Where is the Line?
President Trump's Endless Hit List
I keep meaning to talk about parenting again. And with an ADHD teen fighting his way through high school, and a 9-year-old who won’t stop dragging me outside in these frigid temperatures to throw him the football, I have plenty to talk about.
But we installed our new dictator president earlier this week, and he’s wasting no time following through on all the promises he made, except the ones that actually help lower the price of eggs, or help end the war in Ukraine, or help anyone at all, and especially the ones he supposedly didn’t promise in documents like Project 2025.
I’m not gonna run through all of that terrifying stuff here; I have my own sanity to protect. But needless to say, his executive orders to remove birthright citizenship; eliminate DEI protections, and allow ICE to infiltrate formerly safe spaces like schools and hospitals while rounding up immigrants; his moves to withdraw from the World Health Organization and exit the Paris Agreement, to reverse regulations on climate change, pardon hundreds of violent insurrectionists, and shutter the White House’s Office of Gun Violence Prevention, and more, don’t fill me with joy.
I will run through something else, though.
As you’ve surely heard by now, during a prayer service after Trump’s inauguration, Episcopal Bishop Mariann E. Budde made a courageous plea to the new President for mercy, kindness, and decency. Her remarks, which could only be considered “courageous” if they stood in direct opposition to the new administration’s policies—which they somehow shamefully do—were quickly met with a predictable (and boring) social media takedown from Trump.
We’ve seen similar versions of Trump’s disgusting post on Truth Social dozens, if not hundreds, of times before. The list of groups and people he has been attacking and denigrating—and sending his mob after—for the past decade of his political dominance is quite long, because he hates everyone who doesn’t love him. Listing them all is a fool’s errand, but it’s Dry January and I have nothing better to do, so here goes.
Forgive me if I miss any, because I am quite certain I’m missing many.
Biden and Kamala Harris and Obama anyone else in the previous administration or any previous Democratic administration
Liz Cheney and any and all Republicans who don’t bend the knee
Any former employees or former cabinet appointees or politicians or human beings who dare express contempt or disappointment or skepticism at any of his policies
Gavin Newsom and every other blue-state Governor, Mayor or elected official
Women
Black people
Mexicans
Illegal immigrants
Legal immigrants
Anyone from other countries, except their dictators
China
Ukraine
Haiti
Jamaica
“Shithole countries”
Europe
NATO
Earth
Disabled people
Gay people
Trans people
Religious people
Nice people
Military personnel who disagree with him
Military personnel who got captured
Veterans
Scientists
Doctors
Journalists
News anchors
(Black) athletes
Protesters
His own children
His ex-wives
His current wife
Elon Musk, both previously and eventually
Robert DeNiro
Jimmy Kimmel
Stephen Colbert
Too many other celebrities to name
Democrats
People who live in democratic states
That’s a lot of people in a lot of different categories, but there’s really just one category:
Literally anyone who doesn’t give him money or praise
This includes Bishop Mariann E. Budde and would almost certainly include the actual Jesus Christ, who, if he were to one day return as so many of Trump’s followers fantasize, would have a lot more in common with Bishop Budde than with Trump, or Elon, or anyone else who is a part of or even supports the current administration. Thus far, all evidence indicates that, given the choice, all of those people would continue to side with President Trump over the literal Christian messiah.
Which leads us to my ultimate question: Where is the line?
At what point does this man attack and denigrate and target and victimize a group of people so sacred that his supporters might actually wake up to Trump’s true character and jump ship, regardless of the price of eggs (at an all-time high, by the way)?
Right now, a few days after he excoriated an actual bishop after she made a heartfelt plea for kindness and mercy, I suspect there is no line. Trump’s MAGA cultists haven’t just guzzled the Kool-Aid (it was actually Flavor-Aid at Jonestown, FYI) that Fox News and OAN and the countless podcasts and social media influencers and other assorted enablers spew, they bathe in it. It sustains them. Before abandoning their false idol, they would need Trump to go door-to-door and call them losers to their faces, and even then I doubt it would give them much pause.
These people, so many of whom claim to be of the very faith that Bishop Mariann Budde preaches about and personifies in ways their Dear Leader has no interest in or capability of doing have instead placed that faith in a man who habitually makes it clear that he deserves none, and that he has nothing but disdain for them and their purported values.
Where is the line? We crossed it a decade ago, and there’s no going back.
Social Media Round-up
Well said!!
Cracking post man. Bishop Budde is the best of us. She is so brave.