“I don’t think about Americans’ financial situation. I don’t think about anybody.”—Donald Trump
One way or another, the American taxpayers always get screwed by politicians eager to spend our hard-earned dollars on programs and projects that do little to improve our lives, safeguard our freedoms, or secure our future.
Donald Trump—the billionaire trust-fund baby/reality TV showman who transformed himself into a populist champion of working-class Americans—has proven to be no different, and in many ways worse, than the politicians who came before him.
Trump has given new meaning to government corruption, graft, grift, profiteering, self-dealing and pay-to-play politics.
From the proposed White House ballroom and its taxpayer-backed security upgrades, to the high-dollar UFC spectacle planned for the White House lawn, to pardons that function less like mercy than loyalty rewards, to government access increasingly conditioned on political obedience, Trump has turned the presidency into a private rewards program for himself, his donors, his allies and his enforcers.
Every new abuse is wrapped in the language of patriotism, security or justice. Every bill lands, sooner or later, on the backs of the American people.
Thus, rather than draining the swamp, Trump has shown himself to be the veritable swamp monster, mired in the muck and determined to keep it that way.
Trump’s latest grift? A taxpayer-funded slush fund, dressed up as justice, purportedly to compensate those who claim they were targeted by the “weaponization” of the Biden Justice Department and Democrats.
As part of the same settlement, the government also reportedly agreed to bar the IRS from auditing Trump, his family, the Trump Organization and related entities over tax filings and claims predating the agreement—a breathtaking act of self-protection disguised as legal closure that helps shield the president and his empire from the very kind of government scrutiny ordinary Americans are expected to endure without complaint.
Taken together, the payout fund and the audit shield expose the real purpose of this so-called anti-weaponization crusade: not to end weaponized government, but to decide who gets protected by it, who gets paid by it, and who gets crushed by it
Read between the lines of the deliberately vague information provided about this “Anti-Weaponization Fund,” which will be seeded with $1.776 billion in taxpayer funds, and it starts to look suspiciously like a fund to reimburse those convicted, investigated or politically inconvenienced for crossing legal lines in service to Trump’s agenda.
If it looks like corruption—and it smells like corruption—there’s a good chance it’s corruption.
Donald K. Sherman, president of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, wasn’t mincing words when he described it as “one of the single most corrupt acts in American history.”
At best, this is an outrageous misuse of taxpayer money. At worst, it is yet another perverted form of Trump’s presidential pardons, which have overwhelmingly benefited political loyalists, donors, grifters, extremists, and individuals either convicted of crimes in pursuit of Trump’s ambitions or useful to advancing those ambitions in the future—or both.
The message is unmistakable: commit crimes that benefit those in power, and those in power will absolve you, reimburse you, excuse you, or reward you.
These are not miscarriages of justice being corrected. They are protection payments, signals to future operatives: do what we need you to do, and we will take care of you.
But who will compensate “we the people” for the damage done when the government weaponizes its powers against us?
Who will compensate the people surveilled without warrants, raided without cause, censored for their views, bankrupted by fines and fees, brutalized by militarized police, jailed without due process, dragged through the courts, disappeared into detention centers, or treated as enemies of the state for exercising their constitutional rights?
Who will compensate the victims of a police state that has been weaponized by Republicans and Democrats alike?
That is the real question.
The Trump administration claims this fund is about redressing government weaponization.
Yet at the very same time, it is weaponizing the government against the citizenry: against protesters, immigrants, law firms, judges, journalists, universities, critics, whistleblowers, and anyone else who stands in the way of executive power.
This is what it means to weaponize the government.
When the government turns its power against its own people—through surveillance, retaliation, censorship, and intimidation—it ceases to serve the public and instead becomes a weapon of oppression.
According to the Political Dictionary, “The term ‘weaponize’ refers to the strategic manipulation or transformation of information, institutions, or social issues into tools for gaining political advantage.” That can mean exploiting existing laws, turning neutral institutions into partisan weapons, using the bureaucracy to delegitimize opponents, or rallying a base by convincing them that oppression is justice.
Time and again, presidents and power-hungry politicians have stretched—or outright shattered—the limits of their authority, weaponizing government power through unjust laws, surveillance, censorship, detention, intimidation and suppression.
Each power grab is another way of turning government into a weapon.
John Adams used the Alien and Sedition Acts to prosecute journalists and political opponents.
Abraham Lincoln suspended habeas corpus, allowing the military to detain individuals without trial and suppressing Confederate sympathizers and political dissenters.
Under Woodrow Wilson, the Espionage and Sedition Acts were used to crack down on anti-war activists, socialists, and labor organizers, including Eugene V. Debs, who spoke out against World War I.
Franklin D. Roosevelt issued an executive order that led to the internment of over 120,000 Japanese Americans during World War II, based on suspicions of disloyalty, despite little to no evidence.
Richard Nixon harnessed the power of the FBI, CIA, and IRS, to harass, spy on and sabotage his political opponents and perceived enemies.
Spanning numerous presidential administrations, from FDR to Nixon, the FBI’s covert intelligence program COINTELPRO was used to infiltrate, discredit and disrupt civil rights leaders, anti-war activists, and other political dissidents.
In a bid to fight so-called disinformation, Biden pressured social media companies to censor and suppress individuals expressing views perceived as conspiratorial or extremist, especially as they related to COVID-19.
And then there’s Donald Trump, who is setting new records for how far he’s willing to go to retaliate against his perceived enemies and sidestep the rule of law.
Indeed, Ken Hughes, an investigative journalist who spent two decades listening to Richard Nixon’s Secret White House Tapes, has concluded that Nixon’s abuses of presidential power—which included weaponizing the government to sabotage Vietnam peace talks, manipulate the timing of withdrawal from Vietnam, and spring former Teamsters president Jimmy Hoffa from prison in return for political support—pale beside Trump’s abuses.
Trump, who once vowed to end government overreach and the weaponization of the federal government, now openly uses its full force against his critics, dismantling democratic norms, consolidating power in ways that defy the Constitution, and directing an all-out weaponization of the federal government against his perceived enemies.
Those “enemies” now include anyone who dares to oppose him.
If Trump were merely a blowhard, that would be one thing.
Unfortunately, having populated his administration with individuals more loyal to him than to the Constitution, Trump has gotten drunk on power.
The danger is not Trump alone. The danger is Trump backed by enablers-to-abuse: the many minions within his administration and beyond who are eager to carry out unlawful orders, defy the courts, ignore Congress, trample rights, and butcher the Constitution in the name of putting America first.
If this keeps up, America—once held up as a bastion of freedom and economic opportunity—will be the last place anyone thinks of when they hear the words freedom, justice and equality.
Every action taken by the Trump administration in defiance of the rule of law—whether or not that action is dressed up as national security, law and order, border control, anti-corruption, or anti-weaponization—pushes us that much closer to the complete dismantling of our constitutional republic.
Don’t be so carried away by fear-inducing tales of rapists, foreign invaders, corruption, crime waves and political persecution that you let the government get away with murder: the painful execution of our rights.
That way lies tyranny.
You can see the pattern forming already.
When protesters are snatched up, arrested, prosecuted or surveilled for challenging government policy, that is government weaponized against dissent.
When immigrants are rounded up, chained, deported or detained without meaningful due process—without being properly identified, charged, heard, or allowed to challenge the government’s claims—that is government weaponized against due process.
When law firms are punished for the clients they represent, barred from federal buildings, stripped of security clearances, threatened with the loss of contracts, or pressured into providing hundreds of millions of dollars in legal services aligned with the administration’s priorities, that is government weaponized against the right to counsel.
When judges are derided, defied or threatened for ruling against the president’s agenda, that is government weaponized against the separation of powers.
When universities are threatened with funding cuts, investigations and ideological purges for failing to toe the government’s line, that is government weaponized against academic freedom and independent thought.
When journalists and critics are branded enemies, liars, radicals, criminals or traitors for questioning official narratives, that is government weaponized against the First Amendment.
When government websites, archives, agencies and public records are rewritten, scrubbed or politicized in order to reshape history, control memory, and enforce ideological obedience, that is government weaponized against truth.
When the president threatens other nations militarily, talks openly about seizing foreign lands, stirs up international tensions, rattles the war drums, and then claims wartime powers at home, that is government weaponized against peace, liberty and constitutional restraint.
Trump, adept at twisting facts and spinning lies, insists these end-runs around the rule of law are for our safety.
Don’t believe him. Words are cheap.
More importantly, don’t trust him. Bind him down with the chains of the Constitution.
The only real protection we have against tyranny is the rule of law, provided that the people and the system of government still hold the rule of law as inviolable.
That is our real power: the extent to which we hold fast to the Constitution and demand that the government and its agents do so, as well.
The moment that we relent in that commitment—the moment that we look the other way and let first a few encroachments slide, then ever more and more—is the moment the Constitution loses its power to protect us against tyranny.
That is what is unfolding right now.
This is the devil’s bargain that we are being asked to enter into with Trump: empty promises and a one-way street to a dictatorship in exchange for our freedoms.
Watch out.
When any politician claims to be saving you money by imposing tariffs that ramp up inflation and cutting government programs aimed at educating the masses, feeding the hungry, and helping the poor, disabled and elderly, all the while spending taxpayer money on his own lavish lifestyle and self-serving political programs, you’d better beware. Your hard-earned dollars will be next in line to be seized, spent and squandered.
When any politician suggests that you relinquish your freedoms—of speech, assembly, due process, association, etc.—in exchange for promises of greater security, you’d better beware. Your freedoms will be next on the chopping block.
When any politician persuades you to look the other way while innocent individuals are rounded up alongside suspected criminals just because they look a certain way, talk a certain way, worship a certain way, protest a certain way, or belong to a particular demographic, you’d better beware. Your right to due process will be next.
When any politician comes up with a vast array of reasons why he doesn’t need to obey court rulings—because they were issued verbally, because his power trumps that of the courts, because the courts are biased, because national security demands obedience, because the law ends at the border—you’d better beware. This shifty reasoning for breaking the law could be used against you next.
There can be no doubt about the nature of what is taking place right now.
This is government weaponized into war.
President Trump’s justification for defying the courts and doing whatever he wants in pursuit of his political agenda (arresting protesters, carrying out mass arrests and deportations, muzzling critics, seizing funds, dismantling agencies, usurping congressional powers) is that “this is war.”
Here’s the thing, though: Trump may be using the language of war to bypass the Constitution at every turn, but the only war being waged is a war against the Constitution, the rule of law and the American people.
Congress, which has the sole power to declare war under Article I, Section 8, Clause 11, has not declared war on the American people. And still Trump is using the emergency powers and wartime rhetoric of the presidency to sidestep accountability and due process.
In ruling after ruling, the courts, which have the judicial power to rein in overreach and misconduct, have pushed back against the Trump administration’s steady dismantling of constitutional limits. And still Trump is unilaterally hacking away at the very foundations of our system of government.
If the president refuses to be held accountable, insists his power is supreme, abuses the power of his office to wreak havoc and revenge, reduces our republic to rubble, tramples the Constitution, and disregards the rule of law, he is aligning himself with every despot, dictator and tyrant to have walked the earth.
We’ve been here before. We know how this story ends.
It takes time and effort and a willingness on the part of “we the people” to look beyond our differences and stand united in opposition to oppression, but when we do that, freedom prevails in the end.
This year will mark the 250th anniversary of the birth of this country, when America’s founders declared their independence from King George’s tyranny.
What’s just as important, however, is what came before that: the small steps of rebellion, resistance and outrage that said, “enough is enough.”
What we are now experiencing is not simply a partisan power struggle. It is the weaponization of the machinery of government for compliance and control.
The objective: obedience.
The strategy: destabilize the economy, polarize the populace, escalate racial and political tensions, intensify the use of violence, and then, when all hell breaks loose, clamp down on the nation for the good of the people and the security of the nation.
The outcome for this particular conflict is already foregone if we refuse to resist: the Deep State wins.
The Deep State wins by ensuring that we are censored, silenced, muzzled, gagged, zoned out, caged in and shut down.
It wins by monitoring our speech and activities for any sign of “extremist” activity.
It wins by ensuring that we are estranged from each other and kept at a distance from those who are supposed to represent us.
It wins by saddling us with taxation without representation and a government without the consent of the governed.
It wins by terminating the Constitution—or rewriting it until it no longer restrains those in power.
So where does that leave us?
“We” may have contributed to our downfall through our inaction and gullibility, but we are also the only hope for a free future.
After all, the Constitution begins with those three beautiful words, “We the people.”
Those three words were intended as a reminder to future generations that there is no government without us: our sheer numbers, our muscle, our economy, our physical presence in this land.
When we forget that—when we allow the “me” of a self-absorbed, narcissistic, politically polarizing culture to override our civic duties as citizens to collectively stand up to tyranny and make the government play by the rules of the Constitution—that is when tyranny rises and freedom falls.
Remember, there is power in numbers.
Not the kinds of numbers that Trump likes to spout about landslide victories and electoral mandates, but the most powerful numbers of all: the sheer, overwhelming mass of humanity that is “we the people” of these United States of America.
If there is any means left to us for thwarting the government in its relentless march towards outright dictatorship, it rests with us.
Ultimately, that’s what the Tenth Amendment to the Constitution is all about: it affirms that “we the people” have all the power, and what powers we do not explicitly give to the federal government or the states, we retain.
We may appoint government representatives to act in our stead, but we never relinquish that power altogether.
That’s where Trump and his Deep State handlers get it wrong. Speaking through him and his administration, they claim that this dismantling of the federal government is a bid to return power to local communities and state governments, but it’s not their government to dismantle, nor is it their power to return.
We are the government.
We are the power.
And it’s time “we the people” reminded the government and its henchmen of that important fact.
The power still lies with us.
We must resist every attempt to erode our freedoms, demand accountability, and uphold the Constitution before it’s too late.
It’s time to invalidate governmental laws, tactics and policies that are illegitimate, egregious or blatantly unconstitutional.
Nullify everything the government does that flies in the face of the Constitution.
Flood your representatives’ phone lines, inboxes and townhall meetings with your discontent.
Protest everything that tramples on the Constitution.
Stand up for your own rights, of course, but more importantly, stand up for the rights of those with whom you might disagree.
Defend freedom at all costs. Defend justice at all costs. Make no exceptions based on race, religion, creed, politics, immigration status, sexual orientation, etc.
Don’t play semantics. Don’t justify. Don’t politicize it.
If it carries even a whiff of tyranny, oppose it.
Demand that your representatives in government cut you a better deal, one that abides by the Constitution and doesn’t just attempt to sidestep it. That’s their job: make them do it.
And don’t let them distract you with slush funds, payouts, pardons and political theater disguised as justice.
If the government is going to compensate anyone for being victimized by weaponized power, then start with “we the people.”
Start with the Americans whose rights have been trampled by SWAT teams, surveillance dragnets, censorship regimes, secret watchlists, police brutality, asset forfeiture schemes, no-knock raids, indefinite detentions, politically motivated prosecutions, and every other tactic by which the police state has turned the Constitution into collateral damage.
Start with the people forced to pay for their own oppression.
Until then, this so-called Anti-Weaponization Fund is not justice.
It is hush money for the powerful, paid for by the powerless.
It is the weaponized government rewarding its own while leaving the rest of us to foot the bill.
As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, all freedoms hang together.
They fall together, as well.
Article posted with permission from John Whitehead
