Letters from an American - May 26, 2025

Episode Date: May 27, 2025

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May 26, 2025. President Donald J. Trump's erratic behavior was on display this weekend in two public speeches, one to this year's graduates at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, New York, and the other at Arlington National Cemetery. While both speeches are traditionally nonpartisan, Trump indicated he would make them partisan when he wore a red MAGA hat at West Point. The president began both speeches by sticking to a script, but then veered off course. At West Point on Saturday,

his speech went on for over an hour. He attacked diversity, equity, and inclusion programs and said, The job of the U.S. Armed Forces is not to host drag shows, to transform foreign cultures, or to spread democracy to everybody around the world at the point of a gun, he said. The military's job is to dominate any foe and annihilate any threat to America, anywhere, anytime, and any place. In fact, the mission of the Department of Defense is to provide the military forces needed to deter war

and ensure our nation's security. Trump veered off into immigration and a chat about golf, then repeated a story about William Levitt, a real estate developer whose post-World War II housing developments became synonymous with suburbia, that he had told at a 2017 Boy Scout Jamboree. On Saturday, Trump talked about Levitt becoming very rich, a very rich man, and then he decided to sell.

And he sold his company and he had nothing to do. He ended up getting a divorce, found a new wife. Could you say a trophy wife? I guess we can say a trophy wife. It didn't work out too well, but it doesn't, that doesn't work out too well, I must tell you. A lot of trophy wives. It doesn't work out, but it made him happy

for a little while at least, but he found a new wife. He sold his little boat and he got a big yacht. He had one of the biggest yachts anywhere in the world. He moved for a time to Monte Carlo and he led the good life and time went by and he got bored and 15 years later, the company that he sold to called him and they said, the housing business is not for us. You have to understand when Bill Levitt was hot,

when he had momentum, he'd go to the job sites every night. He'd pick up every loose nail. He'd pick up every scrap of wood. If there was a bolt or a screw laying on the ground, he'd pick it up and he'd use it the next day and putting together a house. After his speech, Trump skipped the traditional shaking of each graduate's hand, left the ceremony, and flew to the Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster, New Jersey. At Arlington National Cemetery on Monday, the president veered off into a dig at his predecessor, President Joe Biden, then noted that he, Trump, will be president for the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. And he added, most important of all, in addition we have the World Cup and we have the Olympics.

Can you imagine if I missed that four years? And now look what I have. I have everything. Amazing the way things work out. God did that. I believe that too. Trump's social media account was similarly inappropriate. His message on Memorial Day, a solemn day to honor those American military personnel

who died in service to the country, began, happy Memorial Day to all, including the scum that spent the last four years trying to destroy our country through warped, radical left minds. But that message quickly took a turn toward his recurring attacks on judges. Trump claimed that criminals and the mentally insane are entering the United States through judges who are on a mission to keep murderers, drug dealers, rapists, gang members, and released prisoners from all over the world in our country so they can rob, murder, and rape again, all protected by these USA-hating judges who suffer from an ideology that is sick and very dangerous

for our country. Hopefully the United States Supreme Court and other good and compassionate judges throughout the land will save us from the decisions of the monsters who want our country to go to hell. In February 2024, almost a year before Trump took office the second time, the country's 23 Democratic state attorneys general began preparing for a second Trump term. They listened to what he was saying on the campaign trail and read the plans in Project 2025, then wrote potential lawsuits against what he might try to put in place.

Once he took office, they hit the ground running, banding together when they could to file lawsuits to bring the president's unconstitutional and illegal actions before courts. And they are not the only ones. On Friday, Alex Lemonides, Seamus Hughes, Mattathias Schwartz, Lizarro Gameo, and Camille Baker of the New York Times listed the many lawsuits against the Trump administration,

and noted that as of May 23rd, at least 177 rulings have at least temporarily paused some of the administration's initiatives. Those include cases involving the administration's attempt to fire large numbers of federal employees unlawfully, freeze federal funding required by Congress, refuse to recognize birthright citizenship, hand power to the Department of Government Efficiency, dismantle government agencies, take away civil rights from transgender Americans, revoke environmental policies, and use the federal government to punish individuals or organizations.

But it is the judicial orders and decisions concerning immigration that Trump and his administration are most vocally attacking. Their primary focus is on Maryland man Kilmar Abrego-Garcia, who was rendered to the notorious Seacott Terrorist Prison in El Salvador on March 15th, in what the administration at first called an administrative error. Nick Miroff of The Atlantic recorded that when Abrego-Garcia's family filed a lawsuit to get him returned, lawyers at the departments of State, justice and homeland security, quietly tried to secure his safety and bring him back to the United States.

But White House officials saw the case as a way to challenge the ability of the judicial branch to restrain presidential power. As Mirov writes, Abrego Garcia's deportation developed into a measure of whether Donald Trump's administration can send people, citizens or not, to foreign prisons without due process.

They began to insist, without evidence, that Abrego Garcia was a gang member, a drug dealer, a terrorist, and a human trafficker, Despite orders from courts right up to the Supreme Court to facilitate Abrego Garcia's return to the United States, they have publicly insisted that Abrego Garcia will never return to the United States. White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller, a white nationalist nativist, has said that the administration is thinking about suspending the writ of habeas corpus, which would permit the government to throw people in jail without charge or trial.

The Constitution specifies that Congress alone can suspend that writ. Their attacks seem designed to convince Americans that judges insisting on the rule of law are backing violent criminals. That, in turn, seems designed to encourage MAGA loyalists to threaten judges. And they are. The Wall Street Journal reported Sunday that a security committee at the judicial conference,

the body that makes policy for federal judges, has floated the idea of creating an armed security force apart from the current US Marshals Service that operates under the idea of creating an armed security force apart from the current US Marshals Service that operates under the Department of Justice. Judges have expressed concern that Trump and Loyalist Attorney General Pam Bondi might withdraw protections from judges who have ruled against the administration. Conservative Judge J. Michael Ludig noted, "...it is an extraordinary and unprecedented development in American history that the nation's federal judiciary would have to consider having its own security force because federal judges

cannot trust the U.S. Marshals Service under this president and his attorney general. They cannot trust this president and this attorney general to ensure their protection." He continued, "...I had to admit that giving the continuing unprecedented and vicious personal attacks and threats on the federal courts and federal judges by the president, Vice President Vance, Attorney General Pam Bondi, and Donald Trump's cabinet and senior White House advisors, I would never rely upon the U.S. Marshals Service for my protection.

Were I still a sitting federal judge? How could anyone? Letters from an American was written and read by Heather Cox Richardson. It was produced at Soundscape Productions, dead in Massachusetts. Recorded with music composed by Michael Moss.