(Dobbs) Without An Ounce Of SympathyPeople are being punished for something they didn’t even do.
Does it tell you anything— anything at all— that in all the pronouncements from this cold-blooded administration about furloughs for some federal employees and mandatory work without pay for others and in the worst cases, “Reductions In Force”— which translates to the phrase that made Donald Trump famous, “You’re fired”— we never hear a word of sympathy, a word of compassion, a word of caring for the people losing their paychecks and losing their jobs and losing their careers? We didn’t hear it during the slash-and-burn career-cutting crusade of Elon Musk’s DOGE, and we don’t hear it now. Trump’s heartless architect of widespread suffering, Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought, put a post up yesterday about the government shutdown. “OMB is making every preparation,” he wrote, “to batten down the hatches and ride out the Democrats’ intransigence. Pay the troops, pay law enforcement, continue the RIFs, and wait.” “Continue the RIFs.” Could he possibly have added even an ounce of sympathy, because while “RIF” is a government acronym that he tosses around like confetti, each RIF is actually a real human being. Yes, if he had a sympathetic bone in his body, he could have indicated that he understood that there are victims to his cutthroat policies. But from all appearances, he doesn’t. Trump’s no better. At a cabinet meeting last week, most of which are no more than stage plays casting this president as the king of our country, he announced, “We’re only cutting Democrat programs, I hate to tell you, but we are cutting Democrat programs. We will be cutting some very popular Democrat programs that aren’t popular with Republicans, frankly.” Then he went to his blame game: “That’s the way it works,” he said. “They wanted to do this so we will give them a little taste of their own medicine.” What he conveniently leaves out is, it’s not Democratic politicians who taste the bitter medicine. It’s the people of both parties in Democratic states whose jobs— like the $2 billion worth of infrastructure-related projects in New York that are losing their funding and the $8 billion worth of climate-related projects from coast to coast— that take the hit. Again, couldn’t the president— don’t forget, he’s supposed to be the president of all fifty states and not just the ones that voted for him last November— couldn’t he possibly have thrown in an ounce of sympathy for the real human beings who lose something, in some cases everything, when these “Democrat programs” are cut? Yes he could…. if only he knew how. But that’s not how a narcissist thinks. It’s a sickness, and no amount of loss, even right before his very eyes, will change that. I read everything I can about Donald Trump and his band of unmerry men and women, and yesterday scoured the internet to see if I’ve missed something, maybe some soft spot that has taken verbal form and popped out of their mouths when they weren’t looking. But I’ve come up with zeroes. The closest Trump ever came was back in March when Musk was taking his chainsaw to the federal bureaucracy and the president told NBC News, “I feel very badly,” but then before he barely took another breath he had to add, “but many of them don’t work at all. Many of them never showed up to work.” So overall, zeroes. Zeroes from Pam Bondi at Justice, Pete Hegseth at Defense, Kristi Noem at Homeland Security, Kash Patel at the FBI, Karoline Leavitt at the White House press machine, JD Vance at the office one step away from the Oval Office, and others. Even zeroes from Marco Rubio, now so reliantly tied to the man who once mercilessly belittled him that he doesn’t express remorse for decimating programs he once praised and supported. Leave a comment These guys don’t confess that people are suffering because they are ambitious. They don’t confess that people are suffering because they don’t care. They don’t have to worry about how they’re going to feed their kids without a paycheck. They don’t have to agonize over how they’ll pay the next month’s rent. They don’t have to wonder whether they’d better settle the electric bill or the doctor’s bill first. Between Americans who are losing their paychecks and Americans who are simply losing access to government services because of the shutdown, people are being punished for something they didn’t even do. Without a word of regret from those meting out the punishment. Share Upgrade to paid Over more than five decades Greg Dobbs has been a correspondent for two television networks including ABC News, a political columnist for The Denver Post and syndicated columnist for Scripps newspapers, a moderator on Rocky Mountain PBS, and author of two books, including one about the life of a foreign correspondent called “Life in the Wrong Lane.” He also co-authored a book about the seminal year for baby boomers, called “1969: Are You Still Listening?” He has covered presidencies, politics, and the U.S. space program at home, and wars, natural disasters, and other crises around the globe, from Afghanistan to South Africa, from Iran to Egypt, from the Soviet Union to Saudi Arabia, from Nicaragua to Namibia, from Vietnam to Venezuela, from Libya to Liberia, from Panama to Poland. Dobbs has won three Emmys, the Distinguished Service Award from the Society of Professional Journalists, and as a 39-year resident of Colorado, a place in the Denver Press Club Hall of Fame. You can learn more at GregDobbs.net |