By Michael Townsend

Donald Trump is on pace to become the worst president in the history of America.

This is not even a political issue anymore. Between his narcissistic temperament and his extremist views that threaten the very fabric of American society, from his reliance upon “alternative facts” (falsehoods, cannot stress this enough) to justify his controversial positions to his targeting of specific religions, Donald Trump is a human hurricane that simply cannot be tamed. This joke isn’t funny anymore because it is all too real.

The day after the election I wrote a piece about why people should side with Trump instead of against him. I now realize I was dead wrong. Those days were more reasonable times when one could actually expect a presidential temperament from the President of the United States, and I foolishly failed to consider the worst case scenario. I feel obligated to clarify that I do not by any means condone this administration and its actions so far.

For a long time people tried to use common sense and reason, and now those very tools are melting away before our very eyes. Donald Trump has no common sense or reason, and this is worsened by the fact that his ego, no doubt his weakness, is being fed by some of the most evil people in America. Steve Bannon, formerly the head of Breitbart, a fake news empire, is now going to be attending sensitive briefings of the National Security Council thanks to the influence he has held over Trump in the administration so far. Kellyanne Conway, who was only a minor fixture in the political stratosphere a year ago as a Ted Cruz supporter, is now going on television and using Orwellian vocabulary to avoid acknowledging even Trump’s most minor blunders. The influence of these two people specifically has led Trump to become dangerously estranged from the press and has set off a chaotic political mess that appears to have already negatively impacted American society (hello to all of those stranded in American airports due to Trump’s executive order on Saturday). There is no justification whatsoever for normalizing Trump at this point, and his term has barely even begun.

The signs of Trump’s inability to lead should have been apparent a long time ago. Trump’s specific appeal to xenophobia and misogyny as well as his lying were apparent throughout the election cycle. In one of his earliest campaign events, Trump, in justification of his insistence upon improved border security (of course, mostly vague other than his promise to build a great, big wall), referred to Mexicans who choose to immigrate to the United States illegally as “rapists” and insisted that they were bringing “drugs” and “crime” along with them. Just weeks prior to the election, Trump admitted to non-consensually touching women in a rant chock-full of sexist references to female sexuality. After being criticized by the parents of a fallen US soldier who happened to be Muslim at the Democratic National Convention, Trump insisted that the mother of the soldier, who was barely able to talk due to her grief, did not talk because her Muslim beliefs did not allow her to do so. And let us not forget that Trump was found to have committed a fraud scheme under the guise of an online university, “Trump University,” leading to the debt of many aspiring businesspeople. In spite of these signs, however, people chose to elect Trump anyway, and now we are stuck with the mess we have now.

    As a concerned and frankly quite scared member of the up-and-coming generation, I implore the American public to stay tuned so that we as a people never make a mistake like Donald Trump again. Keep reading the news. Unlike Trump says, the New York Times and Washington Post are not “fake news sites” (Breitbart, where Bannon hails from, is actually fake news) and have actually been credible and respected media organizations since before Trump was even born. Based on the actions of the Trump administration so far, it is clear that we are not going to get the truth from Washington, so keep checking the news – credible news, I cannot stress enough that you fact check what you read in this jaded era of journalism – and pay attention as this disastrous presidency unfolds. For the sake of my generation, do not ruin this country.