In 2024, nihilism—and its adherents—played a key role in reelecting Donald Trump President of the United States.   

During the 2024 Presidential campaign Trump promised to appoint Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., as Secretary of Health and Human Services. 

On October 27, 2024, Trump told a rally in Madison Square Garden: “I’m going to let him go wild on health. I’m going to let him go wild on the food. I’m going to let him go wild on the medicines.”

Kennedy, the son of the late Senator Robert F. Kennedy, is a self-admitted former 14-year heroin addict, which he has said began at age 15. In a 2012 deposition he claimed that doctors found a dead parasitic worm in his brain, which he believed caused significant memory loss and brain fog around 2010.

Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.

Since 2005, Kennedy has peddled vaccine misinformation and public health conspiracy theories. Among these:

• Vaccines cause autism.
• The COVID-19 vaccine—which has saved countless lives—is “the deadliest vaccine ever made.” 
• There is no comprehensive system for monitoring vaccine safety.

Since Kennedy took office on February 13, 2025:

• February 14, 2025: Around 1,300 employees of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) were laid off by the administration, including all first-year officers of the Epidemic Intelligence Service. 
• August: Over 600 CDC employees were laid off. Among programs completely dismantled: Maternal and child health services, oral health, and the Violence Against Children and Youth Surveys.
• By July 7, 2025, 1,281 measles cases had been reported, more than the 1,274 measles cases reported in all of 2019. This was the highest level of cases since the disease had been declared eliminated in 2000.
• Roughly 93% of infections in 2025 and 95% so far in January, 2026, were among unvaccinated people or those with an unknown vaccination status. And this can be directly traced to the influence of anti-vaccine conspiracy-spreaders like Kennedy.   

Measles virus

Since becoming President again on January 20, 2025, Donald J. Trump has aggressively committed a series of outrages against his fellow Americans, including: 

• Granting clemency to more than 1,500 people convicted of offenses related to the January 6, 2021 United States Capitol attack.
• Signing 26 executive orders reversing climate change initiatives, eliminating DEI programs, changing the federal designation for the Gulf of Mexico to the “Gulf of America” and initiating a federal hiring freeze.
• Revoking an executive order on Artificial Intelligence safety signed by former President Joseph Biden, to establish safeguards for the rapidly advancing AI technology.
• Firing the inspectors general—who are charged with protecting the government from waste and corruption—from more than a dozen federal agencies.
• Purging about a half-dozen executive assistant directors at the FBI. These were some of the bureau’s top managers overseeing criminal, national security and cyber investigations. Their “crime”: Investigating Trump’s inciting the January 6, 2021 coup attempt and illegally holding highly sensitive national security documents after leaving office.
• Following Trump’s anti-DEI executive order, the Department of Defense deleted content that included the achievements of nonwhites—such as Navajo code talkers, black Tuskegee Airmen, Medal of Honor winners and women veterans.
• Firing the board members at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts and appointing himself as chairman—just as Joseph Stalin made himself arbiter of what was permissible for artists in the Soviet Union.
• Ordering the Justice Department to indict his critics such as New York Attorney General Letitia James and former FBI Director James Comey.
• James had convicted him on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records. Comey had sought to investigate Russia’s subversion of the 2016 Presidential campaign to ensure Trump’s election.
• Shutting down the Federal Government on October 1, when Democrats refused to agree to his gutting Medicaid, Medicare and the Affordable Care Act (ACA), causing 10-15 million Americans to lose health insurance coverage. 
• Among those not getting paid: Air traffic controllers for the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). Owing to many controllers refusing to work, the FAA reduced air traffic by 10% at many airports.
• Shutting off the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) for the poor to pressure Democrats to support his gutting of healthcare programs.
• Flooding the streets of Los Angeles, Washington, D.C., Chicago with federalized National Guard troops against state governors’ wishes during immigration crackdowns and civil unrest.
• Flooding Minneapolis and St. Paul, Minnesota, with 3,000 Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents who are terrorizing (and in one case murdering) both American citizens and illegal aliens. 
• Governors have requested the deployment of federal troops—such as in Arkansas in 1957 for school desegregation and in California in 1992 during the Los Angeles riots following the Rodney King verdict. But Trump is the first President to deploy troops against the wishes of states’ governors.
• Pardoning favored political allies and loyalists. Among these: Seventy-seven people associated with the Trump fake electors plot to overturn the results of the 2020 U.S. presidential election, including Trump’s personal attorney Rudy Giuliani and former chief of staff  Mark Meadows.
• Others included: Former Honduras president Juan Orlando Hernández, sentenced to 45 years’ imprisonment for moving tons of cocaine to the United States.
• Threatening to invade Greenland, a self-governing, autonomous part of the Kingdom of Denmark. The United States has recognized Denmark’s ties to Greenland since 1917 and signed a joint defense agreement in 1951.
• As Denmark is a member of NATO, an attack on Greenland would ignite a war between the United States and its NATO allies.

Even as an ex-President, Donald Trump continued to benefit from the routine cowardice of the Democratic party. 

While Congressional Republicans relentlessly investigated President Joe Biden and his family, Democrats refused to similarly investigate Trump’s family. 

Democrats never probed why Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law and  former White House adviser, received $2 billion from Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. The money came to Kushner’s private equity firm after Kushner left the White House in 2021. 

Jarred Kushner

Democrats also refused to investigate the Trump administration’s illegally seizing vitally-needed medical supplies in at least seven states during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) did not publicly report the thefts, despite the outlay of millions of dollars of taxpayer money. Nor did the Trump administration explain how it decided which supplies to seize and where to reroute them.

Nor did FEMA inform states if they would receive the materials they ordered and paid for.

COVID-19 virus

Americans willingly ignored Trump’s crimes because they were angry about surging numbers of illegal aliens pouring into the country. But the Biden administration refused—until its closing months—to dramatically address this issue.  

A Vox story, dated July 12, 2024, warned:  “According to Gallup,  2024 is the first time since 2005 that most of the public have wanted less immigration, and this year marks the largest share of Americans feeling resistant to immigration since 58 percent said so in 2001….”  

Six months later, on January 17, 2025, another Vox story offered: “What Democrats must learn from Biden’s disastrous immigration record.” 

It opened: “One of the main reasons Vice President Kamala Harris lost the election is the Biden administration’s record on immigration and the border — polls show it ranks up close with inflation among the top issues that drove swing voters to Trump.…”

From 2021 to 2023, the number of illegal aliens skyrocketed. Even blue states and cities complained they were overwhelmed. In December 2023, a record 250,000 illegal aliens tried to cross the border.

Illegal alien climbing over the border fence in Brownsville, Texas

Then, starting early in 2024, and continuing throughout the year, border arrivals plummeted—by more than 80%.

The reasons:

1. The Biden administration got the Mexican government to launch an extensive crackdown on migrants passing through its territory to the United States. 
2. Biden decreed that new unauthorized migrants would be ineligible for asylum if too many people were coming to the border. Essentially, this meant shutting down the asylum process.

Unfortunately for Harris, the downturn in illegal immigration came too late.

In times of economic uncertainty, hostility rises toward immigrants—especially those who are alien to a host country’s language and culture. This has proven true in Europe as well as the United States.

Americans blamed President Biden for inflationary price increases—especially for groceries such as eggs. And they believed Trump’s lies that he would immediately reverse those price increases.

According to a December 20, 2024 article—“Why are groceries so expensive? What you need to know”—by the Center for Science in the Public Interest:

“Since January 2019, food prices have risen nearly 30 percent in the US, leaving many households struggling to afford groceries.”

Among the issues responsible for this:

• COVID-19: Caused worldwide disruptions in supply chains.
• Transportation costs and fuel prices: Fuel costs are directly tied to how much retailers charge for groceries and other goods.
• Animal diseases, weather events, crop failures: When bird flu (H5N1) first struck the U.S. in 2022, eggs were priced at around $2 per dozen. They peaked at $4.82/dozen in January, 2023, and in December, 2024—following the infection of over 123 million chickens—prices fell to about $4.15/dozen.
• Global conflict: In February, 2022, Russia invaded Ukraine, which exports wheat, corn and agricultural fertilizer, among other products. Russia has tried to strangle Ukraine’s exports by attacking the nation’s agricultural centers.

No President—including Biden and Trump—can control such events. Unfortunately, every Presidential candidate virtually promises to be Superman. And voters repeatedly fall victim to this absurdity.

Trump benefitted from the Politically Incorrect truth that misogynistic Americans don’t want a woman President.

American voters proved that in 2016 when former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton ran for President—and lost to Trump in the Electoral College by a count of 227 to 304. 

And Hillary had an advantage that Vice President Kamala Harris lacked: Hillary was white.

Kamala Harris

England has elected a female Prime Minister: Margaret Thatcher. And Mexico—notorious for the machismo of its men—has elected a woman President: Claudia Sheinbaum Pardo. But in the United States, electing a woman chief executive is unthinkable to most American men.

Machismo played a major role in Trump’s popularity, especially among Hispanics.

Roughly six in 10 men described Trump as a strong leader, compared with 43% who said that in 2020. About half of Hispanic women said Trump was a strong leader, up from 37%.

This despite Trump’s past derogatory comments about Hispanics (“When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best….They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists. And some, I assume, are good people”).

And despite a sea of “MASS DEPORTATION NOW” signs at the 2024 Republican National Convention 

More than any other group, Hispanics would face the full fury of Trump’s campaign to deport at least one million illegal aliens each year.