In his State of the Union address last week, President Donald Trump promised that Americans “will always be free.” That throwaway line assured another round of applause from his Republican devotees on Capitol Hill. But will other Americans be as gullible or servile as members of Congress?
Americans are indoctrinated in government schools to presume that our national DNA practically guarantees we will always be free. But few follies are more perilous than presuming that individual rights are safe in perpetuity. None of the arguments on why liberty is inevitable can explain why it is becoming an endangered species. Presuming that freedom is our destiny lulls people against political predators.
Sorting out the absurdities in Trump’s “always be free” assertion is like peeling a political onion.
A key theme in Trump’s presidential campaign last year was that President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris were tyrannizing American with censorship, DEI mandates, and idiotic regulations. When Trump said Americans “will always be free,” did he presume that the Biden presidency never happened, or what? Were all of the Biden administration’s abuses expunged on the day that Trump took his oath of office as 47th president? Trump has vigorously nullified many of Biden’s worst policies and executive orders. But the feds were oppressive long before Sleepy Joe arrived in the Oval Office.
Trump raised a similar claim six years ago in his 2019 State of the Union address. He announced, “America was founded on liberty and independence—not government coercion, domination, and control. We are born free, and we will stay free.”
Sure, except for armies of government enforcement agents waiting to imprison Americans for violating hundreds of thousands of laws and regulations or simply “pissing off the police.”
Does Trump’s “always free” claim last week have more credibility than his 2019 “stay free” pledge? In early 2020, Trump praised the brutal tactics used by the Chinese government to supposedly thwart the spread of the COVID virus. On March 16, 2020, Trump endorsed “15 Days to Slow the Spread”—a slogan that would live in infamy. Trump promised: “If everyone makes this change or these critical changes and sacrifices now, we will rally together as one nation and we will defeat the virus and we’re going to have a big celebration together.” Freezing the economy and daily life would magically vanquish the virus!
On April 13, 2020, Trump proclaimed, “The federal government has absolute power. It has the power. As to whether or not I’ll use that power, we’ll see.” Politico reported that Trump’s Justice Department was considering asking Congress to approve suspending habeas corpus for the duration of the pandemic, enabling the feds to detain anyone suspect of being infected or disobeying lockdown orders. Trump condemned many of Biden’s worst COVID policy abuses. But that doesn’t expunge Trump’s guilt for knocking over the first COVID oppression dominos.
How can Trump’s “always be free” assertion be reconciled with more than ten million people being arrested every year—many for nonviolent crimes? In early 2019, Trump bitterly complained that the FBI had used twenty-nine people and armored vehicles to arrest Roger Stone. But SWAT teams conduct up to 80,000 raids a year, according to the ACLU, mostly for drug arrests or search warrants. Many innocent people have been killed in such raids. Perhaps Trump doesn’t consider such raids a violation of freedom unless they are targeting his high-profile supporters.
Or maybe Trump believes that people forfeit their right to freedom after government suspects or accuses them of wrongdoing. Trump is a champion of asset forfeiture laws which entitle law enforcement to confiscate people’s cash, cars, and other property based on the flimsiest accusation. Federal law-enforcement agencies seized more property via asset forfeiture than all the burglars stole from homeowners and businesses nationwide. Trump’s new Bitcoin Reserve Fund and United States Digital Asset Stockpile will rely on asset forfeiture to finance acquisition. The White House website noted that the Commerce and Treasury Secretaries “are authorized to develop budget-neutral strategies for acquiring additional bitcoin, provided that those strategies impose no incremental costs on American taxpayers.” What could possibly go wrong?
How can Trump’s “always be free” proclamation be reconciled with the perpetual abuses of the Internal Revenue Service? Federal, state, and local tax burdens turn citizens into sharecroppers of their own lives. The average American is forced to labor for twenty years simply to support the government. Americans are forced to pay more in taxes than their total spending on food, clothing, and housing. Each week, scores of thousands of Americans have their bank accounts seized by the IRS, or have IRS liens put on their houses or land, or endure a tax audit, or receive notice of penalties and demands for additional taxes. Will people “always be free” even after government wrongfully seizes most of their income?
Did Trump mean to imply that Americans “will always be free” as long as Trump is the supreme ruler? Many Democrats and liberals have been histrionic ever since Election Day last November, proclaiming that practically any reform or statement that Trump makes proves he is the reincarnation of Hitler.
Trump is no Hitler but what about Napoleon? Last month, Trump tweeted out an old saying attributed to Bonaparte:
He who saves his Country does not violate any Law.
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 15, 2025
The New York Times fretted that “taken at face value, Mr. Trump’s statement…suggested that even if what he is doing unambiguously breaks an otherwise valid law, that would not matter if he says his motive is to save the country.” Trump zealots such as Laura Loomer responded to the Napoleonic invocation: ““Thank you, President Trump. We love you.”
It doesn’t inspire confidence that Trump administration lawyers are invoking the same “unitary executive theory” to justify his legal decrees that President George W. Bush used to disregard congressional prohibitions on torture.
Trump is one of a long series of commanders-in-chief who expanded and exploited the dictatorial potential of the presidency. Americans who are relieved that neither Biden nor Harris are in the Oval Office cannot afford to be any less vigilant of their rights and liberties. Trump’s occasional pro-liberty rhetoric provides no assurance against abuses of power that could end in a legal-constitutional Waterloo.
