In his speech last week at Davos, President Donald Trump zeroed in on Somalis: “We’re cracking down on more than $19 billion in fraud that was stolen by Somalian bandits. Can you believe that Somalia, they turned out to be higher IQ than we thought?”

The president continued: “These are low IQ people, how do they go into Minnesota and steal all that money? And we have, you know, their pirates, they’re good pirates, right, but we shoot them out of the water, just like we shoot the drug boats out.” 

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This disparagement of Somalis—calling us “low IQ,” “bandits,” and “pirates”—has been translated into every language Somalis speak. These words are discussed in American living rooms, and in refugee camps and cities across the Somali diaspora. When the president of the United States speaks this way, Somalis everywhere hear it.

I am Somali American, a refugee, and a naturalized U.S. citizen. I grew up in Mogadishu during a brutal civil war. I lost my sister. I was separated from my family. I taught myself English by watching American movies and listening to American music because America represented something rare to me: possibility. Law. Order. A future shaped not by violence, but by effort.

When I finally arrived in the United States in Aug. 2014 through the Diversity Visa Lottery—my “golden ticket”—I arrived with gratitude, humility, and responsibility. I did not come to take from America. I came to join it.

That is why the president’s words sting so deeply—not just because they are insulting, but because they flatten an entire people into a single, negative image. They ignore complexity. They erase our contributions. And they miss an essential truth: Somalis are not perfect, but neither is America, and neither is any community that has ever been part of this nation.

Let me say this clearly: fraud is real, and fraud is unacceptable. Any Somali—or any American—who commits fraud should face the law. Accountability matters. Justice matters. No community should be shielded from consequences simply because it has suffered. Most Somalis I know believe this deeply. We want fairness, not favoritism. We want integrity, not excuses. Afterall, the vulnerable communities are the ones hurt by fraud.

But what is unjust—and dangerous—is using the wrongdoing of some to condemn an entire people.

There are so many Somali Americans like me who are law-abiding, hardworking, and deeply invested in this country. Many of us arrived after surviving war, displacement, years in refugee camps, and the most extensive vetting processes the U.S. government has. Somalis born here are not outsiders or visitors; we are Americans who know no other home. To suggest that all of us are suspect, or should be targeted, is not law enforcement. It is collective punishment.

That is not how America works—or at least, not how it is supposed to work.

President Trump’s rhetoric also misunderstands Somalia itself. Somalia is often spoken about as if it is nothing more than chaos. Yes, Somalia is fragile. Yes, it struggles with corruption, insecurity, and weak institutions. But it is also a country whose people have endured extraordinary hardship with resilience, faith, and determination.

Somalia did not always know extremist violence in the way the world imagines today. Radical groups like Al-Shabaab emerged in a global context shaped by war, power vacuums, and regional destabilization. Today, Somali soldiers—poorly equipped and underpaid—are fighting an extremist group that openly chants “death to America.” They are dying on the front lines of a conflict that also protects American interests.

That reality deserves honesty, not mockery.

President Trump does not understand Somali American patriotism. Many Somali Americans love this country fiercely—not because it is flawless, but because we know what life looks like without functioning institutions. We value the rule of law because we have lived without it. We value free speech because we have known fear. We value citizenship because we have known statelessness.

My story is not unique. Somali Americans are doctors, U.S. army servicemen and veterans, truck drivers, and public servants. We take the oath to be loyal to and serve this country, and many of us stand by that oath and stay here. Those who break the oath are not representatives of Somali Americans.

Patriotism does not mean silence. It does not mean pretending problems do not exist. It means believing a country can do better—and choosing to stay engaged even when it is painful. When I write critically about America, I do so as someone invested in its future, not as someone standing outside of it.

President Trump’s words have consequences. They shape how neighbors see each other. They influence policy. They embolden suspicion. Somali Americans—many of whom already navigate Islamophobia, racism, and misunderstanding—are caught in the weight of those words, regardless of how they live their lives.

To be sure, America has always struggled with newcomers. Every immigrant group has faced suspicion before eventually becoming part of the national fabric. Somalis are no different. We are living through that familiar chapter of American history—one where fear speaks louder than facts.

The president’s rhetoric is not just about Somalis. It is about America’s ability to hold complexity: to condemn wrongdoing without demonizing communities, to enforce laws without abandoning humanity, and to recognize that loyalty can come from many places.

I am Somali and I am proudly American.

These identities do not cancel each other out. They strengthen each other. And they allow me to say this with conviction: Somalis are not America’s enemy. We are part of its story: imperfect, accountable, resilient, and deeply committed to the country we now call home.

America is strongest when it remembers that.

On Jan. 22, National Park Service staff tore down an outdoor exhibit on the history of slavery at the President’s House in Philadelphia, part of Independence National Historical Park. The removal comes after months of conjecture and protest over whether and how the site—which tells the story of the nine people George Washington enslaved while president—would reconcile its content with President Donald Trump’s 2025 executive order demanding the removal of history that might “inappropriately disparage” famous Americans.  

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This latest act of historical erasure comes amid heightened scrutiny of slavery’s place in Washington’s legacy in recent years. During the demonstrations for racial justice in 2020, protestors across the country defaced and tore down statues of Washington, arguing that enslavers should be reviled, not honored. Predictably, others pushed back, demanding that we continue to celebrate him as our national hero. 

Though many Americans emphasize that we must acknowledge Washington’s involvement with slavery to fully understand his legacy, the Trump administration and many of his conservative allies remain unwilling to even acknowledge Washington’s flaws. In 2024, Trump told an audience, “You know, they thought he had slaves. Actually, I think he probably didn’t.”

Yet for all their intensity, today’s arguments about Washington are hardly new. In fact, disputes over how to acknowledge our first president’s relationship with slavery are as old as the nation itself. For the last 250 years, Americans have treated Washington as an endlessly flexible symbol, one they could celebrate, distort, or wield to serve the needs of their own moment. 

Despite efforts to simplify or ignore it, Washington’s involvement with slavery was complicated. He enslaved more people than any of his fellow founders, and he was actively, intimately involved in every aspect of the institution. Yet Washington also privately expressed uneasiness over his entanglements with slavery, and a desire to see it gradually abolished, though he never shared those views publicly. 

On his deathbed, Washington used his last will and testament to free the people he enslaved. Although that emancipation came with conditions, it remains true that at the end of his life, Washington freed 123 people from slavery. 

This ambiguous legacy as both enslaver and emancipator has troubled Americans ever since. 

Even during his lifetime, Washington faced criticism for holding slaves. In 1775, British essayist Samuel Johnson criticized America’s founders, many of whom held slaves: “How is it we hear the loudest yelps for liberty among the drivers of Negroes?” 

In 1797, British abolitionist Edward Rushton wrote a letter directly to Washington, crying “Shame! Shame! That man should be deemed the property of man, or that the name of Washington should be found among such proprietors.” Yet Rushton also understood why many Americans couldn’t recognize Washington’s hypocrisy: “Man does not readily perceive defects in what he has been accustomed to venerate.”

Shortly after Washington’s death in 1799, it was Richard Allen—a preacher born into slavery who later became the founder of the African Methodist Episcopal church—who first told Americans that Washington had freed the people he enslaved. Weeks before the will became public, Allen urged his Philadelphia congregation to mourn Washington’s passing, praising him for having “dared to do his duty, and wipe off the only stain with which man could ever reproach him.”

Yet even as Washington’s will was published hundreds of times in pamphlets and newspapers and the nation learned of its remarkable emancipation provisions, few Americans highlighted it in the way Allen had. In the dozens of biographies of Washington published in the decade after his death, few bothered to mention slavery at all. This silence opened space for future generations to cherry-pick from Washington’s history with slavery as they saw fit.

Indeed, few of today’s comments about Washington and slavery are more vitriolic than the criticisms levied by his nineteenth-century critics. In 1841, for example, abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison reminded Americans that Washington was “a slaveholder to the day of his death,” a charge other antislavery activists repeated frequently in both speeches and print. 

Likewise, in 1853, radical abolitionist Parker Pillsbury reminded Americans that Washington was “not only a slaveholder, but a slave hunter!!” because of his attempts to recapture Ona Judge, a woman who fled from the President’s House in Philadelphia.

Proslavery white southerners also invoked Washington, insisting they—not abolitionists—were carrying on his legacy. Washington was a slaveholder and had fought a revolution to overthrow British tyranny. Seceding from the United States to establish a slaveholding republic, they argued, was what Washington himself would have done. 

They put Washington’s image on the official seal of the Confederacy, and on Confederate money, and at the top of Confederate newspapers. Most notably, when the Confederacy inaugurated its permanent government in Richmond, Va. in 1862, President Jefferson Davis delivered his remarks beneath a towering statue of Washington on George Washington’s birthday, declaring that their cause—the cause of slavery—was “fitly associated” with the day and setting.

These competing claims persisted well after the Civil War. In 1932, as the nation prepared to celebrate Washington’s 200th birthday, the all-white federal planning body worried that, for most Americans, Washington had become “a rather imaginary character.” 

Determined to revive the “real” Washington, the George Washington Bicentennial Commission launched a year-long educational campaign. They published books and newspaper columns. They produced teacher training courses, radio broadcasts, and films. They mailed 900,000 posters to American schools. They put Washington on the quarter. 

None of this material explored slavery. For all their talk of reviving the “real” Washington, most white Americans still refused to acknowledge one of the central facts of his life and legacy.

Black Americans refused to accept that erasure. Black newspaper editors and activists presented a rival account of who the “real” Washington was, emphasizing his involvement with slavery. The Baltimore Afro-American, one of the nation’s most prominent Black newspapers, ran stories declaring “Washington, on Horseback, Whipped Women Slaves until Blood Ran.” In headlines, they described him as “GEORGE WASHINGTON, SLAVE DRIVER.” 

Nearly a century before today’s debates about monuments, the paper argued that statues of Washington should all include explanatory text acknowledging his involvement with slavery.

On Feb. 22, 1932—Washington’s 200th birthday—renowned scholar W. E. B. Du Bois praised Black Americans’ efforts to reveal Washington’s role as an enslaver. In an address in Philadelphia, Du Bois condemned Washington for failing to take a public stand against slavery, accusing him of having “the same ordinary attitude with which modern white men weakly face the issue of race when it is placed before them.”

Americans’ arguments about George Washington and slavery have never been only about him. Rather, Washington has served as a stand-in for the nation itself. His history as both enslaver and emancipator has allowed generations of Americans to selectively cite evidence, wielding the past in service of contemporary debates, rather than trying to understand or reckon with it.

The uncomfortable truth is that Americans have mostly been having the same argument about Washington and slavery for nearly 250 years. Should we condemn him, redeem him, or avoid the question altogether? 

Americans have never had one answer, largely because we’ve never agreed on what liberty, justice, democracy, or America itself should mean, either. 

Attempting to silence the issue by removing an exhibit in Philadelphia will not resolve these tensions. Each generation must confront Washington’s legacy anew, grappling with its discomfort and ambiguity.

President Donald Trump kicked off the new year with a cacophony of policy decisions which have diverted attention from his disastrous 2025. 

The first year of Trump 2.0 has been soundly rated a failure in all major national polls and in each dimension of national and international priorities. Gallup found that only 36% of Americans approve of the President’s job performance. And according to a CNN poll, just 37% of Americans say that Trump places the good of the country above his personal gain and 32% say that he’s in touch with the problems ordinary Americans face in their daily lives.

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Faced with high levels of unemployment, an affordability crisis, and being named in the Epstein files multiple times, Trump has unleashed a blizzard of divisive actions. He has attempted to change public discourse to focus on an alarmist hunt for enemies abroad, through his aggressions against Venezuela and Greenland, and at home, through his unpopular and violent ICE raids and attacks against Federal Reserve Chair, Jerome Powell.

Chaos is often an order, misunderstood. There is a method to Trump’s madness—but it can backfire.

Philosopher George Santayana once proclaimed that “Chaos is a name for any order that produces confusion in our minds.” Philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche saw chaos as a creative force to “give birth to a dancing star.” The renowned psychologist Carl Jung drew upon a similar celestial meaning of chaos: “In all chaos there is a cosmos, in all disorder a secret order.”

Having personally known and studied Trump for decades, I have come to believe that philosophers, psychologists, and magicians—with their appreciation of intentional smokescreens and colliding illusions as diversions—can help us best understand the President. Historians and alarmist journalists often wrongly classified Trump as dumb or crazy. In my view, Trump is crazy like a fox in that he uses his facade of chaos to accomplish his goals. But even foxes can outfox themselves by their own designs.

American journalists have been understandably overwhelmed by President Trump’s 2026 chaos. In a candid confession, ABC’s Jonathan Karl acknowledged this: “This morning, we had a hard time figuring out where to start the show. The frenzy of activity emanating from the White House so far in the first weeks of 2026 has been dizzying.”

Some have concluded that Trump’s frenzy is the arbitrary approach of a deranged demagogue. “Trump does not appear to have control of his mental faculties,” asserts historian Heather Cox Richardson. “When people talk about that ‘Oh he shouldn’t do this?  He can’t do this? Why is he doing this?’ and so on—you don’t make those arguments about people who don’t have any logical reason for anything they are doing excerpt perhaps, ‘I wanna feel good about myself and make lots of money.”

But this perspective misses an important point: Trump keeps getting what he wants. 

Consider the many times Trump’s political balloon was thought to be punctured. He began his political career falsely accusing President Barack Obama of not being a citizen. He insulted large groups of people including, but not limited to, Mexican immigrants, Muslim Americans, and women. He ridiculed John McCain and other heroic veterans. Still, he has received support from some voters of these groups.

In May 2024, a jury convicted Trump as guilty of 34 felony counts for repeatedly and fraudulently falsifying business records in a scheme to conceal a $130,000 hush money payment to adult film star Stormy Daniels in an effort to impact the 2016 election. Still, he won the 2024 election. 

And a special investigation determined that Trump led a “criminal effort” to overturn the 2020 election, which resulted in the Jan 6. insurrection. Still, Trump has successfully pardoned over 1,500 Capitol rioters.

I would argue that the transgressions of President Richard Nixon (who resigned by his own accord) pale in comparison. Most other politicians would have been felled by any one of these seeming missteps. And yet, like the villain in a Stephen King horror story, Trump was always returned to fight another day, even when he was presumed to be vanquished. His resilience is proof that he is a wizard of mass communications with a set of tools. These include divide and conquer techniques and bullying—as well as an ability to centralize authority and produce a haze of confusion akin to a Phil Spector-esque musical “wall of sound.”

Indeed, Trump is dumb like a fox with intrigues he has carefully devised. However, ancient mythology is filled with examples of crafty foxes being outsmarted by their own traps. Unlike the pounding melody in a Phil Spector song, Trump’s tune is lost in his own noise with his message diluted.

Trump’s effort to justify his invasion of Venezuela has been deflated. The excuses of drug interdiction, or to restore democracy, or to serve the commercial interests of the U.S. oil industry have been unraveled.

Just last month, Trump pardoned former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández, who was convicted of drug trafficking—undermining his “war on drugs” narrative. Trump left in place the entire corrupt Venezuelan regime he promised to remove. The oil barons of the U.S. contradicted Trump saying they were never in favor of an invasion of Venezuela and that Venezuela’s oil is un-investable.

Domestically, Trump’s efforts to prosecute dissenting government officials have repeatedly failed in the courts and led to dissent in his own party. The cruel ICE raids against non-criminal members of U.S. society have unified communities against him, driving down his national polls and accidentally diverting attention from his success in stemming illegal border crossings.

Trump’s challenge is not his intelligence or his sanity, it is his values and his over-reliance upon the same tool kit. 

In my book Trump’s Ten Commandments, I make the argument that there are 10 principles of mass communication and persuasion which Trump has mastered. However, what 2026 has made clear is that he is over-reliant on these tools.

The philosopher Abraham Kaplan referred to this as “the law of instrument.” Using the same hammer with increasing fevered frenzy is not going to address the challenge when a different approach, like perhaps a saw or a wrench, is needed. Trump needs to adopt new unfamiliar leadership tools which he has no experience using and which are unknown to his current sycophantic advisors.