It’s been a sad year for America.
Since Jan. 20, 2025, we’ve had a president actively working to impede – some would say destroy – our democracy.
It’s hard to understand how a president who incited hundreds of Capitol insurrectionists in 2021 and then pardoned them for their protests can now be sending armed federal thugs into cities to assault protesters of a different ilk. How hypocritical.
It’s hard to understand how the very same president can support an ICE crackdown in Minneapolis where agents killed a suburban mom in a van when he is threatening Iran with bombs for using government thugs to kill thousands of protesters. How sanctimonious.
It’s hard to understand how a president can pick a former heroin addict and vaccine denialist to run a national health agency that has weakened recommendations that have kept American children healthy for decades. And now thanks to anti-vax denialism, vaccination rates are below herd immunity levels in South Carolina, where the Upstate has become the nation’s measles outbreak hotspot. How stupid.
It’s hard to understand how a president who cozies up to authoritarian leaders from Russia to China had the audacity to shut down the Voice of America, a global radio network that pushed the principles of freedom and helped foster democracy. How undemocratic.
It’s hard to understand how a president has the gumption to accept the world’s largest bribe – a $400 million jet – from Qatar when his family is making millions in business from oil gazillionaires all over the Middle East. How corrupt.
It’s hard to understand how a president who so covets a Nobel Peace Prize bombed seven countries in 2025 without congressional authority. And he then suckered a Venezuelan to give him her Peace Prize medal. Seems authoritarian and misleading.
It’s hard to understand how an American president who holds big grudges can turn the U.S. Justice Department into an agency that targets and prosecutes people who he perceives as political enemies. How unjust.
It’s hard to understand how the president can’t understand basic economics, how tariffs are paid by American consumers, not foreigners, and how businesses and farms are forced to shutter because they can’t afford inflated prices caused by the president’s tariff policies. How idiotic.
It’s hard to understand how too many Americans put up with a president who is a convicted felon and continues to run from his involvement in a scandal blooming from his sex predator buddy. And how the president constantly tries to skitter away by making grand pronouncements, like a need for taking Greenland, or deadly action, like bombing Venezuela, just to deflect attention from the Epstein scandal. How criminal.
It’s hard to understand how Republicans in Congress put up with all of this scandal, nonsense, misinformation, disinformation, lying and corruption.
And yet, the dysfunction that’s drowning democracy continues. Fortunately, protesters aren’t giving up. Fortunately, more people are speaking out, just like former President Bill Clinton and former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton did this week when they explained why they wouldn’t testify before a rigged congressional committee. In a personal note to U.S. Rep. James Comer, R-Kentucky, they wrote:
“Continue to mislead Americans about what is truly at stake, and you will learn that Americans are better at finding the truth than you are at burying it. … Continue to abet the dismantling of America, and you will learn that it takes more than a wrecking ball to demolish what Americans have built over 250 years.”
Yes, it’s been a sad year in America. But true patriots who believe in democracy and freedom will not let either die.
Andy Brack is editor and publisher of the Charleston City Paper and Statehouse Report. Have a comment? Send to: feedback@statehousereport.com.
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