Betrayer-in-Chief
Missing from every analysis about the fact that Trump betrays all his allies while demanding absolute loyalty for himself: Trump has already betrayed, and continues to betray, this country and its values and democracy itself.
The self-interest and business conflicts that define him made the betrayal of democratic values the singular inevitability of his election, and we are seeing that played out every day. To the extent a betrayal of American values does not occur, it is the product solely of coincidence. When America’s interests happen to coincide with Trump’s, he may support them them. Otherwise, we are out of luck. (So far, we are mainly out of luck.)
Failure to recognize that Trump is not tethered to any morality or any principle outside of his own personal, situation-based need for dominance and his unslakeable thirst for approbation, leads to the endless stream of truly idiotic analyses like this latest one from the New York Times:
Trump has quite obviously not “upended” 150 years of two-party “rule.” (The word is in quotes because the principle behind a democracy is that we elect those who govern; we are not subjects to be “ruled” by them.) There is no third party that he has attempted to start. He ran as and was elected as a Republican and could never have won without the support of life-long Republicans, which he received notwithstanding the defections of some high-profile elites; indeed, partisan affiliation (i.e., party identification) was the number-one predictor of how people voted in the 2016 election.
The fact that Trump does whatever Trump impulsively feels like doing in the moment does not make him an “independent.” He has stocked his cabinet with a combination of right-wing opportunists and right-wing ideologues who together are pursuing the GOP’s wet dreams of (i) restricting the rights of people of color, women, the LGBITQIA community, immigrants, the disabled, and Muslims; (ii) undermining the role of government by attacking, defunding, destablizing, and destroying the missions of government agencies and subverting them to the goal of shifting public resources into the hands of rightwing donors, who are disproportionately wealthy; (iii) destroying the environment and lives and well-being of the people of the United States by rejecting science and replacing data-based analysis with partisanship, substituting the economic self-interest of rich donors for the well-being of our citizens; and (iv) actively seeking to destroy the social safety net with sustained attacks on Medicare, Medicaid, Obamacare, Social Security, public education, public housing, and on and on and on. Trump’s agenda is the Republican platform.
But Trump’s basic alignment with the GOP platform is not the result of ideological commitment or party loyalty, which is what allows Baker the fantasy that Trump is an independent. Discussions categorizing Trump as an “independent” because he conducts Twitter-wars with his own party are as foolish as those labeling John McCain a “maverick” — they construct a false narrative and deploy a political lens that ignores facts. Trump is defined by the need to dominate, coupled with grievance and resentment (despite the inordinate privilege into which he was born) — the red meat off which the GOP base feeds and in which it recognizes Trump as a soulmate. Reporters and editorialists who continue to analyze him as if he is driven by a coherent political agenda, or a goal or strategy of achieving anything for any purpose outside himself and his need for dominance, are not only missing the essential point of Donald Trump — they are unwittingly aiding and abetting him by normalizing him as a regular politician and by affording him credit he is neither due nor has earned.
And they are understating and obscuring his ongoing attacks on American democratic values and national and global security — attacks which are still nearly 100% supported by the GOP despite his occasional criticism of them and the occasional critiques of him by the GOP. This notion of “independence” boils down to the observation that Trump is not a party loyalist. But the reason Trump is not a GOP loyalist has nothing to do with “political” independence and everything to do with his malignant narcissism, as he is loyal to no one but himself, those he sees as his extensions (family), and those who support him unconditionally. (His demands for personal loyalty, of course, are improper in the context of and antithetical to a properly functioning democracy; and the few times we have seen him exercise personal loyalty to others, it has been in service of flouting democratic norms and possibly the law. See, e.g., his personal involvement in drafting Donald Jr.’s false and misleading statements to the press about his June 9, 2016 meeting in Trump Tower.)
And it should be obvious by now that Trump has no interest in doing anything but promoting his personal brand — whether through hats he and his wife wear and then hawk on his campaign website, like the crass two-bit grifters they are, during a visit to Texas after a devastating hurricane, or by bankrupting the Secret Service on his endless vacations promoting his golf courses and hotels, or by declaring one moment that the House healthcare bill is great and in another that it is terrible, or by attacking Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton to build himself up. Part of promoting Trump’s personal brand, and essential to his self-concept, is pushing the idea that he is a “winner.” And if getting the win means sticking it to Ryan and McConnell by teaming up with Democrats here or there, he’ll do it.
This should come as neither a surprise nor an argument for political independence. Trump’s actions at all times are merely a reflection of his own pettiness and need to dominate — both individuals and the media cycle. However, his primary goals and actions remain aligned with those of the Republicans. And that is why we see virtually no meaningful criticism of him, much less breaking with him, except for a small handful of select players — except when he attacks other Republicans. The GOP will support him, if only by neutrality and silence, despite his manifest vileness — indeed, they have since his inauguration.
He campaigned on a platform that, with a few notable exceptions (trade, putative — and false — commitment to Medicare and Social Security) is textbook Republican, and he simply took the Southern Strategy of racism and made it raw and explicit, then married it to misogyny and other forms of frothing bigotry masquerading as “authenticity.” He is angry at McConnell and Ryan for not giving him easy wins and bragging rights. Trump is simply too gleefully ignorant and lazy to master the art of the deal in Washington or to play any kind of long game — he wants things to tweet about in the moment. Nancy and Chuck played him, but that doesn’t make him an independent; it makes him the easily-manipulable puppet that Hillary Clinton warned about.
Remember, his entire revolting cabinet has been installed and is wreaking havoc on our values and the lives of people around the country; from Sessions’ attacks on justice itself to Pruitt’s use of the EPA to destroy the environment and reject science to Tillerson’s disembowelment of the State Department and undermining of U.S. diplomacy, and on and on. Trump and the GOP leadership sought and failed to repeal Obamacare; both will seek (and hopefully fail) at their tax cut attempts; both champion voter suppression; etc. Their goals are largely and broadly aligned, as the GOP platform reflects. Trump is not and cannot afford to be a political independent. To the contrary, Trump is the Republican Party and it is him (Le GOP, C’est Trump).
The problem for the GOP is that that alignment is mercurial, because (i) Trump has no patience for political strategy; (ii) Trump does not understand the difficulty or nuance of legislating and does not want to understand it; and (iii) Trump is an indecent human being who is patently unfit for office on every conceivable metric. The GOP has been willing to overlook all three of these problems in service of that aligned agenda, despite the fact that Trump says and does whatever is convenient to assuage his impulses and emotional needs in the moment, and despite the extraordinary damage he is doing to democratic norms, global stability, and American international standing. That does not make Trump any less their creature and their apotheosis. Political writers and reporters would do well to recognize that Trump’s occasional fickleness to the GOP and his reprehensible temperament do not do make him a political independent — they make him a singular threat to the Republican Party and to the country itself. A man whose sole loyalty is to himself will betray everyone around him, and every principle, in service of himself. Nothing comes before Trump, and that includes the country and the Constitution he has sworn to defend, but has already repeatedly betrayed.
