EDITOR’S NOTE: Each week we cross-post an excerpt from Katrina vanden Heuvel’s column at the WashingtonPost.com. Read the full text of Katrina’s column here.

Across the nation, protesters fill the streets outraged by police brutality and systemic racism. At least 114,000 and counting lie dead from the novel coronavirus. Thirty million have been tossed out of work. Thousands of businesses large and small have closed forever. Midland, Mich., is flooded by a collapsing dam. And hurricane and wildfire seasons are still to come. Events feel increasingly biblical: plagues, fires, floods, chaos—a reckoning of sorts. “Make America Great Again” this is not.

President Trump has managed to make each of these overlapping crises worse. He chose tax cuts for the rich and corporations over the promise to rebuild America. He ignores extreme weather caused by climate change. He mishandled the pandemic, denying its import early, then shutting down the economy without a clue about how to manage the damage. He defames even common-sense electoral reforms. The sweeping national horror at the death of George Floyd led him only to double down on his race-baiting divisive politics.

Read the full text of Katrina’s column here.