The Danger that Donald Trump Poses to Disabled People
Fellow Mighty member @mightyaut has expressed her fears regarding the state of care for disabled people in the United States. I am adding my voice to hers, as I believe it is important that we understand the threat that Donald Trump poses to the services that disabled folk rely on.
I had reservations about Mr. Trump from the beginning of his candidacy in 2015. His mockery of disabled Washington Post reporter Serge Kovaleski convinced me that Mr. Trump lacks compassion and was unfit to be President. Learning about Mr. Trump’s nephew Fred and Fred’s disabled son William only strengthened my conviction that Mr. Trump is unfit to lead a nation with a substantial disabled population. Fred visited his uncle to express his concerns about the increasing cost of William’s care, and Mr. Trump told his nephew that he should just let his son die. According to an article in The Guardian, Mr. Trump expressed the same sentiment to a group of physicians and disability advocates he met at the White House. In Mr. Trump’s eyes, the lives of disabled people have no value; they are a burden to be disposed of. Fred Trump said, understandably, that it hurt him to hear his uncle speak that way about his son. He added,“Acceptance and tolerance would only come with public education and awareness…Donald might never understand this.”
Mr. Trump is intent on destroying the Department of Education, which, among other duties, maintains the Office for Civil Rights. This office investigates when schools discriminate against or abuse disabled students. An article in USA Today says that shortly after taking office, Mr. Trump ordered that 243 staffers from that office be laid off, crippling its ability to look out for its young charges. Allowing discrimination and abuse to go unchecked normalizes seeing disabled people as “other.” This in turn makes it easier to paint disabled people as subhuman.
Disabled folk disgust Mr. Trump. He doesn’t see us as people, instead viewing us solely in terms of how expensive it is to keep us alive. His solution is slashing Medicaid, a move one disability advocate calls a “soft” version of Nazi Germany’s Aktion T4 euthanasia program. Between 1939 and 1945, pediatricians, psychiatrists and nurses working for the Third Reich murdered upwards of 300,000 mentally and physically disabled children and adults after the Reich disparaged them as “useless eaters’ and “burdensome lives.” The equivalent manifesting in 2025 America is more subtle: deny vulnerable Americans access to care while denigrating them as parasites and the reason that MAGA’s diehard supporters can’t have nice things. In the meantime, the money the country saves by killing its most vulnerable citizens will fund a tax cut for Elon Musk. If Mr. Musk spent an amount totaling my father’s mortgage every day of the year, it would take over ten thousand years to exhaust his net worth. I for one am glad that Mr. Musk will see his tax burden relieved. I don’t know how he summons the strength to go on, making do with so little.
The need for brevity has obliged me to simplify my arguments against President Trump. At this juncture, I recall helpful advice offered by fantasy author George R. R. Martin when the President was running against Hillary Clinton. Martin pointed out that Mrs. Clinton’s campaign ads were straightforward, unedited clips of Mr. Trump being himself, because the strongest argument against Mr. Trump becoming President has always been Mr. Trump himself. To paraphrase Mr. Martin, you don’t need to listen to Mrs. Clinton, George R.R. Martin, or me. Listen to Trump. Watch videos of his speeches. Read the transcript of his address at West Point over Memorial Day weekend. Look at his social media accounts. Then ask yourself, seriously, if this is a man who should be deciding whether you deserve to have health care or not.
Thank you, @mightyaut, for your posts and the encouragement they gave me to speak out. I hope others will follow your example and speak out as well. Before I go, I recommend Sarah Kendzior’s Substack as a source of information on the danger that Mr. Trump poses to American democracy. As Ms. Kendzior puts it, the smoking gun pointing to Mr. Trump’s crimes against ordinary Americans is smoking because Mr. Trump is shooting this country to death, and that won’t change until enough of us stand up to a man who is little more than a glorified bully. #Disability #MentalHealth #Depression #Trauma #PTSD #Suicide