A Warning

by Anonymous

Removing my identity from the equation deprives him of an opportunity to create a distraction. What will he do when there is no person to attack, only an idea?

Two traits are illustrative of what brought the Steady State together: the president’s inattentiveness and his impulsiveness.

Forget the three points. Come in with one main point and repeat it—over and over again, even if the president inevitably goes off on tangents—until he gets it. Just keep steering the subject back to it. ONE point. Just that one point. Because you cannot focus the commander in chief’s attention on more than one goddamned thing over the course of a meeting, okay?

He doesn’t know how the executive branch works. As a consequence, he doesn’t know how to lead it.

“About a third of the things the president wants us to do are flat-out stupid. Another third would be impossible to implement and wouldn’t even solve the problem. And a third of them would be flat-out illegal.” Heads nodded.

What does this have to do with Donald Trump? Well, Cicero gave us a useful guide for measuring a leader’s character. His four-part rubric will sound familiar: (1) “understanding and acknowledging truth”; (2) “maintaining good fellowship with men, giving to every one his due, and keeping faith in contracts and promises”; (3) “greatness and strength of a lofty and unconquered mind”; and (4) “the order and measure that constitute moderation and temperance.”

short, it was a version of the cardinal virtues—wisdom, justice, courage, and temperance. His formula is as relevant in today’s fractured political climate as it was during the rockiest days of the Roman Republic, which is why we are going to use it to assess the current president.

During the campaign, candidate Trump variably touted and dismissed his own reading habits. He proclaimed himself a great advocate of the Bible, remarking in February 2016 that “Nobody reads the Bible more than me.” He was unable to point to a single Bible verse that he found inspiring, almost certainly because he’s never actually read

You can see why behind closed doors his own top officials deride him as an “idiot” and a “moron” with the understanding of a “fifth or sixth grader.”

The president spreads false claims almost daily. He is the nation’s most prominent re-tweeter of “fake news” while simultaneously being its biggest critic. In fairness, every president gets facts wrong once in a while. The difference is that those presidents

It’s gotten so tiring that aides will acknowledge the gripe and pledge to remedy it, while letting it drop to the very bottom of (or off) their to-do lists because the problem is impossible to fix, pointless to address, or requires a counterproductive solution.

Trump is a bully. By intimidating others, he believes he can get what he wants, not what is fair. It’s a philosophy he brags about. He regales staff with stories about filing meritless claims in court against other companies in order to coerce them to back down or to get a better deal.

Trump received five deferments: four for education, one for medical reasons. The excuse? “Bone spurs” in his feet. The injury was concocted, according to the daughters of the podiatrist who made the diagnosis, as well as the president’s former lawyer, who recounted Trump saying, “You think I’m stupid? I wasn’t going to Vietnam.”

he fuels rather than avoids mob behavior. And he is demonstrably obsessed with public opinion. This is second nature to a man who spent years obsessing over TV ratings. Our tweeter in chief survives on a diet of “likes” and “retweets.”

Polls and polling to him are demonstrations of loyalty, not scientific measures of the country’s mood. They aren’t data points to help feed into deliberations,

Classical liberalism developed over hundreds of years. In a nutshell, it posited that people should be allowed to conduct their lives however they wanted, as long as they didn’t violate someone else’s liberty. Government existed for the sole purpose of preserving freedom and protecting people from each other. Anything beyond that was government overreach.

Just look at 2019. The president proposed a record-breaking $4.7 trillion budget. That’s how much he suggested the federal government spend in a single year. Since Trump took office, the US debt—much of which we owe to other countries that we borrow from—has grown by the trillions, to another all-time high of $22 trillion total. To pay off our debts today, according to one estimate, each taxpayer in the United States would need to fork over an average of $400,000. This should set off fiscal tornado sirens across

years. He is more than a minor headache for the Pentagon. He is a blinding migraine. Those who have served at the highest levels of the Pentagon, who have sat with Trump in moments

“We get these women coming in with like seven children,” he told his listeners, briefly attempting a Hispanic accent. “They are saying, ‘Oh, please help! My husband left me!’ They are useless. They don’t do anything for our country. At least if they came in with a husband we could put him in the fields to pick corn or something.”

Congress is an easy target because it doesn’t move very fast. This is partly by constitutional design. The architects of our nation wanted all sides to come together when there were shared interests,

He said he could cut good deals; he was better at it than anyone in the world. Yet for a man who built a reputation on negotiating, Trump turned out to be a pretty terrible dealmaker. His record of bringing everyone together on Capitol Hill is dismal. That’s why he’s forced to declare emergencies,

Consequently, his congressional-relations aides are in a perpetual state of consternation.

Congress is a co-equal branch of government, and one of its many rightful roles is to monitor the executive. The more vehemently the president inhibits that proper function, the more likely future administrations will avoid accountability, creating fresh opportunities for government malpractice.

We learned that, given enough time and space, Donald J. Trump will seek to abuse any power he is given. This is a fact of life we’ve been taught inside his administration through repeated example.

“The president sees in these guys what he wishes he had: total power, no term limits, enforced popularity, and the ability to silence critics for good.” He was spot on. It was the simplest explanation.

What he doesn’t see, especially with China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea, is that their governments are programmed to oppose us. They represent the opposite of our values. No “deal” will change that. Until their political systems shift fundamentally or they lose power, they will stand against the free and open international order America built.

recognize the president is a simplistic pushover.

He is visibly moved by flattery. He folds in negotiations, and he is willing to give up the farm for something that merely looks like a good deal, whether it is or not.

Donald Trump’s words are powerful, and we are suffering three primary consequences from them. First, his words are hardening the national discourse, making it more difficult to sustain civility.

Second, they are undermining our perceptions of the truth, making it challenging to find common ground.

And third, they are fanning the flames of the mob mentality our Founders tried to prevent, making reasonable people once again consider—an...

It was a clown car that became a slow-motion auto accident—funny at first, but soon horrific.

blunt words as the clock ticked down to Election Day. He said he only supported Trump out of antipathy toward Hillary Clinton. “I’m doing so despite the fact that I think he’s a terrible human being.” Donald Trump is “absolutely not” a role model, the conservative leader declared. In fact, he is “[one] of the most flawed human beings ever to run for president in the history of the country.” The speaker was South Carolina congressman Mick Mulvaney. Roughly twenty-four months later, Mick would become Donald Trump’s third chief of staff.

appointee attempting to assert independence from a questionable White House policy by leaking internal deliberations to the press to distance himself. The problem was that he threw a more veteran and ruthless political staffer under the bus. “That was a bad move. He brought a knife to a gun fight,” a communications aide said after reading the news article. “That fucker will be dead by morning.” If the Trump administration is good at anything, it knows how to eat its own. The cannibalistic culture is deterring good people from coming on board. Mick

As a result, the administration has lost its real leaders, and unsavory figures are racing to the forefront. The public doesn’t recognize many of their names yet, but they will eventually. You will see them get subpoenaed and watch them testify. History will record the rise of the Apologists, and, one day, perhaps one day soon, chronicle their fall.

The real question is, what motivates Trump’s Apologists to support him even when his behavior is wrong? Why do his boosters take to the airwaves, performing verbal gymnastics to defend immoral statements or conduct? Some of them are the same people who stood on

believer. He or she fell for the president’s message right away and admires Trump to the point of literal brand loyalty.

The Sycophant’s motives are a combination of “power” and “tribalism,” which is why, when the president asks them to do something wrong-headed, they won’t flinch. His ethics are their ethics.

The Silent Abettors know what’s happening is wrong. They are aware an impetuous man is presiding over the executive branch. They watch him flip-flop with the change of a channel, or unveil shoddy decisions instantaneously with a few keystrokes, CAPS LOCK on, extra exclamation points for emphasis. And they say nothing. Their motivations are a combination of “power” and “fear,” and they will do what President Trump wants because they have subordinated their beliefs to a short-term, naked self-interest. The Silent Abettor is a species that

should not surprise anyone that Donald Trump would act in a manner that is unbecoming of his office and possibly disqualifying. He has always acted impulsively to serve his interests