The Heart of a Champion:
An Open Letter to Some of My Friends Who Are Trump Supporters©
There are a few who feel compelled to confront me whenever I voice a critical view of President Donald John Trump. They seem to regard themselves as his champions, determined to defend him at every turn. Yet, as the first year of his second presidency draws to a close, I find myself feeling almost pity for them. It must be exhausting—if not infuriating—to live in continual readiness to justify the latest outburst or absurdity from a man so erratic. “Continual” is the operative word, for in these early days of January 2026, even his defenders do not know what to expect next—what reckless or outrageous thing he will say or do, or how soon he will do it.
It must take a heart emptied of devotion to democratic principle to defend a government that once stood as the world’s exemplar of liberty but is now the epitome of how sudden moral and ethical foundations can erode. How troubling it must be for Mr. Trump’s champions to justify, before a watching world, conduct that debases both office and nation—boasts of lawless impunity, acts of cruelty, even savagery, and abuses of power that echo far beyond our shores, from Mar-a-lago to foreign capitals.
As his offenses multiply, it must grow ever harder to sustain even the pretense of a credible defense. We are witnessing a moral and civic decline of historic proportions—a horrifying descent in plain sight. The nation has entrusted power to a convicted felon, a man found liable for sexual assault, and that, astonishingly, is only the beginning. The slope downward is steeper now, the pace swifter, and the peril to our institutions and society more profound.
It must take a heart hardened to conscience and deaf to decency to defend a man who boasts he could sexually assault women (grab them by the genitals), or take a life in plain view (shoot someone on 5th Avenue) and escape all consequence. The Supreme Court’s ruling on presidential immunity has only confirmed his conviction that power excuses all. Even the least wary among us might have foreseen that such license, granted to such a temperament, would unleash excess beyond restraint—and so it has. His undisciplined mind and ungoverned passions have loosed a reckless scourge upon the nation. Seizing every chance to exalt himself, he seeks not merely to rule America as a sovereign but to stand as master of the world, persuaded of his own unrivaled genius.
It must take a heart dulled to decency and a conscience untroubled by dignity to defend a man who makes a spectacle of belittling, ridiculing, and humiliating reporters, fallen soldiers, and political opponents, turning cruelty into entertainment and contempt into applause at rallies. And if his defenders chose to separate the man from his actions as president, it requires a heart equally calloused and blind to look the other way.
It must take a heart hardened against the rule of law and a will indifferent to justice to defend a man who seeks to turn the Department of Justice, the FBI, and the Department of Defense, into instruments of personal vengeance—bent on punishing his opponents, branding dissenters as traitors, and dreaming of retribution against those who refuse to kowtow to him.
It must take a heart indifferent to principle and integrity to defend an administration whose persistent displays of hubris, ignorance, defiance, and rebellion erode respect for law, embolden cruelty, and transform authority from a stewardship into an instrument of oppression of the less powerful.
Why? What principles, policies or objectives, then, do such defenders hold higher than democracy, decency, the rule of law, the preservation of liberty, the discipline of accountable power, the practice of civility, and the pursuit of justice itself?
Happy New Year!
Let’s think together again, soon.
