A Question for Trump Supporters: Is This Really What You Voted For?

At first, I didn't know how to write about the second Trump administration, so I was quiet on here. And I still need to set boundaries on my time, so I can love my family, church and community well. Focus on the things within my control, as Stephen Covey would say.

But I think I've come up with a way that my writing can be useful. At this point, I don't see any use in talking about Trump's character or corruption. People who voted for him decided either to overlook that, to deny it, or even to justify it.

And after the mess of the Biden administration on issues like immigration and inflation, I can see why people wanted a change. And on a few issues, like transgender ideology or abortion, I am more aligned with the Republican party than the Democrats, and I can see why, for some Christian friends of mine, that was enough reason to vote for Trump.

But now we are seeing the cruelty to the poor and to legal, not just illegal, immigrants that was promised by Project 2025 coming into fruition.

And I just have one question for Trump voters: Is all this really what you voted for?

Consider that yesterday both the US Department of Education and the VA had to issue emergency statements saying that student aid would continue during Trump’s “pause” of government loans and grants. But what would happen if the Republican Party actually fulfilled its party platform plant to abolish the US Department of Education? No one knows.

I've also heard from friends in the past few days about how Trump's efforts to reduce the number of federal employees have impacted their careers. And on how his immigration orders have blocked them from bringing their adopted children home from overseas.

And Trump's just getting started. He and Elon Musk want to cut enough money from the federal government's budget, without cutting defense, Medicare or Social Security, that it would eliminate all discretionary spending.

That would include Medicaid and SNAP. And, in my work as a deacon in a low-income neighborhood of Dorchester, I see so many people facing food insecurity now. And cutting Medicaid would impact Republicans in rural areas, not just Democrats in rich ones. It would also end the benefits that my sister who has Down syndrome relies on for her care. Talk about pro-life.

We could also talk about Robert F. Kennedy and how his delusional ideas on public health already contributed to a measles outbreak in Samoa - look it up. And he's under consideration for HHS Secretary just as bird flu is getting more serious again (check the price of eggs).

And just to touch on inflation briefly - does anyone really think that tariffs on allies like Canada or Mexico will lower prices at the grocery store? There was a reason why the Democrats and the Republicans used to both support free trade, and why the '90s were more prosperous than today. Tariffs backfire, and are just a hidden tax on American consumers.

So, again, if you voted for Trump, is all this what you voted for? Last time around, he didn't have a team of people who had thought carefully how to execute on radical ideas. This time, from what we've seen so far, it appears that he does.

And Trump's opposition is largely exhausted and demoralized. All the lying that was done to cover up Biden's cognitive decline, to justify the riots in the inner cities, to hide that Hunter Biden's laptop was real, and to mask the likely real origins of COVID-19 in US-government funded research in Wuhan - it took its toll. I can see why people were cynical and disgusted by the Democrats, and we still see the chaos of Democratic governance in places like California.

But Trump's reactionary regime is not the proper response. I believe that people may be cynical now, and understandably so to a point, but they are still self-interested. And if they see how the Trump administration's actions aren't benefiting them, the pendulum can swing once more.

So, as I have time, I hope to point out the more morally repugnant or broadly harmful of the Trump administration's policies in the hopes that it gives some people pause, as they look to 2026 and 2028. I hope this is better than the kind of "Orange Man Bad" essays that are just preaching to the choir.