One way or another, the American taxpayers always get screwed by politicians eager to spend our hard-earned dollars on programs and projects that do little to improve our lives, safeguard our freedoms, or secure our future.
Donald Trump—the billionaire trust-fund baby/reality TV showman who transformed himself into a populist champion of working-class Americans—has proven to be no different, and in many ways worse, than the politicians who came before him.
Trump has given new meaning to government corruption, graft, grift, profiteering, self-dealing and pay-to-play politics.
From the proposed White House ballroom and its taxpayer-backed security upgrades, to the high-dollar UFC spectacle planned for the White House lawn, to pardons that function less like mercy than loyalty rewards, to government access increasingly conditioned on political obedience, Trump has turned the presidency into a private rewards program for himself, his donors, his allies and his enforcers.
Every new abuse is wrapped in the language of patriotism, security or justice. Every bill lands, sooner or later, on the backs of the American people.
Thus, rather than draining the swamp, Trump has shown himself to be the veritable swamp monster, mired in the muck and determined to keep it that way.
Trump’s latest grift? A taxpayer-funded slush fund, dressed up as justice, purportedly to compensate those who claim they were targeted by the “weaponization” of the Biden Justice Department and Democrats.
As part of the same settlement, the government also reportedly agreed to bar the IRS from auditing Trump, his family, the Trump Organization and related entities over tax filings and claims predating the agreement—a breathtaking act of self-protection disguised as legal closure that helps shield the president and his empire from the very kind of government scrutiny ordinary Americans are expected to endure without complaint.
Taken together, the payout fund and the audit shield expose the real purpose of this so-called anti-weaponization crusade: not to end weaponized government, but to decide who gets protected by it, who gets paid by it, and who gets crushed by it
Read between the lines of the deliberately vague information provided about this “Anti-Weaponization Fund,” which will be seeded with $1.776 billion in taxpayer funds, and it starts to look suspiciously like a fund to reimburse those convicted, investigated or politically inconvenienced for crossing legal lines in service to Trump’s agenda.
The message is unmistakable: commit crimes that benefit those in power, and those in power will absolve you, reimburse you, excuse you, or reward you.
These are not miscarriages of justice being corrected. They are protection payments, signals to future operatives: do what we need you to do, and we will take care of you.
But who will compensate “we the people” for the damage done when the government weaponizes its powers against us?
Who will compensate the people surveilled without warrants, raided without cause, censored for their views, bankrupted by fines and fees, brutalized by militarized police, jailed without due process, dragged through the courts, disappeared into detention centers, or treated as enemies of the state for exercising their constitutional rights?
Who will compensate the victims of a police state that has been weaponized by Republicans and Democrats alike?
That is the real question.
The Trump administration claims this fund is about redressing government weaponization.
Yet at the very same time, it is weaponizing the government against the citizenry: against protesters, immigrants, law firms, judges, journalists, universities, critics, whistleblowers, and anyone else who stands in the way of executive power.
This is what it means to weaponize the government.
When the government turns its power against its own people—through surveillance, retaliation, censorship, and intimidation—it ceases to serve the public and instead becomes a weapon of oppression.
When protesters are snatched up, arrested, prosecuted or surveilled for challenging government policy, that is government weaponized against dissent.
When immigrants are rounded up, chained, deported or detained without meaningful due process—without being properly identified, charged, heard, or allowed to challenge the government’s claims—that is government weaponized against due process.
When law firms are punished for the clients they represent, barred from federal buildings, stripped of security clearances, threatened with the loss of contracts, or pressured into providing hundreds of millions of dollars in legal services aligned with the administration’s priorities, that is government weaponized against the right to counsel.
When judges are derided, defied or threatened for ruling against the president’s agenda, that is government weaponized against the separation of powers.
When universities are threatened with funding cuts, investigations and ideological purges for failing to toe the government’s line, that is government weaponized against academic freedom and independent thought.
When journalists and critics are branded enemies, liars, radicals, criminals or traitors for questioning official narratives, that is government weaponized against the First Amendment.
When government websites, archives, agencies and public records are rewritten, scrubbed or politicized in order to reshape history, control memory, and enforce ideological obedience, that is government weaponized against truth.
When the president threatens other nations militarily, talks openly about seizing foreign lands, stirs up international tensions, rattles the war drums, and then claims wartime powers at home, that is government weaponized against peace, liberty and constitutional restraint.
Trump, adept at twisting facts and spinning lies, insists these end-runs around the rule of law are for our safety.
This is the devil’s bargain that we are being asked to enter into with Trump: empty promises and a one-way street to a dictatorship in exchange for our freedoms.
There can be no doubt about the nature of what is taking place right now.
This is government weaponized into war.
President Trump’s justification for defying the courts and doing whatever he wants in pursuit of his political agenda (arresting protesters, carrying out mass arrests and deportations, muzzling critics, seizing funds, dismantling agencies, usurping congressional powers) is that “this is war.”
Here’s the thing, though: Trump may be using the language of war to bypass the Constitution at every turn, but the only war being waged is a war against the Constitution, the rule of law and the American people.
Likewise, this so-called Anti-Weaponization Fund is not justice.
It is hush money for the powerful, paid for by the powerless.
It is the weaponized government rewarding its own while leaving the rest of us to foot the bill.
As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, all freedoms hang together.
They fall together, as well.
Reprinted with permission from the Rutherford Institute.
