Trump Thinks People With Disabilities Are Better Off Dead
His view of life is right out of the fascist playbook of "life unworthy of life"
There are many reasons we think Trump is a horrible person. After all, he's given us the opportunity to watch him make hateful remarks about just about everyone under the sun.
But if you think that's merely his public persona and maybe he's a nicer person when it comes to his family, you're sorely mistaken,
We recently learned he wouldn’t mind letting disabled people die. He even encourages it.
His opinion of disabled people is straight out of the Nazi playbook. Like them, he thinks they are unworthy of life and don’t deserve to live.
In his recently released book, Fred C. Trump III,
’s brother tells us that after a meeting about disability policies at the White House, his uncle told him:“Those people . . . ” Donald said, trailing off. “The shape they’re in, all the expenses, maybe those kinds of people should just die.”
This is precisely the line of argument used by the Nazis when they made their euthanasia policies. To exterminate "life unworthy of life” (Lebensunwertes Leben), as they called it.
This Nazi poster, which they used to solicit support for their policies, reads: "This person, who suffers from a hereditary disease, will cost the national community 60,000 Reichsmarks during his life. Fellow Germans, that's your money too."
Maybe it’s no big surprise that Trump's line of thinking follows Nazi policies; after all, he was raised by someone who is said to have been a Nazi sympathizer.
And he has previously used many other Nazi talking points, like saying that immigrants poison the blood of Americans - also a popular trope of Nazi propaganda. Or made remarks glorifying Hitler, who he thinks did a lot of good things, and posted videos invoking the Unified Reich.
It’s no secret that Trump admires fascist ideology and fascist autocrats like Putin and the little North Korean dictator - Kim Jong Un.
I had to google his name because Menopause is still eating my brain, and the search for “little North Korean dictator” actually delivered the right result. Go figure.
Trump’s nephew, Fred C. Trump, is a big advocate for disability rights and support. He’s the father of a son, William, with a rare seizure disorder.
Due to his personal situation, he has gotten involved in the "Committee for People with Intellectual Disabilities" to improve the lives of families with disabled family members. He is trying to raise awareness of their financial needs and the need for more government support. So, of course, he used his family connections to get a meeting in the White House to discuss policy.
It was after this meeting that Trump told him that he thought it might be better if these people died.
You could argue that Donald Trump was only concerned about the costs incurred by government action to support disabled people. That he was trying to be mindful of the budget. But he truly doesn’t see the point in keeping disabled people alive.
Trump said basically the same thing about William, Fred’s son when they talked about William’s needs and the increasing costs of his care :
“‘I don’t know,’” he finally said, letting out a sigh. ‘He doesn’t recognise you. Maybe you should just let him die and move down to Florida.’”
Even if you lack the empathy to sympathize with someone who has a disabled child, or think this has nothing to do with you, let's examine this train of thought.
What follows if you think that people who cost society money are useless and should die?
Let’s look at what the Nazis did to such people.
Their underlying belief was that people with serious illnesses or people they considered inferior had no right to live.
In 1939, they launched Aktion T4, the program to mass murder people by involuntary euthanasia. Doctors were authorized to select patients whom they "considered incurably ill after most critical medical examination" and euthanize them.
I was born in Austria, and so were my brothers and sister. My younger brother has schizophrenia. He hasn’t been able to contribute a penny to society his entire life. He is still a wonderful person who deserves to live like everyone else.
But if the Nazis had been victorious - or if people like Trump had their way - he’d be one of the people who would be put down for the sake of the greater good.
They called these killings a "mercy death," but let’s be very clear: they snuffed out the lives of people who had whole lives left to live because they considered them useless.
They rounded up and gassed handicapped and mentally unwell people in centers specially equipped with carbon monoxide gas.
Due to widespread protests in Germany led by the Bishop of Münster Aktion T4 was replaced in 1941 by program Aktion 14f13. The new program, also known as the "Invalid or Prisoner Euthanasia Campaign," targeted “only” the inmates of Nazi concentration camps. It included cultural and religious groups as well as people with physical and mental disabilities.
And it included the sick, the elderly and prisoners who were no longer considered fit for work.
Until the end of WWII, 300,000 people were killed in these two campaigns in Germany, Austria, Poland and the Czech Republic.
And this is exactly where the path of putting money above human life leads: to a society that only considers fully functional, productive people worthy of life.
At some point in life, every single one of us will become a nonproductive member of society; we will cost money. Keep that in mind when you think about how we should treat disabled people.
A society that is governed by people who are reluctant to spend money on disabled people because they’re expensive is on a slippery slope. If we allow people who think some lives are more valuable than others to govern us, we might end up with policies for involuntary euthanasia.
Not only for disabled people but also for the sick, the elderly and everyone else who costs money.
The Nazis didn’t start the mass murder of people in the concentration camps either. There were steps.
Forced sterilization was the first. This was followed by the killing of "handicapped" children in hospitals and then the killing of "handicapped" adults who were taken from psychiatric institutions.
Then came the killing centers for "disabled" inmates of concentration and extermination camps and, finally, mass killings in the extermination camps themselves.
There is a very popular German saying, “Wehret den Anfängen,” which means “Resist the beginnings.” This saying is common when warning of dangerous political developments.
Originally by Ovid, the entire phrase goes “Principiis obsta et respice finem,” - “Resist the beginnings and consider the end.”
And we should. We should resist having people in power who don’t value all life equally. They will lead us down a dangerous path.
If you’ve enjoyed my writing and want to support me, please share this story on social media or buy me a cup of coffee! Please subscribe to my newsletter—it really helps with visibility on Substack—and follow me on Medium, Threads or LinkedIn if you’re on any of these platforms.
All true. It's important to do what you've done here – compile his Nazi proclivities on one page. He is a eugenicist. He doesn't want to even look at a disabled solder, and thinks anyone who died in war is a loser. I sometimes wonder if that is why he is not completely anti-abortion, because his desire to only have perfect humans requires abortion to exist in some capacity. Who knows, he might even mandate aborting fetuses that exhibit any defects, or if either parent has a hereditary disease. I don't put anything past him or his cult.
Thank you for this. One thing I would ask you to consider is this: many disabled people are very productive, but in ways that aren't profitable to the capitalist machine. We need to be very clear that when people express this attitude that disabled people are expendable because we're not productive, they are saying that profit is more important than life. Let that sink in.
I am both Autistic and chronically ill, and I was terrified at the height of the COVID pandemic because even before we consider the dangers of Trump's attitude, we must acknowledge that his views are already common, even among medical professionals. Many hospitals had policies in place that dictated that if there were a shortage of beds, respirators, etc., disabled people's care would be deprioritized (Autistics are among those considered less worthy of care than non-disabled people, so i was scared on two accounts). This is but one example. Ableism in this country is rampant, and there is an underlying cultural assumption that our (disabled people) lives are pathetic and not worth living. You don't need to feel sorry for us; just please respect our human dignity and don't assume our lives are not worth living.