Cruelty is the Point – Are You a Target? You Will Be Eventually
Every day in America, people are waking up to a new threat to their human rights. Donald Trump is approaching his first 250 days in office, and it’s been constant constitutional chaos and, more importantly, constant cruelty. Whether you are a woman, a part of the LGBTQIA+ or other marginalized communities, or the press, you’re a target of the current administration. Even other countries have been targeted, with Trump’s claims that he’s going to buy Greenland or make Canada the 51st state.
In particular his 2024 campaign heavily targeted and attacked immigrants and immigration in general, which his supporters loved every moment of as they further gravitated towards cruelty. Why does Donald Trump and his administration know that cruelty to others will sell?
Donald Trump and his administration are using human lives to live out his fantasy and being a vessel for his former mentor, Roy Chon (who we’ll discuss later). Lacking decency or regard for others whom they deem unworthy of their time, he imitates dictators of the past and present. And he does it because he and his administration know that cruelty and lies will sell their brand of fascism. For this administration, cruelty is the point.
This article covers some the many human rights abuse and unconstitutional acts by this administration, and the people who’ve been helping Trump achieve his goals (and the goals of Project 2025).
Trump Wanting to Reopen Alcatraz as He Begins Building Concentration Camps
A Response to Accountability
Earlier this year, Donald Trump ordered federal agencies to look into the process of reopening the maximum-security prison Alcatraz. Per his post on his own social media platform, Truth Social, his reason? To hold the most violent criminals. As reported on CNN, the U.S. Bureau of Prisons Director, William K Marshall, will “pursue all avenues” to implement this change.
This idea stems from Trump in a direct response to those he calls “radicalized judges” looking to ensure that the government doesn’t violate deported people’s right to due process. In his eyes, providing a trial for every person would result in millions of trials and take too much time. This is a direct violation of the Constitution, despite Donald Trump and his constituents proclaiming their love for the United States of America, and presumably, its laws.
However, in an interview with NBC News, Trump was asked by Kristen Welker if every person in the United States is entitled to due process. He responded, “I don’t know. I’m not, I’m not a lawyer. I don’t know.”
This is infuriating, as Donald Trump and his supporters have always campaigned about putting “America first,” but don’t believe in its laws that contradict what they want to do or whatever idea Trump wakes up with for the day.
Some Quick Alcatraz History
Alcatraz, also known as “The Rock,” previously held America’s most famous and vile criminals like Al Capone and George “Machine Gun” Kelly. The prison sits in the middle of the San Francisco Bay and was open from 1934 to 1963, with 36 inmates attempting to escape on 14 occasions. It was closed due to high operational costs. It’s noted that one of the expenses would be shipping fresh water; the prison required one million gallons of water to be brought weekly.
Despite this cost, earlier this year Trump spoke of reopening the prison, which is in disrepair. Trump didn’t care about the cost and how much it would cost to operate this decaying prison, with the reported estimate that restoring it costs between $3 and $5 million.
In addition to the disregard of the expenditure required for reopening the prison, Trump’s reasoning, like many of his ideas, is laced with misinformation. Donald Trump boasted that no one has ever escaped from Alcatraz. This is not true, as a mystery surrounds the famous escape of three men in June 1962.
From Alcatraz to Alligator Auschwitz
So far, as of July 17th, the plan is still to reopen Alcatraz. In the meantime, though, Trump found new ways to harm migrants who ICE detained – by opening up a concentration camp in the Everglades.
Right before the country celebrated its 249th Independence Day, an already failing venture called “Alligator Alcatraz” was opened. Located in the Florida Everglades, about 50 miles west of Mar-A-Lago, a detention center now sits in the middle of the wetlands and was claimed to be able to hold up to 5,000 detainees. Immediately, the facility reportedly experienced flooding, which exacerbated the horror stories that have already come out about the treatment of the people held captive there.
People refusing to use the gimmicky name the government has given the facility – which became a tourist attraction for MAGA – instead refer to the place as “Alligator Auschwitz.”
Thankfully, in late August, U.S. District Judge Kathleen Williams ordered Florida and the Trump administration to stop bringing new detainees to the facility and to wind down operations there within 60 days. This move is thanks to three lawsuits that challenged the detention center. One of the lawsuits was filed by two environmental groups and the Miccosukee tribe. (NPR).
However, while the camp has been shut down, there are now reports that hundreds of those detained here have disappeared or are otherwise have no record of where they’ve been moved to.
Adding Insult to Injury – Tax-payer money used to construct the concentration camp
The funding for this makeshift detention center was fronted by Florida’s Governor, Rob DeSantis, costing Floridians $450 million. The state then submits reimbursement requests through FEMA, expending the cost of operating a concentration camp in the Everglades to all Americans. To make matters worse, as the Florida facility was opened, Texans experienced catastrophic flooding, which claimed the lives of 136 people, including children and counselors at a summer camp next to the river that flooded.
While the devastation unfolded, elected leaders were too busy to care. Trump allegedly was golfing at his New Jersey golf course, while Texas Senator Ted Cruz was on vacation in Greece and didn’t return until days later. To make matters worse, disaster relief has been dismal since the flood. And as Texans grieve this loss and try to repair their state from the incompetence of the government not sending resources that should have been available through FEMA, those funds are funding a failing detention center with claims of torture to those detained there.
While the bodies of children and others lost during the flood were still being discovered, Governor DeSantis and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem were making jokes about the possibility of potential escapees being fed to alligators and pythons. Merchandise for the concentration camp is also now being sold, both by the administration and by people on sites like Etsy.
Where Priorities Lie
And on top of everything thus far, Trump wanted five more congressional seats and asked Texas to prematurely redraw their state district map, which historically is only done after the census, which isn’t for another five years. Texas Governor Gregg Abbott not only willfully complied with Trump’s remand, but he also tied the redistricting to the state receiving relief funds for the floods. The Republican state legislature went to hold a vote for the redistricting, which would have amounted to all-out gerrymandering. In response, state Democrats fled to states to force a quorum and stop the vote from being held. Having since returned and being forced to agree to a police escort at all times, Texas Republicans went on with the vote and approved the measure to redistrict the whole state with a completely gerrymandered map.
In response, California Governor Gavin Newsom put forth a special election for California voters to decide whether they would also redistrict their state map with their own gerrymandering to reclaim the five seats Texas Democrats would potentially lose in their redistricting.
As disaster funds and other taxpayer dollars go towards building concentration camps on American soil to imprison migrants and increasing funding to ICE, Americans are suffering around the country from skyrocketing living expenses and the threat of growing fascism.
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More Constitutional Violations
Sending People to El Salvador Without Due Process
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As noted in Project 2025, there was always a plan for mass deportations that intended to violate immigrants’ and Americans’ rights alike. However, Trump claimed he was unaffiliated with Project 2025, while fulfilling every plan in the document. The announcement of Trump wanting to reopen Alcatraz comes after a meeting with El Salvador’s “Cool Dictator,” President Nayib Bukele. The administration signed a $6 million agreement to house 300 accused members of the Venezuelan Aragua gang.
This prison has become known for arresting more than 84,000 people, many without due process, like Kilmar Abrego Garcia. As mentioned, Trump said he believes all the accused rounded up here would take too long to go through the constitutional legal process. Trump seems inspired by Bukele’s unethical actions, proving that the idea to reopen Alcatraz is unoriginal.
Unable to deliver results on the lies he spewed about there being “so many criminal immigrants in the United States,” his next move was to target birthright citizens as a distraction. While Trump was running for president, he promised that he would have the largest deportation operation in history, and that has so far not materialized. More deportations happened under former presidents Barack Obama and Joe Biden. While not a statistic to be celebrated, it highlights his desire to up the ante on the cruelty scale.
During his meeting with Bukele, Trump says, “The homegrowns are next, the homegrowns. You’ve got to build about five more places.”
A Blatant Threat to American Citizens
Trump explicitly let America know he’s coming for birthright citizenship under the guise of only targeting those born in the United States to illegal immigrants. This should concern all, as this sentiment is entirely unconstitutional. And with the disregard for due process, reports of American citizens ending up in detention centers are being overlooked. Trump has even suggested revoking citizenship from naturalized citizens. This is only a few steps away from revoking anyone’s citizenship and leaving them stateless.
Which threat to your human rights will it take to be threatened for you to be radicalized by the treatment of those you see as less than?
For now, this is in the realm of the courts. According to Reuters, “The 6-3 conservative majority U.S. Supreme Court on June 27 sided with the administration in the litigation by restricting the ability of judges to issue so-called universal injunctions and directing lower courts that had blocked Trump’s policy nationally to reconsider the scope of their orders. … But the ruling contained exceptions, allowing federal judges in Massachusetts and New Hampshire and the 9th Circuit to issue new decisions stopping Trump’s order from taking effect nationally.”
As of now, birthright citizenship is still a protected constitutional right, but the Supreme Court, in their ruling, has made it harder for cases and injunctions to be brought against the federal government for unconstitutional actions.
Sending Troops to American Cities
Over the summer we saw protests happen in Los Angeles in response to ICE targeting people, both undocumented folks and American citizens alike. If someone looks Hispanic, speaks Spanish, or is even just in the wrong place at the wrong time, ICE has been kidnapping them. So, people in Los Angeles began pushing back. They began recording and following ICE and unmarked vehicles, found their hotels and kept them up at night with loud noise, and more. And they took to the street in droves to protect their community. In response, Trump sent the National Guard, claiming there was violence and riots in the street, which was largely disproven.
Since then, Trump had federal agents invade D.C., and sent armed National Guardsmen there as well, citing violent crimes and skyrocketing murder rates. This, despite the US Attorney’s office reporting a historic reduction in crime in the city. In fact, there was so little for federal agents and the military to do, that many of them started picking up trash around the city to pass the time. This led to the assumption that Trump was beginning to target Democratically run cities, as the cities and states with much higher crime and murder rates haven’t been mentioned as needing government intervention. And while his next target was Chicago, the mayor of the city and Illinois’ government pushed back against Trump and told him not to come.
Despite sharing an AI-generated ‘Apocalypse Now’-inspired image of himself on Truth Social, with the threatening caption, “Chicago [is] about to find out why it’s called the Department of WAR” [Politico], Trump eventually backed off Chicago. At least, for the time being.
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Trump’s Lackeys, -err, his Administration
Elon Musk and His Short but Destructive Reign With DOGE
The Costs
Trump created an environment around him that enables a lack of accountability, as he surrounded himself with sycophants. The most notable was Elon Musk.
In January, the Washington Post reported that “Elon Musk donated $288 million in the 2024 election,” to Trump, raising questions about the legality of those payments. As Trump continues to ignore the courts, the likelihood of an investigation is slim to none.
Musk tried to hang with Trump and partake in the administration’s savagery by creating the “Department of Government Efficiency.” Most commonly known as DOGE, the group comprised of software engineers who guaranteed savings to government spending and transparency amongst programs. But, as Politico reported, “Through July, DOGE said it has saved taxpayers $52.8 billion by canceling contracts, but of the $32.7 billion in actual claimed contract savings that POLITICO could verify, DOGE’s savings over that period were closer to $1.4 billion.”
During Trump’s first 100 days of presidency, DOGE laid off an estimated 121,000 federal workers, not accounting for the voluntary buyout offered to workers. Musk claimed that these changes and cuts to the government budget saved $150 billion. But financial experts debunked this number. Musk attributes this failed venture to backlash and complaints, with no regard for how DOGE affected people’s lives, and refuses to admit the harm it caused.
Moreover, according to Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), DOGE went after more than 30 federal agencies, costing taxpayers billions in lost revenue. This doesn’t even include the cost to run DOGE, nor does it account for lost international goodwill, as cuts to programs like USAID caused people in other countries to die due to lack of aid.
Lies have been told to create a facade, all the while Trump called this failed venture a “very big success,” when it wasn’t.
An Inevitable FAFO
However, DOGE has been a thorn in the side of Americans and now Elon himself, as this venture of his affected the bottom line of his businesses like Tesla, and his own pockets. Trump gave Elon and DOGE the ability to have unlimited access to Americans’ personal and financial information and caused a mental frenzy with illegal firings that are now amid dozens of lawsuits. His popularity and his stocks quickly plummeted. People even began protesting at Tesla dealerships. And of course there was the double Nazi salute he made at the inauguration.
Elon and his department’s arrogance reared its ugly head when he sent an insensitive email to federal workers, demanding they respond with five bullet points of tasks they completed that week to prove their productivity and worth. This requirement comes from someone who had no problem admitting that “Some of the things that I say will be incorrect” to the press while Donald Trump was sitting next to him.
Now that chaos and stress have ensued, you won’t find Musk being mentioned as much these days, as the backlash has created too much attention, and Trump doesn’t like anyone being bigger than the program. With the significant drop in Tesla stock, this reason can be attributed to Elon’s announcement of reducing political spending. Tesla’s profits in the first quarter fell a staggering 71%; Trump was even trying to insinuate that the boycott of the products and some instances of Tesla vehicle vandalism were “domestic terrorism.” Unsurprisingly, Trump does not have the same empathy for federal workers whose lives were turned upside down, illegally, but it seems the line is drawn for the billionaire who had a hand in it.
A Nasty Break-up
As a surprise to no one, Musk officially departed from the White House at the end of May, as he and Trump disagreed over Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill.” As the type of people who base their relationships on how it benefits them, once the bottom line, in this case – money – has been affected, there is no sense of loyalty. This breakup led to an embarrassing feud of tweets and ridiculous statements from both sides, including threats from Elon to create a new political party and threats from Trump to possibly deport Musk. Musk even called out Trump for being in the Epstein files, despite both having ties to Epstein. After a couple of weeks, nothing happened and things died down again, further showing how little these things affect or mean to them, but can crush someone else’s world in a split second.
After Musk left, DOGE was dissolved, with many of its members, including a staffer known as “Big Balls,” went on to get high-ranking positions in the government. In its wake, DOGE left the government in shambles, gutted agencies, and cut funding for programs that saved lives around the world, like USAID, which fed and provided medical care to children and people around the world. As a result, children and people have starved to death or died from lack of medication or life-saving care.
Tom Homan
Another figurehead in the Trump administration who upholds the violent nature is Tom Homan, who left retirement to serve as the Head of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, widely known as ICE. Homan made threats, despite questions about the legality of these deportations, that immigrants need to be looking over their shoulder, and even supported charges being brought to democratic reps who, in his words, would go against ICE. The alarm wasn’t rung amongst citizens when Homan proudly declared that he didn’t care what judges thought about the deportations.
Due to his cruel ways, his family is also being affected, as Homan received death threats. His family isn’t allowed to live with him with fear for their safety. Is he so dedicated to this inhumane work that he’s willing to be away from his own family, just to destroy someone else’s?
Kristi Noem
The United States Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and self-admitted puppy killer, thought it was humane to visit the El Salvador prison, posing in front of a cell of prisoners and showing videos of the humiliating process of when deported individuals arrived. This is the same individual who was embarrassed in front of peers for not being able to define habeas corpus accurately.
Noem wants to enact clauses within the constitution to deport people, which she is on record admitting that she has never read. In a constant pursuit to market their brutal treatment of immigrants, the Department of Homeland Security is also considering a reality show that will have immigrants compete for citizenship.
It’s no wonder that South Park went all out on making fun of Noem in their most recent season of the show, repeatedly highlighting the story of her shooting one of her dogs because she thought it was “untrainable.” That episode satirizes the incompetence and lack of any standards of ICE, which has been hiring pretty much anyone and everyone, even as young as 18-year-olds, with no experience. From Homan to Noem and ICE as a whole, everyone in Trump’s administration is highly unqualified and incredibly cruel.
Other Notable Mentions
To keep an already long article a little shorter, some notable mentions of other members of this administration deserve a quick note. One is Attorney General Pam Bondi, who we know as the person who said the Epstein Files were on her desk back in February, and then pivoted to say the files didn’t exist. By proxy to her and the files of course is FBI director Kash Patel and Deputy Director of the FBI Dan Bongino. Both of whom also dialed back their comments about the files after getting into their positions by advocating for the release of the files on their respective podcasts prior to the election. That’s right – the FBI is run by podcast bros now.
There’s also Pete Hegseth, former Fox News contributor, who’s now in charge of the Pentagon as the Secretary of Defense. If you remember the Signal Gate scandal, you’ll recall he sent classified information through a Signal group chat to the Editor-in-Chief at the Atlantic.
And of course, there’s Karoline Leavitt, the White House Press Secretary, who gleefully pedals the administration’s propaganda and outright lies.
All these appointments beg the question of, “Why is it acceptable to be so unqualified, let alone for positions that dictates the livelihood of human beings?”
When will enough be enough?
Mirror, Mirror on the Wall, Who’s the Biggest Dick of them All?
A Brief History of Roy Cohn
This type of cruelty is not something that develops overnight, nor is it something that can be brought to fruition without help. To understand how Trump has become capable of his actions, one must examine his mentor, Roy Cohn. Cohn and Trump were very close in their time spent together, and Trump admired Cohn’s ruthlessness. It wasn’t until rumors of homosexuality that surrounded Cohn’s reputation that it was the dagger in their connection.
Becoming an assistant prosecutor very early on in his law career, in 1951, he was a huge participant in the decision to execute Julius and Ethel Rosenberg in the Soviet Spy Case. This conviction was riddled with scandal as Cohn used off-the-record communication to convince the judge to give the couple the death penalty, which led to their execution by electric chair, which was proven to be a wrongful sentence years later.
This trial got the attention of Senator Joseph McCarthy, and he appointed Cohn to the Senate Permanent Subcommittee for his Investigations Department. Much like Trump’s Administration today, that team went after members of the LGBTQ community, all the while Roy Cohn was a part of that community.
When it came to his reputation, Cohn would say the worse the adjectives, the better it was for business. Although Trump has not said those words verbatim, it’s apparent that it’s his goal, and for reasons unknown, his followers love it.
Two Peas in a Pod
Their working relationship began in the 70’s with Trump seeking Cohn’s legal counsel for his lawsuit, where he was accused of avoiding renting to Black tenants.
“Tell them to go to hell and fight the thing in court and let them prove you discriminated,” Cohn said, with the advice to countersue for defamation. It was ultimately thrown out in court; however, it served as a distraction and gave grounds for a settlement without the admission of guilt. From that case on, Cohn became Trump’s number one contact for legal and personal matters, including his marriage to Ivana Trump, where he helped him with a prenuptial agreement.
Between the 1960s and 1970s, Cohn faced charges of bribery, obstruction of justice, and fraud, but had always managed to skirt the charges, and was never convicted. It wasn’t until 1986 that he was disbarred for unethical conduct. Similarly, Trump went on to become the first former President to be sentenced on 34 felony counts of fraud. Even after this case and Trump’s lies about the 2020 election being stolen, the January 6th insurrection, he was still elected as President in 2024.
Roy Cohn had a reputation for being evil, cruel, and a liar, yet he still had support, much like today for Trump. It begs the question of, even at your detriment, why are people eager to follow court-proven liars?
A History of Disdain
The hatred and exploitation of immigrants by Donald Trump is how we, as a society, were essentially introduced to him. During the 80s, Trump was accused of using undocumented Polish workers who worked poorly conditioned 12-hour shifts. His use of undocumented workers did not end there. A class action lawsuit was filed, and Trump had to pay $1.3 million in the 1998 settlement. The Washington Post spoke with former employees who verified they worked on five Trump golf courses in New York and New Jersey.
To this day, although Trump no longer hires undocumented workers due to using the E-Verify system, he still denies any knowledge of hiring these workers. It begs the question that, since Trump has such strong stances against immigrants, why did he have such trouble in the past with hiring American citizens?
Where Do We Go Now?
As I write this article, it occurred to me that I’ve ended each piece with a question rather than a statement, and I believe that speaks to the question I started with when writing this article: Why is cruelty being used as marketing for Trump’s followers? The answer is that cruelty IS the point. And they revel in it.
One thing I know for sure is that understanding this logic is not more important than fighting against it. Where logic and facts are being attacked in the spirit of Roy Cohn’s “Deny, deflect, delay” mantra, it is up to us to dismantle this rhetoric that the other side is working tirelessly to implement.
If you’re still wondering if you’re a target, the answer is that you will be eventually. Get involved and mobilize with your community however you can, reach out to your political leaders, and show up when the call is made. We all have a role and a part to play in whatever comes.
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