Trump Is A Bipartisan Problem

I keep thinking about the difference between Republican lawmakers’ reactions — and non-reactions — to Trump’s erratic pronouncements on “policy” (whether it’s trade or gun safety legislation or immigration or health care), and to the endemic, incurable features of his presidency, which are distinct from policy or politics. His policies and politics are loathsome to me, but our democratic system can handle and has to be able to handle policy and political differences, no matter how deep; what’s integral and fundamental, and what allows us to endure as a nation, is a commitment to the process itself. Because what democracy is, is a system of government; a process for achieving outcomes but without a guarantee of any specific policy outcome. What we have seen over the course of the last two years, however, is that the irrespective of policy, there have been systemic features of the Trump candidacy, and then the Trump transition, and now the Trump presidency that are antithetical to our democratic values, violate the Constitution, undermine the fabric of our society, and place our nation and even the globe at extreme risk. And every one of these features is a bipartisan problem.

Here is a short list of several of the defining features, which can be and should be separated out from Trump’s support or lack of support for any particular law or measure:

1. Business conflicts and refusal to fully disclose them, divest them, or put them in a blind trust.
2. Pathological lying. About everything. From the size of his hands to the size of his inauguration crowd to the attendance at his rallies to his ties to his health to his weight and height to whether he said what he said on the Access Hollywood tape to how much TV his watches to whether he golfed on a particular day to what he said yesterday, to deeply significant issues such as his and his campaign’s financial ties to and meetings with Russia. The lies are not limited to Trump, as he has in his employ a team of professional liars who have gone far beyond the gray area of spin and routinely mouth untruths to press to create “alternative facts” and an alternative reality in which up is down and east is west, in the concerted hope of maintaining the illusion of their political base that Trump’s failures are successes. This is a presidency steeped in absolutely pathological mendacity.
3. Nepotism. Installation of manifestly unqualified family members and friends and into positions of power in the government.
4. Corruption. From the staggering waste of taxpayer money to fund constant boondoggles for himself, his family, the cronies he installed in the White House and in cabinet positions; to using the White House as a cash cow to hawk his properties and his merch — even to hurricane victims — to doubling the fees at his club and having lobbyists and foreign diplomats eager to curry favor to stay at his hotels (which he fails to track), to promoting his golf courses and other properties; to foreign “policy” driven by his own or his family’s personal business interests in Russia and Dubai and India and Turkey the Philippines and Qatar and elsewhere; to acceptance of corruption among his advisers/appointees like Kushner (just a few examples of Kushner’s corruption and the national security threat he represents are here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here) and Ivanka (examples here, here, and here) and DeVos (examples here, here, and here) and Pruitt (examples here, here, here, and here) and Zinke (examples here, here, here, here, and here) and Price (examples here and here) and Carson (examples here, here, and here) and Mnuchin (examples here, here, here, and here), among others; even, apparently, providing advance notice of trade policy to Carl Icahn so the latter could engage in what looks a lot like insider trading, and get away with it, and not for the first time.
5. Attacks on basic Constitutional precepts and rights — free speech, free press, due process, freedom of religion.
6. Rejection of diplomacy and gutting of the State Department.
7. Attacks on the intelligence apparatus of the United States, primarily for personal political cover or gain.
8. Abuse of power — weaponization of the presidency to personally attack and/or retaliate against individuals and companies who criticize him, and undermining the independence of the judiciary and the rule of law in order to promote and protect himself. Examples here, here, here, here, here, here.
9. Outright racism. The New York Times has a what it calls a “definitive” list here.
10. Defense of Nazis and white supremacists; refusal to condemn them except under pressure, and then doing so only half-heartedly.
11. Promotion of anti-Muslim propaganda and stoking of Islamophobia, which is causing a sharp increase in anti-Muslim hate-crimes.
12. Tolerance and promotion of anti-Semitism, including of anti-semitic websites, retweeting of anti-Semitic imagery, and refusal to decry anti-Semitism. Anti-semitic acts are up sharply.
13. Promotion of xenophobia, including through false statements and propaganda.
14. Overt and tacit embrace of violence, especially against people of color.
15. Lack of understanding or respect for separation of powers.
16. Attacks on the judiciary.
17. Personal, disparaging attacks on individual members of Congress. For example, one in five Republican Senators (including Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, John McCain, Bob Corker, and Jeff Flake). Also multiple Democrats, especially women of color. The attacks on women are typically also misogynist and those on people of color, racist. Examples of attacks here, here, here, here, here, and here.
18. Belittling and disrespect for all who disagree. A comprehensive list of the people he has childishly insulted on Twitter is here. A shorter list is here.
19. Treatment of political opponents as “enemies” and designation as such. Refusal to serve as president of the entire country or even pretend to do so.
20. Deliberately sowing hatred among Americans for each other.
21. Embrace of dictators including their tactics of government-sanctioned murder, suppression of speech and dissent, and vote rigging. (Examples here, here, and here.)
22. Refusal to acknowledge that our country was attacked by Russia and denying it repeatedly over the findings of 17 U.S. intelligence agencies, and deriding it as a “hoax” or “witch hunt” invented by Democrats.
23. Refusal to implement sanctions, imposed by Congress in an overwhelming bipartisan vote, against Russia for attacking the 2016 election.
24. Even though his own administration has warned that the 2018 elections are under attack from Russia, refusal to put in place any measures to defend this country’s upcoming elections from ongoing Russian hacking and other threats; the country’s cyberchief says he has received no presidential authority to protect our election from Russian attack.
25. Disparaging and engaging in smear campaigns against public servants and their families to discredit them to take pressure off himself in the Russia investigation.
26. Demanding loyalty oaths from public servants and asking who they voted for.
27. Publicly berating Sessions for recusing himself from the Russia investigation, then trying to humiliate him into resigning.
28. Obstructing justice, and pressuring the Justice Department to discredit the FBI and fire staff, attacking the FBI, publicly toying with shutting down the investigation by firing Sessions or Rosenstein, and intimidating witnesses. Examples are here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.
29. Violating the Emoluments Clause.
30. Refusing to disclose tax returns to enable transparent evaluation of his conflicts of interest.
31. Failure to fill key positions required for government to function properly.
32. Circumventing the confirmation process through extended interim appointments.
33. Rejecting transparency in how he runs the administration.
34. Threatening possible nuclear war in unhinged Tweets.
35. No understanding of the Constitution.
36. Holding a meeting in Oval Office with hostile foreign government actors Lavrov and Kislyak and leaking top secret intelligence to them, while mocking former head of FBI as the Russians laughed, in front of Russian news organization TASS, after having expelled American press from the meeting.
37. Attacks on the press for publishing critical news stories, repeatedly deriding negative news coverage as “fake news.” Designating the press the “enemy of the people.” He even threatened NBC’s broadcast license. Other examples of his attempt to sabotage these news outlets are here and here.
38. Calling for the investigation and imprisonment of a political opponent.
39. Willing use of stolen emails and aid from Russia to help campaign and get elected; refusal to admit it happened or do anything to stop it from continuing.
40. Falsely accusing a former president of wiretapping him, and doing so after having engaged in an extended racist political attack on him from 2011 to 2016.
41. Insulting world leaders.
42. Unseemly lashing out multiple times a day in unhinged and barely literate rants.
43. Threatening our national security in multiple ways — from installing unregistered foreign agents of Russia and Turkey (Flynn, Manafort) to serve in his campaign and the administration, to putting racists and Nazi sympathizers in the White House (Gorka, Miller, Bannon, Gorka’s wife) to allowing unqualified political hacks and chaos sowers to serve on the national security committee until there was an outcry (Bannon) to refusing to defend our country from Putin to installing people with ties to Russia at every level of government to providing dozens of people incapable of passing a security clearance with access to secret information to jeopardizing our ability to collect intelligence due to his leaks and intemperateness, to his refusal to read daily intelligence briefings to his reliance on family and friends rather than people with expertise to his refusal to accept information or intelligence that might hurt his ego to holding national security meetings at Mar a Lago with an open phone line in front of paid visitors as if defense of country is a reality show.
44. Unparalleled narcissism.
45. Lack of self-control.
46. Revolving door of firings and resignations, internecine fighting and backbiting, incompetence, and contempt for knowledge or expertise.
47. Verbal attacks on NATO (with no understanding of how it works), refusing to affirm Article 5, and alienation of many of our longstanding allies (including Great Britain, Germany, Mexico and the Latin American diaspora, and Australia. The U.S.’s standing in the world has plummeted among allies and foes alike, with the exception of Russia.
48. Nomination and appointment of kleptocrats and/or manifestly unqualified cronies or hacks; several of these same hacks also lied under oath during confirmation hearings.
49. Brazen misogyny. From his own (denied) sexual assaults and degrading language toward women to his hiring and putting in positions of power men who who assault women to his support for Roy Moore (assaulter of teenagers) and David Clarke (oversaw a jail in which women were forced to give birth in shackles).
50. Rejection of the rule of law. He pardoned Joe Arpaio, a man who has spent his life abusing detainees and then refused to obey a court order. He supports David Clarke, responsible for multiple deaths of prisoners on his watch including via torture. He supported disgraced former Judge Roy Moore, who in addition to multiple allegations of sexual predation of teens, was twice kicked off the bench for violating the Constitution. He called for the police to violate the Constitutional rights of prisoners, prompting police departments to have to repudiate his statements. He has called for the execution of drug dealers. He floated the idea of violating the due process rights of gun owners.
51. Sleaze, vulgarity, and consorting with money launderers, mobsters (especially Russian mobsters), porn stars, shady oligarchs, grifters, thugs, liars, D-list celebrities, reality TV stars, possible Russian agents, and other bottom feeders — time will tell whether the kompromat in the Steele Dossier proves true, but he’s already lied about his ties to many of these and had his fixer Michael Cohen pay hush money to bury stories about his sexual encounters, thereby exposing himself to potential blackmail and Cohen to campaign finance violations.
52. And then there’s the potential that he did in fact conspire with Russia in ways beyond which we’ve already seen, or is completely beholden to Putin or others in ways similar, for example, to his desperate, compromised, crooked former campaign manager, Paul Manafort. There is ample evidence already of grotesquely inappropriate conduct with respect to Russia right now and by his campaign aides, as well as evidence of likely money laundering by the Trump Organization and a deep beholdenness to Russian moneylenders. And his former campaign aides and advisers to his fledgling administration were immersed in illegality; from Manafort to Trump’s former national security adviser, Michael Flynn (whom he hired after being warned against him by former President Obama and others), to his former campaign adviser Rick Gates, and his former campaign foreign policy adviser George Pappadopolous. (Why Carter Page, who had been under FBI surveillance as a possible Russian asset, has not been indicted yet is anyone’s guess.) Indictments have included charges of conspiracy against the United States, bank fraud, money laundering, and lying to the FBI. (Other indictments of those of higher “rank” are sure to follow.)

It is manifest that this man is unfit for office and has no business being anywhere near the presidency. Almost every one of these items, standing alone, should sink his presidency and lead to demands for resignation and/or impeachment. Together, however, these features present a staggering picture: He is a clear and present danger to the United States. He cannot and will not execute the most basic aspects of his oath of office. He is indelibly corrupt, conflicted, and incapable of acting in the best interest of the United States of America.

And yet other than a few murmurs, from the GOP we hear nothing to combat his and his enablers’ ongoing assault on our democracy. It’s largely radio silence. The GOP has an agenda, and if ramming it through requires the aid of Putin, the violation of the Constitution itself, the undermining of our intelligence apparatus, the public humiliation of public servants and threats to their livelihoods, the rupture of our alliances, the Goebelsization of the White House communications office, the hijacking of our elections, a foreign policy that simply serves the goals of the Trump Organization, the mainstreaming of Nazis, the embrace of naked racism and violence, well, then, so be it. Everything is worth it to get tax cuts for the most privileged among us, decimate the social safety net (to ensure more tax cuts), use public funding for projects that will go to GOP donors (private prisons and infrastructure contracts to Trump supporters and fat defense contracts for GOP funders), use the government to ensure that no corporation ever has to pay for its oil spills or chemical waste or poisoning of the environment, strip people of their civil rights, and, of course, to advance the project of guns everywhere.

In other words, the GOP’s policy goals have driven them to allow Trump to shred democracy and democratic values, and frankly, basic human decency or civility and the norms of government necessary in a functioning democracy.

It is only when Trump occasionally reveals himself to not be, on occasion, their policy puppet that they are willing to do or say something in putative opposition to him. So when he makes un-Republican noises on DACA or gun safety legislation or trade or health care, they are “stone-faced” and “silent”.

Trump is an occasional apostate on GOP policy preferences because he did not used to be a Republican. But because he does not understand policy or law or norms or details or care to do so, and because narcissism and corruption and the need to dominate drive everything Trump does, the GOP can largely bring him to heel when it comes to policy itself. They know this. They will overlook everything, and deny and condone and enable and permit this abomination to remain so long as he serves their agenda.

And the Democrats are in the minority and cannot fight non-policy issues without the support of at least some Republicans. The Democrats, moreover, are so busy trying to combat the GOP’s policy agenda that their efforts to take on the corruption and other issues get lost in the shuffle, diluted; disappeared. Are they fighting hard enough? I don’t know. But without at least few Republicans willing to preserve this country it cannot be done. Norms of democracy must be bipartisan or we have no democracy. It’s really that basic.

And yet for far too many GOP politicians, there appears to be no interest in a broader concept of democracy or country or the Constitution or the national defense that ought to bind us and supersede any short-term political end or policy preference. The corruption and lies and lack of qualifications and abdication of our election system to the intervention of a hostile foreign power and obstruction of justice should take precedence over everything. Ousting Trump still leaves them with Pence or Ryan. They will still control the government. And yet they do nothing. And as I have said many times, that is an abomination far worse than Trump himself. They have the power to stop him. And they decline to use it. They have made it clear that will do nothing about any of the features above, no matter how great the risk to our country and to the democratic values. Whether it is cowardice on their part or a deep moral rot I cannot say. But they have decided that subversion, illegality, utterly contemptible conduct, and even possible treason, are a price they are willing to pay to get the policy results they want. And that is a corruption and a corrosion as deep as the self-interest that propels Trump.

I used to think it was nuts that anyone, but anyone, would corrupt themselves and betray their values for the likes of a creature like Donald Trump. Now I realize that in fact Donald Trump exposes the values of those around him. He strips away the thin veneer of patriotism or decency or democratic values that we like to think bind us as a society. He has revealed that the experiment of the United States as a Western democracy could fail at any moment, and that a sizable percentage of the country would be okay with that — including the political party that currently runs the country.

The demands for Trump’s resignation and/or impeachment should be loud and getting louder. I know that will not result in his resignation or impeachment, but if enough people talk about it, it will enter the conversation. It is simply obscene that this man continues to occupy the presidency, and every day we don’t say so we mainstream and normalize these anti-democratic, unethical, immoral, and dangerous features that define his presidency — features which are incompatible with a functioning democratic state and which put our nation at risk.

And of course, really, given Republican complicity, there is only one answer. Vote the Republicans out. By a landslide.