How Much More Stupidity Will Americans Endure?

Reflecting on the escalating hostility to America values, principles and decency in a 24-hour period

A thoughtful leader in the Oval Office and Donald Trump. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla via Getty Images).

I admit: The daily drumbeat of stupidity is exhausting. I wish it were enough for me to simply document the dangerous ignorance of Trump and his sycophants, confident that we’ll soon be free of this regime and its power to spread their poison and cancerous hostility across the land and around the world. But the midterm elections will not arrive for another 17 months. It’s hard to overstate how much damage Trump, his cabinet and his kowtowing Republican Congress can cause between now and then.

That’s why most days I ask myself: Could today be the day Americans decide they’ve had enough and demand change? I have thought that there might be a single event that triggers millions of Americans taking to the streets or committing to a national strike in a public, unavoidable show of solidarity. But I have come to see that the daily drumbeat is numbing too many people, causing them to adapt to the cruelty, the racism, the hostility to democracy, the arrogant rejection of the Constitution and the rule of law. The metaphor of the frog in a slowly boiling pot of water is apt; by the time the frog’s figured out he needs to get out, it’s too late.

We’re not there yet. You can see that dedicated lawyers are filing suit against the corruption and criminality, judges are pushing back, outraged Americans are engaging in protests, some elected Democrats and other awake leaders are ringing alarm bells, a growing number of colleges and universities have refused to buckle under, some independent media are addressing the reality of authoritarianism in no uncertain terms. Americans have not surrendered their sanity or capacity to know what’s right and wrong, what’s true and false. The pot may be beginning to boil, but we can still see and feel what’s happening. We are still able to take action.

But I want to spotlight a series of events in a single 24-hour period that individually outrage me and, taken together, express a level of stupidity and sickness that should motivate more than a shrug of the head or an angry social media post. You may have already focused on—been outraged by—one or even all of these. But it’s important to not look at them as discrete events, but part and parcel of a single plot to convince us that we should accept a fascist regime bent on elevating white nationalism, oppressing people of color, silencing dissent and making the rich richer and the poor and middle class poorer and sicker. This effort is led by a malignant racist and sociopath who’s convinced the people around him to do what he says, no matter how ugly, cruel, blatantly false—or just plain stupid.

Two of the four events were in the Oval Office Wednesday—our Oval Office, the place where real presidents have made some of the most momentous decisions that improved the lives of Americans, created a safety net to overcome the ravages of the Great Depression and soften cap italism’s turbulence, helped defeat the Nazis and fascism, built global alliances that made the world safer, more stable and prosperous, and demonstrated a commitment to bend the arc of history toward justice.

Into this historical place of honor came South African President Cyril Ramaphosa, a calm and skilled diplomat who decades earlier had served alongside Nelson Mandela as his chief negotiator to end apartheid in South Africa. But just like Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in February, he arrived for an ambush by a spiteful, narrow-minded man who spreads lies like Ukraine not Russia started the still-raging war. On this day he insisted with false information from fringe groups that South Africa, whose leaders are mostly Black, are committing genocide against white farmers, a false narrative that his top donor and South African-born Elon Musk has propagated.

At Trump’s urging, Ramaphosa answered a reporter’s question about what it would take to convince Trump there is no such white genocide. “It will take President Trump listening to the voices of South Africans, some of whom are his good friends, like those who are here,” he calmly said, referencing South African golfer Ernie Els who was in the room. “When we have talks between us around a quiet table, it will take President Trump to listen to them.”

But South Africa’s president was being set up. Trump interrupted him to play a video pushing the lies, then he showed photos meant to “prove” how much death there was, even leading Trump to mutter, “Death, death, death, horrible death, death.”

Except the video clip showing a long line of white wooden crosses were not actual burial sites for white farmers, as Trump insisted, but were from a 2020 protest against farm murders over the years. Except the photo Trump showed of people lifting body bags, insisting they “are all white farmers that are being buried,” was actually of humanitarian workers burying bodies in Congo. Except for all the claims of genocide among white farmers, meant to justify bringing white Afrikaners as preferred refugees to America now, there were a total of 44 murders in farming communities last year, Reuters reports, with over 26,000 in the country overall.

President Ramaphosa came to discuss trade and economic partnership. Yet Trump brought him into the Oval Office to ambush and abuse him, push his white nationalist agenda, spread more widely his egregious lies and showcase that—while illegally deporting people of color—only whites deserve America’s protection from presumed persecution. “We were taught by Nelson Mandela that whenever there are problems, people need to sit down around a table and talk about them,” Ramaphosa noted, but Trump was not listening.

And then there was Trump’s hostile attacks against NBC reporter Peter Alexander, who dared to raise a question about the Pentagon approving receipt of the $400 million jumbo jet from Qatar. “You know, you ought to get out of here. What does this have to do with the Qatari jet? They are giving the United States Air Force a jet, OK? And it’s a great thing,” Trump said, irate that Alexander was not focused on Trump’s fake photos and questioning the “gift” from Qatar. “You are a real—you know, you are a terrible reporter. Number one, you don’t have what it takes to be a reporter. You are not smart enough.”

Trump was not done. He lied that Qatar “gave $5.1 trillion worth of investment in addition to the jet,” before returning to Alexander. “Go back— you ought to go back to your studio at NBC because Brian Roberts and the people that run that place, they ought to be investigated. They are so terrible the way you run that network. And you're a disgrace. No more questions from you.”

Perhaps no right is more sacred in a democratic society than the right of free speech. This thin-skinned tyrant is determined to strip the White House of actual reporters and threaten reporters and their media companies if they dare to question him. It’s an appalling sign that every reporter in the Oval Office Wednesday didn’t speak up or get up and leave in support of Alexander, a veteran White House correspondent. Worse, we haven’t heard a word from NBC News or its parent company, Comcast. But it’s a reminder that Alexander was in the room on behalf of all of us—to question and cover a U.S. president who took an oath to protect and defend the Constitution. Trump’s disgusting assault was an attack on all of us.

And then there were House Republicans, demonstrating their fealty to Trump and oligarchy early yesterday morning by voting (215-214) to advance his big ugly bill—ridiculously titled the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act”—weighing in at 1,100 pages. If a version passes the Senate, this monstrosity would cause 7.6 million people to lose Medicaid benefits and another 1 million relying on the Affordable Care Act to go uninsured in an effort to “save” money by cutting over $625 billion.

The overarching goal of this legislation, estimated to add more than $3 trillion to the federal deficit? Extend and add tax cuts for the richest Americans. Is there a more appalling illustration of the Trump regime’s priorities and its cruel determination to hasten inequality in America?

The final event I’m spotlighting in this 24-hour period is the regime blocking Harvard University’s ability to enroll foreign students. This follows Harvard’s defiant refusal to capitulate to Trump efforts to take control of its hiring and academic practices. This escalation, carried out by sycophantic Homeland Security chief Kristi Noem, is an expression of Trump’s need for retribution when the university refused to hand over records of students with visas involved in “known illegal” or “dangerous” activity.

Noem called this action a warning to every U.S. academic institution, minimizing the role of international students and underscoring her awareness of what economic harm this can do. “It is a privilege, not a right, for universities to enroll foreign students and benefit from their higher tuition payments to help pad their multibillion-dollar endowments,” Noem said.

You may think that Harvard has the money and power to handle this; after all, its endowment exceeds $50 billion. But this hostile move further endangers higher education, discourages international students from coming to Trump’s America and puts at risk the intellectual and scientific research and scholarship that has depended on bright minds from around the world. In the specific case of Harvard, I wonder how willfully dumb this regime can be in undermining one of the brightest jewels of higher education, a magnet for talent and a driver of significant scientific and medical achievements.

All this is just one day. There are other transgressions, of course, not included. But taken together, this day of stupidity and hostility should be taken seriously as a warning that it will not get better without pushback. From the attack on factual reality and the principle of racial equality in Trump’s ambush of South Africa’s president, to his ugly assault on a White House reporter and free speech, to a kowtowing Republican Party dedicated to making the rich richer and the poor and middle class poorer and sicker, to an escalation in the war against a crown jewel of higher education, we should not allow ourselves to be numbed by the flood of outrages.

Rather, we should see these actions as a whole, a plot to dismantle liberal government and destroy America. This daily drumbeat is exhausting, but we can’t be exhausted. This regime is infuriating, but we must refuse to lose our sense of reason. All this is dispiriting, but we can’t lose our spirit. Trump may be bent on killing idealism and principled action, but we must hold dear to the power of American ideals, values and principles.

The time is coming to say out loud and with a shared voice that we’ve had enough and we’re not going to take it anymore. I hope it’s soon.

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