Or - more likely - what if Trump decides he doesn't want the world to outlive him?
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That’s not in dispute. The only question is how many of us will die too early, when and how.
A doctor friend reminded me recently of the predicted death toll that could result from Trump’s early moves to stop funding health programs in foreign countries.
Many of us have probably forgotten Trump’s attack on USAID and similar programs because there’s so much else going on now. I know I’d put that out of my mind.
But my friend pointed me to a Nicholas Kristof column in the New York Times last month that predicted 1,650,000 million people might die annually without continued U.S. funding for HIV prevention and treatment. He noted other outcomes – such as a half-million annual deaths from lack of vaccines.
We know that two children have died in Texas of measles, and both were unvaccinated. We can’t blame Trump for those deaths, but we know that he appointed Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a vaccine skeptic, to oversee public health. Without vaccines, children will die.
We know that the Trump is trying to end programs meant to slow, stall and reverse climate change. Our tortured environment already is producing catastrophic firestorms, tornadoes, blizzards, hurricanes, heat spells and floods. Unchecked, a wounded climate could make the earth unlivable.
The nation’s attention currently is on Trump’s assault on the economy – our own and the world’s – by imposing high tariffs, resulting in stunning shifts in stock and bond markets.
For days, Trump vowed to stay the course until he sort of didn’t, "pausing" most big tariffs hikes, but leaving in place 10 percent tariffs on most countries and boosting China’s levies to 145 percent.
Markets rose joyfully at first. Then they fell. Who knows what they’ll do next Monday morning or on Thursday afternoon, as financial wizards undertake a fool's mission - trying to make sense of what Trump is thinking.
Which brings me to the most serious danger of all –
Trump’s singular ability to activate the United States' nuclear arsenal.
But Donald Trump would never be that reckless.
Even Trump would never unleash an unprovoked nuclear holocaust.
That’s what we all believe. The Trump “base” thinks he’d never, for one reason or another, fire off a nuclear missile. Democrats, progressives and Independents and apolitical citizens of all sorts really can’t imagine that.
But here’s something that the great horror writer Stephen King said about Trump during his first term:
“That this guy has his finger on the nuclear trigger is worse than any horror story I ever wrote.”
That line was posted on Twitter, now X, which was cited in a 2017 Esquire magazine article.
Two years later, King was interviewed about a character in his 1979 novel, “The Dead Zone,” which imagined an emerging demagogue, who had eyes on the White House. The video interview appeared in a “Rolling Stone” magazine article.
“Do you think that the Trump presidency is scarier than a Stephen King novel?” the interviewer asked.
“Short answer to that is yes, I do,” King replied. “I
do think it’s scarier.”
Those 2017 and 2019 comments seem to have been blended into a inaccurate quote that’s widely attributed to King: “Donald Trump is worse than any horror story I’ve written.”
You can find this wording easily in a Google search. But if it's not a literal quote, it is an apt paraphrase of King’s insight into both Trump, as well as the public’s appetite for a charismatic, dangerous politician.
King long has had a feel for leaders who go off the rails. I’ve read two of his novels, “The Stand,” published in 1978, and “Under the Dome,” 2009, that feature dangerous characters who have sway with groups of citizens.
I haven’t read “The Dead Zone,” the novel discussed in the 2019 piece in Rolling Stone , but book summaries describe a rising politician, Greg Stillson, whom another character envisions triggering a nuclear war if he makes it to the White House.
King, in his interview, says that his Stillson character, like Trump, wasn't taken seriously as a politician at first, but gained a following and that there were other similarities between the imagined and the real.
“I know that American voters have always had a real attraction to outsiders with the same kind of right-wing ‘America First’ policy,” King told his interviewer. “And if that reminds people of Trump, I can’t be sorry, because it was a character that I wrote. It was a boogeyman of mine, and I never wanted to see him actually on the American political scene. But we do seem to have a Greg Stillson as president of the United States.”
Happily in "The Dead Zone," the fictional
Stillson’s political career was cut short and the envisioned nuclear launch
never took place.
IN REAL LIFE, United States finds itself in the grip of a president who is as
frightening as any in American memory
And as, King suggests, actual, historical monsters – Hitler, Stalin, Mao – are far scarier than those who are made up.
Donald Trump has many disturbing attributes. He's racist; he’s cruel, a liar, abusive, vengeful and unpredictable.
On occasion, Trump has alluded to the use of nuclear weapons.
Sparing verbally with North Korea during his first term, Trump issued this warning:
“North Korea best not make any more threats to the United States,” Trump told reporters at his New Jersey golf club in 2017. “They will be met with fire and fury like the world has never seen.”MOST DISTURBING to me is that Trump says he’s God’s instrument, meant to guide the United States into a new era, the proof being his narrow escape from an assassination attempt during last year’s campaign.
Trump put it this way in his inaugural address:
"Just a few months ago, in a beautiful Pennsylvania field, an assassin’s bullet ripped through my ear. But I felt then and believe even more so now that my life was saved for a reason. I was saved by God to make America great again."
This is a man who has carelessly, recklessly brought the country to the edge of a recession, who has arbitrarily shipped immigrants to a dangerous foreign prison, moved to abandon life-saving health programs, mused about taking over Canada and extorted universities and law firms with financial and legal threats.
So much is worse today in America and the world, so many lives put in jeopardy, than was the case just a few months ago, all because of one man.
It makes me wonder what Donald Trump might do –
now or in the future – should he get a signal from God.
