Criminality, ineptitude and the question that won’t go away

A question for die-hard President Trump supporters, what keeps you on board? Is it his criminal behavior or inept policies?

Let’s start with criminality. Trump is the only U.S. president ever convicted of a felony. Well, to be precise, Trump was found guilty on 34 felony counts involving an illegal scheme to boost his 2016 presidential chances by paying hush money to porn actress Stormy Daniels, to keep her from going public with the details of their affair. That affair took place in 2006, whilst Donald was married to Melania, who was busy taking care of their four-month old son Barron at the time. What a guy.

Worse, Trump has yielded to his criminal proclivities when acting as commander-in-chief. Indeed, legal experts concur the to-date 22 strikes Trump’s administration has ordered the U.S. military to conduct on civilians suspected of smuggling drugs into America—which have killed at least 87 people—constitute clear violations of both U.S. domestic and international law.

There’s no gray area here. Using the military to summarily kill civilians who might be committing a crime, without arresting them and giving them a fair trial, is a fundamental violation of U.S. law generally, and due process rights specifically. The order to kill civilians is especially egregious under these circumstances. After all, even if these purported drug dealers were arrested, tried and convicted, they wouldn’t face the death penalty. Depending on various factors, like the specific drugs involved and number of prior offenses, the ultimate sentence would include a fine and incarceration that could vary from less than one year in prison to life.

No wonder the American Civil Liberties Union and other civil rights organizations recently filed a lawsuit seeking immediate release of all documents Trump has relied on to authorize these illegal, lethal strikes. “The public deserves to know how our government is justifying cold-blooded murder of civilians as lawful,” said Jeffrey Stein, an ACLU attorney.

If criminality and government sanctioned killing of civilians without a trial isn’t your cup of tea, maybe you like Trump’s inept policy initiatives. Here there are so many options to choose from, it would be hard to cover them in a 60,000-page tome, much less a 600-word column. So let’s focus on one of Trump’s favorites: tariffs. When he announced his “beautiful tariffs” in April, Trump promised they’d bring in “trillions of dollars,” “lead to lower prices” and “have jobs and factories come roaring back into our country.” Boy, that rhetoric hasn’t aged well.

Start with the “trillions of dollars” claim. To date, the tariffs have netted about $250 billion, nowhere close to Trump’s hyperbole—nor anywhere near enough to make a dent in the $4.5 trillion his tax cuts for rich folks and corporations add to the deficit over the next decade. Meanwhile economists agree that, far from bringing prices down, Trump’s tariffs have led to greater inflation in the cost of most consumer goods and services, even those produced domestically. That’s because many U.S. producers incorporate imported merchandise in their goods.

How about his boast about jobs and factories roaring back? Well, not so much. Since Trump first imposed tariffs, there has been no factory boom. To the contrary, America has lost some 50,000 manufacturing jobs, while overall job growth is well below initial projections, and the unemployment rate just hit a four-year high. Worse, the U.S. economy is tanking. According to the Philadelphia Federal Reserve Bank, real GDP growth will be just 1.9% in 2025, and 1.8% in 2026, down from 2.5% in 2024.

Bottom line: Trump’s criminal actions and ill-informed tariffs are ruining the nation’s economy and reputation. So how can anyone still support him?

• Ralph Martire, rmartire@ctbaonline.org, is Executive Director of the Center for Tax and Budget Accountability, a fiscal policy think tank, and the Arthur Rubloff Professor of Public Policy at Roosevelt University.