By Rudy Barnes,Jr, May 3, 2025. See Beyond the chaos of Trump's authoritarianism, taken from the article by Jeffrey Franz, published April 24, 2025 in Progressive Christianity at https://progressivechristianity.org/resource/the-inexpressible-evil-of-trump-2-0/.
In a word, Trump is an evil force in U.S. Politics. To understand the levels of evil and the unending darkness of Trump 2.0, it’s important to understand some of the background that explains Trump’s behavior. We can begin with Roy Cohn, Trump’s mentor, who was abrasive, corrupt, and immoral to the core.
In 1973, Donald Trump and his father, Fred, were in trouble. The U.S. Department of Justice had sued both father and son, along with their multi-million dollar business, alleging racial bias with their real estate dealings. The government was able to get multiple employees to confess the wrong doing. The advice of the Trump lawyers was to settle and move on, but Trump resisted doing this, seeking the counsel of Roy Cohn, the notorious attorney for Senator Joseph McCarthy during the “Red Scare” of the 1950s. As it turns out, Trump developed his “playbook” for politics from the mentoring he received from Roy Cohn.
When they first met, Roy told Trump, “You might be guilty; it doesn’t matter. Go after the Justice Department. Don’t ever admit guilt.” Cohn advised him to “fight back” and countersue the federal government, which is what the Trump company ended up doing. The lesson here for the young Donald Trump was clear: you can turn a situation around just by ignoring the facts and going after your attacker. Early on, Cohn’s mantra to Trump was attack and counter-attack, attack and counter-attack. Never admit any wrong-doing, and never apologize.
In a recent documentary on Roy Cohn, he is described by people who knew him as “a snake,” “a scoundrel” and “a new strain of a son of a bitch.” One of the questions the documentary seeks to unveil is how much of him and his “savage,” “abrasive” and “amoral” behavior is visible in the behavior of Donald Trump. Over his career, Cohn had been indicted for stock-swindling, obstructing justice, perjury, bribery, conspiracy, extortion, blackmail, and filing false reports. Like Trump, Cohn was famous for winning cases by delaying, denying, and endlessly lying.
More evil than evil
“In trying to understand these times (the third decade of the 21st century), we should point out that we have never had a president who was remotely as evil and as corrupt as Donald Trump. The depths and levels of his evil are seemingly endless. We almost need a new word for something that is “more evil than evil” in order to capture the darkness of his spirit. Even more amazing is that, assuming it was an honest election, the American people who elected him President of the United States share culpability for supporting his evil.”
Let’s take a look at who we put back in the White House a few months ago: “A twice impeached, four-times indicted, convicted (on 34 counts) criminal. A convicted rapist (according to the judge in the case) and sexual predator. A man who was having sex with a porn star when his wife was nursing his new-born child at home. A man who openly ridicules and mocks disabled people. A man who calls veterans who served in our armed forces “suckers” and “losers.” A man who is an incurable, pathological liar and a malignant narcissist. A man who, unwilling to accept his loss to President Joe Biden in the 2020 presidential election, inspired a treasonous insurrection at our nation’s capital seeking to overthrow the 2020 election results.
Trump is a nasty narcissist, and he has never been reluctant to show his evil nature. “Trump took our country out of the Paris climate change accords, canceled the treaty with Iran to prohibit them from developing nuclear weapons; and is threatening to terminate our participation in NATO. He is weakening our national security through his sycophant support of Vladimir Putin in Russia, coupled with his bullying disrespect and lack of support of Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Ukraine, a democratic ally of ours in Europe; Trump only obeys court orders he agrees with, and just defied the 9-0 decision of the United States Supreme Court to mediate the return of Salvadoran Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, who was legally in the United States and then unlawfully deported to a notorious Salvadoran prison.”
Notes:
“By the grace of God, America, what were we thinking?
To this day, Trump will not hire anyone or allow anyone to work in his administration who is not an election denier. In other words: someone who does not agree that he was grievously denied the presidency in the 2020 election. Building on Trump’s incurable animus in all of this, his only clear policy positions thus far (first 100 days) are retaliation and retribution against all of his perceived enemies. Directly, or indirectly, these dark motivations are what animates Trump.
So, what do we do?
In the illuminating light of Christian values, one hardly knows where to begin. We do not have words that adequately the level of evil embodied by Donald Trump. We need a new vocabulary to define his evil concept of political legitimacy. Can we begin to imagine the sheer ugliness and hatred that stir in this man’s heart?
In his excellent book, “The Children of Light and the Children of Darkness,” the great theologian Reinhold Niebuhr noted that “evil is always the assertion of some self-interest without regard to the whole.” This is Trump to a “t.” Niebuhr goes on to point out how evil leaders are evil precisely because they know no law beyond the self. Such leadership becomes morally cynical in its declaration that “a strong nation need acknowledge no law beyond its own strength.”* (*The Children of Light and the Children of Darkness, pages 9-10)
In response to this evil, “we the people” must do everything we can to get organized and push back. In recent weeks, protests are already wide spread across the country. They are literally happening everywhere and with increasing numbers of protestors. It may come to the point where millions of Americans will have to storm our nation’s capitol and demand the return of the rule of law and the full-granting of our constitutional rights.
Throughout the Bible, the voices of social and economic justice sound out. In the face of evil, again and again, prophetic voices have shouted out their truth. Now is the time for these voices to ring out across our great country and for us to rise in protest until our nation is rid of this demonic presence.
