A president can win an election and still fail the test of leadership. The presidency is a public trust, not a personal platform, family enterprise, or license to demean people and disregard the law. Donald Trump holds the office legally. Yet his conduct raises a fundamental question: is he fulfilling the constitutional duties that give the presidency its meaning? The answer, visible in his behavior, is no. He performs the role of president the way a showman performs a part — loudly, aggressively, and without the substance the office requires.
Leadership is not conferred by a title; it is demonstrated through conduct. Ethical leadership requires integrity, honesty, sound judgment, and accountability. Moral leadership demands empathy, fairness, humility, and the courage to do what is right even when doing so carries a personal or political cost. When a president repeatedly demeans people, disregards established norms, and places personal interests above public duty, citizens have every reason to question his leadership — or whether he is leading at all.
Millions of Americans now say, “He is not my president.” They are not denying his election. They are expressing a deeper concern: a president cannot fully discharge the office while rejecting the obligations that define it. The Constitution grants power, but it also imposes duty. When a president abandons those duties, he hollows out the meaning of the presidency and becomes president in law only — not in constitutional substance.
On January 20, 2025, Trump took the presidential oath. The Constitution does not require a Bible; it requires a commitment to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution and faithfully execute the office. The oath is not ceremonial. It is a promise to the American people. The question is whether his conduct honors that promise.
No serious leader behaves the way Donald Trump behaves. He is unfocused, impulsive, and driven by personal grievance rather than public duty. His deeds are often cruel, his rhetoric divisive, and his priorities centered on power, praise, and money. He praises dictators, demands constant admiration, and treats public office as a stage for self‑promotion rather than a responsibility to the nation. FOX News awarded him a “Patriotic” honor, yet patriotism is measured by service, sacrifice, and fidelity to the Constitution — not by showmanship or self‑congratulation. In my view, he is not a leader, not a patriot, and not a president in the constitutional sense. He is a man who holds the title but rejects the substance.
Courts, Congress, and federal agencies exist to check presidential power, yet Trump has repeatedly treated those limits as optional. Federal judges have ruled against administration actions, and reporting has documented delays and defiance of court orders. After the 2020 election, he challenged lawful results and pressured state officials to change outcomes. Presidential power is substantial but not unlimited; the Constitution’s Take Care Clause requires faithful execution of the laws. A president cannot make personal certainty the final authority over elections, courts, or law. Constitutional government collapses when lawful constraints are dismissed as inconveniences.
Public trust erodes when the presidency appears to advance personal interests rather than national priorities. Attacks on the press deepen that distrust. The late Senator John McCain warned that suppressing the press is “how dictators get started.” A free press helps citizens evaluate government claims and hold officials accountable. Leaders who seek to restrict scrutiny weaken the public’s ability to judge their actions.
Many Americans fear that public service is becoming self‑service. When questions about conflicts of interest, personal financial gain, or the use of public resources arise, citizens deserve transparent answers. Public office must never become a means of private enrichment. A president cannot demand public trust while treating accountability as an attack.
Professionalism also requires humility and perspective. Trump has repeatedly insisted that he deserves the Nobel Peace Prize. A president may believe his diplomatic efforts deserve recognition, but ethical leadership does not demand honors or treat their absence as an insult to the nation. Leadership is measured not by awards a leader believes he deserves, but by responsibility accepted and consequences faced. Public service is not a personal competition for recognition.
Constitutional leadership requires evidence‑based decisions, sound judgment, and respect for lawful outcomes. Repeated litigation and judicial rebukes should prompt restraint and compliance, not attacks on the legitimacy of the courts. When citizens are expected to obey the law, the president must demonstrate that he is bound by it, too.
Effective leaders also demonstrate empathy, humility, resilience, and the ability to build shared purpose. Critics see the opposite in Trump’s governance: loyalty‑based appointments, attacks on journalists, disregard for established processes, and behavior they regard as retaliatory or cruel. The question is not whether another president would have faced identical circumstances. It is whether constitutional standards are applied consistently, regardless of party. Accountability that depends on political allegiance is not accountability.
Senator Lisa Murkowski warned in 2025 that “retaliation is real.” When elected representatives fear punishment for exercising independent judgment, the issue extends beyond one senator or dispute. Congress is supposed to check executive power, not accommodate it.
Congress has both the authority and the responsibility to restrain presidential overreach. It must investigate credible evidence of misconduct, protect inspectors general and whistleblowers from retaliation, and demand transparency about executive decisions and public spending. Its appropriations power is a constitutional safeguard. No administration should divert public money without lawful authority or evade meaningful oversight. Taxpayer funds must serve legitimate public purposes, not personal image‑making or partisan advantage.
Congress should also strengthen safeguards against conflicts of interest and require meaningful disclosure of presidential financial interests. These are practical protections for public trust. Oversight must be continuous, evidence‑based, and applied without regard to party.
Not every presidential action citizens dislike is unconstitutional. Presidents have legitimate authority to set policy, issue lawful orders, veto legislation, nominate officials, and conduct foreign policy. Constitutional government depends on evidence, legal process, and institutional checks — not partisan assumptions or personal allegiance. Allegations must be investigated fairly, and violations must be addressed through lawful remedies.
The responsibility does not rest with Congress alone. Americans can vote, petition, organize, support independent journalism, demand transparency, and examine how their representatives vote. Democratic accountability continues between elections.
The deeper danger is the erosion of institutional trust: constitutional limits become negotiable, loyalty replaces independent judgment, and accountability is dismissed as persecution. Confidence without competence is not leadership. Power without restraint is not strength.
The question is not whether Trump occupies the office. He remains president in law. Whether he fulfills its responsibilities must be judged by his conduct, the evidence, and constitutional standards. The title cannot substitute for duty.
No Fortune 500 board would tolerate the patterns of conduct we have seen — not because of politics, but because leadership requires judgment, accountability, and respect for institutional limits. A president may hold the office in law, but leadership is earned through duty.
A president may hold the office in law, but the Republic endures only when its leaders fulfill the constitutional duties that give that office meaning — and when its citizens insist that no president is exempt from those obligations.
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Carolyn Goode is a retired educational leader and former principal who spent her career advancing civic responsibility, equity, and public engagement. She writes about democracy, ethical leadership, and the values that strengthen American communities.
U.S. President Donald Trump speaks during a campaign rally at Pinnacle Bank Expo Center on the Nebraska State Fairgrounds on October 05, 2026 in Grand Island, Nebraska.
The President Invited Iran to Bomb My Home
I was driving home to San Diego from Los Angeles on Monday night when I heard that the President of the United States had offered both cities up to Iran as bomb targets. At a rally in Nebraska, defending his war, Trump told the crowd, “let [Iran] take out Los Angeles, let ‘em take out San Diego.” It was, he said, “a very small price to pay.”
I was coming from a Bernie Sanders rally for Proposition 40, the one-time tax on California billionaires that would send 90% of its revenue to healthcare. We desperately need it to pass because, in order to give tax breaks to billionaires, Trump signed a law that will strip health coverage from 10 million Americans; this tax will make sure we can still cover Californians. Call me crazy, but I think taxing billionaires one time so we can make sure kids in California get to see a doctor is a very small price to pay. I also think that even if Trump were joking, it is indefensible to make jokes about the potential destruction of so many lives. Human life is never a small price to pay. Human life is priceless.
Plus, the reality is: here in San Diego, we’re already paying the price for Trump’s actions, and it’s not small at all. He has gutted FEMA, tried to kill climate resiliency programs, and destroyed public health standards, while his signature law is set to cut off health insurance and food support for hundreds of thousands of San Diegans. Like plenty of American cities, San Diego is already busy finding local solutions to respond to the problems this president has recklessly created.
Not to mention, at least 19 American service members have been killed in this war already. Human rights monitors have documented more than 3,600 dead in Iran by April alone. Here at home, gas is sitting just pennies below its all-time record. Taxpayers have already spent more than $45 billion on the war, while Trump’s oil and gas portfolio has grown by roughly $15.5 million this year alone. Of course anything is a “small price” to someone paying free.99 for this war, and profiting from it. Meanwhile, We the People are paying twice: first for the war, and then for the consequences of that war. But now he wants San Diego to pay a third time, flippantly offering us up to Iran.
It is worth noticing which cities he thought to name. Were San Diego and Los Angeles strategically chosen to signify something to his audience, or were they simply the first cities that came to mind as expendable places? Either way, the effect is to normalize—-and to gauge a crowd’s reaction to–the idea of massive violence in major California cities, suitable targets because of their perceived liberal lean. So what if Iran needs to bomb a little bit of America before the war can be over? Who cares, says Trump, if they target Los Angeles and San Diego?
By the way, why didn’t he offer up San Francisco, the free-love hippie-town MAGA loves to hate (and also my birthplace)? Could it be because that’s where the tech titans live? The same ones who joined Trump for Xi Jinping’s state dinner, a guest list worth a combined $2.4 trillion?
San Diego may have fewer billionaires, but it is home to more than 115,000 active-duty service members and 230,000 veterans. One in six active-duty sailors–in the entire Navy–is stationed here. So is one in four Marines. You cannot throw a rock in this county without hitting a military family: brats and spouses and veterans are among us. I got out of the Navy last year after ten years, and eight of those were here in San Diego. When Trump says “let ‘em take out San Diego,” he’s talking about the backbone of the United States military. He’s also talking about the people fighting his war.
San Diego has not been watching this war from the sidelines. Today, the USS Abraham Lincoln returns to North Island after an almost yearlong deployment to the Middle East that featured food shortages, broken toilets, and mold in the showers after 286 days at sea without a single port call. Eight sailors in the Lincoln’s strike group attempted suicide, but in August, when a reporter asked whether the deployment had gone on too long, Trump said “not nearly long enough.” Now he has told a crowd in Nebraska that we should let Iran take out the city those sailors call home. These are sociopathic sentiments.
Last week at Quantico, Pete Hegseth closed his address to the force by telling them, “President Trump has your back and so do I.” To the contrary, President Trump has put one of the biggest military towns in the country forward as a target for our adversaries. With friends like these, the “domestic” in “against all enemies, foreign and domestic” starts to sound a lot less hypothetical.
San Diego is home to Naval Air Station North Island, Naval Base San Diego, Naval Amphibious Base Coronado, the Point Loma submarine base, Camp Pendleton, and Miramar (and I have been permanently stationed at or trained at all of them). If Iran bombed San Diego and Los Angeles, aside from the devastating loss of life, it would cripple an immense share of our national security readiness.
And for what, exactly? Trump says the war is “essentially almost over with.” This is the same man who claimed in June 2025 that Iran’s nuclear program had been “obliterated,” then launched a war over it anyway on February 28. More than seven months later, he wants us to believe two things at once: that we’ve basically won, and that we might need to sacrifice an American city or two to finish winning. If the war is almost over, why does anybody need to take out San Diego?
I wonder if Trump’s endorsed candidate for California’s 48th District here in San Diego County will respond to these remarks. He recently said “no pain, no gain,” when referring to the gas prices San Diegans are paying. Jim Desmond, would you apply that same mindset if we were bombed? Or do you have the moral courage to stand up for the people you’re running to represent?
Last November, six Democratic members of Congress, all veterans, including Senator Mark Kelly, recorded a video reminding troops of their duty to disobey unlawful orders, restating the law that says so. Trump called it “SEDITIOUS BEHAVIOR, punishable by DEATH,” and then his Justice Department went looking for an indictment, which a grand jury refused. The president treated reading the law out loud to the troops as a capital offense, but then he himself invited a foreign enemy to destroy two American cities, possibly as a punchline. Is anyone calling the latter sedition? Who is demanding accountability?
Calling our lives a small price to pay affirms a moral bankruptcy, as well as an obvious dereliction of duty to the office he holds. While we can’t impeach him or invoke the 25th Amendment ourselves, we must stop being so quiet about what we’re paying already. We can make our voices heard by calling our representatives, writing op-eds, knocking doors, phone banking, and voting in defiance of the man who threatens the safety of our city. Ballots are already arriving in mailboxes. Vote, and vote yes on 40 (and no on 41 and 42).
Trump has been harming our cities for a while, but now he is inviting our military adversaries to join him in the harm. If we have any self-respect as Americans, we must not tolerate our leaders disregarding the dignity of lives in this way. We must fight for our home.
Julie Roland was a Naval Officer for ten years, deploying to both the South China Sea and the Persian Gulf as a helicopter pilot before separating in June 2025 as a Lieutenant Commander. She has a law degree from the University of San Diego, a Master of Laws from Columbia University, and is a member of the Truman National Security Project.