Bullies Gonna Bully

The Trump administration isn't really winning much for their team, so it resorts to meanness for meanness's sake, to make them feel better

Sometimes, bullies get something for their bullying—lunch money, perhaps. Sometimes, though, bullies end up getting little or nothing out of it. This can be frustrating; the bully will often deal with this by bullying all the more for no reason at all, simply to feel good by making others feel bad.

Sad, really, although it’s hard to actually feel sympathy for someone seeking pleasure from the harm they can bring to others.

The Trump administration, if you ask me, has been doing a lot of bullying and getting very little lunch money to show for it. For all their show of cracking down on immigrants, they are making little serious progress on their signature pledge of deporting the millions of undocumented people in this country—so much so that chief immigrant-hater Stephen Miller reportedly browbeat ICE agents last week for their insufficient arrest rates. (The administration and its supporters quickly blamed Joe Biden’s loose immigration policies for the recent Boulder, Colorado attack, but it sure didn’t seem like the alleged culprit was having trouble continuing to live and plot in Trump’s America.)

That’s hardly the only area where Trump and his team have made less progress than promised to his MAGA faithful. The DOGE effort, while causing chaos, firing a lot of people, and doing untold damage to vulnerable people (and America’s interests) around the world, doesn’t seem to have made a significant dent in federal spending. Much of that effort, and other unilateral executive actions, have been stymied by the courts; Trump thus far seems willing to play games with, but not openly defy those judges he complains of. The Big Beautiful Bill he staked so much on is stalled in the Senate, largely because it doesn’t do much cost cutting; Trump has meekly acknowledged that changes will need to be accepted—while complaining harshly about oppositionist Republican Senators, such as Rand Paul—even though such changes likely imperil the delicate majority vote in the House.

MAGA types have been complaining, meanwhile, about the lack of movement toward codifying the DOGE changes, so Trump finally sent over on Tuesday a recission bill. But it calls for less than $10 billion in cuts, coming mostly from those international aid programs plus the very popular PBS and NPR funding. And even that down payment appeared likely to fail, as Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski quickly objected to cuts in PEPFAR funding to combat AIDS.

And then there’s foreign relations, where MAGA folks are divided in opinions on the Russia-Ukraine situation, and the Trump administration has managed to look like utter failures from every angle. The news about the Iran negotiations aren’t exactly following through on the tough talk and high MAGA expectations on that front either.

And the less said about the whole tariff thing, the better.

MAGA world continues to find silver linings while ignoring obvious failures, but cracks are showing and frustrations are growing. Elon Musk isn’t the only one complaining.

So, back to what I said to start. The bully goes out looking for easy targets to bully, to feel good through the use of his own power to bring misery to those without.

Stepping up as the ringleader bully, is Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. As part of his ongoing efforts to remove unity and inclusivity from the military, the U.S. Navy will rename the USNS Harvey Milk, so that it no longer carries the name of the gay rights leader, public servant, and Navy veteran tragically assassinated.

It could be noted that Hegseth, for several years, has argued that military bases should retain their confederacy-general names because those names, in addition to marking important heritage, provide continuity for soldiers who have served with those assets under those names. Why the same arguments shouldn’t apply to the Harvey Milk has not been explained, but officials did acknowledge that the timing of the change for Pride Month—which Hegseth has forbidden otherwise acknowledging—was deliberate.

The Harvey Milk is a John Lewis-class replenishment oiler, all of which were to be named for civil rights leaders. Reports say that others in that group will have their names reviewed—notably those ships not yet completed but already named for women and minorities including Thurgood Marshall, Harriet Tubman, and Dolores Huerta.

This is the kind of bullying this administration and its followers can feel good about—the kind that makes clear that one group has the power, other groups do not, and the powerful can make the powerless feel bad for no good reason other than to prove that point while making the powerless cry.

Hegseth’s spokesperson Sean Parnell released a statement explaining the changes as necessary to make the names “reflective of the Commander-in-Chief’s priorities, our nation’s history, and the warrior ethos.” The latter two criteria are an unserious joke to anyone with a list of U.S. Navy ships and other military assets, which leaves Trump’s high priority of making sure Harvey Milk and Harriet Tubman are not honored by their country. Which gains him, and the country, absolutely nothing. But it makes the bullies feel good.