Monday, Feb. 16, 2026 | 2 a.m.
I can’t recall another time when my grown kids have called their mom the political journalist to talk about political news. But my older daughter couldn’t help herself after President Donald Trump posted a racist depiction of Barack and Michelle Obama as apes, and then waved off all criticism, blamed someone else and seemed to wonder what all the fuss was about.
For Sarah, the revolting news brought back a painful memory of an incident in her youth at a racially mixed Washington, D.C., middle school. I instantly remembered it too: Some preteens’ playground squabble turned nasty. The N-word flew, and the whole group got schooled. Students were disciplined. Apologies were made. Lessons were learned.
So how is it, the adult Sarah angrily asked me, that kids can get into such trouble for their behavior, accept responsibility and make amends, but the president of the United States does not and will not?
What could I say but that elections have consequences and Americans, including a few of her relatives, elected (for a second time!) a man who routinely — and several times just this week — shows himself unfit not only for the most powerful job in the world, but for just about any job.
We’re stuck with a president who daily models behavior that we don’t accept in our schools and workplaces. Yet the malefactor in chief faces no consequences. We’re forced to tolerate conduct from him that a fast-food fry cook, middle manager, teacher, factory worker — even a middle-school student — wouldn’t get away with.
If only we had an H.R. department for the White House.
The whole world knows from years of experience that the other two branches of government aren’t filling the role. They’re not the check on this president that the Constitution’s authors intended. Obsequious Republicans won’t provide the votes in Congress to restrain or punish Trump, even when he’s usurped the lawmakers’ own constitutional powers. And the judiciary has a decidedly mixed record: Many lower court judges (including Trump appointees) have courageously ruled against his lawlessness, only to be overridden too often by the excessively deferential right-wing supermajority on the Supreme Court.
Set aside the plentiful evidence of Trump’s mental instability. Pretend instead that you’re simply a human resources rep and the United States is your workplace. Imagine that Trump works for you, as he is supposed to work for all Americans, as well as for the millions of noncitizen U.S. residents who likewise have constitutional rights in this country, for those who didn’t vote for him as well as for those who did, for blue states and cities as well as red ones.
Just think of the trouble Trump would face in your office.
His racist post against the Obamas was bad enough, but he’s a repeat offender with a long record of statements and actions against Black Americans, Black nations and other people of color.
No sooner might you have called him to account for the apes trope than you would have learned that he’d lashed out on social media yet again to attack Bad Bunny, a Puerto Rican American and currently the globe’s most popular entertainer, for singing in Spanish throughout his Super Bowl halftime show. “ ‘A slap in the face’ to our Country,” Trump called it.
Then there is Trump’s repeated unsportsmanlike conduct, his failure to play and work well with others, his incessant lying, his childish name-calling, the self-dealing corruption. For Trump, the presidential H.R. department would need a revolving door.
He breaks deals on trade and other issues that he signed himself with longtime U.S. allies. He covets the Nobel Peace Prize so obsessively (despite his murderous strikes on small boats off South America, takeover of Venezuela and armed occupation of U.S. cities) that last month he accepted the 2025 medal from the brave Venezuelan dissident who actually won it, María Corina Machado. (Contrast that with bad ol’ Bad Bunny giving his new Grammy to a young boy during the halftime show.)
After the NFL championship, Trump even posted a demand that the winning Seattle Seahawks give him their trophy. “Seattle is a Disaster Zone run by Nasty People,” he wrote. No, it’s a great city that, like other Democratic-run cities and all American cities, is full of his constituents. This month, he’s inexplicably disinvited Democratic governors from the traditional White House meeting and dinner that presidents for decades have hosted for all governors during the National Governors Association’s annual Washington meeting.
And what might H.R. have done with Trump’s hour-plus of nastiness earlier this month at, of all things, the 74th annual National Prayer Breakfast? Before thousands of U.S. and foreign leaders, the president was anything but prayerful from start to finish. “I don’t know how a person of faith can vote for a Democrat,” he said at one point, and for the gazillionth time claimed falsely that Democrats had rigged the 2020 election against him. He called a Republican dissident in Congress “a moron,” mocked former President Joe Biden as demented and maligned former President Obama as a “terrible divider of our country.” Talk about projection.
And be forewarned: Trump isn’t done breaking norms, rules, laws and the Constitution. On Tuesday he defied all political prognostications to tell the servile Larry Kudlow on Fox News that in the midterm elections, Republicans “should win in a landslide. And we’ll do everything we can to do it.” Pretty ominous from a man who tried to overturn Biden’s victory in 2020 and sat by during an attack on the Capitol.
Fantasies aside, there is no White House H.R. rep to stop him. It’s on us.
Jackie Calmes is a columnist for the Los Angeles Times.
