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Donald Trump and Twitter: A Turbulent Relationship, Here to Stay

An image of Donald Trump making a speech.

Many people across the United States have joked about Donald Trump’s Twitter. He is often brunt and open about his opinions regarding everything from foreign policy to his own political agenda. To the average American, Twitter is a place to get one’s thoughts out there and state opinions. However, Trump is not the average American. He is the President of the United States. Trump’s Twitter has become an immature platform for him to say essentially whatever he wants. Some of his tweets are harmless and ego-inflating. Yet, other tweets present danger to the United States as a whole.

 

On January 2, Donald Trump tweeted, “North Korean Leader Kim Jong Un just stated that the “Nuclear Button is on his desk at all times.” Will someone from his depleted and food starved regime please inform him that I too have a Nuclear Button, but it is a much bigger & more powerful one than his, and my Button works!” Despite the playful nature of the tweet, Donald Trump made a threat to use nuclear weapons on North Korea. At this time, North Korea has significantly developed its nuclear program and could eventually have the capability to send nuclear warheads as far as the continental US. Trump’s tweet seems to further destabilize an already unstable relationship.

 

Lawmakers, diplomats, and security experts alike have offered mixed opinions on the tweet and what it implies.Some have expressed their alarm and scorn at the immaturity and the danger of the president’s current approach to foreign policy with North Korea. That approach is characterized mainly by his tweets directed towards Kim Jong Un. In August  2017, a similar threat was made towards North Korea when Trump threatened to rain “fire and fury” down upon the country if it were to put the United States in any sort of danger. Eliot A. Cohen, former counselor to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice under President George W. Bush, said that he found the January tweet immature and dangerous for someone in such a position of power. He tweeted, “Spoken like a petulant ten-year-old. But one with nuclear weapons- for real- at his disposal. How responsible people around him, or supporting him, can dismiss this or laugh it off is beyond me.

Yet, Trump’s supporters and even some high level diplomats view the tweet positively as a message of strength. Ban Ki-moon, the former UN Secretary General called the tweets “a message from the international community.” In some ways, the tweet could be seen as a more aggressive tactic for relations with North Korea, as many presidents have seemed to take a passive role in response to the dictatorship.

Amidst the controversy surrounding Trump’s North Korea tweet (and many others), some have called for Twitter to ban Donald Trump. However, Twitter responded to the requests and said that they did not believe that it was beneficial to international discussions to ban political leaders from Twitter. In a way, banning public figures from Twitter silences them. So, in spite of the danger that Trump imposes by tweeting, his tweets are here to stay.

Despite the controversial tweets that spew from Donald Trump’s account daily, banning him from Twitter would be equally controversial. Twitter is right when it says that banning him would be silencing him. Like it or not, he is a powerful public figure and the President of the United States, and his opinions cannot be silenced. However offensive and dangerous his remarks may be, banning Donald Trump from Twitter would probably have negative implications.

On the Lackluster National Response to the Opioid Epidemic

An image of a person pouring pills from a prescription bottle into their hand.

Last month, President Trump formally declared the opioid crisis a “health emergency.” Since his campaign for president, and recently in the past few months, Trump signaled his intentions to significantly combat the national epidemic. But what does it mean to declare the opioid crisis a “health emergency?”

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Is it Fair to Blame President Trump’s Behavior on Mental Illness?

A dark photo of Donald Trump clapping.

On October 25, former Oklahoma Senator Tom Coburn (a Republican) said that President Trump has “a personality disorder.”  He was not the first to posit that President Trump has some form of mental illness. The press has been engaging with such speculation since the start of his campaign, though there has been a decided increase of late. On October 26, New York Times columnist David Brooks reported that some Republican senators thought Trump is “suffering from early Alzheimer’s.” In an article titled “Some Republicans are starting to more openly question Trump’s Mental health,” Business Insider reports that “One psychiatric professor at Yale said about half a dozen lawmakers had contacted her over the past several months.”

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In the Manafort Indictment, An Ethical Test for the Trump Administration

Robert Mueller speaking during an Oval Office meeting.

On October 30, former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort and his business partner, Robert Gates, were indicted on 12 counts, including money laundering, conspiracy against the United States, false and misleading statements, and violations of the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA). The issue becomes more complex when considering the direct relation that the Manafort and Gates indictments have to the Trump campaign, which have not pointed to any verifiable collusion.  

Right-wing media instantly took up arms to help the Trump campaign defer and deflect the allegations.  These efforts include redirecting blame to the Clinton campaign’s “Steele Dossier” and the wholly unsubstantiated “Uranium One” claims. Attempts at deflecting Russian collusion from the Trump campaign to the Clinton campaign has involved a strategic attempt made by right-wing media sources to sidetrack the Mueller indictments of Manafort, Gates, and George Papadopoulos.

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More Than Just a Game: A Follow-Up

A photo of football players taking a knee during the National Anthem.

At an Alabama rally on September 22, President Donald Trump criticized the NFL and NFL team owners for not taking harsher action against players who protest during the playing of the national anthem at games. He is quoted referring to players who protest as “sons of bitches,” and claimed NFL owners should fire them for protesting. Trump also called out NFL fans, adding that if they would “leave the stadium” in the event of a protest, then “things would stop.”

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Less Healthcare, Less Regulation: Is Donald Trump Killing People?

A photo of a woman in a hospital bed

Follow liberals and anti-Trump conservatives on Twitter and you will often see the accusation that Donald Trump is killing people. For example, here are some recent tweets from three Trump critics:

Pepin Lachance @PepinLachance: @foxand friends @realDonaldTrump GOP and Trump undermining the healthcare of US citizens. They should be ashamed. People will die due to republicans they are killing us.  

Gia Sonata @RedGia: @GeorgeTakei @sherrilee7 Oh – Trump is killing people.  Slowly.  With TrumpCare.  Deregulation. FLINT still doesn’t have clean water.  “Killing me softly w/his song”

Josh B @joshious: @SenDeanHeller @BillCassidy @LindseyGrahamSC Nevadans will hold you accountable for killing thousands of people and raising healthcare costs for all if you don’t vote NO on Trumpcare!

Repealing Obamacare would certainly lead to deaths.  Twenty to 30 million people would lose their health insurance under the various repeal-and-replace bills that were considered by Congress in July.  Loss of health insurance would mean less healthcare, and less healthcare would mean more deaths.  But we could just say Trump will be letting people die, if he fulfills his pledge to end Obamacare.  Should we go further and say he’ll be killing people?

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Doxxing for Social Justice

In 2015, after Lindsey Graham said that Donald Trump should “stop being a jackass,” Trump read Graham’s personal cell phone number aloud to a crowd at one of his campaign rallies and urged people to call the number. Journalists who dialed the number were directed to an automated voicemail account reporting “Lindsey Graham is not available.” His voicemail inbox was, unsurprisingly, full.

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Moral Obligations and Tinfoil Hats: The Ethics of Conspiracy

On, March 4th, 2017, Donald Trump claimed, without evidence, that Barack Obama wiretapped the phones at Trump Tower during the presidential election.  This is not the first baseless claim that Trump has made about the former president.  As the American population is well aware, Trump was one of the most vocal participants in the birther movement.  Even after Obama made his birth certificate public, proving that he was born in Hawaii in 1961, Trump said, in an interview with ABC News, ”Was it a birth certificate?  You tell me.  Some people say that was not his birth certificate.  Maybe it was, maybe it wasn’t.  I’m saying I don’t know.  Nobody knows.”

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Just War Theory and the Aims of Trump’s Airstrikes

The guiding concern of just war theory is that it is wrong to harm people, therefore it is wrong to harm people en masse, as we do in war. Thus, just war theory stems from the observation that aggression of all kinds requires justification, and the theory attempts to lay out the justification for acts of war. War is aggressive, and it harms and kills individuals as well as damages nations, and therefore we should take seriously the moral weight of the obligations to avoid it. The two principle realms that just war theory addresses are jus ad bellum (justified principles for entering war) and jus in bello (justified principles of conduct within war).

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Is Ivanka Trump Really “Complicit?”

Since the general election, the popular comedy show, Saturday Night Live, has had a Trump-themed segment every week. These segments are not just about Trump himself, but also poke fun at many of his family members, including his wife and children. Though Alec Baldwin has played a recurring Donald Trump and Cecily Strong often plays Melania Trump, Scarlett Johansson impersonated Ivanka Trump during the March 12 show. The skit, which took the form of a fragrance ad, portrayed Ivanka as complicit in her father’s wrongdoings. Though many found the skit to be hilarious and accurate, and even feminists applauded the portrayal of Ivanka, is it fair to assert that Ivanka is in part responsible for the actions of her father? Does Ivanka have a greater responsibility for the actions of her father because they negatively affect women?

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Defunding America’s Cultural Institutions: An Exercise in Absurdity

Editor’s note: The Prindle Institute for Ethics, which hosts The Prindle Post, has recently been awarded a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the institute’s director has engaged in advocacy work for the National Humanities Alliance.

The logic of President Donald Trump’s proposed federal budget has left even some of his supporters scratching their heads. First, there are the cuts to programs including the New York Police Department and airport security programs – proposals that are especially perplexing, given Trump’s longstanding emphasis on keeping America safe. Then there are cuts targeting programs widely seen as both uncontroversial and beneficial. Such programs include Meals on Wheels, an organization that delivers food to the elderly and the poor. While many expected Trump’s budget to reflect a hard-line conservative approach to federal spending, cutting programs like Meals on Wheels has taken even some GOP members of Congress aback.

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DACA and the Dangers of College Campuses

In the face of President Donald Trump’s threats for an immigration overhaul, as well as increased U.S. immigration enforcement across the country, undocumented individuals will undoubtedly face greater threats of deportation, raids, and discrimination in the coming months. Despite the fact that, yes, the Obama administration set a record high for deportation of immigrants and therefore a precedent for future Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) activity, President Trump’s usage of executive orders has particularly targeted legislation designed to protect immigrants.

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Should Americans Hope for a President Pence?

A little over a month into Donald Trump’s presidency, chaos continues to swirl around even the most basic of the administration’s operations. High profile controversies – most notably, the emerging details about Trump surrogates’ contact with members of the Russian government during the campaign – continue to roil the nascent administration. From within, leaks to the press abound, painting a portrait of a chaotic White House even more defined by power struggles and botched policy rollouts than usual. And all the while, Trump continues to make inflammatory statements, most recently asserting without evidence that then-President Barack Obama ordered wiretapping of Trump Tower during the 2016 election.

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A Shooting in Seattle: Hate Crimes under Trump

On Friday, March 3, a man was shot in a suburb outside of Seattle after being berated and told to go back where he came from. He wore a turban, and the shooter presumably interpreted him to be of Middle Eastern origin. The man was a Sikh, a population that is enduring harassment and worse alongside Muslims in the United States’ most recent rise of Islamophobia due to the widespread ignorance of the religion.

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Making Sense of Trump’s Wiretapping Accusations

At 3:35am on March 4, President Donald Trump tweeted an accusation that former President Barack Obama wiretapped the phones in Trump Tower prior to the election. Trump compared it to Watergate and called Obama “sick.” A spokesperson for Obama quickly and strongly denied the allegations, stating that “neither President Obama nor any White House official ever ordered surveillance on any U.S. citizen.” FBI Director James Comey asked the Justice Department to immediately reject the president’s allegations on the grounds that it falsely implies that the FBI broke the law.

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Trial by Trump: The Case of Bowe Bergdahl

In June of 2009, 23-year-old Army Sergeant Bowe Bergdahl deserted his post at Mest Manko in Afghanistan.  Shortly thereafter, he was captured by the Taliban.  He was held as a prisoner of war for five years in deplorable conditions.  In 2014, President Barack Obama’s administration arrived at an agreement with the Taliban. In exchange for Bergdahl’s release, the United States would release five Taliban members from Guantanamo Bay.  The deal was controversial.  Many people felt that the U.S should not have negotiated with terrorists for release of a soldier that deserted his post.

Bergdahl’s case was a hot topic on the campaign trail during the 2016 presidential election.  Now-President Donald Trump commented on it frequently, referring to Bergdahl as a traitor and suggesting that if he could undo the deal, sending Bergdahl back into captivity and returning the detainees to Guantanamo, he would do so.  

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Dissecting “America First”

President Donald Trump’s foreign policy has been labeled everything from isolationist to realist and everything in between. In maneuvering through the clues of policy that Trump has left us throughout his campaign and his presidency, a common thread can be found. This metaphorical thread is in some ways revolutionary — not necessarily in its existence, but rather in its blatant acknowledgement in recent mainstream American politics. This overarching theme is as harrowing as it is simplistic: American nationalism. Trump has centered his interactions with the outside world around the idea that Americans are the best, must be respected, are superior, and deserve more than their foreign counterparts — solely because of the land they happened to be born on.

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Disbanding the EPA: Is it Ethical?

Last week, Democrats in the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee sat out Scott Pruitt’s confirmation vote. Pruitt had been nominated by President Trump as administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), and was heavily criticized for his history of accepting money from anti-environmental interest groups. Though this was heralded as a virtuous political statement, the Republicans on the committee managed to approve the vote by changing the rules of Senate appointments. Though many environmentalists see this appointment as the end of the EPA as we know it, the appointment of Scott Pruitt is not the most serious threat to the EPA. Florida Representative Matt Gaetz recently introduced H.R. 861, which has the sole purpose “To terminate the Environmental Protection Agency.” Though many might consider nominating a man with no scientific background and conflicts of interest to head the EPA as unethical, what are the ethics of completely disbanding the Environmental Protection Agency as a whole?

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Marching for Science

After the January 21 Women’s Marches that clocked in at between 3 and 4 million participants worldwide, other rallies and marches to protest the new Trump administration have been planned in their wake. Amongst these emerging marches is the March for Science, in which scientists will march on Washington and in 11 other cities to advocate for public funding for evidence based research. While the march has gained approval from politicians, scientific organizations, and prominent scientists alike, some wonder whether or not scientists should be marching in the first place.

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Defending Normative Governance: A Matter of Language

It is a time-tested notion of politics that the delivery matters just as much as, perhaps more than, the message. It is also a notion that feels painfully appropriate to describe our current times, as the country prepares to inaugurate a former reality show star to its highest office. In light of Donald Trump’s ascendence, and in preparation for the days to come, those looking to rein in the President-elect’s most unethical tendencies are approaching this lesson with fresh eyes.

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The Moral Consequences of Protecting American Jobs

One of President-elect Donald Trump’s key campaign promises was to stop companies from shipping American jobs overseas. Since his election in November, he has already claimed credit for making progress on this promise. The President-elect has claimed credit for stopping Carrier from moving jobs in Indiana to Mexico. More recently, Ford announced that it had cancelled plans to build a new car manufacturing facility in Mexico. The January 3 New York Times article linked to above suggests that Ford’s decision was partially a response to Trump’s plans on trade policy.

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