His Crimes Are Legion–Make Him Pay
Accountability is not revenge. It’s the law catching up.
Donald Trump will not be president forever. That fact alone is a kind of oxygen. That fact alone gives us hope.
Whether he leaves office on January 20, 2029, or earlier due to forces beyond his control, his departure should mark the end of an era defined by contempt for democratic norms, cruelty dressed up as policy, and a personality cult that treated the Constitution as a suggestion. What must not follow is the familiar script Washington always reaches for: calls for unity, pleas to “heal,” and a quiet agreement to look forward rather than reckon with what was done.
We’ve seen that movie before. It always ends the same way.
The damage caused during the Trump years wasn’t abstract. It wasn’t a misunderstanding. It was deliberate. It was staffed, funded, and defended by people who knew exactly what they were doing. Pretending otherwise is how accountability dies.
This isn’t about revenge. It’s about consequences.
Trump’s legacy should not be preserved out of politeness or fear of appearing divisive. His name is a stain on the moral character of our once great nation, and it does not belong on public buildings, commemorative plaques, or monuments paid for by a people he repeatedly undermined. Those symbols matter. They tell future generations what we chose to honor. Removing them isn’t erasure. It’s judgment.
The same goes for the physical manifestations of his ego. If a gaudy ballroom or gilded shrine exists solely to glorify a presidency built on grievance and cruelty, repurposing it is not petty. It’s appropriate. History does not require us to preserve every scar as a shrine.
More important than walls and names, though, are policies.
Every policy rooted in punishment over governance should be reversed swiftly and without apology. Immigration enforcement as practiced under Trump was not about law and order. It was about spectacle, fear, and dehumanization. ICE, as currently structured, became a symbol of that philosophy. Disbanding it in its present form and rebuilding something accountable, limited, and humane is not radical. It’s overdue.
Then there are the enablers. His acolytes. His toadies.
Trump did not act alone. He was surrounded by officials, lawyers, and ideologues who translated his impulses into action. People like Pam Bondi, Pete Hegseth, Kristi Noem, Russell Vought, and Robert Kennedy Jr. did not stumble into their roles. They chose alignment. They lent credibility, legal cover, and institutional power to an agenda that repeatedly tested the limits of the law. Lock them up.
If crimes were committed, they should be investigated. If laws were broken, charges should follow. Not as retribution, but as affirmation that status does not confer immunity. Lock them up.
This is where the inevitable backlash begins. We’re told prosecutions would be “divisive.” That pursuing accountability would distract from governing. That the country needs to move on. Lock them up.
Move on to what, exactly?
Moving on without consequences doesn’t heal a democracy. It teaches future leaders that power insulates them from the law. It tells voters that norms are optional and that the worst abuses will be politely ignored once the next election cycle begins.
That lesson is poison.
The American public is not naïve. People understand the difference between accountability and chaos. What they’re tired of is watching elites close ranks while ordinary people are told to accept the damage as the cost of stability. There is nothing stable about that arrangement.
Real healing requires acknowledgment. It requires truth. And it requires consequences proportionate to the harm done.
This doesn’t mean endless investigations or political show trials. It means taking the law seriously, even when it’s uncomfortable. Especially then.
There is a moral failure in pretending that the Trump era was just another swing of the political pendulum. It was not. It was an open stress test of democratic institutions, one that exposed how fragile they become when bad-faith actors are indulged for the sake of civility.
The next administration will face enormous pressure to soften its stance. Editorial boards will urge restraint. Those cable TV panels will warn of backlash. Some Democrats will talk about turning the page. No!
They should resist.
History does not reward timidity masquerading as wisdom. It remembers who acted, and who chose comfort instead.
Trump will leave office. That part is inevitable. What happens next is not.
We can either mark the end of his presidency with a collective shrug and a plea for calm, or we can insist that the law means what it says, even for presidents and their inner circles. One path invites repetition. The other draws a line.
If democracy is to mean anything more than ritual, that line has to be drawn now.
Resist.
Professor Mike is a university lecturer. He teaches, among other subjects, justice studies and global security, including international terrorism. In his spare time, he writes for Medium and Substack. His work has been published on various platforms, including CNN.