s actions “vindictive, reckless and foolish. It’s revenge politics” that will cost some 15,000 “good paying” construction jobs. The termination threatens to “choke off our economy,” Schumer said.
Commentator and Nobel Prize economist Paul Krugman last week called President Trump “an incredibly petty man….”
To say the president is a strange duck wildly understates the case, but a strange duck he is. The self-proclaimed world peacemaker is waging war against at least half the country, and his antics threaten American democracy itself.
What is going on here? This is not meant to be flippant, but it appears that Donald Trump is suffering from a serious case of U.S.-derangement syndrome.
Richard Robbins lives in Uniontown. He can be reached at dick.l.robbins@gmail.com.