Donald Trump takes his cruelty to a whole new level

| 12:01 pm EDT August 30, 2020
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While there is so much wrong with Donald Trump as a leader and a person, perhaps the most disturbing of Trump’s attributes is his cruelty. Trump’s cruelty is not limited to an occasional insult or a callous disregard for others that can be spun as inevitable or inconsequential, then swept under the rug. Trump’s cruelty is a gratuitous sadism that feeds an insatiable appetite for perversity. As Trump nears the end of his first—and what must be his final—term, we keep learning even more gruesome details.

Since Trump took office in 2017, evidence continues to leak about the extent of Trump’s lust for inflicting pain on other human beings as part of his hardline immigration policy. According to new reporting from The New York Times, on October 22, 2018, the same day that Trump demanded “extreme action” against migrant caravans, top Homeland Security officials called a meeting to suggest unleashing a new “heat ray” weapon against families who approach the border that creates a severe burning sensation without warning.

Although this heat ray plan reportedly shocked some attendees and fortunately was never implemented, it’s yet another example of how the Trump administration has been bending over backwards to please its heartless, soulless boss. This follows earlier dark revelations, as Palmer Report reported, including a villainous wish list Trump had for his border wall that included painting its metal slats “flat black” (at great taxpayer expense) to burn the hands of climbers and adding sharp spikes to the top to ensure that successful climbers’ hands would get lacerated.

Miles Taylor, who served as a former Homeland Security chief of staff under Trump, has recently denounced his involvement with Trump’s horrific schemes and urged Republicans to end this madness by voting for Biden. As Taylor told Noticias Telemundo this week, Trump’s family separation policy was truly about the cruelty. “Sickly, the President wanted to do it again, deliberately, to keep the kids away from the parents,” he said.

One item that is proudly missing from Joe Biden’s decades-long record of public service is brazen cruelty, and it is impossible to imagine it having a place anywhere in a Biden administration. In a radio address 80 years ago, President Franklin D. Roosevelt told Americans, “Human kindness has never weakened the stamina or softened the fiber of a free people. A nation does not have to be cruel in order to be tough.” We must vote in record numbers on November 3 so that, starting January 20, we can prove FDR right once again.