To be an elected official is to be responsible to two publics.
The first is the one that put you in power, the staffers, donors, volunteers and voters that helped to pave the path from mere candidate to winner, and wielder, of state power.
But this partisan public is no more than a subset of the broad public you are obligated to lead and represent. You owe your voters, yes, but you also owe the whole people of your county, or city or district or state. You have to consider their interests — not just those of your fellow partisans. The government works for the whole people and so you, too, must work for the whole people.
Or at least, that’s the idea. That is the theory.
Enter President Donald Trump. At no point, in his time in public office, has Trump ever acted as if he were president of the whole United States. He acts, instead, as if he is president only of Red America, and even then, only those states that backed him in the presidential election. Like too many Americans, Trump sees the binary color scheme of our quadrennial Electoral College maps and thinks that it corresponds to reality. He seems unaware that he has equally passionate supporters in the “blue” state of California and in the “red” states of the Deep South.
This week we’ve seen both him and his White House speak and act in ways that demonstrate their contempt for those Americans who opposed his 2024 campaign for the Oval Office.
On Tuesday, at an unusual gathering of the nation’s military leaders, the president condemned large parts of the American public as an “enemy within” to be confronted with force. “Inner cities are a big part of war,” Trump said, criticizing Democratic-led cities such as Los Angeles and Portland, Ore. “I will never hesitate to protect our people from the horrible plague that is taking place from within.” He suggested that the military use “dangerous” American cities as “training grounds” and added, “History is built with military heroes who took on all enemies, foreign and domestic.”
And on Wednesday, Russell Vought, head of the Office of Management and Budget, announced that he would use the government shutdown to defund Democratic-led states and cities of federal investments in infrastructure and green energy. “Nearly $8 billion in Green New Scam funding to fuel the Left’s climate agenda is being cancelled,” Vought said on X, naming 16 states that backed Kamala Harris in the 2024 presidential election. Vought also said the White House would be withholding $18 billion in funds for infrastructure projects in the New York metropolitan area.
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The post Who Is Donald Trump Responsible To? appeared first on New York Times.
