It's Too Damn Hot

Susan Estrich on Jul 10, 2025

Speaking of his budget bill, which will kick millions of people off the health insurance rolls, give tax breaks to the wealthy and add $3 trillion to our kids' debts, President Donald Trump said last Thursday in Des Moines:

"(Democrats opposed the measure) only because they hate Trump. But I hate them, too. You know that? I really do. I hate them. I cannot stand them because I really believe they hate our country."

Not disagreed, mind you. No reasonable minds can differ here, even if it is by all standards a regressive tax measure. The Democrats are not the loyal opposition. We are the enemy. He hates us. We hate America.

What does that mean you should do?

Words have power. If anyone should have learned that on Jan. 6, it is Donald Trump, whose words incited political violence and a criminal riot.

So what is he doing talking like this, literally within weeks of what he himself recognized as the "terrible" assassination of a Minnesota legislator and her husband who were on a list of Democratic targets?

Since Donald Trump has come on the scene, people say and do things in politics that would have once been unimaginable. Remember when Mitt Romney was unceremoniously mocked for having "binders full of women" qualified for top jobs? Mitt Romney is a fond memory.

"Trump says he hates Democrats" didn't get any headlines that I saw. Just Trump being Trump, you can dismiss it as that. But Trump being Trump, and the rest of them doing their best imitations of him, is what has us in the ugly place that politics has become. To Putin, he's Mr. Congeniality, while he's ready to declare WWIII on the Democrats in Congress.

Letting Trump be Trump, letting him get away with it without calling him out from all sides, exposes us not only internationally but domestically. It feeds the toxins that have taken over the political landscape. It leads to ugliness, and ugly conduct.

If your kids talked like this, you'd take away their phones. If they posted and re-posted the garbage he does, you'd cut them off social media, or try. And the president of the United States?

He's never going to listen to Democrats/liberals/academics/columnists or even just occasional critics who tell him this. MAGA is the only station in the radio in his head, and it is time for the responsible leaders of MAGA -- if there are any -- to tone down their leader in his attacks on his so-called enemies in the Democratic Party and the judiciary.

Somebody could get hurt. People already have. He will be blamed for it. Consider this a warning. Presidents should not be in the business of "hating" their opponents in the other party or accusing them of "hating" this country. It's the equivalent of the leader calling fire in a very crowded theater. Maybe he doesn't really mean it, but how are they supposed to know?

Ironically, in attacking his former BFF Elon Musk's proposal to start a third party, Trump came close to endorsing the Democratic Party as the only legitimate opposition, pointing out on Truth Social that third parties have "never succeeded in the United States," the "System seems not designed for them," and argued they only create "Complete and Total DISRUPTION & CHAOS."

Disruption and chaos meet Trump and Musk. Throw in some fake enemies, and you could have an ugly fight. Who wants that?

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To find out more about Susan Estrich and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.