I often these days ask myself, “What am I missing?” “Why do people so vigorously support Trump in spite of everything I see?” I still don’t have an answer. I have some theories but, in my experience, it’s very difficult to get a definitive answer to the question of why, specifically, people support Trump. The most often response is, “The economy is doing great and unemployment is low.” Even if true, I just cannot understand why that is a necessary and sufficient argument for allowing American democracy devolve into an authoritarian regime. This is what I see.
First and foremost, it should be apparent to everyone by now that disagreeing with Trump in any way, shape or form will lead to immediate retaliation and threats. Trump turns it into a personal mission to crush and/or discredit ANYONE who disagrees with him. Just recently, Sen. Lisa Murkowski (Alaska) stated that she agreed with the statements made by General Mattis (ret) excoriating President Trump. Immediately, Trump has made it a personal mission to ensure Sen. Murkowski is defeated for re-election this year. And Sen. Murkowski joins a long list of people who have, at one time or another, disagreed with the President, and are now in his sights. Look at the long and unprecedented list of people who have served in the White House and are no longer there because they said something that displeased the President. This is the type of behavior exhibited by Putin, Erdogan, Kim Jong Un and other despots. In a true democracy people should feel free to speak their minds.
In the last few weeks, Trump has fired 5 Inspectors General charged with independently and apolitically providing for government oversight. They are Michael Atkinson, Intelligence Community; Mitch Behm, Transportation Dept.’ Glenn Fine, Defense Dept.; Christi Grimm; Health and Human Services; Steve Linick, State Dept. I find it no coincidence that each of these individuals, in the course of doing their jobs, were investigating possible wrong-doing by Trump and his associates. Steve Linick at the State Dept. was fired while in the middle of an investigation of Mike Pompeo, Secretary of State, into misuse of government assets. Mitch Behm (Transportation) was looking into possible conflicts of interest with Elaine Chao, the Secretary of Transportation (and Mitch McConnell’s wife!!). The message is clear – Donald Trump does not want any oversight of any kind for him and anyone close to him. Period. That’s not democracy. That is what dictators do!
Trump promised to ‘drain the swamp.’ And yet there is a long list of people associated with the President who are in jail, under investigation or have had to resign because of ethics violations. You are the company you keep. And Trump keeps the company of a bunch of really corrupt and slimy people. And just to add to that a little, Trump would like to repeal the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) that prohibits American companies from paying bribes overseas. (Having worked in international business development for a big chunk of my career, I have a lot of experience with this!) So, in Trump’s mind, as long as we win contracts overseas, we don’t care how corrupt we have to be – talk about ceding America’s moral authority, such as it was.
He has pulled the United States out of most international agreements; The Paris Climate Accords, The Iran Nuclear Deal, The Transpacific Partnership, The Nuclear Test Treaties with Russia; and most recently deciding to withhold funding for WHO (World Health Organization) in the midst of a global pandemic and to withdraw from the Open Skies Treaty that allows for overflights of signatory countries to help ensure compliance with international arms agreements. Rather than trying to work with our allies to strengthen alliances which can then be used to collectively pressure international ‘bad players’ to be more cooperative and transparent, we will be going it alone. The United States cannot maintain the position of global superpower without cooperation and support drawn from strong strategic alliances. Russia knows that and China knows that.
He has engaged in a trade war with China, the economic impacts of which are borne by the American consumer rather than China – in spite of what the President may say. China is not paying for these tariffs!!! These tariffs are paid for by higher prices paid by American consumers and shrinking markets for farmers. Are there problems dealing with China – yes! But we would be in a far stronger position to bring about change by forming strong strategic alliances and then collectively putting pressure on China. The US, in trying to do this by ourselves, will lose this battle. The only question is, how much pain will the US consumers have to endure?
President Trump, from almost day one, has continued to denigrate the intelligence services of this country. He does not read the PDB (Presidential Daily Briefing) that is a comprehensive intelligence report about issues facing America. As such, there is no clear international strategy that can be conveyed to the military, Dept of State, and intelligence agencies. Decisions affecting the US national security are made via Tweet and very often without consulting all of the key stakeholders and allies. A prime example is Trump’s decision to withdraw troops rapidly from Syria. That left our Kurdish allies flailing in the wind to face a potential slaughter by Turkey and a power vacuum that got quickly filled by Russia. Conducting foreign policy by Tweet is ridiculous and dangerous. It does not leave America safer and certainly doesn’t help to Make America Great!
Trump is continuously replacing very experienced, eminently qualified people throughout his administration with people whose sole qualification is their unwavering support for Trump. All of these people who have been forced out or fired, swore an oath to uphold the Constitution of the United States, NOT to be loyal to Trump at any cost to the country. A perfect example is Richard Grenell, who was put in the position of Acting Director of National Intelligence after Dan Coates was forced out. Richard Grenell has virtually no intelligence experience or background! His sole qualification is that he is a loyal Trump supporter. Richard Grenell was replaced by John Ratcliffe, who has since been confirmed as DNI. Like Grenell, John Ratcliffe has never worked at any of the 17 intelligence agencies and has essentially no intelligence experience. He also had to withdraw his nomination to the position earlier because of allegations that he padded his resume. But, like Grenell, he is a loyal (and vocal) Trump supporter. Actions like this should scare the shit out of anyone who cares at all about democracy and the Constitution. The President is surrounding himself with people, some of whom have questionable credentials, who are basically ‘yes’ men. And by the way, they are virtually all men and all white!! If people in senior leadership positions in the government cannot speak ‘truth to power’, that almost by definition is an autocracy.
Trump is the only president in modern history to not put his assets into a blind trust to avoid even the appearance of impropriety and conflicts of interest while in office. His sons are allegedly running the business without talking to the father about what’s going on – bullshit! There are currently lawsuits winding their way through the courts about violations of the Emoluments Clause in the Constitution. And of course, he has his daughter and son-in-law working as ‘senior advisors’ in the White House. That clearly violates nepotism laws that govern virtually every other government agency. However, once again Trump shows that he is above the law. But the thing that concerns me and should concern everyone more than the mere fact that they are working in the White House, is the fact that their father pushed through their high level clearances so they now have access to some of the most sensitive intelligence data produced by the agencies. When the clearance paperwork was submitted through the normal process, the agencies involved recommended against giving Jared Kushner a high-level clearance because of his overseas financial entanglements. But Trump, yet again, found that rules don’t apply to him and his family and he pushed through the clearance.
Another dictatorial trait exhibited virtually daily by Trump is the continued attack on any press that disagrees with or fact checks things he says or asks him hard questions. Fake News – we’ve all heard it. First of all, if you are in any kind of a leadership position, you should expect hard questions. It goes with the territory. If you can’t answer hard questions, you shouldn’t be in the job – period! But beyond that, it should raise a major red flag to everyone that Trump and his minions will only appear on and allow interviews almost exclusively with one media outlet, Fox News. And it is well known that Sean Hannity and Trump talk frequently. A free press is one of the mainstays of any democracy and restricting the press and denigrating the press is a standard tactic used by virtually all dictators. Another thing that should scare the shit out of everyone.
And, of course, there is the lying. It is a provable fact that Trump lies and spews misinformation virtually every day. The rest of the world leaders are well aware of this. How can we have any credibility with any other country if the President cannot be truthful to the citizens of this country. It’s impossible. There is no country in the world that will trust anything Trump has to say. This is a huge disservice to our allies and a gaping national security risk to be exploited by our adversaries. Don’t think for a second that Russia and China are not aware of this and exploiting it. This is not Making America Great. It is making American weak and vulnerable.
Lastly, there are the current crises facing this country with the COVID 19 pandemic and the widespread unrest as a result of the killing of George Floyd. For the first, he tried to deny it was a problem, then took some action in a kind of half-assed way, would not put a national strategy in place, and started looking for scapegoats to absolve himself of any responsibility. And with the death toll over 108,000 and climbing, he has the audacity to try to tell us all that ‘his’ response was perfect.
And in the instance of the current unrest, Trump is in his White House ‘fortress’, entirely unempathetic and deciding the best way to handle this is to order thousands of US military troops into the streets to ‘dominate’ the protestors. If that is not the sign of a dictator, I don’t know what is. Fortunately, the senior leadership of the military realized what an assault on the Constitution this would be and have spoken up against such action. Let’s hope that prevails.
So, I come back to my original question, “Given all of this, how can you support this man?” If the answer is still, “The economy is great, the stock market is up and there is low unemployment,” then I have to ask, “Is our democracy worth so little?” There are many Americans who have fought and died defending this democracy. It is not perfect, but we cannot dishonor all of those who have made the ultimate sacrifice and all of those who have fought and continue to fight for ‘Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness,’ and all of those who continue to fight for Equal Justice by letting one man put a price on our democracy. Our democracy and our constitution are priceless but fragile. We all need to recognize that and act accordingly.