“Kikulacho ki nguoni mwako” translates from Swahili as “the thing that eats you is in your clothes”. When I first heard this proverb, I took it to mean that you are your own worst enemy. Later, a Tanzanian friend explained that it means the person you generously support will destroy you.
Here are just a few recent examples of how the man 77,302,580 Americans voted for as leader in November 2024, is ‘eating’ their country.
‘Finding’ extra votes and seats
You may remember back in 2020 when Donald Trump lost the election in Georgia by 11,779 votes. He called Brad Raffensperger, the Georgia secretary of state who oversees elections, and said: “What I want to do is this. I just want to find, uh, 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have, because we won the state.” Raffensperger replied that the Georgia results were correct – a diplomatic go-to-hell.
That was almost five years ago. In 2025 many speculate that the Republicans will lose control in the House of Representatives after the 2026 mid-term election, maybe even get clobbered. Trump has never found a way to cheat he won’t try every chance he gets.
In July he called one of his favorite Grand Old Party (GOP) bobblehead governors, Gregg Abbott of Texas, and said something like, I just want to find, uh, five more seats. When questioned, he did not deny it: “I won Texas. I got the highest vote in the history of Texas, as you probably know, and we are entitled to five more seats.” It’s not cheating, he’s entitled.
Gerrymandering election outcomes
The number of House seats that each state is allocated follows the census taken once every ten years. In 42 out of the 50 states, the legislature draws up the voting districts. Often the majority party will make sure they get as many seats as they can – ‘gerrymandering’, also called ‘pack and crack’. Lines are drawn to pack as many likely to vote for the opposition into as few districts as possible. Crack splits a large group of opposition voters into two districts, cancelling their power.
The GOP-majority Texas legislature has gerrymandered five urban districts that voted for the Democratic Party in 2024 to make sure that the GOP candidate will win in 2026. Democrat legislators left the state for two weeks, denying the GOP a quorum to adopt the new map. The Dems have now returned, and Trump will get his five more seats.
The Democrat Governor Gavin Newsom of California announced he would “fight fire with fire”. But unlike Texas, an independent commission draws congressional voting districts – no gerrymandering. Newsom must put a redrawn map to a vote on the November ballot. If voters approve, Dems may get five or more seats in 2026.
GOP states of Florida, Missouri, Ohio and Indiana may also decide to gerrymander seats for 2026, which could bring Dem states like New York and Illinois to counter. The world would witness a tit-for-tat gerrymander war in the greatest democracy the world has ever seen.
Census disruption despite law
Trump tried to disrupt the 2020 census but failed. In 2025 he’s at it again. On 7 August he said he would order a “new and highly accurate CENSUS…with information gained from the Presidential election of 2024”.
He added in a Truth Social post that undocumented immigrants will not be counted.
He failed in 2020 because excluding anyone from the census is unconstitutional. Section 2 of the 14th Amendment states: “…respective Numbers of the several States will be determined by counting the whole number of persons in each State.” “Whole number” means everyone. Article 1 of the Constitution also mandates a census once every 10 years, not whenever the president feels like it. Furthermore, federal law requires that census questions must be submitted to congress two years before a count is conducted, not two months.
Ongoing constitutional violation
Ignoring the Constitution has been a hallmark of Trump’s presidency since the day he was sworn in. Not divesting himself of his many businesses was in breach of the Constitution’s emolument clause: “…no Person holding any Office of Profit or Trust under them, shall, without the Consent of the Congress, accept of any present, Emolument, Office, or Title, of any kind whatever, from any King, Prince, or foreign State.” Trump has raked in a whole lot of emoluments since 20 January 2017.
Could he get away with a mid-decade census? It has not happened since the first census in 1790. But then Trump is the only convicted felon ever to occupy the White House. Also he’s the only president to be impeached twice and then get reelected. He has a GOP controlled congress that comply with his every whim and a very friendly Supreme Court. I wouldn’t bet against him.
National guard threat to democracy
As ridiculous and despicable as the first two examples are, calling the national guard into the nation’s capital is, in my opinion, much more dangerous to democracy. Trump declared a “public safety emergency” on 11 August. Eight hundred national guard troops were deployed to the streets of Washington. Now, another 700-800 are coming. By law they can’t arrest anyone, but that didn’t stop them in Los Angeles in June.
At that time, Mayor Karen Bass said: “L.A. is a petri dish and this is an experiment signaling the nation – this is what’s coming your way.” And sure enough, there they are in their combat gear, framed against the Capitol building.
Trump has talked about deploying the military to NYC, Baltimore, Chicago, Oakland and more in LA. All six of these cities including DC have a falling rate of violent crime. More to the point, all six have Democrat mayors who just happen to be black. Coincidence?
Expanding Trump’s “quick reaction force”
But it’s not just in Democrat cities or states. In 20 Republican controlled states, governors have authorised their national guard to assist Immigration and Custom Enforcement agents.
Trump wants to create what he calls a “quick reaction force” composed of 600 national guard troops on standby 24/7 to put down “domestic civil unrest”. What constitutes domestic civil unrest? Anything Trump calls domestic civil unrest on any given day. Maybe the five to six million Americans coming out on 14 June (Trump’s 79th birthday) for the ‘No Kings’ demonstrations could have qualified as domestic civil unrest, even though they were entirely peaceful.
The phases towards a Trump dictatorship
Joseph Nunn of the Brennan Center for Justice talks about a “domestic forever war”. He warns: “You don’t want to normalize routine military participation in law enforcement. You don’t want to normalize routine domestic deployment.”
Phase One: Trump’s actions of transitioning the US to autocracy are well underway.
Phase Two: Americans get used to seeing the military in their communities. Congress, the courts and citizens allow Trump to normalise the use of military for routine law enforcement
Phase Three: Trump declares martial law. No more free and fair elections. No more Bill of Rights. No more free speech, free press or freedom of assembly. One man rule.
At a campaign rally in Iowa on 2 December 2023 Trump said that as president, he would be a dictator, adding “but only on Day One”. He only half lied. 1984 in 2025.
