Donald Trump at 101 days: Is this what you really wanted? I don’t think so | Opinion
If all I knew about Trump supporters came from the blinking strings of expletives and insults that land in my inbox, then I, too, would think you quite the mean-spirited bunch, exulting in the unnecessary misery of all sorts of people you do not know, and of any who do not agree with you.
That isn’t all I know, since I grew up with you. So I often argue with those who believe that the cruelty of Trump’s first 100 days in office is the one thing that you can’t quit, and why there is nothing that this man could do to lose your support, even as you claim not to like him very much. True, owning the libs seems to be quite the draw, but surely not at any price.
Because from what I’ve seen of those of you I actually know, helping those who need it, even when they are not like you, I persist in thinking better of you. I do not — see above — persist in believing that you will take this in the spirit in which it’s intended, or that you will respond in kind, but here is what I would like to know if you did.
You said you wanted violent criminals deported, and that’s more than right; the only disagreement was over how many of those there actually were. But I do not believe that you wanted a little American kid with cancer shipped off, or due process destroyed. I don’t think you wanted a student who did nothing more than write an op-ed snatched off the street like this wasn’t even America anymore, because weren’t you all about free speech?
When did it start being OK to ignore the courts?
Every one of your elected officials I ever knew anything about came up talking so reverentially about the Constitution. I saw that as genuine. So when did it start being OK to cancel the cancelers, or threaten judges, or ignore the Supreme Court, or censor history, or attack academic freedom, including at KU, by the way?
You said you wanted budget cuts, but I don’t think you would have said to hell with our veterans, or the young people who go out and work their guts out for AmeriCorps, or those who provide services for disabled people, or do vital research into all kinds of diseases that you and your loved ones get, too. Even in this up-is-down world, that would make no sense.
You wanted an end to endless wars, and don’t we all, but I don’t remember you signing up for annexing Greenland, or Gaza, or Canada. Even those of you who weren’t so pro-NATO didn’t want all of our most loyal allies turned into adversaries and vice versa. It has been a great 100 days for Russia and despite the tariffs, for China, and unless the project was wrecking the United States, how was that part of the plan?
You who are pro-life care about all children everywhere, so how was ending the USAID that was keeping so many alive across the globe not a cataclysmic event? According to ProPublica, senior USAID officials warned Trump officials that a “million children will go untreated for severe malnutrition, up to 166,000 people will die from malaria and 200,000 more children will be paralyzed by polio over the next decade, the memos estimated. The programs were cut anyway.”
The rationalizations by Elon Musk — including that USAID was paying The New York Times “tens of millions of dollars” didn’t hold up; it actually paid the paper $1.6 million over five years, for subscriptions that could have been canceled without letting some of the world’s poorest kids die.
This government, too, can be wrong
I’m sure you who so distrust government in general know that this government, too, can get things wrong, just like they did when they accidentally fired top NIH research scientists, accidentally ended funding for burying veterans, walked back cuts to aid for 9/11 first responders, accidentally fired those working on an answer to the bird flu, and mistakenly fired hundreds of those who work in our nuclear weapons programs.
So if those accidents can and did occur, how is it so impossible to believe that someone could erroneously be sent to a prison that, according to the self-described “world’s coolest dictator,” no one ever leaves alive? People are wrongly convicted in this country even with due process, so taking that important protection away is genuinely frightening, and completely un-American.
I do not for a second believe that you see those photos from that megaprison CECOT in El Salvador and stand a little taller. So here’s my question: Why so silent?
Some say it’s because none of this has touched you Trump supporters personally yet, but that simply isn’t true. The president’s need for constant chaos has seriously damaged the economy already, and nobody is immune from that.
It isn’t only Democratic federal workers who have been let go across the country, and here in Kansas City, too, of course. Our small businesses are as vulnerable as anywhere else, and cuts to the Jackson County Public Health office and grants that promote infectious disease testing and vaccinations will hurt us in ways we can’t even yet predict. Kansas farmers were “devastated” by the first-term Trump tariffs, yet as a group they voted for more of the same, and will get it.
Oh, but he’s slumping in the polls, you say? While I do not agree with Trump’s view of pollsters as “criminals” who should be investigated right along with his other perceived enemies for saying he’s slipping, I also put zero stock in any polling at this point. And a little anonymous “I could be happier” grousing is not the same as standing up against the wrongs that are happening and the rights being eroded.
On his first day in office, Donald Trump said he was going to do some things that we would find shocking. Nothing he could do would shock me. But you I’ve known all my life, who say nothing when speaking up to the people you put in office could make such a big difference, that’s what I find the hardest of all to accept. Why so silent?
This story was originally published April 30, 2025 at 5:08 AM.
