American Catastrophes, Part 3
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I hope I’ve made my feelings about the 45th president of the United States abundantly clear these past few years. If not, I apologize, and hope to correct the record.
In the four years since I first saw the news of Trump’s election on my phone, almost everything about our civic life has felt wildly out of control. Almost every single day of the previous 1,382 since his inauguration left me outraged, embarrassed, and exhausted. A common refrain in many conversations now goes: “I didn’t think it could get any worse. And yet somehow, every single day, it is always worse.” Every single day, he is always worse.
The Presidency
Contrary to the hopes of many traditional conservatives and the fervent prayers of evangelicals, Donald Trump has not changed. He is the same obnoxious, oafish, and offensive human being he was the day he announced his candidacy. Sitting behind the resolute desk has taught him nothing. The weight of making life-or-death decisions for members of our military has not humbled him. The unceasing horrors of a global pandemic that has now killed more than 230,000 American citizens, and even put him in the hospital, have not caused him to reflect. He remains, and will always remain, a juvenile, bigoted, lying, thin-skinned, selfish, vacuous, petulant, willfully ignorant, cruel, bullying, and vile old man.
If America is to emerge from the darkness and fear of 2020 with any semblance of hope for the future, with any chance to right the wrongs and inequalities that led us to this near collapse in our national life, we must elect a new president on November 3.
“He remains, and will always remain, a juvenile, bigoted, lying, thin-skinned, selfish, vacuous, petulant, willfully ignorant, cruel, bullying, and vile old man.”
Four years ago, one could make the (admittedly flimsy) argument that he wouldn’t govern the way he campaigned. Surely he would act more presidential once in office. We had no record of Trump’s performance as president to assess, no actual examples to cite of his behavior. Now, we have enough to last a lifetime.
It would be nearly impossible to rehearse all of the reasons and examples that make him uniquely unqualified and undeserving of another term in my eyes. Instead, here are five of the most glaringly obvious reasons Donald Trump should not be president.
He Put Children in Cages.
The policy of the Trump administration explicitly called for the separation of migrant children from their families as a form of state sponsored psychological and social terror to deter migrants from entering the country. According to an investigation by Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horwitz, then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions explicitly told prosecutors “We need to take away children.” Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein argued that it didn’t matter how young the children were, and ordered U.S. attorneys to prosecute them even if they were infants. The investigation found a pilot program in 2017 saw Border Patrol agents removing breastfeeding infants from their mothers.
Now the government says it is unable to locate the parents of 545 children they separated, effectively rendering them orphans. Immigration officials are also deporting unaccompanied children from other countries into Mexico, violating diplomatic agreements with Mexico and basic child welfare laws. One only needs a passing knowledge of the atrocities committed in 20th century Europe to recognize the dangers of directing armed agents of the state to forcibly separate families in the pursuit of punishing or relocating specific populations.
He Encourages White Supremacists.
As president of the United States, Donald Trump has gone to extraordinary lengths to avoid condemning white supremacists and right-wing extremists. While he made his own racism plain from day one, it wasn’t until the deadly clashes in Charlottesville, Virginia, in August of 2017 that I truly realized how dangerous he was to our country. Trump’s initial statement on the brawling and chaos between neo-Nazis, Klansmen, alt-right losers and counter protesters was “We condemn in the strongest possible terms this egregious display of hatred, bigotry and violence on many sides, on many sides.”
The next day he attempted to clean it up by saying “I think there is blame on both sides,” and that there were “very fine people on both sides.” Of the tiki-torch-wielding anti-Semites from the night before, Trump added “There were people in that rally, and I looked the night before. If you look, they were people protesting very quietly, the taking down the statue of Robert E. Lee.” To be fair, Trump did qualify his statement with this: “I'm not talking about the neo-Nazis and the white nationalists, because they should be condemned totally.” So yes, he has condemned neo-Nazis and white nationalists, technically. However, for the president to fumble such an easy, straight-forward moment of national leadership spoke volumes to those very same white supremacists. The former Klan leader David Duke tweeted his thanks, saying “Thank you President Trump for your honesty & courage to tell the truth about Charlottesville & condemn the leftist terrorists.”
During the first presidential debate of 2020, just over a month ago, Trump bent over backwards to avoid besmirching white supremacists. Standing on stage in front of the entire nation, Trump dodged when asked if he was willing “to condemn white supremacists and militia groups” by moderator Chris Wallace. After saying “Sure, I’m prepared to do that,” Trump attempted to pivot to his unfounded claim that “almost everything I see is from the left wing, not from the right wing.” When pressed further, specifically on the neo-fascist group the Proud Boys, he seemingly gave them a signal to await his instructions, saying “Proud Boys, stand back and stand by,” adding that “Somebody’s got to do something about Antifa and the left.” The Proud Boys took this statement as a presidential endorsement, and now feature Trump’s words on their patches and logos.
It’s also worth noting that all available data tells us that far-right extremist and domestic terrorist groups are responsible for the vast majority of terrorist plots and killings in the United States. Trump’s own acting Secretary for the Department of Homeland Security has written “I am particularly concerned about white supremacist violent extremists who have been exceptionally lethal” in recent years.
He is Categorically Corrupt.
Donald Trump and his family are personally profiting from the most financially corrupt administration in American history. It’s not even close. According to investigation by The New York Times into Trump’s tax returns, “over 200 companies, special-interest groups and foreign governments” patronized Trump properties during his first term. 60 of those customers paid him $12 million in his first two years through his properties and businesses. While serving as president, he maintained an undisclosed Chinese bank account while his daughter Ivanka secured Chinese trademarks for her personal business while on the White House staff.
“Trump didn’t drain the swamp. He turned it into a nature preserve for pay-to-play politics and his own profit.”
His businesses have charged the federal government more than $900,000 in taxpayer money since he took office, including charging the Secret Service to rent rooms and golf carts while guarding him at Mar-a-Lago. According to campaign spending records, the Trump Organization has received $3.8 million from hosting Republican events at Trump properties. In all, The Washington Post estimates Trump has made at least $8.1 million from the federal government and from Republican political donors since taking office. Forbes reports that Trump’s businesses hauled in $1.9 billion in his first three years in office.
Trump didn’t drain the swamp. He turned it into a nature preserve for pay-to-play politics and his own profit. Trump supporters love to point to the fact that he donates his annual presidential salary of $400,000 to government agencies as evidence of his Christian virtue. This is a hollow sacrifice, however, compared to the $142,000,000 cost to the taxpayer for the 284 days he played golf at one of his properties in his first term (well over twice the amount of golf President Obama played in eight years).
He Adores Authoritarians.
Contrary to his willingness to badmouth America’s closest allies, Gold Star families, fallen veterans, POWs, governors targeted in kidnapping plots, and teenage climate activists, President Trump remained steadfast in his unwillingness to criticize the world’s worst authoritarians. Normally so quick with a tweet or an ad-libbed insult, he curiously finds no fault in leader’s like Russia’s Vladimir Putin, Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the Phillipine’s Rodrigo Duterte, Hungary’s Viktor Orban, or Brazil’s Jair Bolsanaro. The only time he pushes back on President Xi Jinping of China is when it relates to his trade deals or the “China virus.” What do all of these world leaders have in common? They are part of a reactionary and illiberal politics, committed to cementing their power and patronage through antidemocratic means. Many of them, taking their cue from Putin, seek to undermine the established liberal democratic world, the postwar rules-based order America helped to establish and then prospered from.
According to Yale historian Timothy Synder, these politicians “manufacture crisis and manipulate the resultant emotion.” To distract from their own inability to govern, they “instruct their citizens to experience elation and outrage at short intervals, drowning the future in the present.” Additionally, they use “technology to transmit political fiction, both at home and abroad” in order to “deny truth” and to “reduce life to spectacle and feeling.” They subvert the very notion of truth in order to deny us the standards and values with which to hold them accountable. Remind you of anyone?
“Trump borrows tactics and turns of phrase from modern history’s worst tyrants.”
Trump’s closest relationship with a foreign leader is arguably with his pen pal Kim Jong Un of North Korea. After bringing our two countries to the brink of nuclear war in August 2017, the two developed a relationship Kim described as something out of a “fantasy film.” During an interview with Bob Woodward for his recent book Rage, Trump said “It’s funny, the relationships I have, the tougher and meaner they are, the better I get along with them.”
While he’s never met them, Trump borrows tactics and turns of phrase from modern history’s worst tyrants. His repeated denunciation of the free press as “the enemy of the people” mirrors the Russian phrase “vrag naroda,” or “enemy of the nation/people,” employed by Vladimir Lenin and Josef Stalin to describe anyone who opposed the Bolshevik, and later Soviet, party line. Adolf Hitler and the Nazis used the German equivalent to describe Jewish citizens, and also referred to critical media as “Lügenpresse,” which translates as “lying press” or “fake news.”
No, I am not literally comparing Trump to Lenin, Hitler, or Stalin. That would be ridiculous; they all proved far more capable at achieving their goals.
He is Antidemocratic.
Trump has done more than imitate the language of the despots he admires; he has also attempted to employ their tactics to subvert free and fair elections. Back in 2016, Trump laid the groundwork to deny the legitimacy of the election if he lost, claiming without evidence that the vote was rigged. Even when he won the presidency through the Electoral College, he still claimed it wasn’t legitimate, arguing (again without evidence) that he actually also won the popular vote if you didn’t count “millions of people who voted illegally.”
During the 2018 midterm elections, Trump took to Twitter to try and put his thumb on the scales for races in Florida. When the governor and senate races required a recount in accordance with Florida law, because they were both within a margin of 0.5%, Trump demanded that officials stop counting the ballots. “Must go with Election Night!” he wrote, claiming that any change in vote tallies after Election Night were not due to the counting of completely legal absentee ballots from active duty military voters and people living overseas. Instead, according to Trump and Republicans, it was fraud!
As we all assumed he would, Trump is again laying the groundwork to deny the legitimacy of the upcoming election. In July Trump raised the possibility of delaying the election, an action that veteran White House reporter Peter Baker said was meant to “tell Americans that they should not trust their own democracy.” Baker added that “Never before has a sitting president of the United States sought to undermine public faith in the election system the way Mr. Trump has.” It was doubly remarkable to see a president so consistently demonize mail-in voting, a normal option for voters in every state in every election, during a global pandemic that is best mitigated by limiting large public gatherings. In defiance of medical advice and common sense, Trump spent most of the year stoking fears about the process of absentee voting, spewing forth misinformation at record rates.
His administration also actively worked to undermine the United States Postal Service in an effort to suppress their ability to handle the increased volume of mail-in ballots. Trump openly admitted to the scheme in August, telling the Fox Business Network “If we don’t make a deal, that means they don’t get the money. That means they can’t have universal mail-in balloting; they just can’t have it.” Knowing that Democratic voters were more likely to vote by mail, Trump and the Republicans sought to head them off at the pass and prevent their votes from ever reaching the ballot box. At minimum, it could help sow enough confusion and chaos for Trump to challenge vote totals and the ultimate outcome of the election.
For the record, there is no evidence whatsoever of widespread or coordinated voter fraud in any election, in any state. The FBI has said there is no evidence of voter fraud to support the president’s claims. The Trump-appointed chairman of the U.S. Election Assistance Commission says there is no evidence of voter fraud, despite years of study and investigation into the matter. Researchers studying voter fraud found 31 instances of attempted impersonation out of a total of roughly 1 billion votes cast between 2000 and 2014. That’s 31 out 1 billion. In Oregon, the state has documented maybe a dozen cases of fraud out of the more than 100 million mail ballots they’ve sent out since 2000. As Republican lawyer Benjamin Ginsberg wrote in a near-perfect turn-of-phrase, “Proof of systematic fraud has become the Loch Ness Monster of the Republican Party. People have spent a lot of time looking for it, but it doesn’t exist.” As we’ve seen time and time and time again, voter fraud is not what’s taking place, it’s voter suppression.
“Objecting to mail-in votes could help sow enough confusion and chaos for Trump to challenge vote totals and the ultimate outcome of the election.”
The President, however, has moved beyond just casting doubt on voting and the election. Since the summer he has refused to commit to a peaceful transition of power. In July, he danced around the question from Fox News’ Chris Wallace, saying “I have to see.” In late September, responding to a reporter’s direct question, Trump refused to commit to a peaceful transfer of power after the election. “We’re going to have to see what happens,” Trump said, employing his characteristic meaningless evasions. Pressed again on the issue, Trump added that if you “Get rid of the ballots and you’ll have a very peaceful — there won’t be a transfer, frankly. There will be a continuation,” referring to mail-in ballots.
On Halloween, Trump responded to a Supreme Court decision allowing extended periods for mail-in ballots to be received in North Carolina and Pennsylvania. Trump said “a very dangerous thing happens” when states are allowed to count all of the votes beyond election day, and predicted “bedlam in our country.” On the eve of the election, Trump tweeted that the Supreme Court decision was “very dangerous” and would lead to “rampant fraud” and “violence in the streets.” Twitter removed the post for violating its rules. His words are already having consequences. Over the weekend, a convoy of Trump supporters surrounded a Biden campaign bus in Texas and attempted to slow it down and run it off the road. The FBI has opened an investigation into this fairly blatant attempt at political intimidation. Trump, however, openly endorsed the actions of his supporters, tweeting “I LOVE TEXAS” and “In my opinion, these patriots did nothing wrong.”
For all his belligerent nonsense, all of the eye-roll inducing idiocy he proudly displays, this is singularly dangerous. Why? Because while a great deal of our system is designed to constrain human passion and transgression through law, peaceful presidential successions remain almost solely dependent upon the behavior and goodwill of the individuals involved.
In his book Will He Go: Trump and the Looming Election Meltdown in 2020, Amherst College legal scholar Lawrence Douglas writes “Our Constitution does not secure the peaceful transfer of power, but rather presupposes it.” He also notes “That we have largely avoided electoral disasters has more to do with our democratic culture and the character of those seeking public office than with any inherent strengths of the electoral system itself.” With Trump, a president who gleefully disregards our nation’s democratic norms and who possesses a distinctly myopic and dishonorable character, our country’s fate now feels frighteningly vulnerable.
What Can We Do?
If this all leaves you feeling overwhelmed and anxious on Election Day, you are not alone. At various points this year I’ve felt helpless and isolated, uncertain of the future and fearful that I had no power to help prevent my country’s slide into further disarray. In an effort to combat that, I’ve spent a lot of time trying to figure out the best ways to prepare, as an average citizen, for a potentially chaotic election and transition. Here is my advice for the coming days and weeks, no matter the outcome.
Vote.
It matters. It really does.
Take time to study how our elections work.
Don’t fall into the trap of following election results like you are watching professional sports. It might be entertaining and exciting, but it doesn’t really work that way. Given the likely record number of ballots cast this year, election officials will face a Herculean task in counting all of the votes. In some states, this will go more quickly than others, and we could have a clear result on the night of November 3. In other states, specifically ones that don’t allow officials to start counting absentee ballots until Election Day, results will take longer. And that is okay. If the vote total changes from what we know at midnight on November 3, that’s not because of fraud, it’s because they’ve had time to accurately count all of the votes.
Recognize electoral patterns.
In addition to, and partly because of, the additional time it can take to count absentee ballots, political scientists describe two important phenomena to watch for on Election Night: the red mirage and the blue shift. These terms are used to describe a pattern where initial election results from in-person voting could seem to favor one candidate, creating a mirage, whose lead then disappears as more ballots are counted to give the complete results, causing a shift. The mirage is “red” because Republicans are more likely to vote on Election Day, which can create an early lead for their candidates. Democrats, meanwhile, are more likely to vote using absentee ballots or provisional ballots; the extra time it takes to count these votes will add to the total numbers for Democrats and can shift things in their favor. Trump and the GOP will likely squawk fraud at the first sign of any change in the early results, as they did in 2018. But this is not fraud or cheating. It’s just the natural result of voting preferences and procedures.
Be patient.
Like everything else in our lives, we expect instant results in our elections. The truth is, however, we have never had the full results of an election that very same night. What we get are projections by media outlets, almost all based off of the Associated Press. Normally, these projections are very reliable and allow us to confidently assess the state of the race. But it’s not official or legally binding. Each state is different in its laws, but in most the vote counting goes well past election day, sometimes even for weeks. The official vote totals won’t be certified in 21 states until two weeks after the election. Then the official presidential electors will meet on December 14 to cast their votes in each state. Those will then be sent to Congress by December 23. The new Congress will be seated on January 3, and then a joint session will meet to count the votes on January 6. The president elected by those electoral college votes will then be inaugurated on January 20 at 12 pm EST. Typically, most Americans completely ignore the process between the election and the inauguration. And, typically, it is safe to do so, as it's mostly pro forma routine and legal procedure. This year, however, it could prove critical to follow the entire process more closely.
Practice good citizenship.
Don’t spread blatant misinformation online or among your friends. Call out and condemn any misinformation spread by your candidate, party, or peers. Do not allow any dehumanizing language about political opponents. Do not seek out unnecessary conflict and do not escalate tensions online or in person. Be the keeper of all your fellow Americans, whether you agree with them or not. If you see someone in trouble, go to their aid. Remain aware of your surroundings and work to make sure everyone is safe.
Be brave.
Don’t be afraid to stand up for what you believe in. Now is not the time to silence yourself for fear of standing out. We need you to make your voice heard, to set an example for others to follow. Do not allow the trolls and bigots to censor you from the national dialogue. When one person breaks the silence of indifference, it grants permission to everyone around them to speak up as well. The coming weeks and months may require us to make our voices heard not just on social media, but in peaceful protest alongside our fellow citizens. America needs you now more than ever.
Be prepared.
Unfortunately, I fully anticipate America will see acts of political violence and unrest this week. I don’t believe it will be the kind of society-wide violence of a civil war, but I do think there is a high potential for more incidents of violence than we’ve seen since the protests against the Vietnam War. The images and videos could be disturbing and frightening. You might even witness something ugly in person. The country is at its most dangerous moment in a long, long time. I don’t say this to scare you, but instead to help you mentally prepare yourself to respond. The best way for each of us to help prevent any political violence from spreading is not by arming ourselves to patrol the streets, but instead by actively reinforcing our society’s norms against violence. Be present in your community, let your neighbors see you and hear you. It may encourage them to join you in holding civil society together.
Don’t give up.
I hope that Election Day comes and goes without incident. I hope that we elect Joe Biden in a landslide, and that Trump and his noxious perversion of our country’s highest office is humiliated and repudiated. But even if we elect Biden, that will not magically solve all of our problems. We will still face a grim winter ahead with the coronavirus pandemic and bitter divisions within our country. While I fully support Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, I know that they will make decisions and say things I disagree with. No president is perfect, and we shouldn’t expect them to be. However, I do believe we have a right to expect our president to possess basic human decency, to follow our laws, to strive to better the lives of all of us, to uphold and defend the Constitution, and to base their decisions on empirical reality.
“We have a right to expect our president to possess basic human decency, to follow our laws, to strive to better the lives of all of us, to uphold and defend the Constitution, and to base their decisions on empirical reality.”
Joe Biden will not be a perfect president. But I believe he will not steer our nation to a moment such as this, to a precipice of division and unrest few alive have known, all in the service of ego and greed. He will not fail so abjectly in every single responsibility of his office as to leave us wary of the present and doubtful of the future. I believe he can provide a steady hand and a calming voice to help lead us out of this darkness.
I hope we can overcome this challenge, and find our way back to that road towards a more perfect union. We still have so far to go, but it’s not without hope. The fate of our government of the people, by the people, and for the people calls on us now. Each of us must answer and do our part to hold the line.
