A Warning

by Anonymous

Not long after, the president’s justification began to unravel. While he claimed he made the decision at the advice of the Justice Department’s two top officials, Trump’s own explanations in the ensuing days contradicted this. In an interview with NBC News, he cited the Russia probe as one of the reasons he had gotten rid of Comey. “I said to myself, I said, ‘You know, this Russia thing with Trump and Russia is a made-up story,’ ” he told the outlet. The same month in a meeting with Russian officials at the White House, the president confessed to them that dismissing Jim had relieved “great pressure.” It was soon revealed that the president had actually asked the Justice Department to draft the firing recommendation that was given to him, which they did reluctantly. It was all staged.

Trump became unhinged when Rod Rosenstein, the Justice Department’s number two, made the decision on May 19 to launch an independent investigation into Russian interference. Rosenstein appointed former FBI director Bob Mueller as “special counsel” to lead the probe. We all watched with a sense of doom as Trump soon began searching for ways to get rid of Mueller. Within days of Comey’s firing, he argued that the special counsel needed to go because he was “conflicted,” contending that Mueller was a Never-Trumper, wanted to be named FBI director again, and had a Trump golf course membership. But aides told President Trump the “conflicts” were imagined, and they feared his demand was meant to impede the investigation.

After the Mueller Report dropped, hundreds of former federal prosecutors signed a letter stating that Trump’s efforts to derail the investigation constituted obstruction of justice. He would have faced “multiple felony charges” if he weren’t president of the United States, they said. Some of these signers were left-wing pundits as you’d expect, but others served in Republican administrations, including Jeffrey Harris, a former Justice Department attorney under Ronald Reagan and a friend of Rudy Giuliani. “Whether to prosecute this kind of conduct was not a close prosecutorial call,” Harris told one newspaper when asked about signing the statement. “This was a no-brainer.” I’ll leave that conclusion to others, but at a bare minimum, episodes like the one with McGahn are entirely inexcusable for a US leader.

The FBI director has tried to stand up for his workforce, saying in response to presidential criticism, “The opinions I care about are the opinions of the people who actually know us through our work.” It’s not enough to counter Trump’s megaphone.

Not enough folks around Trump have pushed back and told him to cut the crap, so the president continues pummeling another democratic institution unabated.

It’s clear to anyone who’s ever had a serious discussion with the president about the legislative process that he has no idea how it works, or is supposed to work.

Now more than ever is an appropriate time for Congress to play its watchdog role. The president knows this, too, which is why he has sought to further diminish public support for the body by deflecting criticism onto US representatives and senators for his own failings, sneering at the dictates of the legislative branch, and actively obstructing congressional oversight of his administration.

The president is grateful to have other politicians to blame. When he didn’t get the first budget deal he wanted? The fault went to the Republican-controlled Congress. When he didn’t get the second budget deal he wanted? The still-Republican-controlled Congress. The third time around? Congress, this time run by the Democrats. Factories closing in America? “Get smart Congress!” Immigration? “Congress, fund the WALL!” Caring for our nation’s veterans? “Congress must fix.” The failure to reform health care? “Congress must pass a STRONG law.” Children dying in homeland security’s custody? “Any deaths of children or others at the Border are strictly the fault of the Democrats.” You get the picture.

His record of bringing everyone together on Capitol Hill is dismal.

Donald Trump is also comfortable flouting Congress when the law explicitly says Congress shouldn’t be ignored, should be consulted, or must approve something before action can be taken.

He infuriated Capitol Hill by moving forward with controversial weapons sales to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates without congressional permission. By law, the president is required to provide Congress a thirty-day heads-up before weapons sales can move forward, allowing them an opportunity to block the transactions. Trump knew there was bipartisan opposition, so he invoked an “emergency” provision in the law, sent it to Congress at the last minute, and went forward with the sales anyway. To be clear, there was no “emergency,” and Trump set another bad precedent for future chief executives to pretend the legislative branch doesn’t matter.

All told, midway through his third year, Trump had nearly 1,400 cumulative days of cabinet vacancies in his administration, days when top agencies had no confirmed leader. By comparison, Barack Obama had 288 cabinet vacancy days at the same point, and George W. Bush only 34.

He has his lawyers dismiss them by flaunting “executive privilege,” the prerogative of a president to prevent the disclosure of certain confidential information and advice. The refusals go beyond standard practice and have turned into a full block-and-tackle exercise against congressional investigators across an array of Trump administration controversies.

Meetings these days start off with a list of grievances. Behind closed doors, senators and congressmen rattle off all the ways our administration has undercut their mandates or flat-out ignored them, and I’m not just talking about Democrats. I’ve gotten the same treatment from Republicans, too. We’re forced to tell these representatives that our hands are tied until the president changes his mind or they have something to trade with him.

When Democrats finally took the House, the unspoken administration policy toward Capitol Hill became: Give as little as possible, wait as long as possible. Even routine inquiries are now routed to the lawyers, who have found unique ways to say “We can’t right now,” “Give us a few months,” “We’re going to need to put you on hold,” “Probably not,” “No,” and “Not a chance in hell.”

A common refrain you hear in the Trump administration after the president cooks up an unwelcome scheme is “We’ll get enjoined by the courts immediately.” His ideas veer toward impropriety and illegality so often that virtually every senior official has heard this phrase, said this phrase, or fears this phrase. It’s the canary in the coal mine—the signal that a bad idea is about to come crashing down. Donald Trump is the miner with his headphones on and the music turned up, oblivious to the warnings. Sometimes it seems he genuinely enjoys taking actions that will get the administration sued.

It’s up to the Justice Department to probe potential crimes. American presidents don’t implore foreign leaders to open investigations into domestic political opponents. But with the campaign consuming his daily mental bandwidth, Trump couldn’t resist the temptation to use his office to gain a competitive edge.

Those of us who have seen these sorts of reckless actions, again and again, wanted to slam our heads against the wall. The explanation that he wanted to help combat “corruption” in Ukraine was barely believable to anyone around him. The obvious corruption was in the Oval Office. The president had apparently learned nothing from the Mueller saga. Only we did. We learned that, given enough time and space, Donald J. Trump will seek to abuse any power he is given.

If the president’s assault on democracy seems too remote for most Americans, don’t worry. You can look closer to home because President Trump has sought to abuse his power to target you directly. He has repeatedly tried to leverage his office to punish what he calls “Democratic states”—those where the majority of citizens voted for Hillary Clinton in 2016, ignoring the fact that his supporters live in those places, as well. The president surprises staff with horrifying ways to make life difficult for these parts of America.

After wildfires devastated homes and properties in California, Trump insisted that federal funds be cut off to the state. No emergency dollars should be flowing to Californians, the president told staff. Word of his spiteful demand spread throughout the building, in part because Trump was raising the idea, as he often did, with random people. It was jaw-dropping, especially considering that clips of burned-out homes and Americans living in temporary shelters were still replaying on our television screens.

Then several weeks later, the president fired off tweets anyway, saying he’d ordered relief aid for California to be halted, probably because he was frustrated that it hadn’t. To my knowledge, officials never acted on the public demand. It faded from view. But the request showed his true colors, as a politician blatantly seeking to hurt people in places where he can’t see an electoral advantage.

He’s found other ways to go after the state, though. President Trump announced that the administration was revoking California’s tailpipe emissions waiver, which for years allowed the state to set a tougher standard when it came to reducing automobile pollution. He’s moved to cut funding for its high-speed rail projects, and he’s threatened to dump more migrants in California to punish it for statewide policies shielding illegal immigrants, only a sample from a longer list. If Congress is examining politically motivated activity in the Executive Branch, might I suggest that some of these threats and decisions warrant further scrutiny.

Trump didn’t like forums where he wasn’t guaranteed star billing, or where he would be outnumbered by other leaders with different points of view.

Trump faced two options. He could take the criticism in stride and steer the conversation at the G7 toward issues that could unite the allies. Or he could play the role of sore loser and sow deeper division. None of us were surprised when he veered toward the latter.

The prediction that the event was going to be “bad” became a self-fulfilling prophecy. The hosts were upset when the president arrived late. Trump berated other leaders about “unfair trade practices.” He grew irritated with Japanese prime minister Shinzō Abe, at one point apparently telling him in a meeting: “Shinzō, you don’t have this problem [of illegal immigration], but I can send you twenty-five million Mexicans and you’ll be out of office very soon.” He tossed Starburst candy at German chancellor Angela Merkel, remarking, “Here, Angela. Don’t say I never give you anything.” And then he left the summit early, rounding off the visit with a tweetstorm blasting Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau as “so meek and mild…very dishonest & weak,” and announcing that the United States was backing out of the joint statement signed only hours earlier with the other leaders. What a horrible mess, I thought. This isn’t how we’d act toward our enemies at an international summit, and these were our close friends. Not only that, we’d wasted an opportunity to show solidarity with them on important issues where we had common interests. Perhaps worst of all, the president alarmed everyone at the summit by publicly calling for a nation-state rival, Russia, to be readmitted into the G7 meetings. Russia had been cast out of the group over its invasion of Crimea. Since then, Vladimir Putin had done little to demonstrate he was a responsible world partner, but the president questioned why ...

“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.

According to the Pew Research Center, “favorable” views of the United States are at record lows in many nations, and more countries say relations with Washington have worsened, not improved, during Trump’s tenure.

We must be very clear—our leaders must be very clear—about who is a friend and who is a foe. On that account, President Trump has failed us.

Like Athens, we also have a Cleon in our midst, a foul-mouthed populist politician who uses rhetoric as a loaded gun. I’m not the first to see the similarities. 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—and lament—democracy’s greatest weakness.

“With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation’s wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.”

Those of us watching the event on the West Front of the US Capitol Building were perplexed. This was a moment to unite and inspire. But his remarks were resentful and foreboding. Looking back, I find it oddly fitting that the very moment he started speaking it began to rain.

He often scraps those prepared remarks on the spot, allowing us to hear from the real Donald Trump—a man whose natural oratory is crude and mean spirited.

Unfortunately, Trump’s words don’t foster national civility. They corrode it.

Such a nasty woman,” he said of her. Well, he got it his way, and instead we ended up with a nasty man.

I know other administrations dealt with this every once in a while. Obama’s cabinet officials complained quietly that their boss would talk an issue to death and couldn’t make up his mind. Bush aides winced at the president’s foot-in-mouth moments. However, I also know that none of them had to deal with these frustrations on a daily basis.

When you bump into former officials in the course of Washington business, they ask what it’s like to operate in this type of environment. I’ll tell you. It’s like showing up at the nursing home at daybreak to find your elderly uncle running pantsless across the courtyard and cursing loudly about the cafeteria food, as worried attendants try to catch him. You’re stunned, amused, and embarrassed all at the same time. Only your uncle probably wouldn’t do it every single day, his words aren’t broadcast to the public, and he doesn’t have to lead the US government once he puts his pants on.

A majority believed President Trump “has changed the tone and nature of political debate for the worse.”

The inability to bite his tongue is the second-worst trait any president can have when he’s trying to make deals on behalf of the American people. The worst is dishonesty.

You, the reader, might be more enlightened and dismiss these statements when you hear them, yet millions of people accept them as fact, changing the way they engage in politics.

The president has been called a pathological liar. I used to cringe when I heard people say that just to score political points, and I thought it was unfair. Now I know it’s true. He spreads lies he hears. He makes up new lies to spread. He lies to our faces. He asks people around him to lie. People who’ve known him for years accept it as common knowledge. We cannot get used to this. Think of what we must “trust” a president to do as our chief executive. That’s why we spent the beginning of this book assessing character, because it is so critical for our commander in chief to have it.

Kellyanne is not a dumb person. She’s smart, well-read, and normally quite considerate, but like everyone who hangs around Donald Trump too long, she’s been forced to become a reality contortionist. This is what he asks of her, of anyone, to stay in his good graces. He enjoys watching people go out and compromise their integrity in order to serve him.

Donald Trump exacerbates this phenomenon by pandering to common prejudices with false information. When he does, the “false” part gets ignored by followers because of their confirmation bias. The “information” part gets absorbed. They are willing to march with him in lockstep if what he says validates what they already believe. This happens on both ends of the political spectrum, but the president exploits it to a level heretofore unseen. You think your government is corrupt? Donald Trump agrees with you, peddling conspiracies about a faceless Deep State secretly pulling the levers of government. Worried about illegal immigrants stealing US jobs by the millions? You should, he says, because they’re swarming America and will probably be cleaning out your desk on Monday.

yet the media, for all of its flaws, exists for a reason in a democracy. They are our defense against the government, a source of power that can’t be censored. But since he can’t censor them, President Trump has tried to do the next best thing and discredit them.

Trump’s views on freedom of speech are most charitably described as perverted.

His attitude has trickled down to staff. I remember a rambling ninety-minute press conference in fall 2018 when the president got into it with CNN’s Jim Acosta, who started asking uncomfortable questions about Russia. The president told him to sit down and called him a “rude, terrible person.” Later in the day, Bill Shine, one of the many White House communications chiefs we’ve had, sauntered into a meeting. “Guess what I just did,” he baited aides. “What?” they asked. “I blocked Acosta from getting into the White House. He’s supposed to be on TV tonight from here, but he’s about to find out that Secret Service won’t let him in!” The team laughed and gave him high fives. Acosta could be a jerk sometimes, but I don’t remember the part of civics class where being a jerk was a limitation on the freedom of the press.

Our current president exploits the mob mentality, which is the most consequential aspect of his charged rhetoric.

When the pixelated pitchforks get raised, truth becomes the first victim. Irrationality takes over. That’s how the president turns his own fake news into instantaneous reality. His falsehoods get retweeted by the tens of thousands before the fact-checkers wake up. Today, there is no limit to how many pitchforks he can put into the hands of the virtual mob because social media allows it to swell to unlimited sizes, spreading his words far and wide, for free.

Speaking to a group of Civil War veterans in 1875, Ulysses S. Grant speculated that if ever the nation were torn apart again, it would not be split North versus South along the infamous Mason-Dixon Line, the geographic boundary that separated free states and slave states. He surmised that in the future the dividing line would be reason itself, with intelligence on one side and ignorance on the other. Grant was a student of history. He knew that in societies where truth comes under attack, the fertile soil is tilled for violent conflict. Austrian philosopher Karl Popper took it a step further, writing, “The more we try to return to the heroic age of tribalism, the more surely do we arrive at the Inquisition, at the Secret Police, and at a romanticized gangsterism,” a horrible degeneration that begins with the push of a domino—“the suppression of reason and truth.”

If Trump’s actions have turned the US government into one of his failed businesses, his rhetoric is turning our national stage into one of his reality television shows. It is no longer a preeminent forum for the debate of high-minded issues. The stage is fast becoming a drama-soaked series following the misadventures of a business tycoon navigating Washington in search of power and popularity, stirring up new controversies to capture the short attention span of a glass-eyed, zombie-like mob of spectators. They are desperate to be entertained, willing to be fooled, and easily provoked toward infighting by his unseemly antics. If you feel sick watching this production, imagine what it’s like to be a part of the cast.

“The President hears a hundred voices telling him that he is the greatest man in the world. He must listen carefully indeed to hear the one voice that tells him he is not.” —Harry Truman