Burke: Most ‘Asked For It,’ but where does that leave the rest?

By Tom Burke / Herald Columnist

The 1950s-era TV program, “You Asked for It,” asked viewers to suggest places for the show to “go” and film, which resulted in a televised visit to the Fort Knox vaults, a woman being sawed in half, and a real shooter, using real arrows, shooting a real apple off the head of an willing (real) “volunteer.”

The show went off the air around 1959. But two weeks ago it reappeared.

We elected Donald Trump as president.

And, gentle reader, what happens over the next four years, well, “You Asked for It,” or at least a slim majority of Americans did.

Now, a couple of things.

First, I totally blew my prediction Harris would win in a landslide.

I offer no excuses, I simply read the rest of the nation by what I was hearing/seeing here in Washington state and, while I can claim a small victory with my state predictions (Harris carried WA 57.7 percent to 39.1 percent and Snohomish County 57.8 percent to 38.9 percent), I blew it nationally.

Next, Trump doesn’t have a “mandate.” He actually may get less than 50 percent of the popular vote once all ballots are counted, and 2 million fewer votes in 2024 than he did in 2020; and only won by less than 1.7 percent. Now Harris got 20 million fewer votes in 2024 than Biden did in 2020 losing, among others, Latinos and Arab-Americans. (How that works out as Trump says he’ll use the military to deport 15 million to 20 million mostly Latinos and totally supports Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s total war strategy versus the Palestinians remains to be seen.)

Finally, I (we?) need to confront how we approach the next four years and the plans, policies, and personnel being cooked up in Mar-a-Largo.

First, of course, is Trump’s implementation of “Project 2025,” described by the BBC as “a 900-page policy ‘wish list’ set of proposals that would expand presidential power and impose an ultra-conservative social vision.” (We’ve written about this before, so no details today. Suffice to say it fundamentally changes our democracy and abandons doing anything to help anyone [except the uber rich and Trump’s cronies]).

Then there are the Trump’s campaign-trail promises, such as huge across-the-board-inflation-inducing tariff increases; the aforementioned deportation of millions; pardoning the Jan. 6 insurrectionists; using the Department of Justice for revenge; ending the war in Ukraine before he’s inaugurated; cutting federal funds to schools teaching “critical race theory;” rolling back electric vehicle incentives; eliminating the Department of Education; replacing the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare); stopping all federal payments to schools requiring vaccinations; expanding drilling for oil and gas; drastically cutting environmental/clean energy regulations; closing the border to immigrants; ending all offshore wind projects; making the NFL “get rid of the ridiculous new Kickoff Rule!” and being a dictator on Day 1.

(Note: Trump has refused to say how he’ll pay for any of this except raise the tariffs that we pay. Plus much of this needs either congressional action or states and local jurisdictions to implement. Keep your eyes on the states and localities.)

Next are the policies advocated by his political appointees, including Pete Hegseth to head Defense, a Fox News weekend host with no major managerial experience who said “we should not have women in combat roles” because men are “more capable.”

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to lead Health and Human Services, an anti-vaxer who said no vaccine is “safe and effective,” that chemicals cause people to become transgender, and who will immediately fire 600 from the National Institutes of Health, take fluoride out of drinking water, and end research on drug development.

And Matt Gaetz, Trump’s controversial attorney general wanna-be who said we should, “defund, get rid of, abolish the FBI, CDC and ATF.”

Then there’s Elon Musk, who’s super PAC spent $200 million getting Trump elected and who, along with Vivek Ramaswamy, has been appointed to run the “Department of Government Efficiency,” a nonexistent government department to cut all government functions except defense, Social Security and Medicare by about 75 percent.

Together, Musk and Ramaswamy have floated plans that would cut veterans’ health-care programs (9.1 million veterans), opioid addiction treatment, the State Department, federal housing assistance, antipoverty assistance, the landmark Violence Against Women Act, billions in federal grants funding schools and school districts, funding for NASA, funding and regulations for arms sales to allies, economic aid for developing countries, airport security, anti-narcotics-trafficking policies, the Peace Corps, and funding for the more than 800,000 children enrolled in Head Start programs.

Then there’s Trump’s “recess appointment” scam where he wants to arbitrarily “recess” Congress so he can make political appointments of Hegseth, Gaetz, Tulsi Gabard and others without the Senate’s “advice and consent.”

It is a naked power grab and no less than four of the Supreme Court’s most notable conservatives decried this ploy (in a ruling about an Obama recess appointment) as an “anachronism” that undermines the separation of powers, “The need it was designed to fill no longer exists, and its only remaining use is the ignoble one of enabling the President to circumvent the Senate’s role in the appointment process,” wrote Justice Antonin Scalia, joined by Chief Justice John Roberts, Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito.

So, what do we do next? Resist. Peacefully. But resist.

Write and call and donate and support others who resist.

Don’t give up, or surrender, or get disheartened, depressed or discouraged.

Endure and wait. Wait ‘til 2026 and then we vote, vote, vote and take back Congress.

And take to heart what the philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson said, “Nature has made up her mind that what cannot defend itself shall not be defended.”

Slava Ukraini.

Tom Burke’s email address is t.burke.column@gmail.com.