Make Ableism Great Again

Trump 47 isn’t a sequel. It’s a series finale.

The majority of American voters and too many members of the news media seem to have forgotten what a disaster Trump was in his first term as president. So please allow me to review. As I write in the introduction to Rough Beast:

Donald Trump’s term in office can be summed up in four words: pandemic, protest, impeachment, and insurrection. He left the White House with 392,428 Americans dead of a plague he exacerbated; with Washington recovering from a coup attempt he instigated; with the economy teetering towards recession; with our standing around the world at its lowest point in a century; and with the U.S. an additional $8 trillion in debt. He had, by far, the lowest average presidential approval rating since Gallop started keeping track in 1938, and was widely reviled abroad. Four of the five largest protests in the history of the country happened on his watch. He was impeached twice. He could have been impeached a third time, in 2019, after the release of the Mueller Report—which, contrary to what Trump and the mendacious Bill Barr told us, did not exonerate him. Even his much-ballyhooed campaign promises fell flat: He failed to build the wall, and he failed to drain the swamp. He did, however, watch a lot of television and play a lot of golf.

. . . By any metric, Trump was a catastrophic failure: corrupt, sociopathic, cruel, venal, disruptive, artless, dumb, and pathologically inept—a terrible president and an even worse human being. He threw paper towels at hurricane victims! He called veterans of our armed forces “suckers and losers!” He invited the Taliban to Camp David! He banked $2.4 billion in emoluments during his four years in office! He characterized the neo-Nazis at Charlottesville as “very fine people!” He nominated an(other) alleged sexual assailant to the Supreme Court! He sat on his ass watching TV as his besiegers stormed the Capitol! He humped a flag! And that’s just off the top of my head.

We have never had a monster like this in the White House. No one comes close. That the country managed to survive four years of Trump suggests that Otto von Bismarck was on to something when he remarked that God seems to have a special providence for the United States of America. With Donald, we dodged a big orange bullet.

Despite all of that, and for reasons pundits and political scientists and people who badly want to believe in the promise of America struggle to explain, voters have opted to reload that big orange bullet into the revolver of the White House to play another round of Russian roulette.

Evangelicals might view Trump’s triumphant return as the Second Coming of Tangerine Jesus. But Trump 47 isn’t a sequel. It’s a series finale.

The first go-around, Donald at least pretended to be an actual president of a democracy. No more. Any glimmer of hope that the almost-octogenarian had been magically matured by the job and would take it seriously this time around evaporated with the disturbing news of his cabinet nominees.

If Trump has his way—and he usually does, for reasons I will go to the grave not understanding—the Department of Justice will be led by Jeffrey Epstein 2.0. The proposed head of Health & Human Services wants to Make Diphtheria Great Again. His pick for the Director of National Intelligence is a stooge of either the Kremlin or Jagad Guru Siddhaswarupananda Paramahamsa, the founder of the Science of Identity Foundation cult she’s belonged to all her life; either way, say aloha to our national secrets! Oh, and the proposed Defense Secretary is a white nationalist with a thing for the Crusades.

Now, it may be that Donald is just trolling us with these selections—that he’s floating Matt Gaetz as AG so no one will object when he puts in Mike Davis or Matthew Whitaker instead. He’s a negotiator, after all—art of the deal and all that. But there’s no pair of glasses rose-tinted enough to make any of this look good. Trump has three, and only three, priorities for his second term: 1) avoid prison, 2) exact vengeance on his enemies, and 3) plunder from the American people on a galactic scale. That’s it. That’s all. Any serious analysis of what he plans to do has to start with these axioms.

Trump will not lift a (short) finger to help anyone in need—not because of some Ayn Randian / Paul Ryan philosophy about bootstraps, but because he is a sadist who enjoys watching people suffer. Throughout his presidency—hell, throughout his life—Trump has expressed disdain for people with disabilities. How will his flagrant ableism, combined with his sadistic tendencies, affect how he governs in his second term?

On today’s PREVAIL podcast, I discuss this with the broadcaster Jimmy Kennedy, former executive producer of “The Noel Casler Podcast” and host of “JBK On Air.” Jimmy, who has cerebral palsy, is also a longtime public speaker with the non-profit organization Timmy Global Health, where he advocates on behalf of people with disabilities.

“Something I want to establish quickly here is, we all have disabilities,” Kennedy tells me. “Some are more pronounced; others you can hide better. Trump himself is dyslexic. He can’t read, you know—so Trump himself has issues, and they were never dealt with properly or given proper treatment. So that’s one reason for his ableism.”

We see evidence of this prejudice in Trump’s decision, years ago, to cut off his disabled nephew from the company’s health insurance. “He said, let his nephew die who had cerebral palsy and was wheelchair bound,” Kennedy says. “This is not a changing behavior.”

Donald’s antipathy towards people with disabilities is “a long-held belief,” Kennedy notes. Another example: “He mocked Braille being in the elevator of Trump Tower and said that ‘Blind people will not live here.’”

One of the many repugnant things we learned about Trump in Jeffrey Goldberg’s “Hitler’s Generals” Atlantic article is his contempt for soldiers wounded in war:

Kelly and others have taken special note of the revulsion Trump feels in the presence of wounded veterans. After Trump attended a Bastille Day parade in France, he told Kelly and others that he would like to stage his own parade in Washington, but without the presence of wounded veterans. “I don’t want them,” Trump said. “It doesn’t look good for me.”

Milley also witnessed Trump’s disdain for the wounded. Milley had chosen a severely wounded Army captain, Luis Avila, to sing “God Bless America” at his installation ceremony in 2019. Avila, who had completed five combat tours, had lost a leg in an improvised-explosive-device attack in Afghanistan, and had suffered two heart attacks, two strokes, and brain damage as a result of his injuries. Avila is considered a hero up and down the ranks of the Army.

It had rained earlier on the day of the ceremony, and the ground was soft; at one point Avila’s wheelchair almost toppled over. Milley’s wife, Holly­anne, ran to help Avila, as did then–Vice President Mike Pence. After Avila’s performance, Trump walked over to congratulate him, but then said to Milley, within earshot of several witnesses, “Why do you bring people like that here? No one wants to see that, the wounded.” Never let Avila appear in public again, Trump told Milley.

That is the soon-to-again-be President of the United States openly ordering his top general to keep people with disabilities hidden from view. You know, like the Nazis did.

That, Kennedy says, is the Trump position that most concerns him. “People with disabilities belong in society and should be seen,” he says. “They are part of what makes a community community. You can’t just, you know, hide them from society and expect positive results. I think that’s what scares me the most, is that people with disabilities are not going to be seen. They’re going to continue to struggle. And a marginalized group already is going to continue to be marginalized. I think that’s the biggest concern.”

Donald’s contempt for people with disabilities was readily apparent on the campaign trail eight years ago. “As somebody who wanted to give Trump a shot in 2016, I didn’t totally write him off until he mocked a reporter as a candidate in 2016 on live television,” Kennedy says. “You know, if he’s bullying a reporter with a disability on live television, what does he do in private?”

If the Access Hollywood tape is any indication, or the details from Goldberg’s dogged reporting at the Atlantic, or the many reports of Donald using the n-word on the set of The Apprentice, or the four dozen sexual assault allegations, or a thousand other stories from a thousand other people who have had the misfortune to be in his immediate orbit, what Trump does behind closed doors is much, much worse.

Insofar as he has any concrete vision at all for the future of the country, Trump wants to recreate the McKinley era: American empire, tariffs, Jim Crow, women as second-class citizens, union busting, no regulations on food or drugs or anything else, extreme income inequality, frequent diphtheria outbreaks, propaganda masquerading as objective news, and all the money and power concentrated in the hands of a select few. MAGA, baby! Wilmington Massacre to own the libs!

Things didn’t end so well for McKinley. Just three months into his second term, he was shot and killed by an anarchist who opposed the president’s plutocratic policies. The swashbuckling young VP, Theodore Roosevelt, ascended to the White House, and the rest is history. While Trump is unlikely to serve all four years of his second term—given his advanced age, ill health, possible dementia, penchant for being shot at by his own followers, and removability via the 25th Amendment or third impeachment, the odds are stacked against him—I am somehow unpersuaded that JD is TR. (“I knew Teddy Roosevelt, I worked with Teddy Roosevelt—you’re no Teddy Roosevelt!”)

There’s no way around it: We are headed for four years of pain, and we will be lucky if American democracy is not kaput by the sestercentennial. Most disheartening of all, this is the future a majority of U.S. voters wanted.

“I think the biggest disappointment,” Kennedy says, “is that a lot of people who know better than to empower him chose to empower him.”

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LISTEN TO THE EPISODE

S8 E10:  The Mourning After (with Jimmy Kennedy)

Jimmy Kennedy was the executive producer of the first season of “The Noel Casler Podcast,” the afternoon drive producer for The Kent Sterling Show on CBS Sports 1430 AM in Indianapolis, and a gameday staff member with the Indianapolis Colts of the National Football League. He is currently the host and producer of his own show, “JBK On Air,” where he interviews a variety of guests including athletes, political commentators, media personalities, & more. Jimmy, who has cerebral palsy, is a longtime public speaker with the non-profit organization Timmy Global Health, where he advocates on behalf of people with disabilities.

In this conversation, Greg Olear and Jimmy Kennedy discuss the aftermath of the recent election, reflecting on the surprising outcomes and the implications for democracy. Kennedy shares his personal journey in broadcasting, highlighting the importance of storytelling and the impact of his experiences on his podcasting endeavors. They discuss the implications of Trump's policies on Social Security, the intersection of politics and sports, and the challenges of maintaining relationships in a politically divided society. They delve into the rights of people with disabilities under the Trump administration, the importance of finding hope amidst political turmoil, and the potential future of American politics with figures like JD Vance. Plus: coming attractions.

Subscribe to Jimmy’s podcast:
https://linktr.ee/jbkonair 

Support Timmy Global Health:
https://www.timmyglobalhealth.org/

Subscribe to The Five 8:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC0BRnRwe7yDZXIaF-QZfvhA

Check out ROUGH BEAST, Greg’s new book:
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0D47CMX17

ROUGH BEAST is now available as an audiobook:
https://www.audible.com/pd/Rough-Beast-Audiobook/B0D8K41S3T

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Photo credit: President Donald J. Trump, places a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier as part of the 150th annual Department of Defense (DoD) National Memorial Day Observance hosted by the Secretary of Defense at Arlington National Cemetery, May 28, 2018. Senior leadership from around the DoD gathered to honor America’s fallen military service members. (DoD Photo by U.S. Army Sgt. James K. McCann)