A little over a year ago, Donald Trump came into office as the United State’s 45th President after an exceedingly controversial election. I was among the many people who feared that Trump would ruin our country, dragging us backwards rather than forward. Unfortunately, in such a short time as president, Trump has managed to do more damage than I ever thought possible.
It all started with a few lies here and there which, little did I know, would turn out to be the only consistency one could expect from Trump. Soon after winning the election, Trump took to his Twitter to post the first of many incorrect statements, saying that he had won the popular vote. He has continued to make up his own statistics and false claims with no evidence to support them. On March 13, 2018, Trump insisted that “the state of California is begging us to build walls” when the truth is that California had started a lawsuit a while ago to stop the construction of Trump’s glorified wall.
However, while his lies started out small, Trump has continued to spew larger, more complex lies to keep secrets that are finally coming out into the light. Investigations into Trump’s involvement with Russia are slowly but surely progressing, and the closer Mueller gets to finding hard evidence of Trump’s collaboration with Russia in swinging the 2016 election, the guiltier he looks. Trump has managed to fire everybody he can who has gotten too close to the Russia investigation which only urges Mueller and his team to dig deeper.
Amidst the search to uncover the inappropriate and illegal dealings Trump seems to have had with Russia, Trump himself has been busy wreaking havoc since January 20, 2017. In the following months, Trump signed an executive order that banned travel from seven mostly Muslim countries, announced via his Twitter that transgender people wouldn’t be allowed in the military due to the “tremendous medical costs and disruption”, and called the white supremacists involved in the Charlottesville neo-Nazi rally “fine people.” Each and every one of these actions caused a justified uproar from the American population as the man they may or may not have voted for as president slowly revealed himself to be a racist and unfit leader.
As if that wasn’t enough, it’s become evident that Trump doesn’t care at all about the environment, seeing as he hired Scott Pruitt as the leader of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Pruitt spent his years opposing the EPA’s clean air and water rules, and both Trump and Pruitt have pushed for the return of coal mining, a process well-researched and proven to have a dangerous environmental impact.
With Trump as our president, the United States of America has become an unreliable and unstable presence. Trump has threatened to and has backed out of international treaties and recently announced the establishment of trade tariffs which created tension with America’s allies. The decision to implement tariffs on Chinese goods caused the stock market to take a major dive.
Unfortunately, he continues to mock, belittle, and make light of serious situations, with his behavior replicating that of an id-driven child more than that of a composed national leader. I wish I could say that I’m hopeful for the future, but from what I’ve seen from this man within his first year of taking office, I’m honestly fearful of what is to come. I’m fearful because we have a corrupt and deluded president who cares less about being a president and more about his own personal agenda. I’m fearful because we have a president who does not care about all of his citizens, only those that are white and preferably male. However, most of all, I’m fearful because a president is supposed to protect his people, and instead, Trump has sided with the NRA in regard to the movement that has ensued after Parkland. I can only cross my fingers and pray that Trump doesn’t inflict too much damage in the remaining years of his term, yet I’m sensing that I, along with the rest of my generation, will be required to continue taking action into our own hands.
