The Revenge-Obsessed President(ial Candidate)

Sandra Wade
10 min readDec 11, 2018

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NOTE: I wrote this article in 2018. I am re-upping because Trump has repeatedly said on the campaign trail that if he wins in November, he will use every power within his grasp to get “revenge” on his opponents.

Was this the fateful night that Trump hatched his plan that would ultimately lead to his trainwreck presidency?

“He that studieth revenge keepeth his own wounds green, which otherwise would heal and do well.” — John Milton, “Paradise Lost”

Trump supporters love to accuse us Trump critics of suffering from “Trump Derangement Syndrome.” I’m not sure where that silly term came from, but it sure seems like Trump is the one suffering from a crazy obsession that perhaps we should call “OBAMA Derangement Syndrome.”

Many people suspect it arose at the 2011 White House Correspondents’ Dinner, but Trump’s hatred of Obama goes way back to when Trump gave “birth” to the whole “birther” conspiracy. For a long time before he even decided to legit run for President and not just talk about it, Trump would not stop hammering away on social media and at the press with questions about Obama’s citizenship.

He would question it in that way of speaking that only Trump possesses..the sort of mealy-mouthed, passive aggressive, hyperbolic “sounds like a question so if I’m wrong, I can escape responsibility for what I just said” style of rhetoric he has perfected as president:

“You are not allowed to be a president if you’re not born in this country. He may not have been born in this country. But there’s something on that birth-─ maybe religion, maybe it says he’s a Muslim. I don’t know. Maybe he doesn’t want that. Or he may not have one. But I will tell you this. If he wasn’t born in this country, it’s one of the great scams of all time.”

Trump has a well-established history of racism that he seemed to learn on his daddy’s knee. Both Trump Sr and Jr were cited by the Civil Rights Division of the DOJ in the 70s for deliberate discrimination in their business practices. They simply refused to allow people of color to rent their properties.

In the lawsuit the federal government pressed against the Trumps, it was revealed that Trump’s real estate agents were writing down “C” for colored or “Number 9” to indicate a black prospective tenant, and those people were often turned away.

In the 80s, when hot and heated accusations flew towards the “Central Park 5” — 5 black and hispanic teenagers who allegedly raped a woman in the park and left her for dead — Trump simply couldn’t stay out of it. He placed this ad in the New York Times:

Trump’s ad in the NY Times calling for the execution of 5 nonwhite men who had not yet been judged guilty

Yes, he called for the death penalty for KIDS who hadn’t even gone to trial yet. We’ve known Trump’s true nature for decades now. There is no excuse for his supporters to continue to delude themselves that this man is anything other than a sociopathic, heartless bigot. (By the way, ONE man eventually confessed to the attack on the jogger, and the Central Park 5 were exonerated.)

I personally believe Trump started the birther conspiracy because a) he simply could not handle the U.S. having a black president, and b) he was beginning to court the alt right/gamergate/MRA/Fox News crowds, with a possible presidential run in the back of his mind. After all, Trump had been talking about running since the 80s. For a narcissist like Trump, the presidency represented not just the chance to be the most powerful man in the world, but an opportunity to be the most TALKED ABOUT celebrity on the planet. And let’s face it..celebrity and money have always motivated Trump more than power.

As for the Correspondents’ Dinner, Trump sat there with a foul grimace on his face the entire time. He was clearly pissed off, even though Obama‘s tone was good-natured and jovial. Obama didn’t seem to hold a grudge towards Trump. If anything, it seemed like he considered the “birther” controversy too silly to take seriously (which is what most intelligent people thought of a potential Trump presidential run at the time.)

For someone who insults and bullies others on a regular basis, Trump sure is a special little snowflake when it’s directed at him. Trump can’t even handle Saturday Night Live making fun of him, and they’ve made fun of every president, starting with Chevy Chase mimicking Gerald Ford when the show first started.

Um..Fox and Friends is your “equal time”, snowflake!

Perhaps that is why he refuses to go to the Dinner, now that he’s president. Boycotting the WHCD is fine. Who cares, right? Where Trump’s resentment towards Obama gets dangerous, however, is the way it saturates and influences his policy decisions.You know that saying, “revenge is a dish that’s best served cold?” When it comes to Trump, revenge is a dish that’s best served boiling hot and poured all over the American people to burn them alive. Because it simply doesn’t matter if something Obama did was actually GOOD for our country or the rest of the world. To feed Trump’s bottomless ego pit, it has to go. He is cutting off OUR nose to spite Obama’s face.

Here are just a few of the Obama-era regulations and executive orders that Trump has vengefully, indeed gleefully (I mean, who actually sits there and shows off his executive orders to the press like he’s a third grader bragging to his parents about the first time he got an A on his math homework?) revoked, or attempted to eliminate, starting with the actions that have screwed the average person:

  1. Screwing homeowners: Right out of the gate, almost before his tiny inaugural crowds had even dispersed, Trump’s Federal Housing Administration scratched a planned reduction in mortgage insurance premiums. That change helped shore up the financial health of the FHA’s mortgage insurance fund — but came at a real cost to homeowners, who would have saved an average of $500 a year if the Obama-era plan had stayed in place.
  2. Screwing “gig economy” workers: In 2015, the Obama administration issued a guidance document indicating the Department of Labor would crack down on worker misclassification (ie., when companies misclassify workers as independent contractors to avoid labor law). The Trump administration withdrew the guidance document. This was a win for business owners in any number of sectors — not just Uber, but industries such as farming and construction, which increasingly use independent contractors.
  3. Allowing franchises to get away with certain labor violations. The Trump administration withdrew another Obama-era guidance document on how the department will determine whether a parent company, like McDonald’s or Subway, is jointly responsible for its franchises’ labor violations. As with worker misclassification, the Obama-era DOL interpreted the joint employment standard favorably for workers; its withdrawal was a victory for businesses.
  4. Screwing nursing home residents. Right before Obama left office, his administration banned any nursing home that receives federal funding — which is most of them — from requiring that prospective tenants sign an arbitration agreement as a condition to be admitted. These agreements prevent residents from taking the facility to court. Obviously, Nursing homes prefer arbitration because it’s cheaper than mounting a defense in a lawsuit. Residents, on the other hand, often have no idea they signed away their right to sue in court until they actually try to file charges, at which point the nursing home shows them the fine print. The nursing home industry sued the Department of Health and Human Services. Before Trump took office, they won a temporary injunction against is, so it never took effect, and Trump effectively let it die.
  5. Screwing students. The Obama administration announced a policy allowing defrauded borrowers to have their federal student loans canceled, and determined the government would cover the cost. Sadly, the rule wasn’t scheduled to take effect until July 1, 2017 — and now it looks like it will never take effect. Education Secretary Betsy DeVos delayed the implementation of the rule indefinitely, on the grounds that it is the subject of an ongoing lawsuit. DeVos also announced that the department would rewrite the rule altogether, along with another major Obama-era education rule, known as “gainful employment,” that required colleges to meet certain standards or risk losing access to federal student loan dollars. DaVoss has also proven to be a shill for the exploitative, for-profit loan industry, so none of this should surprise anyone.
  6. Screwing investors. A major Obama rule — the “fiduciary standard” would have required that financial advisers selling investment products act in the best interest of their clients. That seems like a common sense form of protection, don’t you think? The Trump administration let it die by simply refusing to enact it.
  7. Taking away health care from millions of people: Trump has systematically attacked and weakened the ACA’s provisions, threatening tens of millions of people with the loss of health care in the future.
  8. Weakening the EPA. Trump’s EPA heads (first Scott Pruitt, then this new guy who’s just as bad as Pruitt) have wasted no time acting like corporate shills. Just like the REST of Trump’s appointees, they seem hell bent on destroying the agency they were appointed to lead. The EPA should change its name. Because the agency is no longer enforcing their mandate to keep our air and water safe. Here’s just one more example of Trump vengefully killing any GOOD regulation Obama passed. In May 2015, the Obama administration issued the Waters of the United States rule — colloquially known as WOTUS — a far-reaching and long-awaited plan to limit pollution in America’s wetlands. Two years later, Trump’s EPA killed it.
  9. Denying that climate change exists, and pulling the U.S. out of the Paris agreement.
  10. Making us more susceptible to a deadly pandemic. Someone needs to tell Trump that diseases like Ebola don’t usually stay in the countries where they originate, because we have like, airplanes and stuff.

http://foreignpolicy.com/2018/05/09/ebola-is-back-and-trump-is-trying-to-kill-funding-for-it/

Back in the day Trump thought we somehow could ban everyone who had Ebola.. just another one of his stupid, unrealistic, unfeasible, authoritarian ideas.

According to Vox, Trump slashed funding for foreign aid and to US public health agencies (in favor of giving rich people like him tax cuts.) I guess he’s assuming wealth will somehow make him and his rich buddies immune from the next big pandemic? We shall see.

11. Nuclear weapons. Trump exhibited how fucking DANGEROUS his presidency would be during his campaign..if only we had all paid attention. He actually pondered in front of millions of TV viewers WHY we don’t USE nuclear weapons.

That alone should have torpedoe’d his chances, let alone the “making fun of the disabled guy” thing, or the “grab em by the pussy thing.”

The guy thinks nukes are an option. He thinks we should turn to them, just like we’d use drones or something.

I’m assuming he didn’t pay attention in class when they taught about Hiroshima or Nagasaki. (Then again, Trump seems to have not paid attention in ANY of his classes. He can’t even figure out how Google works.)

Does anyone know what this tool REALLY stands for, other than his opposition to Obama’s policies, and enriching himself and his family from his political career?

He certainly hasn’t accomplished any of the things he promised to do during his campaign. There’s still no wall. We still don’t have an infrastructure plan. Coal is still a dying industry. His “Muslim ban” keeps failing in the courts (we all know that if he could, he’d get rid of those pesky judges, so he can make America white and Christian again.)

The only thing Trump seems to be good at is inciting xenophobia and taking kids away from their parents

He seems really good at deporting people, and kidnapping kids and babies away from their parents. But that’s only going to hurt America in the long run. Whether the Deplorable MAGA crowd realizes it or not, immigrants are crucial to our economy. Right now, there are farms with produce dying on the vine because their slave immigrant labor is being rounded up by our new Gestapo, ICE, and sent away. Will the underemployed Trump supporters in various red states move to California and start picking strawberries? If not, we’re screwed.

This is what happens when too many of the people in your country are racist idiots who then vote for a racist idiot, who also happens to be a sociopathic narcissist whose sole reason for being seems to be to avenge every wrong he thinks he’s suffered.

As Tony Schwartz, the guy who ACTUALLY wrote “Art of the Deal” explained:

“This is a classic example of where Trump begins to demonstrate something he talks about all the time today, which is he’s a counter-puncher. So somebody comes after him and says that he’s done something nefarious and horrible, and he just goes back at them with all guns blazing. You know, boom, boom, boom! And admits nothing. Never admit anything. Never say you made a mistake. Just keep coming. And if you lose, declare victory.”

It’s too bad that Trump doesn’t read. Otherwise, he might learn by the example of many great stories about how revenge usually only hurts the vengeful. Shakespeare alone wrote a treasure trove of revenge-gone-wrong stories.

When Trump’s presidency is eventually over, I think none of us will emerge from this trainwreck of vengeance and corruption without scars and wounds of our own.

Copyright 2018 S. Wade

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Sandra Wade
Sandra Wade

Written by Sandra Wade

FOLLOW ME ON SUBSTACK: https://substack.com/@sexyliberals TIKTOK: @sexycatladiesdotcom Not coming back til Medium fixes it's "algorithm" and respects writers

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