The President Who Hates His Own People

Today, Donald Trump, the president of the United States, said:
“I hate my opponents and I don’t want the best for them.”

Every once in a while, Trump tells the truth.
This is one of those moments.

If you did not vote for him, he hates you.
If you oppose him, he does not want good things for you.

This is not just political disagreement. This is personal hatred, voiced from the highest office in the land.

And as far as I can find, this is the first time in U.S. history that a sitting president has ever said such a thing.

The role of the president has always been bigger than one person’s personal vendetta.

The president is supposed to govern for everyone, whether you voted for him or not.

The president’s job is to unify.
To lead.
To do the best for all citizens.

Because when you take the oath of office, you swear to serve the United States of America.

Not just your party.
Not just your donors.
Not just your loyalists.

Donald Trump has now told us he does not see his job that way.

He has said out loud that he hates his opponents and wishes them no good.

That means he has just told the American people, the 70% of us who did not put him back in power, that he does not lead for us.

Worse, that we are his enemies.

This matters more than just words. Because words from a president have power. They shape culture, they give permission, they set the tone for the nation. When the president says he hates people who oppose him, he is giving every one of his followers license to do the same. He is making hatred a governing principle.

And that hatred is not staying inside our borders. It is spilling across the world.

Yesterday on Truth Social, Trump threatened Venezuela with “an incalculable price” unless it takes back asylum seekers.

Trump: “We want Venezuela to immediately accept all of the prisoners, and people from mental institutions, which includes the Worst in the World Insane Asylums, that Venezuelan ‘Leadership’ has forced into the United States of America. Thousands of people have been badly hurt, and even killed, by these ‘Monsters.’ GET THEM THE HELL OUT OF OUR COUNTRY, RIGHT NOW, OR THE PRICE YOU PAY WILL BE INCALCULABLE!”

But he didn’t call them people.
He called them “the Worst in the World Insane Asylums.”
He called them “Monsters.”

The president of the United States is equating families seeking safety with criminals and patients in mental institutions.

He is stripping away their humanity.
He is telling Americans not to see asylum seekers as people at all.

And maybe worse, he doesn’t seem to understand the difference.

The difference between an asylum seeker fleeing violence and a person who once lived in what was called an insane asylum.

That confusion is not just offensive.
It is dangerous.

This is how leaders prepare nations for cruelty.
By teaching people to believe that certain lives don’t matter.
By normalizing language that makes violence feel justified.

And it isn’t just words. Venezuela responded by mobilizing 220,000 militia members and 123,000 soldiers. Civilians are being trained for war. Trump’s threats are not disappearing into the air. They are fueling militarization on the other side.

At the same time, he turned his attention to Afghanistan.

His warning on Truth Social:
“If Afghanistan doesn’t give Bagram Airbase back to those that built it, the United States of America, BAD THINGS ARE GOING TO HAPPEN!!! President DJT”

Bagram was the largest U.S. military base during our twenty-year war there. A war that killed more than 2,400 American service members. A war that cost trillions of dollars. A war that drained this country for two decades before we finally left.

And now Trump wants it back.
He is threatening another government to hand it over.
He is dragging us back toward the very conflict Americans thought we had closed.

He knows this is a raw wound for millions of Americans.
For veterans who fought there.
For families who lost loved ones.
For a nation that spent twenty years trying to end a war that could not be won.

This is not leadership.
It is provocation.
It is escalation.
It is exhausting.

And while he threatens wars overseas, he is making war at home too.

This week, his administration canceled the annual hunger survey. Since the 1990s, that report has been the only consistent way to know how many families are going hungry. The last survey showed 13.5% of U.S. households were food insecure, the highest in a decade.

Food insecurity means not knowing if you will eat tomorrow. It means parents skipping dinner so their kids can eat. It means children showing up to school hungry, unable to focus. It means families living on cheap, unhealthy food because it’s all they can afford.

And that was before Trump slashed food assistance. SNAP, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, what many call food stamps, keeps 40 million Americans from going hungry. Children. Seniors. Working parents. Veterans. Trump cut 3 million people from the program.

Canceling the hunger survey is not paperwork. It is hiding reality.

If you stop counting hungry families, then politically, they don’t exist. Imagine if your town stopped reporting crime. You’d still be robbed, but the mayor could say crime was down. That’s what Trump is doing with hunger, pretending suffering doesn’t exist by erasing the numbers that prove it.

But this is more than manipulation. When you cut off basic needs, you light a fuse. When you take food from families, you create desperation. And desperate people do desperate things. Hunger fuels crime. It fuels unrest. It fuels violence.

This is how wars start, not always with armies, but with people pushed so far they see no other option. And if you think he doesn’t know that, think again. For all we know, that may be the point.

A civil war. A war between rich and poor. A war between left and right. A war between Democrats and Republicans. By taking away the basics, food, shelter, dignity, he isn’t just governing poorly. He is starting a war at home.

And then he hands out Medals of Freedom. Three in one month. To Charlie Kirk. To Ben Carson. To Rudy Giuliani. To loyalists. Not to unify the country. Not to honor service. But to reward allegiance.

The message is plain: if you are loyal, you are honored. If you are not, you are hated.

Put it all together and the picture is clear. This is not normal politics. It is the authoritarian playbook.

And what does that mean? Authoritarian is a big word, but the definition is simple. A leader who does not want limits on his power. A man who wants to make the rules, enforce the rules, and punish his enemies, all by himself.

That is why his words matter.

Because when a president says he hates his opponents, it is not a private feeling. It is an order. It is permission. It is an invitation to treat those opponents as less than citizens, less than human.

That is how democracies break.

With speeches that push fear instead of hope.
With leaders who point at enemies instead of solutions.
With words that divide neighbors until they no longer see each other as human.

It does not begin with tanks in the streets.
It begins with a microphone.
With a crowd.
With a man telling you who to hate.

I hadn’t planned to watch today. But I stopped and listened to some of the speakers at Kirk’s service, people who sit in our government, people with real power.

And after hearing them, I knew.

We are already deep into authoritarian rule.
Deep into fascism.

This isn’t something on the horizon.
It’s here.
It’s now.

We are in trouble.

In Germany in the 1930s, Hitler started with words, with speeches. Words that cast neighbors as enemies. Blame that made cruelty feel acceptable.

In Chile in the 1970s, Augusto Pinochet took power by calling opponents enemies of the nation. Soon thousands were tortured and disappeared. It did not begin with tanks in the streets. It began with words that stripped away humanity.

And that is what we are hearing now.

Ungovernable is not just a word. It means empty grocery shelves. It means protests in the streets. It means violence between neighbors. It means police crackdowns. It means a nation too divided and too afraid to solve problems.

That is what war at home looks like.

Trump is preparing us for conflict everywhere. Not just with foreign powers. Not just with our neighbors. But with ourselves.

We were meant to be different. A country where the president serves all citizens, not just the ones who cheer. A nation where dissent is not met with hatred, but with respect for freedom. A democracy where unity, not division, is the goal.

Instead, today, the president of the United States told us plainly: he hates his opponents. He does not wish them well. Seventy percent of the nation is his enemy.

And tomorrow, he may say more. Another threat. Another insult. Another declaration of who is less than human.

We are standing on a knife’s edge.

Trump wants escalation, not resolution. Chaos, not peace. Division, not unity.

The question is whether we will let him succeed.

We cannot stop him from speaking hatred. But we can refuse to accept it. We cannot undo the threats he has made. But we can hold him accountable. We cannot erase the damage already done. But we can decide we will not live in a country where hatred is the president’s official language.

And if we do nothing, that is the future he will deliver.

But if we see it clearly, if we remember that democracy is built on unity, not hatred, on humanity, not dehumanization, on peace, not war, then his words can be a turning point, not a death sentence.

And even in the darkness of this moment, I still have hope.
Hope in us.
Hope in what we can build together.

I still believe in America.
And I hope you do too.

I’ll see you tomorrow,
Heather