Jimmy Carter’s campaign motto in 1976 was “Why Not the Best!” declaring everywhere he went: “I want to see us once again have a nation that’s as good and honest and decent and truthful and competent and compassionate and filled with love as are the American people.”

Dictator Donald Trump wants the opposite and is bringing the worst out of America. Here are a few of his metastasizing initiatives:

1. Championed the worst forms of energy – coal, oil, and gas – and depressing solar energy and wind power with restrictive policies, and even paying ongoing wind project companies nearly a billion dollars in your tax dollars to stop construction! Also, he is using many billions of your tax dollars to subsidize the failing nuclear power companies to build more expensive, unneeded, uninsurable, un-investable (by Wall Street), unsafe, boondoggles while his GOP takes large campaign contributions from fossil fuel and nuclear power corporate welfarists.

2. Encouraged the worst corruption of the Pentagon—more waste, contractor fraud and abuse—led by a foul-mouthed buffoon pushing illegal wars, mass deaths, and racism. Hegseth is despised by many high-ranking officers for his misogynistic firings and incompetence.

3. Brought out the worst from his toady Attorney Generals at the Justice Department—firing prosecutors and other lawyers for perceived vengeance. Trump gives orders directly to DOJ officials, thus ending any traditional arms-length independence at that Department. Trump has gotten his Attorney Generals to dismiss over 100 corporate crime cases, to decline enforcement of laws holding polluters and corporate criminals accountable, and made DOJ his personal law firm.

4. Encouraged the worst from the Environmental Protection Agency, whose puppet director believes that more methane, other greenhouse gases, motor vehicle gases, auto factories, and coal pollution are permissible for America’s children to breathe. EPA Director Lee Zeldin should rename his shattered agency and fired scientists “The Trump Anti-Environment Protection Agency.”

5. Suppressed or cancelled programs of scientific truth-seeking while publicizing pseudo-scientists who go far beyond healthy skepticism to peddle quackery about climate violence, pandemics, and vaccines that lead to distrust and disarray among vulnerable people wanting to protect their families. For Trump, climate catastrophes are “a hoax, a scam” and he is giving corporations the green light on dangerous pesticides (especially deadly to little children) which increase the risk of cancer and other lethal diseases. When you lie every talking hour of the day, as Trump does, the truth and facts have no relevance.

6. Trump is self-servingly wrecking the Internal Revenue Service (IRS). Further cutting its tight budget via the GOP in Congress, the IRS has a grossly inadequate number of experts skilled in detecting complex corporate tax schemes and evasions totaling hundreds of billions of dollars in TAX ESCAPES per year.

One of those Escapes is the coerced deal Trump imposed on the IRS to give him and his avaricious family immunity from past and contemporary audits and enforcement, worth a gold mine to the bragging tax dodger-in-chief. He has wrecked public trust in his politicized IRS, on which voluntary compliance by American taxpayers is based.

7. Trump has grievously brought out the worst from the Congress, finishing off what is left of the separation of powers, turning Speaker Mike Johnson into a panting lap dog and Senate Majority Leader John Thune into a more staid but ready heel-clicker. Trump has opposed any public hearings and investigative oversight of the Executive Branch, including an inquiry into his illegal firing of 17 inspector generals required to root out waste and fraud from their departments.

In his first term, Trump defied over 125 Congressional subpoenas – an impeachable offense if ever there was one.

8. Trump brings out the worst from major corporations. His dictates—allowing corporations to cheat, steal, harm, pollute, and violate with impunity almost any federal laws, most of which Trump has shelved by taking the federal cops off the corporate crime beat—could fill a large book.. This is especially the case in lifting controls over poisonous corporate pollution and letting large companies decide for themselves how little or no tax they pay to Uncle Sam from their massive profits. Why not? He preaches what he practices as he amasses an ever-greater personal wealth using the White House as a profiteering office for profiteering.

9. Worsening the architecture of the White House and nearby Washington, D.C., are major preoccupations of this egomaniacal dilettante. He illegally tore down the East Wing and is building, without Congressional permission, a huge, garish ballroom to go along with other planned desecrations, such as the 250-foot-high arch. As architect critic Philip Kennicott of the Washington Post writes, he has turned “the reflecting pool from a serene oasis to a police zone,” bungling........

© Common Dreams