Steve Schmidt, campaign manager for John McCain in 2008 and prominent co-founder of the Lincoln Project, had this to say about Donald Trump this past June.
Donald Trump has been the worst president this country has ever had. And I don't say that hyperbolically. He is. But he is a consequential president. And he has brought this country in three short years to a place of weakness that is simply unimaginable if you were pondering where we are today from the day where Barack Obama left office. And there were a lot of us on that day who were deeply skeptical and very worried about what a Trump presidency would be. But this is a moment of unparalleled national humiliation, of weakness.
When you listen to the President, these are the musings of an imbecile. An idiot. And I don't use those words to name call. I use them because they are the precise words of the English language to describe his behavior. His comportment. His actions. We've never seen a level of incompetence, a level of ineptitude so staggering on a daily basis by anybody in the history of the country whose ever been charged with substantial responsibilities.
It's just astonishing that this man is president of the United States. The man, the con man, from New York City. Many bankruptcies, failed businesses, a reality show, that branded him as something that he never was. A successful businessman. Well, he's the President of the United States now, and the man who said he would make the country great again. And he's brought death, suffering, and economic collapse on truly an epic scale. And let's be clear. This isn't happening in every country around the world. This place. Our place. Our home. Our country. The United States. We are the epicenter. We are the place where you're the most likely to die from this disease. We're the ones with the most shattered economy. And we are because of the fool that sits in the Oval Office behind the Resolute Desk (Cillizza 1)
Another veteran Republican operative, David Frum, attacks the President.
You cannot expect Trump to gain any wisdom, empathy, or compassion for others. Throughout the pandemic, Trump has disdained the hardships suffered by sick and dying Americans, by their families and neighbors, by those who have lost jobs and homes. When NBC’s Peter Alexander asked Trump on March 20 what the president would say to Americans feeling fear because of the disease, he upbraided Alexander: “I’d say you are a terrible reporter.” ...
What you can expect is a lot of victimhood and self-pity. Trump and those around him have always demanded for themselves the decencies that they refuse others. They will get them, too. Trump’s opponents will express concern and good wishes [about Trump having been infected by the Covid-19 virus] —and if they do not, Trump’s allies will complain that those opponents are allowing politics to overwhelm human feeling. …
Trump has all his life posed a moral puzzle: What is due in the way of kindness and sympathy to people who have no kindness and sympathy for anyone else? Should we repay horrifying cruelty in equal measure? Then we reduce ourselves to their level. But if we return indecency with the decency due any other person in need, don’t we encourage appalling behavior? Don’t we prove to them that they belong to some unique bracket of humanity, entitled to kick others when they are writhing on the floor, and then to claim mercy when their own crimes and cruelties cast them upon the floor themselves?
Americans are dead who might have been alive if Trump had met the challenge of COVID-19 with care and responsibility—or if somebody else, literally almost anybody else, had been president instead. Millions are out of work, in danger of losing their homes, living in fear. Tens of millions of young people have suffered disruption to their education, which will follow them through life. The pandemic was not Trump’s fault, but at every turn, he made things worse than they had to be—because at every turn, he cared only for himself, never for the country. And now he will care only for himself again.
Trump should never have been allowed anywhere near any public office. Wish him well [regarding his recovery from Covid-19], but recognize that his deformed spirit will never be well—and that nothing can be well for the country under his leadership (Frum 1-2).
Bill Moyers, White House Press Secretary under the Johnson administration from 1965 to 1967 and longtime broadcast journalist, spelled out Trump’s destructive actions and peril to the nation.
He understands that most Americans are concerned with little more than the economy, health care and jobs. They respond positively to politicians who promise action on these priorities, whether or not they know if those promises will ever be fulfilled. [Norman] Ravitch [emeritus professor of history at the University of California, Riverside] pointed out that like Hitler and like Mussolini, Trump knows how to appeal to a variety of concerns with promises that can be both attractive and contradictory. Because no population is educated enough, sensitive enough, or ethical enough to see through the deception, “the danger is very great indeed.
It may in fact be one of the chief weaknesses of democracy that democracy can lead to tyranny just as well or perhaps even more than other political systems.”
… This president is no friend of democracy.
He has declared himself above the law, preached insurrection by encouraging armed supporters to “liberate” states from the governance of duly elected officials, told police not to be “too nice” while doing their job, and gloated over the ability of the Secret Service to turn “vicious dogs” and “ominous weapons” loose on demonstrators — to “come down on them hard” if they get too “frisky.”
He has politicized the Department of Justice while remaking the judiciary in his image.
He has stifled investigations into his administration’s corruption, fired officials charged with holding federal agencies accountable to the public, and rewarded his donors and cronies with government contracts, subsidies, deregulations, and tax breaks.
He has maligned and mocked the disadvantaged, the disabled, and people of color.
He has sought to politicize the military, including in his entourage the secretary of defense and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs (dressed in combat fatigues), as his orderlies unleashed chemical fumes on peaceful protesters – all so that the president could use them as stage props in a photo op, holding up a Bible in front of a historic church, just to make a dandy ad for his re-election campaign.
He has purged his own party of independent thinkers and turned it into a spineless, mindless cult while demonizing the opposition.
He has purloined religion for state and political ends.
He has desecrated the most revered symbols of Christian faith by converting them to partisan brands.
He has recruited religious zealots for jobs in his administration, rewarding with government favors the electoral loyalty of their followers.
He has relentlessly attacked mainstream media as purveyors of “fake news” and “enemies of the people” while collaborating with a sycophantic right- wing media – including the Murdoch family’s Fox News — to flood the country with lies and propaganda.
He has maneuvered the morally hollow founder of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg, into compromising the integrity of the most powerful media giant in the country by infusing it with partisan bias.
And because truth is the foe he most fears, he has banned it from his administration and his lips.
Yes, … the man in the White House has taken all the necessary steps toward achieving the despot’s dream of dominance.
Can it happen here?
It is happening here.
Democracy in America has been a series of narrow escapes. We may be running out of luck, and no one is coming to save us. For that, we have only ourselves (Moyers 1-4).
Washington Post journalist Max Boot has warned us about Trump’s apparent plan to steal the election. Boot wrote in September the following.
It is not simply the casting of ballots that makes a democracy. Many dictatorships have faux elections that change nothing. The real test of a nation’s political system is whether politicians respect the will of the voters — and in particular whether the most powerful leader, the one in control of the armed forces, willingly gives up power after losing an election. This is a test that countries such as Belarus and Zimbabwe have failed, and that the United States has passed, in good times and bad, for more than two centuries. Indeed, few presidents are even asked about their willingness to give up power because the answer is so obvious.
That is no longer the case. …
…
… Trump’s talk has a purpose. He is claiming that mail-in ballots will be fraudulent not because any evidence of fraud exists. He is doing so because Democrats in recent years have had a big advantage in ballots that are counted after Election Day. In 2018, Republican Martha McSally was ahead in the Arizona Senate race on election night but lost after all the ballots were counted.
This year the “blue shift” is certain to be even bigger, with more people voting by mail than ever before — and more Democrats than Republicans expressing a desire to do so. By calling the mail-in ballots a “hoax,” Trump is laying the foundation for throwing them out and demanding that he be declared the winner based on ballots counted on election night.
…
… The Constitution provides that each state shall appoint electors “in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct.” [The Atlantic’s Barton] Gellman reports that the Trump campaign is already “discussing contingency plans to bypass election results and appoint loyal electors in battleground states where Republicans hold the legislative majority.”
Trump’s eagerness to confirm a Supreme Court justice before the election is based, in no small part, on the assumption that the outcome of the vote will be adjudicated. “I think this will end up in the Supreme Court. And I think it’s very important that we have nine justices,” Trump said on Wednesday. Trump is seeking to hold on to power any way he can.
…
The Republican Party is unlikely to restrain Trump’s authoritarian instincts. While Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) pledges that “the winner of the November 3rd election will be inaugurated on January 20th,” the GOP will do everything possible to ensure that Trump is certified as the winner — even if he should rightfully lose not only in the popular vote but in the electoral college, too.
The only way to avoid the worst election crisis since 1876 is for Joe Biden to win by a landslide on Election Day. Anyone who cares about the fate of American democracy should pray that happens (Boot 1-4).
Heed as well Thomas Friedman.
I can’t say this any more clearly: Our democracy is in terrible danger — more danger than it has been since 1861, more danger than after Pearl Harbor, more danger than during the Cuban missile crisis and more danger than during Watergate.
I began my career as a foreign correspondent covering Lebanon’s second civil war, and it left a huge impact on me. I saw what happens in a country when everything becomes politics, when a critical mass of politicians put party before country, when responsible people, or seemingly responsible people, think that they can bend or break the rules — and go all the way — and that the system won’t break.
But when extremists go all the way, and moderates just go away, the system can break. And it will break. I saw it happen.
…
I worry because Facebook and Twitter have become giant engines for destroying the two pillars of our democracy — truth and trust. Yes, these social networks have given voice to the voiceless. That is a good thing and it can really enhance transparency. But they have also become huge, unedited cesspools of conspiracy theories that are circulated and believed by a shocking — and growing — number of people.
These social networks are destroying our nation’s cognitive immunity — its ability to sort truth from falsehood.
Without shared facts on which to make decisions, there can be no solutions to our biggest challenges. And without a modicum of trust that both sides want to preserve and enhance the common good, it is impossible to accomplish anything big.
“Politics needs a reference point outside of politics,” argues Hebrew University religious philosopher Moshe Halbertal. "It needs values, it needs facts and it needs leaders who respect that there is a sacred domain of decisions that will never be used to promote political gain, only the common good.''
Public trust is eroded, added Halbertal, when people feel that this notion of the common good doesn’t exist because everything has become politics. That describes the United States today. The institutions we have relied upon to be outside the game of politics so as to adjudicate what is right and true — scientists, certain news media, the courts — have become so ensnared by politics that fewer and fewer of them are universally trusted to define and pursue the common good. Even mask-wearing has become partisan.
…
The Republicans — who in the past voted for Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush, sane conservatives who could be counted upon to uphold the common good — have … fallen in line lock step behind a man who is the most dishonest, dangerous, mean-spirited, divisive and corrupt person to ever occupy the Oval Office. And they know it. Four more years of Trump’s divide and rule will destroy our institutions and rip the country apart.
To me, the only hope for America is to elect Biden and split the GOP between the Trumpists and whatever is left of the moderate Republicans, and then hope that a big center-left and small center-right can agree on enough things to propel the country forward, heal the divide and act together for the common good.
But for that to happen, Biden has to win (Friedman 1-4).
Works cited:
Boot, Max, “Trump Is the Worst Threat to Our Democracy since the 1930s.” Washington Post, September 24, 2020. Web. https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/09/24/trump-is-worst-threat-our-democracy-since-1930s/
Cillizza, Chris, “This Is the Most Succinct -- and Brutal -- Republican Rejection of Donald Trump that You Will Ever Read.” CNN Politics, June 23, 2020. Web. https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/this-is-the-most-succinct-and-brutal-republican-rejection-of-donald-trump-that-you-will-ever-read/ar-BB15Svv8
Friedman, Thomas, “Trump Sent a Warning. Let’s Take It Seriously.” The New York Times, September 30, 2020. Web. https://www.baltimoresun.com/featured/sns-nyt-op-debates-take-trumps-warning-seriously-20200930-srnqrnqjlrbx3h73elhcmw24gy-story.html
Frum, David, “What Did You Expect? Trump Should Never Have Been Allowed Anywhere near Any Public Office.” The Atlantic, October 2, 2020. Web. https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/10/what-did-you-expect-donald-trump/616583/
Moyers, Bill, “We Hold This Truth to Be Self-Evident: It’s Happening before Our Very Eyes.” Moyers on Democracy, June 5, 2020. Web. https://billmoyers.com/story/we-hold-this-truth-to-be-self-evident-its-happening-before-our-very-eyes/
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