Abuser-in-Chief
Donald Trump blamed the left for hate speech, while
delivering a hate speech at the memorial for a man who said there was no such
thing as hate speech.
and
Sep 22, 2025
I don’t remember my mom brushing my hair or tucking me in
at night. I don’t remember the warmth that’s supposed to come with a mother in
your early years — the softness of a bedtime story, the comfort of being held,
the safety of knowing you were loved without question. None of that. What I
remember from life with my mother is hiding. I remember doors slamming so hard
the walls shook. I remember fists flying, voices turning into weapons, words
sharp enough to cut through bone. I remember that kind of silence that comes
after the storm, where you sit frozen, listening, wondering if it’s finally
over — or if the next blow is still coming.
What stayed with me most from those years wasn’t even the
pain itself, but the fear that burrowed into my chest and never left. The kind
of fear that teaches you too early that the world is not safe, that even the
people who are supposed to protect you can be the ones who wound you most. That
fear rewrites your childhood. It seeps into your bones and whispers that you
are never really secure, never really enough.
I don’t remember tenderness from her. I don’t remember
trust. I remember shadows. I remember running. I remember trying to make myself
smaller and quieter, as if disappearing might keep me safe. That was my
childhood with my mother. Not bedtime kisses or warm kitchens or motherly
That’s why I don’t need anyone to explain him to me. I know what an abuser
looks like. I know what it feels like to live inside someone else’s rage, to be
diminished by their contempt, to always wonder when the next blow — verbal or
physical — is coming. That twisted curl on his face, that delight he takes in
humiliating people, that hunger he has for control and fear — I’ve lived with
that before.
And once you’ve survived it, you never forget it.
That’s why I can’t just shrug and call this politics.
Because I know exactly what I’m looking at. I’ve seen it before. I’ve felt it
before. I’ve lived it. And there are nights burned into me that I will never
escape.
One of them was in the parking lot of a resort in the
Poconos. My mother sat behind the wheel, drunk and seething, gripping it like
she was about to rip it off. She turned to me, her face twisted, and hissed:
“You know your father never wanted you, don’t you? He wanted you aborted.” I
was a kid. Just a kid. And she chose that moment to take the one piece of
ground I thought was solid — my dad’s love — and set it on fire.
It wasn’t the only night like that, but it’s one of the
nights I remember most vividly, most viscerally. It’s coded into my DNA now —
the lesson that abusers will always go for the jugular, always look for the
place you feel safest and try to rip it away.
And that’s why Trump feels so familiar to me. He reminds me
of my mom — of the darkest parts of her. The contempt. The rage. The way she
could twist love into a weapon and turn vulnerability into shame. When I see
him sneering on stage, mocking the weak, declaring his hatred, I don’t see a
politician being blunt. I see what I’ve always seen: an abuser in action.
Because that’s what abusers do. They find your seam, and
they jam the knife in. They want you to believe you don’t deserve love. That
you’re worthless. That the hurt is your fault.
So, when I saw the clip of Donald Trump at Charlie Kirk’s
memorial yesterday, I knew exactly what I was looking at. I didn’t need the
chyron. I didn’t need the commentary. I recognized the venomous smile, the
contempt, the glee he takes in cutting people down. Because I’ve lived it. I’ve
been on the receiving end of that acid grin before.
And let’s be real: this wasn’t a memorial. This was a
circus. Pyrotechnics shooting off like it was the Super Bowl halftime show,
donation ads scrolling across the screens, the crowd howling like they’d paid
for front-row seats to WWE. A man had been murdered, but Trump treated it like
just another stop on his traveling hate show. He barely mentioned Kirk, and
when he did, he made it about himself. He babbled about tariffs. About autism.
About enemies. Always enemies. And then came the line — the one that dropped my
stomach.
He stood on that stage, in front of a widow, in front of
grieving people, and said he hated half the country. That he didn’t wish them
well. The President of the United States declaring that hatred is his guiding
principle.
And the crowd roared.
That wasn’t a slip. That wasn’t “off the cuff.” That’s who
he is. He doesn’t know how to honor anyone else because he doesn’t care about
anyone else. He doesn’t understand grief, or empathy, or decency. He only
understands domination. He only understands breaking people down so he can feel
taller standing on their backs.
And it didn’t stop there. Just months ago, Joe Biden
announced he had aggressive prostate cancer. Most people would stop. Most
people would feel at least the smallest pang of empathy. Not Trump. As recently
as the other day he sneered: “If you feel sorry for him, don’t feel so sorry,
because he’s vicious.” He called Biden “not a smart person, but a somewhat
vicious person,” as if a cancer diagnosis was just another chance to spit in
someone’s face.
That’s who he is. He looks at sickness and sees weakness.
He looks at suffering and sees opportunity. He is wretched. He is heartless. He
is malevolent and malicious. And he’s proud of it.
When Minnesota House Speaker Melissa Hortman and her
husband were brutally murdered in their own home, Trump was asked if he’d
called Governor Tim Walz to offer condolences. He said he didn’t know who she
was. He said he wouldn’t call unless Walz asked. As if compassion were some
bargaining chip he could trade. As if sympathy were beneath him. He couldn’t
even fake humanity for a family that had just been slaughtered.
That’s who he is.
It wasn’t only Trump. Stephen Miller slithered out his
lines like they’d been cribbed straight from a 1930s Nazi rally. He talked
about “wickedness” and “victory,” about purging the unworthy, about drawing
battle lines between the “pure” and the “impure.” It is the same script
authoritarians have always used: reduce human beings to caricatures, declare
them enemies of the people, strip them of their humanity, and then dare your
followers not to cheer. History has shown us where that road leads, and it does
not end in freedom.
And yet too many in the press still cover it like theater.
Still reach for euphemisms like “heated remarks,” as if we’re talking about a
bad debate club, not the open rehearsal of fascism. Still pretend this is
politics, when what we’re watching is the deliberate corrosion of democracy.
That normalization is its own toxin — it seeps in, dulls our alarm, and tells
us the unthinkable is just another headline. And if we stop naming it for what
it is, we are not observers anymore. We’re accomplices.
I know what it feels like when cruelty becomes the air you
breathe. You start to believe it’s normal. You start to think maybe you deserve
it. You lower your expectations so far that you forget what tenderness even
feels like. That’s what he wants. That’s what they want. That’s what every
abuser wants.
And here we are, back under his thumb again. Unfortunately,
by the slimmest of margins, a self-sabotaging plurality of Americans returned
our country to having an Abuser-in-Chief. Every insult, every contemptuous
remark, every declaration of hatred once again carries the seal of the
presidency. But this time it’s worse. The guardrails from the first season of
this shitshow are gone. The so-called gatekeepers who once tried — however
feebly — to contain him? Gone too. All that’s left are sycophants,
enablers, and taint supping toadies. Hostility isn’t just tolerated at the top
of our government — it’s been enthroned there.
None of this should surprise us. He incited a deadly attack
on our Capitol to cling to power, and now, back in the Oval Office, he pardoned
the very people who carried it out. That’s not leadership. That’s betrayal.
That’s a man spitting in the face of the country he swore to serve. He has
shown us exactly who he is, again and again, and he will not change. He cannot
change.
To shrug and call this “politics” is not just naïve — it’s
fatal. Because what we are watching is not politics at all, but the corrosion
of our national soul.
So, say it out loud. Write it. Shout it. Teach it. REPORT
ON IT! This is not normal! This is not okay! And as long as Donald Trump stands
on stages to declare his hatred, our job is to stand taller and say the truth:
he is indecent, abusive, unfit. Not a leader, but a predator. Not a president,
but an abuser in chief.
Of course, this isn’t really about what we need
to do — we’re already doing it. It’s about what the mainstream media, and
anyone still cowering in silence, needs to do. Because silence isn’t neutral —
it’s surrender. It hands the microphone to a bully and pretends that’s balance.
And I need to be clear — this isn’t just about him. It’s about the crowd that
roars for him too. The ones who leap to their feet when he says he hates half
the country. The ones who fist-pump when he spits bile and take it as
permission to be their worst selves. They need to know we see them too. They
need to know this isn’t patriotism — it’s corrosion. It isn’t strength — it’s
rot. Every cheer is a confession of their own emptiness. Every laugh is proof
of how small they’ve let themselves become. And we aren’t pretending it’s
normal. We’re calling it what it is: indecency on parade, depravity dressed up
as politics. And the minute we stop saying that out loud, the minute we start
shrugging and moving on, is the minute they win.
I know what happens when you live under the shadow of an
abuser. I know what it does to your spirit to wake up every day in the grip of
someone else’s rage. And I know the power it takes to finally say enough. So, I
will not normalize this. I will not let my children inherit this. And I sure as
shit will not stop fighting until the day the rest of America says enough too.
