Donald Trump has spent years screaming “traitor” at anyone who refuses to worship at his feet, tossing the word around with the frenzied enthusiasm of a playground bully.
Democrats are traitors. His former employees are traitors. Republicans who dare to disagree are traitors. Even former Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, once so devoted to Trump she practically turned sycophancy into a competitive sport, became “Marjorie ‘Traitor’ Greene” the moment she stepped out of line. That is how Trump works. Loyalty to America matters far less than loyalty to him.
Which makes last night’s performance in Nebraska all the more disgusting, because there can be no greater betrayal of a president’s duty than publicly putting forward a hostile foreign power to attack his own citizens.
“Let ’em take out Los Angeles,” Trump said of Iran. “Let ’em take out San Diego.” Then came the truly stomach-turning bit. “This is a very small price to pay.” A small price? Millions of Americans live in those cities and their surrounding communities. Children go to school there, families go to work there, veterans live there, firefighters protect homes there, and police officers patrol the streets there.
Yet because California has repeatedly rejected Trump at the ballot box, its people are reduced in his mind to acceptable collateral damage. Make no mistake, the President of the United States has one overriding responsibility above all others – to protect American lives. It is the fundamental part of their swearing-in. But Trump somehow manages to turn even that into another installment of his endless personal grievance show.
A commander-in-chief should stand between his country and those who wish it harm. This one stands at a cult-like rally, imagining American cities being attacked while his MAGA mob of supporters cheer. America has been reduced to this grotesque spectacle: an angry, ageing, unhinged billionaire buffoon demanding applause as he talks about millions of his own citizens as though they were troublesome extras who could be written out of his script.
Presidents should not joke about foreign enemies killing their own, particularly while their country is fighting a war. They should not suggest that cities which vote against them are expendable, and they certainly should not describe the potential slaughter of fellow citizens as a “small price to pay”.
Imagine Joe Biden saying Russia could flatten Dallas because Texas voted Republican. Trump would have been halfway through a “lock him up” demand before his predecessor reached the end of the sentence. Fox News would have cleared its schedules. MAGA politicians would have queued around the Capitol to pronounce him mentally unfit.
Which brings us to Trump’s favourite obsession during the Biden years. For four years, he relentlessly questioned the man he lost to, seizing upon every slip, forgotten word and confused moment as evidence that America was supposedly being led by a man incapable of understanding what was happening around him.
Trump challenged him to cognitive tests and endlessly mocked his age. But the world no longer needs to conduct its own cognitive assessment on Trump. It is there for everyone to see. America has a president who stands in Nebraska and thinks talking about Iran attacking Los Angeles and San Diego is a perfectly normal contribution to political debate, leading California Governor Gavin Newsom to call him “deranged and dangerous”.
It is becoming increasingly difficult to find two words that fit him better. America has had corrupt presidents, foolish presidents, reckless presidents and presidents with egos large enough to require their own postcode. But none has been so spectacularly unhinged as the man currently occupying the White House.
Trump does not appear to understand the presidency as a duty to an entire nation. He treats it like ownership of his golf clubs, in which membership depends on applauding the proprietor. Vote for Trump and you are a patriot. Oppose him, and apparently, you are barely American at all.
That warped mentality has poisoned US politics for years, because he deliberately turns political opponents into enemies and disagreement into betrayal. He knows what happens after he points the finger. The threats come, the online mob piles in, and another person learns what it means to have the most powerful man in the US put a target on their back.
Even Republicans are disposable. Greene spent years acting like one of Trump’s most devoted disciples, defending almost every outrage until she discovered the central rule of MAGA: yesterday’s loyal servant can become tomorrow’s traitor the second Trump feels challenged. As a result, she now lives under the constant threat of death. There is something almost comically pathetic about a political movement that talks endlessly about strength while demanding total obedience to the moods of one man.
Except there is nothing funny about a president discussing enemy attacks on American cities. Trump was in Nebraska because the midterm elections are looming. Republicans face a savage kicking in November, given the state of America under Trump. His ratings have fallen to an all-time low, voters are angry about prices, and the war with Iran has become another mistake he desperately cannot explain away.
So he reaches for the only political language he has ever really mastered: fear, division, enemies and revenge. When Trump cannot sell success, he sells resentment. And when the facts become inconvenient, somebody else becomes a traitor. Now, staring at the prospect of losing control of Congress – possibly even the Senate – his performance is becoming even uglier.
Americans should remember Nebraska when they vote. They should remember a president casually contemplating attacks on two of their cities and a crowd cheering him for it. And the next time Donald Trump sticks out that familiar accusing finger and calls another American a “traitor”, somebody should remind him of the night he suggested a foreign enemy could take out millions of his own people.