Most of us have heard the fable attributed to Aesop about the farmer and the snake. A farmer finds a snake that is almost frozen. The snake promises the farmer not to bite him if the farmer saves him. Once the snake warms up, he bites the farmer. As the farmer lies dying, he asks the snake why he bit him after promising not to. The snake replies, “You knew I was a snake when you helped me.”
That’s why I’m surprised that people are surprised by Trump’s actions. Trump was known for discriminatory actions. In 1973, he and his father Fred Trump were sued by the Justice Department for alleged racial discrimination for not renting to Blacks at Trump housing developments in New York. Trump tried to countersue the Justice Department for $100 million for making false statements. The case eventually settled.
Is it no wonder that the majority of the countries from which the Trump Administration has banned or restricted immigration appear to be either majority brown or black or Islamic?
In 2005, in an unaired interview with Billy Bush, Trump showed how little respect he has for women by saying, “And when you’re a star they let you do it. You can do anything. Grab them by the p****. You can do anything.”
On May 30, 2024, Trump was convicted in New York of 34 felony counts of falsifying business records in the first degree in connection with concealing a hush money payment to adult film star Stormy Daniels. Usually, felons cannot own a gun or vote. Donald Trump cannot own a gun, but he can vote in Florida because Florida defers to the laws of the state in which the conviction occurs. Under New York law, a felon can vote as long as he is not incarcerated at the time of the election.
Trump continues to say that he won the 2020 election and that the results were fraudulent. He attempted a coup by demanding that his supporters come to Washington, D.C. and stop Congress from certifying the results of the Presidential election. It is strange that Trump alleges that the 2020 election was fraudulent because he lost, but says nothing about the 2024 election that he won. It is the same election system.
In August, 2026, Trump added to the many disrespectful comments to journalists by telling CNN senior White House correspondent Kristen Holmes to “be quiet,” and calling her “fake news,” “disrespectful,” and “a loud, boisterous person” after she asked about the comment that Senator Jon Ossoff made to a crowd about Trump wanting “to build his ballroom and travel with Natalie (the President’s executive assistant) on their apparently defenseless flying palace gifted by the emir of Qatar” rather than wanting “to do the job (of President).” Trump also attacked her on social media. Prior to that incident, he has called a female journalist “piggy” and told one journalist that she was “a terrible person and a terrible reporter.”
Trump has embarrassed himself and our country by suggesting that the United States buy Greenland, proposing that Canada should be our 51st state, renaming the Gulf of Mexico and Lake Ontario, triggering trade wars with allies, and naming seemingly unqualified and polarizing figures such as Kimberley Guilfoyle, Pete Hegseth and Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., and most recently, Katie Zacharia to administrative positions.
In February of this year, Trump proved how low he would go by posting a video superimposing former President Barack Obama and former First Lady Michele Obama’s faces onto cartoon ape bodies and then refusing to apologize.
U.S. citizens re-elected Trump to the presidency in 2024, even after seeing his actions in his first term, and now you’re surprised that he started another war instead of ending the war between Russia and Ukraine as he promised, that our food and gas prices are outrageous, that he is using the U.S. Justice Department to go after his political enemies, that he is unconstitutionally interfering in elections which are the realm of the states, that he has threatened to get rid of FEMA and has visited few of the areas in our country devastated by wildfires, tornados, hurricanes, and floods to offer support and comfort to those affected, and that he is enriching himself, his family, and his friends through the presidency.
Why are you surprised? You knew who he was when you elected him.