Trump is nation's greatest threat

Donald Trump has been president for almost five months, and I still don’t know what to do with myself.

As he casually destroys the foundations of the American republic, I now know what it means to be truly powerless. Every day, with every tweet and every action, he embarrasses the country. One day he lunges at the mayor of London after a terrorist attack, the next he’s calling the former FBI director a liar.

He goes after Germany, one of our most powerful allies, and rips up the Paris accord on climate.

He would like to destroy freedom of the press and freedom of speech. To call him a bull in a china shop is to insult the bull.

I cringe when I read the newspaper. What has he done now, I think. What will he do tomorrow?

With all the news of Russian interference in the election, I think there’s actually a deeper connection. I don’t think Trump personally colluded with the Russians, because he didn’t have to. He was already connected to them. I think Trump owes the Russians a lot of money.

If Russian banks loaned Trump money, in effect, he was borrowing from the Russian government itself, as The New York Times has pointed out. That would mean he is personally beholden to the Russian government.

Russia is a malicious, malignant foreign actor. Putin invaded Crimea and is trying to destabilize Ukraine. He’s helping to tear Syria apart and has killed hundreds of thousands of innocent people to keep Assad in power. His own people have no say in how they are governed.

Because Trump owes money to the Russians, he’s unable to see them for what they are — a major threat to world peace and stability.

Trump himself is the greatest threat to the country and our freedoms, bigger than ISIS, al-Qaida or North Korea. 

So, I walk around in a daze much of the time, my head knocked about by the daily hits our country takes, wondering how much damage Trump can do before our institutions and freedoms start to crumble.

I have considered moving to the highlands of Peru or Canada’s arctic territories, or any remote place where you can’t find The New York Times and get pummeled by Trump’s daily lies and destructive actions, by his assaults on what we know to be reality.

But then I think I need to say in the country I love, for its freedoms and its beauty, its foundation for human liberty. These things are worth fighting for. 

So I recently joined Public Citizen, an advocacy group that is fighting against Trump’s assault on our freedoms. I have given money to environmental groups fighting to stave off the worst effects of climate change.

But there’s more that must be done. We all need to fight a battle we didn’t ask for, but which has been thrust upon us by a president who doesn’t care about this country’s freedoms or foundations of its greatness.