You’ve all heard the phrase, “chickens coming home to roost.” You may know not the origin of the phrase. It’s from a more rural time in history when chickens came to the hen house to roost for the night. It is used today to mean that bad deeds or words return to discomfort their perpetrator (Phrase Thesaurus).

Two and a half years ago, a minority of the American voters decided they wanted to shake up the nation to “Make America Great Again!” Those voters weren’t entirely sure what they wanted, but they were deeply concerned about the direction their country was moving. Whites who dominated this nation since its beginnings saw that dominance fade as non-whites became a greater proportion of the population. That created a lot of fear. Part of that fear was that whites would lose the privilege and power that they were used to. Non-whites call this “white privilege.” It was a valid fear because no one who has power ever likes to give it up.

Think of giving up your smart phone. Your whole life would change as a result.

As a nation, we’re seeing at least three examples of the chickens coming home to roost in the presidency of Donald J. Trump.

The trade war with China is one example. The Trump tariffs and Chinese retaliation are taking a toll on Trump’s Midwestern supporters – farmers cannot sell their soybeans and hogs to China due to the tariff war. Had Trump not delayed the tariff deadline from Sept. 1 to Dec. 15 on his recent threat to put 10 percent tariffs on all Chinese products, the average American household would have taken an $831 hit with higher prices, according to a Federal Reserve projection.

International trade is complex and complicated. It’s frankly beyond the expertise of Trump and his advisers. Winning a trade war against Xi Jinping is not easy. He has more control than the president over his nation’s finances. Trump’s trade policies are creating a great deal of uncertainty, which is far more damaging to the economy than actually imposing the tariffs. The president could cause the U.S. to succumb to a recession in 2020, which would be a disaster to his re-election bid. His chickens would be coming home to roost.

As a second example, Trump’s recent racist hate rhetoric had a direct effect on at least one the recent shooters; the suspect in Dallas had echoed Trump’s anti-immigrant words in his screed.

Trump’s campaign to divide the nation over race is spiraling out of control. America is a much more dangerous place because of his behavior and words. Those chickens have already come home to roost and will continue to do so over the next 15 months of Trump’s term. Be prepared for more shootings.

The furor over the suicide death of Daniel Epstein is a third example. Epstein was part of the wealthy elite who had been involved in sex trafficking and had gotten caught. Conspiracy theories are multiplying like crazy from both the right and the left.

Mick Mulvaney, White House budget director in 2017 (now chief of staff), made this statement: “We think we can run the government more effectively than the previous administration can and more efficiently than the previous administration.” This apparently has proved to be untrue in the case of the federal maximum security prison where Epstein was being held.

It was badly understaffed. It’s likely the guards who were supposed to be watching him were sleeping from the stress of mandatory overtime. One of the guards was on his fifth consecutive overtime shift according to the Huff Post. Guard staff were regularly working 60- to 70-hour shifts.

That’s probably why the warden’s higher up reassigned him rather than fire him. He knew the difficult conditions the warden and his employees were under. The cause of Epstein’s suicide was not due to some great conspiracy. It was caused by bad management decisions by the president that came home to roost.

Die-hard Trump supporters wanted change and that’s why they supported him. They have been willing to ignore his outrageous behavior to bring about the change they wanted. I get that. But do you really want to give him a second term? Isn’t the change he’s bringing in his first term enough? Do you think our republic can survive Donald Trump for another five years?