The Un-American
President
Jan. 24, 2026, 7:00 a.m. ET
By Maureen Dowd
Opinion
Columnist, reporting from Washington.
I saw the charismatic
Italian conductor Gianandrea Noseda lead the National Symphony Orchestra on
Thursday, in a program called “Songs of Destiny & Fate.”
The Brahms, Bach and
Vivaldi were a soothing tonic to President Trump’s soundtrack, which is akin to
the stabbing, shrieking Bernard Herrmann score for Hitchcock’s “Psycho” shower scene.
Noseda began by
conducting “The Star-Spangled Banner.” Even before Trump blasphemously
interloped onto the Kennedy Center’s name, Horrible Trump Culture War Enforcer
Ric Grenell had dictated that all National Symphony Orchestra
concerts begin with the national anthem.
I’m always happy to put my hand on my
heart and listen to the ode to our flag and this “heav’n rescued land.” My
father always had an American flag flying and took it down at sundown as a sign
of respect, which was the custom then. When I won a Pulitzer, New York’s very
cool senator, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, sent me a flag that had flown over the
Capitol, which I cherish.
But it felt tinny to be
force-fed “The Star-Spangled Banner” by our solipsistic president and his
creepy sycophants, who show nothing but disdain for the Constitution and
American values. It was our country’s destiny to reflect ideals that made us an
incandescent beacon for democracy. But Trump has pulverized those ideals. We
are now seen as sinister, selfish, unruly and at everybody’s throats.
Jack Smith’s testimony
before Congress on Thursday was a stinging reminder that Trump tried to
overthrow the government and wickedly put lawmakers and his own vice president
in harm’s way.
“Our investigation
revealed that Donald Trump is the person who caused Jan. 6, that it was
foreseeable to him and that he sought to exploit the violence,” Smith said.
It is heartbreaking that
on the cusp of our 250th anniversary, we have a president who is perverting all
the values our country was founded on — looking out for one another, respecting
one another’s rights.
America is not supposed to be a place
where an angel-faced 5-year-old named Liam, with a floppy-eared hat and a
Spider-Man backpack, gets seized and taken to a detention center by men in masks.
The American leader is
meant to be a unifier, a strong and soothing presence in the world. Trump is an
anarchic toddler, constantly causing upheaval across the globe, transgressing
and remaking everything in his helter-skelter image. He has no interest in
fireside chats; he wants to set fires.
He’s more about droit du seigneur than noblesse oblige. He feels entitled to whatever he wants, from Greenland to
Canada to the Kennedy Center to a Nobel Prize he didn’t win. Unlike previous
presidents, he isn’t countering Russia; he’s catering to it. He disparaged the
NATO troops who died for us in Afghanistan and belittled our nicest neighbor,
claiming that “Canada lives because of the United States.”
Demanding
Greenland, which he kept calling Iceland, he whinged to global
leaders at Davos: “All I want is a piece of ice.”
The depth of his
shallowness is infinite.
One Canadian
columnist asked: “How would
Trump behave differently if he was legitimately losing his mind?”
I understand the importance of legal
immigration. My Irish father fought in the infantry in World War I to earn his
citizenship. Nobody wants illegal criminals here. President Joe Biden let the
border run amok.
But in the new New York
Times/Siena University poll, a sizable majority said ICE had gone too far. Trump
responded by saying he would expand his lawsuit against The Times to include
the poll, because his rampaging vanity cannot accept falling numbers; the
poll indicated that 42 percent of voters said he was
ramping up to be one of the worst presidents in American history.
We have watched in
horror as Minneapolis has morphed into an eerie war zone: ICE claiming that its officers are allowed to barge
into people’s homes without judicial warrants; an ICE agent shooting an unarmed
mom with stuffed animals in her glove compartment three times until she was dead; ICE dragging a
Minnesota man — a Hmong immigrant and naturalized U.S. citizen with no criminal
record — out of his house into the snow, wearing only underwear and Crocs; ICE
detaining four children, including little Liam, from one school district. (An
F.B.I. agent who wanted to investigate the ICE agent who shot the mom resigned
after bureau officials told her to stop her inquiry.)
“Why detain a
5-year-old?” a flustered Zena Stenvik, the town’s superintendent, keened at a
press conference.
It is clear the Trump
crowd sees no difference between a criminal who crossed into the country
illegally and a family that has applied for asylum and is doing everything the
right way to stay here.
My parents inculcated us
with patriotism and gratitude for this country. I grew up surrounded by men in
uniform. My mother carried around a pocket-size Constitution in her purse,
along with miniature bottles of Tabasco. She did not want to see us on July 4
if we were not in red, white and blue. I know what America is meant to stand
for.
Trump has made America un-American.
