Trumpocracy: The Corruption of the American Republic

by David Frum

Donald Trump did not create the vulnerabilities he exploited. They awaited him. The irresponsibility of American elites, the arrogance of party leaders, the insularity of the wealthy: those and more were the resources Trump used on his way to power.

One could say the system failed. But systems are made of people with names, motives, and agency. It was not some big sputtering turbine, some grinding mass of gears and levers, that empowered and enabled Donald Trump. It was people. People with American flag pins affixed to their lapels, people who put their hands over their hearts during the pledge of allegiance, people who swear to uphold the Constitution, people who salute the military on Veterans Day and mourn the brave fallen on Memorial Day . . . people whose throats catch and whose eyes glisten when they declare their love of country and their willingness to sacrifice their all to defend its freedoms.

half of Trump’s supporters within the GOP reported having stopped their education at or before high school graduation,

Only 19 percent had a college or postcollege degree. Thirty-eight percent earned less than $50,000.

What set them apart from other Republicans was their economic insecurity and their cultural anxiety.

Half the contributors to National Review’s “Never Trump” issue would ultimately make their peace with Trump’s leadership.

So how was Trump’s record-breaking $107 million inaugural haul actually used? Good question, and one to which few will ever learn the answer.

The Trump inaugural committee promised that any unused funds would be donated to charity.26 No charity ever announced receipt of any gift from this source, nor did Trump’s inaugural committee offer any accounting for the money it received.

Trump the president, like Trump the businessman and Trump the candidate, plunged his working environments into chaos because he intuited that chaos enhanced his power.

“I wouldn’t believe Donald Trump if his tongue were notarized,” said a deputy mayor of New York.

Press Secretary Sean Spicer would experiment in February 2017 with Hannity’s and Gingrich’s advice, by punitively barring the New York Times, CNN, and the BBC from a briefing open to their competitors.

Gianforte’s violence against a member of the press had become a monetizable asset.

Trump’s press spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders said on June 27, 2017, “I think it’s the constant barrage of fake news that is directed at this president, probably, that has garnered a lot of his frustration.” In the very next sentence she promoted the latest release by a notorious producer of fraudulently edited polemical videos: “There’s a video circulating now—whether it’s accurate or not, I don’t know—but I would encourage everyone in this room and, frankly, everybody across the country to take a look at it.”49 To shift in under a minute from denouncing as “fake” news that is true, and then to promoting as true “news” that is fake—well, there is the Trump White House, captured and revealed.

What we are seeing here is not merely one man’s petty ego needs on display, although we are certainly seeing that. What we are seeing is a grant of permission from millions of people to the president of the United States to diminish, discredit, corrode, and ultimately subvert what the authors of the US Bill of Rights listed among the very first freedoms necessary to their great experiment in self-government.

The right of all adult citizens to vote is no longer seriously debated by Americans, but the universal ability to vote seems to encounter new obstacles with every passing year. If Donald Trump entrenches himself in power, those obstacles will rise higher and proliferate more numerously across the American political landscape.

“Have you ever considered that the purpose of your life may be to serve as a warning to others?”

As President Trump is cruel, vengeful, egoistic, ignorant, lazy, avaricious, and treacherous, so we must be kind, forgiving, responsible, informed, hardworking, generous, and patriotic. As Trump’s enablers are careless, cynical, shortsighted, morally obtuse, and rancorous, so Trump’s opponents must be thoughtful, idealistic, wise, morally sensitive, and conciliatory. “They go low, we go high,” a wise woman said.

We are living through the most dangerous challenge to the free government of the United States that anyone alive has encountered. What happens next is up to you. Don’t be afraid. This moment of danger can also be your finest hour as a citizen and an American.

No single person could possibly plumb the foulnesses of the Trump presidency.