I am starting to see suggestions in various social media sites that it is time to remove Trump from the presidency. I believe it is well past that time and this is why. I will be uncharacteristically brief.

If you were, say, an efficiency expert called in to evaluate how a company’s various employees were performing, you would initially conduct an investigation: Who are the people in question? What functions do they perform in the company? How can what they do be measured in terms of efficiency and perhaps other identified values?

Then and only then would you recommend to top management whether and which ones of those employees should be removed or have their functions changed. It would take time, yes. But if the true goal were to improve the efficiency of the company’s business, that is the process you would undertake.

Donald Trump has done the opposite. He brought in someone who knows little or nothing about how the federal government works. That person is very wealthy and apparently believes he is invulnerable. He and a bunch of uninformed people he hired were set loose on the government and have made a complete hash of the process of evaluating ways to, allegedly, save money.

If you have watched the reports of what this group has done, and in some cases immediately undone, you can see that this is not about cost cutting. Many of their actions are going to end up costing much more national treasure, and other costs including environmental degradation, than were being incurred before they showed up with, in most cases, unlawful claims of authority to fire federal workers at will. This is not about efficiency or lowering taxes, at least not for most people. It is a hatchet job designed to eviscerate the federal government.

Since at least the end of World War II, the United States has had the world’s strongest defense. It costs a lot of treasure, and there is always a reason to examine whether it can be done more efficiently. But it has helped, likely been essential, to the maintenance of world peace, on the whole, for decades.

Donald Trump has aligned himself with Russia against Ukraine, against NATO, against allies around the world. He has, as usual, lied openly about which country was the aggressor in the Russia-Ukraine war. WHY? Theories and speculations abound.

The overall picture is that Trump has, as he did throughout his first term, blatantly disregarded our law, the Constitution he swore to uphold, has violated the separation of powers and generally made clear he intends to operate as a dictator.

This isn’t going to change. It’s going to get worse. Trump is weakening the nation’s defenses. He is undermining the social safety net and threatening to do much more. The people he has nominated and that the Republican Senate has confirmed have, for the most part, no qualifications for the responsibilities they have undertaken and are hostile to missions they have sworn to perform. Trump knows little about how the government does its job and doesn’t care. He admires dictators and aspires to be one.

The wreckage continues to spread each day, undermining essential government services and weakening our capacity to resist aggression. Top military leadership has been removed.  Cybersecurity defenses are being eliminated.

The country does not have to accept this.

It is past time, to remove Trump, and his sycophant Vice President, from office before he weakens our defenses beyond the point of no return and Vladimir Putin decides he can safely move against us even more aggressively than he already is.

Trump’s arrogance knows no bounds. I expect tonight’s address to Congress will be a long diatribe about his brilliance, packed with lies and deflections. I have written elsewhere that I believe the Democrats should wait until Trump reaches the podium to speak, then rise as a group and walk out, leaving one member behind, ideally seated at the back in the shadows. There is no reason to continue normalizing Trump’s incompetence and treachery. Do whatever it takes to bring this catastrophe to an end before it’s too late.