Trump’s obsessive plan to destroy America’s national identity

Earlier today, in a move that’s both devastating and entirely predictable, Trump took to Truth Social to announce that he’s destroying yet another pillar of our shared cultural memory. We should come to expect that he’ll keep doing this, because it’s exactly what other authoritarians have done in the past. But this one is deeply troubling, because it’s personal and symbolic. It erases what American art, history, and identity were meant to preserve.

Trump is shutting down the Trump-Kennedy Center for the next two years, starting on the 250th anniversary of the United States. He framed it as a bold step forward, something about revitalization and grandeur. But the truth is simpler and darker: no one wants to perform there anymore, and no one wants to buy tickets to a stage stamped with his name. He attempted to turn the building into a monument to his ego and failure. And when that happened, he decided to close it and build a monument to himself in its place.

He said the building needs to be “revitalized,” that it’s in poor condition, and that it will be turned into a “new and spectacular Entertainment Complex.” He wrote: “This important decision, based on input from many Highly Respected Experts, will take a tired, broken, and dilapidated Center, one that has been in bad condition, both financially and structurally for many years, and turn it into a World Class Bastion of Arts, Music, and Entertainment, far better than it has ever been before.” He ended it the way he always does: “Thank you for your attention to this matter! PRESIDENT DONALD J. TRUMP.”

No matter how much power he gets, it’s never enough, not until he destroys all that came before him. He is desperate to erase everything the Kennedys ever stood for. Because they were what he’ll never be. They were Camelot. They were art and dignity and diplomacy and service. Beyond any flaws they may have had, they represented a version of America rooted in ideals. He sees them not as a legacy to admire, but as a threat to his own image. So he tears it all down. He ripped out Jackie’s rose garden. He remodeled the Palm Room that she designed. He plastered his name on the Kennedy Center, and now he’s shutting it down and rebuilding it entirely in his own image.

JFK’s grandson, Jack Schlossberg, responded on X with this:

“Trump can take the Kennedy Center for himself. He can change the name, shut the doors, and demolish the building. He can try to kill JFK. But JFK is kept alive by us now rising up to remove Donald Trump, bring him to justice, and restore the freedoms generations fought for.”

That’s what this really is. It’s not about renovations. It’s about erasure. Trump is a man so fragile, so threatened by our collective memory of better times and far superior leadership, that he will spend untold millions trying to rewrite what people once loved. He is replacing a shared American legacy with a hollow monument to himself. It’s pathetic, and it’s dangerous.

And his destruction continues to spread beyond our own borders. In another bizarre story that should never have to be written about a sitting U.S. president, Donald Trump spoke on the phone with Politico today, and started once again referring to himself in the third person like someone who no longer understands he is real.

“If they came to Trump and told him, I’d get everybody to pay up, just like I got NATO to pay up,” he said. “All I have to do is call these countries… they would send checks within minutes.” He kept doing it. Calling himself “Trump” and “Him”. As if he didn’t understand that he is Trump. As if he were talking about a character in one of the reality TV shows he remembers being on. It didn’t sound performative. It sounded disconnected. And hearing about it, the question becomes unavoidable. Does he know who he is in that moment? Does he understand he is talking about himself while he’s saying it?

Then he did something even stranger. After years of mocking and attempting to destabilize the United Nations by pulling the United States out of its population agency and the international climate treaty, cutting foreign aid, and pounding the table about America First, he suddenly flipped. “The U.N. is not leaving New York, and it’s not leaving the United States, because the U.N. has tremendous potential,” he said. And then this slipped out: “When I’m no longer around to settle wars, the U.N. can.” That line gave me pause. Trump almost never talks about a future where he’s gone. But in that moment, he did. Like he forgot to hold the performance together. As if the reality of his own decline and his own limits, caught up to him for just a second and escaped his mouth. It almost felt like even he knows something is very wrong.

That’s what makes this feel so urgent. The United Nations is warning it may have to scale back operations, or even shut down its New York headquarters, because it’s running out of money. And roughly 95 percent of what’s owed comes from the United States. About $2.2 billion. Trump seemed completely unaware that we were even behind on payments. Worse, he acted like he alone was the only one who could fix the crisis that he created, but not necessarily by just paying what we owe. He said he could “solve it very easily,” but refused to say whether the U.S. would actually pay what it owes. Instead, he rambled about his power, how quickly he could make other countries write checks, how the U.N. should just come to him and let him handle it. It was just another strange exchange that might be easy to brush off if this weren’t the President of the United States, and we weren’t talking about the United Nations in crisis.

And none of this is about mocking a person in decline. If we are lucky, all of us will age and slow down to some extent. Some of us will face dementia, Alzheimer’s, or other cognitive impairments. That is part of being human. The problem here is that we are watching someone who can appear alert and functional one moment, and then hollowed out the next. Staring into space. Rambling. Lashing out. Threatening countries and demanding land that does not belong to them. Pushing the world to the edge and then dropping the subject entirely days later. It was not long ago that we were staring down the very real risk of invading Greenland, and now it has vanished from his mind as if it never happened.

Most of us would say, if that happens to me, do not let me run anything, and certainly do not let me lead what used to be called “the free world”. Do not let me command one of the largest militaries on the planet. Do not let me destabilize an entire world. That is the issue. That is why this matters. What we are witnessing is not normal. This is not just an evil man. This is an evil man without guardrails, propped up by enablers who keep lifting him higher so they can keep their own power. That’s what makes it so dangerous. Because this isn’t just about us, it puts the whole world at risk.

Outside of that bizarre phone call with Politico, Trump spent his Sunday trying to convince his followers that Democrats are what is really troubling our country. From Florida, he posted on Truth Social: “The biggest problem our Country has is that the Democrats are SOFT ON CRIME! They want to protect the Criminal, violent and vicious as they may be, at the expense of our great American Citizens and Patriots. That is not what America is about, and never will be! President DJT”.

And while he was blaming the other side for his own troubles, I had “Becoming” by Michelle Obama playing in the background while I wrote. I kept looking up and thinking about how different the presidency was back then. Not because Obama was a flawless president, but because we had a functional government. It wasn’t chaos all the time. There was decency and limits. There was at least the expectation that truth mattered.

I posted about it, just a simple reflection, and went back to working. But when I came back, the comment section had exploded. Racist, dehumanizing attacks aimed at Michelle Obama. People calling her a pig. Saying things I’m not even going to repeat. And it hit me all over again that this is Trump’s America now. They don’t even hide it anymore. The racism, the cruelty, it’s not underground. It’s a signal and an invitation. It’s how they find each other. If you’re hateful and loud and mean, you’re welcomed with open arms. Because the president of the United States has made it clear: cruelty is the point. That’s the culture now.

And what happened in my comment section just reinforces the rise in overt racism we are seeing. Senator John Hickenlooper revealed this week that ICE agents have been leaving behind “death cards” on the vehicles of people they detain. These cards have a history. They were once used by white supremacist groups as warnings and threats. And now ICE is using them, too.

It’s just another clear indication that this is not immigration enforcement. This is a lawless force, moving through communities like a militia. It’s not about safety. It’s not about due process. It’s about fear and control. ICE has become a private army for Trump, with deeply ingrained racism directing its intimidation tactics. There is no oversight, no accountability, no line they won’t cross. And the people allowing this to happen, funding it, cheering it on, ignoring the damage, are just as responsible as the agents themselves.

Trump’s whole plan, whether it’s directed by him or the people surrounding him like Stephen Miller, the Heritage Foundation, or the American Oligarchs, is to change everything about the United States until nothing recognizable remains. They are dismantling history, culture, and law. And the people backing him know exactly what they’re doing. They are encouraging him with vanity projects and distractions, feeding him ideas that stroke his ego and keep the focus on spectacle while the real machinery of authoritarianism keeps moving underneath with hate, destruction, and cruelty front and center.

But today wasn’t all bad. In fact, there were moments that reminded us why we are all fighting so hard to save our country.

The little five-year-old boy, Liam Ramos, the one in the bunny ears hat who captured so many of our hearts, and his father were finally released from ICE custody. After 11 days trapped in one of the regime’s detention camps, they are home tonight and finally sleeping in their own beds. And that matters. Because that’s what our collective resistance did.

Their release didn’t happen because the regime decided to be merciful. It happened because people fought, images went viral, lawyers showed up, elected leaders stepped in, and because the public pressure didn’t stop. A federal judge ruled that their detention violated legal procedures and ordered their release, citing clear constitutional violations. The government wasn’t truthful about their abduction. But the truth came out. And they were set free.

And there was even more good news. We saw two major election victories that shocked the political world. In Texas, a state Trump won by double digits in 2024, Democrat Taylor Rehmet flipped a reliably Republican state Senate seat. He’s a machinist union leader and an Air Force veteran. He ran in a district Trump carried by 17 points, and he won with 57% of the vote. Despite being outspent nearly 7 to 1, defeating a handpicked MAGA candidate. This is the same district Republicans assumed was theirs forever. But people are waking up. They see the direction this country is going. They see the cruelty and chaos. And they’re voting against it.

Then came another win, also in Texas. Democrat Christian Menefee won a U.S. House seat in a runoff, narrowing the Republican majority in Congress to just 218–214. That seat had been vacant since Rep. Sylvester Turner died in March 2025. Menefee won with 68% of the vote, signaling strong turnout and clear momentum. That’s what this win restores: a reminder that this isn’t over.

These races tell us something important: even in deep-red areas, in the heart of MAGA country, the tide can turn. People who should be Trump’s biggest supporters are walking away. They’re not all the way gone yet, but they’re drifting. The fascist grip tightening around everything we’ve known is hurting this regime. It means the pressure is working. And if we can keep slowing the damage and hold the line just long enough, we have a very real opportunity to take back Congress later this year at the midterms.

We need to remember that Trump can try to rewrite history and surround himself with fake monuments to a fake legacy. But we still remember the truth. We still remember what this country was supposed to be. And we are not going to let him destroy it.

When his reign ends, and it will, we will take down every tribute he built to himself. We’ll bulldoze the arch. We’ll tear down the ballroom. We’ll scrub his name from every public wall. And we’ll rebuild something worthy in its place. A country we’re proud to call our own. Where kids aren’t torn from their families, and hate doesn’t win. This is the path we will take, and they won’t be able to stop us. That’s what gives me hope for America. And I hope it does for you, too.

I’ll see you tomorrow,
Heather

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This commentary represents my personal opinions and analysis of matters of public concern, informed by publicly available information. Any references to individuals constitute opinion and commentary protected under the First Amendment.