“Trumpism” does not have much of a future as a coherent political philosophy. Trump has never articulated a comprehensive set of principles, and most of his issue positions have had the lifespan of a mayfly. During the 2016 campaign, he made the risible claim that he could eliminate the federal debt in eight years, and then blithely put it on a path to even larger increases. He threatened North Korea with fire and fury, then fell in love with the butcher of Pyongyang. First, NATO was obsolete, then it was not. Foreign trade is the sole issue on which he has been more or less consistent, talking up tariffs as early as the 1980s, then imposing them in the first years of his presidency. But protectionism is a weak spine for a long-term program because it has practically no intellectual foundation. If there is one point of agreement among economists across the ideological spectrum, it is that protectionism is a foolish approach that harms the people that it is supposed to help. In 2016, the University of Chicago Booth School of Business asked a panel of top economic experts whether it would be a good idea to encourage domestic production by adding new or higher import duties on products such as air conditioners and cars. In response, 93 percent “disagreed” or “strongly disagreed.”[1] The rest did not answer. Not a single respondent called it a good idea.
Some writers and Trump officials have projected their ideas onto the Trump screen but with minimal success. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has tried to root Trump’s foreign policy in the concept of American exceptionalism.[2] There is just one problem: as we saw earlier in this book, Trump has explicitly, emphatically, and repeatedly repudiated that very idea. If anything has guided his actions on the world stage, it is not an intellectual framework but an emotional attachment to foreign strongmen. As with trade protectionism, it is hard to see how this impulse could supply the basis for a political program. Except for the alt-right extremists who chanted “Russia is our friend” at Charlottesville, few Americans put support for autocracy at the top of their political agenda. Trump’s crowds cheer him in spite of this attitude, not because of it.
Trump has done little to build a political movement that promotes anything other than Trump. He has raised money for the GOP, but at least part of his motivation has been to line his own pockets. In mid-2019, the Washington Post reckoned that of all the fundraisers or donor events that Trump had attended as president, about a third had taken place at his own properties.[3] Trump has shown no interest in long-term party-building or in developing organizations that will outlive him.
It would have been unwise to expect anything else. Trump’s ghostwritten book, The Art of the Deal, suggested his attitude toward planning: “You can’t be imaginative or entrepreneurial if you’ve got too much structure. I prefer to come to work each day and just see what develops.”[4] Trump lives for the present and for himself. He would never understand the old saying that society grows great when old men plant trees whose shade they know they will never see. In 2017, aides tried to tell him that his economic policies would bloat the federal debt. Noting that the problem would become critical only after he left office, he reportedly shrugged, “Yeah, but I won’t be here.”[5]
Trump’s indifference to the future represents a break with American tradition, which has always called on our leaders to think about generations to come. The Preamble to the Constitution promised to “secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity.” It might shock the self-styled “King of Debt” that George Washington warned against red ink, “ungenerously throwing upon posterity the burden which we ourselves ought to bear.”[6] In 1989, President George H. W. Bush looked back at his early predecessors: “And if you look back, one thing is so striking about the way the Founding Fathers looked at America. They didn’t talk about themselves. They talked about posterity. They talked about the future. And we, too, must think in terms bigger than ourselves.”[7]
Trump does not think in terms bigger than himself, but like the blast of a dirty bomb, his impact will spread wide and last long.
GOP consultant Rick Wilson put it best: everything Trump touches dies. The first casualties of the Trump regime have been people close to him: staffers, appointees, and political allies. Some have ended up in legal trouble. Many more have stained their public images. Trump does not have some mystical aura that curses those who stand behind him; instead, the harm comes from the conditions that he imposes on them. As before in this volume, the Mafia sheds some light on how Trump works. To become a “made man,” a gangster must first commit a contract murder. As far as we know, Trump does not require his minions to kill, but he does make them lie, cheat, publicly defend ridiculous statements, or at very least, abase themselves by offering oleaginous compliments to the boss. Take Sean Spicer, for instance. Before serving Trump as press secretary, he had a decent reputation as a Republican communications professional. On his first full day on the job in 2017, Trump ordered him to claim that his inauguration audience was the biggest in history, which was provably false. Spicer quickly became a laughingstock. His successor, Sarah Sanders, was worse. She dissembled remorselessly, and only when Mueller’s team put her under oath did her façade crack a little. In a press interview, she had said that rank-and-file FBI agents had lost confidence in James Comey. Under penalty of perjury, Sanders admitted to investigators that she had made the remark “in the heat of the moment” and that it “was not founded on anything.”[8] In other words, she had lied. Steve Mnuchin, after a career dealing with actual numbers in the financial services industry, prophesied that the 2017 Trump tax cut would pay for itself by stimulating the economy. The prediction was ridiculous on its face, and the tax cut predictably caused the Treasury to hemorrhage red ink. In the oleaginous compliment category, it would be hard to top 2020 campaign manager Brad Parscale, who tweeted that “Only God could deliver such a savior to our nation.”[9] To any serious Christian, such language is not just offensive, but blasphemous.
No doubt these people will make money in the future. Even as their bank accounts swell, their reputations will rot. Their cringeworthy comments are tattooed onto the public record, and the technology of the 21st century will make them easy to find. Whatever else Sanders, Parscale, and company may do in life, any search of their records will instantly reveal what they said and did for Trump. Power and money are fleeting. Shame lasts forever.
Will the damage engulf GOP at the ballot box? Republican optimists might point to the aftermath of the Nixon administration. The party took major losses in the 1974 midterm election that followed Watergate, and some pundits speculated that the GOP might go the way of the Whigs. As soon as 1976, however, there were signs of recovery, as Gerald Ford came surprisingly close to winning a full term under adverse circumstances. The 1978 midterm endowed the congressional party with fresh blood and new issues; and two years later, Reagan’s victory reversed the narrative and prompted talk of a Republican realignment. So if the GOP can get back on its feet after Nixon, Republicans might ask, why should they worry now? The answer lies in a fundamental difference between Nixon and Trump. Whereas Watergate crimes took place in secret, Trump’s un-American words and actions are out in the open. Most Nixon-era Republicans did not take part in Watergate and did not see the conclusive evidence of the president’s guilt until the scandal’s final days. Today’s Republican politicians know who Trump is, and they know what they are doing when they support him. His stench will stick to them.
Two features of the American electoral system limit the short-term harm to the GOP. First is the distribution of the vote in House races. Democratic support is concentrated in urban areas, where lopsided margins mean many wasted Democratic votes. GOP support has a more efficient distribution. In Senate elections, equal representation of states means that the lightly populated GOP states of Wyoming and Alaska have the same number of seats as the mega-states of California and New York.
In the long run, though, Trump has greased the way for Republican decline. A 2018 AP poll found that most Americans between the ages of 15 and 35 think that he is racist, dishonest, and “mentally unfit” for office.[10] In 2018, the Pew Research Center found that 59 percent of Millennial voters (born between 1981 and 1996) identified or leaned Democratic, compared with only 32 percent who sided with the GOP.[11] Americans born since 1996 have similar views.[12] Party identification tends to last, so we can expect that GOP vote share will shrink as the rising generations vote in larger numbers and older ones die off. Trump is not entirely responsible for this trend, of course. Democrats have a built-in advantage because younger generations are more ethnically and racially diverse than their elders. But that is also a reason why Trump’s pandering to racists is especially repugnant to young people. By joining hands with him, Republican politicians are making themselves more repulsive to the electorate of the future.
Their choice is partly a matter of belief, partly a response to GOP primary voters. Trump encouraged dark impulses both among elected officials and the electorate. At The Atlantic, Eliot Cohen acknowledged the presence of such impulses among his fellow conservatives. Many of them, he said, had hoped the civil rights movement, changing social norms, and rising levels of education “had eliminated the germs that produced secession, lynching, and Indian massacres. Instead, those microbes simply went into dormancy, and now, in the presence of Trump, erupt again like plague buboes—bitter, potent, and vile.”[13]
Trump is helping turn his followers against the foundations of their own country. In 2016, Maine Governor Paul LePage said: “Sometimes, I wonder that our Constitution is not only broken, but we need a Donald Trump to show some authoritarian power in our country and bring back the rule of law because we’ve had eight years of a president, he’s an autocrat, he just does it on his own, he ignores Congress and every single day, we’re slipping into anarchy.”[14] In a 2018 Ipsos survey, 59 percent of Republicans either agreed or strongly agreed with the statement “America needs a strong leader willing to break the rules.”[15] (Only 22 percent of Democrats answered the same way.) Perhaps the most vivid evidence emerged on July 4, 2017, when National Public Radio tweeted the Declaration of Independence line by line. The network got angry responses from Trump supporters, who did not recognize the source and thought that NPR was attacking the president.[16]
Another problem stems from Trump’s alliance with evangelical Christians. It was an odd coupling from the start. Trump had always acted as if the Ten Commandments were a bucket list. He swindled his customers, cheated on all three of his wives, and lied about nearly everything. Despite his nominal status as a Presbyterian, he showed little familiarity with the Christian faith. “Donald Trump has no knowledge of the Bible at all. It might as well be a paper brick to him,” said embittered former aide Omarosa Manigault Newman, an ordained Baptist minister. “‘We love the Bible. It’s the best,’ he said during the campaign. ‘We love The Art of the Deal, but the Bible is far, far superior.’ How would he know? He says he never reads the Bible. . . . Nothing has more meaning to Donald than himself.”[17] After Trump said that public schools should give their students the “option” of studying the Bible, Reverend David Lewicki tweeted: “I was @realDonaldTrump’s pastor for 5 years @MarbleChurch. I assure you, he had the ‘option’ to come to Bible study. He never ‘opted’ in. Nor did he ever actually enter the church doors. Not one time.”[18]
Indeed, Trump denies a core teaching of Christianity just as directly as he spurns human equality and American exceptionalism. Jesus said: “But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you” (Matthew 5:44). Perhaps His most famous saying is: “If someone slaps you on one cheek, turn to them the other also” (Luke 6:29). Recall from the discussion of the Central Park Five that Trump proclaimed that we needed more hatred, not less. In 2012, he tweeted: “When someone attacks me, I always attack back . . . except 100x more. This has nothing to do with a tirade but rather, a way of life!”[19] Lest anyone miss the point about Trump’s rejection of Jesus’ words, see a tweet from 2013: “What happened to ‘turn the other cheek?’ Sorry, not a believer!”[20]
Evangelical leaders knew that Trump was as un-Christian as he was un-American, but he offered them power and judicial appointments. They took the Faustian bargain, then rationalized it. Some claimed without evidence that he was growing in faith. Others likened him to the biblical King David, a flawed instrument of God’s will. Jerry Falwell Jr., president of Liberty University, said: “God called King David a man after God’s own heart even though he was an adulterer and a murderer.”[21] Franklin Graham, son of Billy Graham, also embraced Trump. Many years before, however, he explained why evangelicals should be wary of comparisons between David and a sinful president:
But forgiveness is not the end of David’s story. Huge consequences followed immediately. The prophet Nathan confronted David with the news that while his life would be spared, the life of his child would be extinguished after just seven days on earth. Bathsheba’s husband and others were killed in an attempt to cover up the illicit affair. David, who confessed his sin when confronted by Nathan (perhaps God’s special prosecutor), also witnessed a bloody coup attempt by his own son, Absalom. He was never the same king.[22]
For people who cared about the lessons of the Gospel, Trump’s presidential actions were more troubling than his private degeneracy. Russell Moore, president of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention, tweeted: “The reports of the conditions for migrant children at the border should shock all of our consciences. Those created in the image of God should be treated with dignity and compassion, especially those seeking refuge from violence back home. We can do better than this.”[23] Falwell responded: “Who are you @drmoore? Have you ever made a payroll? Have you ever built an organization of any type from scratch? What gives you authority to speak on any issue? I’m being serious. You’re nothing but an employee—a bureaucrat.”[24] One wonders what Falwell would think of an itinerant carpenter.
Trump, as any other Republican president would, named judges that evangelical leaders liked. But he made false claims about other things that he had accomplished. A federal law effectively forbids tax-exempt churches and charitable organizations from endorsing political candidates. He told a closed-door meeting that he had gotten rid of the law, which was not true. He also used apocalyptic language to stir fear and hatred of the Democrats. “This Nov. 6 election is very much a referendum on not only me, it’s a referendum on your religion, it’s a referendum on free speech and the First Amendment.” If Republicans lose Congress, he said, “they will overturn everything that we’ve done and they’ll do it quickly and violently, and violently. There’s violence. When you look at Antifa [a left-wing fringe movement] and you look at some of these groups—these are violent people.”[25]
Trump corrupts his evangelical audiences by getting them to accept—even approve—hateful words. At the 2019 Faith and Freedom conference, he spoke about changes in the makeup of the Senate: “We needed 60 votes, and we had 51 votes. And sometimes, you know, we had a little hard time with a couple of them, right? (Laughter.) Fortunately, they’re gone now. They’ve gone on to greener pastures. (Laughter.) Or perhaps, far less green pastures, but they’re gone. . . . Very happy they’re gone.”[26] Among Republicans who departed the Senate in 2018, Trump’s most visible opponents were Jeff Flake and John McCain, both of Arizona. Flake’s replacement was a Democrat, so it is unlikely that Trump could be “happy” about that seat change. Though he did not say so expressly, it is hard to escape the conclusion that he was talking about John McCain. So in front of people who professed to be Christians, Trump was gloating over the death of a war hero and strongly suggesting (“far less green pastures”) that he had gone to Hell. Attendees laughed.
The Constitution forbids religious tests for public office, so presidents of the United States need not belong to a particular religion, or any religion at all. But it is bad for the country when a president actively discredits religion, as Trump has done. Christians began to cheer for Donald Trump without qualification and a chorus of other believers decried that support as immoral, wrote Mark Galli at Christianity Today. “The Christian leaders who have excused, ignored, or justified his unscrupulous behavior and his indecent rhetoric have only given credence to their critics who accuse them of hypocrisy.”[27] A leading evangelical told the Washington Post: “When you Google evangelicals, you get Trump. When people say what does it mean to be an evangelical, people don’t say evangelism or the gospel. There’s a grotesque caricature of what it means to be an evangelical.”[28]
Gallup has long asked whether religion can solve “all or most of today’s problems,” or if it is “old-fashioned and out of date.” Back in 1957, Americans preferred the first answer by a 75-point margin, 82–7 percent.[29] That margin gradually narrowed over the decades, but between 2017 and 2018, it dropped sharply—from 21 points (55–34) to seven (46–39). Author Mark Silk asks rhetorically: “What is it about the Trump era that has led a smaller percentage of Americans than ever to think that religion can answer today’s problems and a larger percentage than ever to think that it is old-fashioned and out of date?”[30] As with the GOP, Trump is hardly the only reason for religion’s problems, but he makes them worse. It is hard to convince people that religion stands for love and charity when key religious leaders extol a man who is so mean and selfish. The Falwells and Grahams of the world are confirming what Alexis de Tocqueville wrote more than a century and a half ago: when religion allies itself with political power, it “sacrifices the future for the present.” A faith “cannot share the material strength of the rulers without being burdened with some of the animosity roused against them. . . . It does not need their support in order to live, and in serving them it may die.”[31]
In 2018, a group of former military officers and defense officials issued a report saying: “America has progressed and regressed. But we have, over our history and in the course of our individual lifetimes, seen moral growth in this country. This is not only a source of great pride, but it is also something we treasure as security experts. It is the nucleus of America’s strength.”[32] To halt or reverse that moral growth is to weaken America for the future.
Trump’s bad moral example has spread beyond our borders, providing perverse guidance to authoritarians around the world. In particular, his dismissal of inconvenient reality as “fake news” has caught on among strongmen. In response to reports of prison deaths, Syrian president Bashar al-Assad said that “we are living in a fake-news era.” President Nicolás Maduro of Venezuela attacked the global media for “lots of false versions, lots of lies,” saying “this is what we call ‘fake news’ today.” In Myanmar, which is killing Rohingya Muslims, a security official said “there is no such thing as Rohingya,” adding: “It is fake news.” In Russia, a foreign ministry spokeswoman told a CNN journalist to “stop spreading lies and fake news.”[33]
When democracy declines, Trump shrugs. During a photo opportunity with President Andrzej Duda of Poland, a reporter asked about democratic backsliding in the country. Trump said: “I’m not concerned. I know the President very well. I know the people and the leadership of Poland very well. I’m not concerned at all. By the way, Poland is doing so well and they know if they do backslide, they won’t be doing well like they’re doing right now. They’ve probably never done better economically.” Duda told the reporter: “Someone cheated you. There is no problems with democracy in Poland. Really. Everything is excellent.” Trump said: “That’s what I hear. Okay?”[34]
Trump’s lack of concern for America’s moral standing was on panoramic display during his 2019 trip to the G-20 summit in Osaka, Japan. He met Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, calling the Saudi dictator “a friend of mine” and saying that he had done “really, a spectacular job.”[35] He praised the prince’s work for women. Although Saudi Arabia had recently allowed women to drive, it continues to oppress them in most other ways and remains a notorious abuser of human rights in general. At a press conference, a reporter asked him about the prince’s role in the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi. Trump lied, claiming that “nobody so far, has pointed directly a finger at the future King of Saudi Arabia.”[36] Actually, the CIA had done so months earlier. When another reporter pointed out that the agency had concluded that the prince had ordered or authorized the killing, Trump lied again: “I cannot comment on intelligence community.” Nonsense: he had commented on the intelligence community many times, often to insult its leaders. Trump kept trying to change the subject to American business deals with Saudi Arabia, claiming that they created a million American jobs—a figure that he made up.
As he sat for photographs with Vladimir Putin at the start of their meeting, Trump referred to journalists: “Get rid of them. Fake news is a great term, isn’t it?” he said. “You don’t have this problem in Russia but we do.” Putin answered in English: “We also have. It’s the same.”[37] Since Putin first became president in 2000, 42 journalists had been killed in Russia. Of those 42 people, the data indicate 26 of them were victims of murder.[38] Putin probably blessed these killings. Trump’s timing made his wisecrack even more ghastly, as it came exactly one year after a gunman opened fire in a Maryland newsroom, killing five staffers.
When the pair took questions, a reporter asked Trump if he would tell Putin not to meddle in the 2020 election. “Yes, of course, I will. Don’t meddle in the election, please,” he said, playfully wagging a finger. “Don’t meddle in the election.”[39] The smirks on their faces indicated that they both saw the question of election interference as a joke. Speaking to reporters later, he repeated an assertion from his infamous Helsinki press conference: “You know we’ve talked about it before. You know he denies it totally, by the way. Just to—I mean, how many times can you get somebody to deny something? But he has, in the past, denied it. He’s denied it also publicly.”[40]
Trump garnished the trip with a surprise visit to yet another murderous autocrat, Kim Jong Un, stepping into the demilitarized zone and becoming the first sitting president to set foot in North Korea. He told Kim that “it’s just an honor to be with you.”[41] Kim had reportedly executed some of his diplomatic officials after his previous summit, but Trump did not ask about their fate. Before heading home, Trump stopped at Osan Air Force Base, where he again violated norms against bringing partisan politics across the water’s edge and onto military facilities. He bragged about increasing the military budget: “And that wasn’t easy because, I will tell you—this is not a political speech, but the Democrats were not going to give it to you. That I can tell you. They weren’t going to give it to you, folks. They weren’t going to. They want open borders and the hell with the military. That’s not good.”[42]
Trump did all of those things over just a few days in June.
Meanwhile, he was continuing to harm America’s standing in the world. A poll of 20,000 people around the globe ranked the United States as the 27th most trustworthy country, down from 17th just three years before.[43] When the Pew Research Center surveyed 22 nations, it found that a median of 45 percent of respondents saw American power and influence as a major threat, up from 38 percent the year before and 25 percent in 2013, under President Obama. This trend occurred together with declines in favorable views of the United States and confidence in its president to do the right thing regarding world affairs.[44]
Classical Western liberalism is the philosophy of liberty and natural rights, the ideas that animated the Declaration of Independence. In a 2019 interview, Vladimir Putin said: “The liberal idea has become obsolete. It has come into conflict with the interests of the overwhelming majority of the population.”[45] Putin reiterated the point after the Osaka summit. “The liberal idea has started eating itself,” he said at a news conference. “Millions of people live their lives, and those who propagate those ideas are separate from them.”[46] A normal American president would have responded to such a direct attack on our Founding ideas. Trump did not. When reporters asked him about it, he did not understand the question. “His comments to the Financial Times, right before arriving here, was that Western-style liberalism is obsolete,” said a reporter “I know you probably haven’t read the interview. Do you think that’s true?” Trump acted as if the question was about leftist California politicians, and he used the occasion to take potshots at fellow Americans: “I mean, he sees what’s going on. And I guess, if you look at what’s happening in Los Angeles, where it’s so sad to look; and what’s happening in San Francisco and a couple of other cities which are run by an extraordinary group of liberal people. . . . But he does see things that are happening in the United States that would—would probably preclude him from saying how wonderful it is.”[47]
Trump brings to mind an old joke. Question: is ignorance worse than apathy? Answer: I don’t know and I don’t care. Whether his comments on Western liberalism grew out of ignorance, apathy, or both, they were appalling—yet the American public did not display the revulsion that one might expect. In part, the muted response reflected the limited media coverage: Trump’s failure to defend liberal democracy was just one story out of many in an eventful week. It also represented the need for better civic education in the United States. One reason why Trump has gotten away with so much is that so many Americans lack a strong understanding of the historical precedents that he is shattering, the democratic norms that he is violating, the republican principles that he is trashing. Popular culture fills this well-documented vacuum in civic knowledge. If you think that House of Cards was an accurate depiction of Washington politics, then Trump’s behavior may seem tame by comparison: after all, he is not personally shoving investigative reporters into the path of oncoming trains.
Improving civic education would not mean drills on the details, such as the number of members of the House of Representatives. It would focus on big questions. What did the drafters of the Declaration mean when they wrote that all men are created equal? How does our nation’s commitment to liberty and equality make us exceptional? How did George Washington’s presidency set standards for how presidents should act? The more that people think about such questions, the more readily they will see how much Trump deviates from the American tradition.
It would be naïve to think that teaching and preaching would be sufficient to safeguard the future of our system. As Madison wrote, “A dependence upon the people is, no doubt, the primary control on the government; but experience has taught mankind the necessity of auxiliary precautions.”[48] One set of auxiliary precautions would consist of legislative remedies for Trump-era problems. Early in 2019, the House passed legislation requiring presidents to disclose their tax returns. Another bill would require presidents and vice presidents to disclose and divest any potential financial conflicts of interest. Congress might also consider legislation clarifying that federal anti-nepotism law applies to the White House staff, thus keeping unqualified trust-fund babies such as Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump off the West Wing roster. On the foreign-interference front, Congress must harden voting and registration systems against electronic tampering. And the example of Paul Manafort should inspire legislation to keep campaigns from sharing private material with foreign governments, and them to report offers of foreign help.[49]
Many reform proposals involve campaign finance laws. Measures to improve the transparency of political contributions might have many beneficial effects, but they would not necessarily prevent the election of un-American demagogues such as Donald Trump. He did not win the 2016 Republican nomination because he spent more than his rivals: Jeb Bush and other candidates spent more.[50] Hillary Clinton outspent him in the general election campaign, both directly and through outside groups.[51]
Whatever specific measures they enact, members of Congress need to remember that they swear an oath to the Constitution, not a president or a party. Regardless of whether they serve in the majority or minority, in-party or out-party, they have a sacred duty to preserve the separation of powers.
Newt Gingrich put it well in 2014:
The Founding Fathers . . . designed the Constitution to enable the American people to maintain their freedom. They sought a balance of power between the legislative, executive and judicial branches (defined in that order with the legislature first). They would be appalled at the arrogance and hubris of a president who thought he could impose his will against the Congress. They would also stand up to the presidential power-grab at all costs, considering it a profound threat to our system of government. The precedent of such unrestrained executive cannot be allowed to stand.[52]
In 2016, House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy expressed concern that the institution was not living up to its responsibility: “Unfortunately, we live in a dangerous time, and many of our nation’s elected representatives accepted the president’s argument, implicitly consenting to his subversion of congressional authority by refusing to block the president’s actions. It seems they are happy to hand Congress’s constitutional powers to the president as long as the policy that gets enacted suits them.”[53]
Trump’s opponents would say that the ultimate check on Trump would be his removal from office. There is no doubt that such a move would be appropriate. In his notes on the Constitutional Convention, James Madison recorded his own authoritative thoughts on the subject: “Mr. MADISON thought it indispensable that some provision should be made for defending the Community agst. the incapacity, negligence or perfidy of the chief Magistrate. The limitation of the period of his service, was not a sufficient security. He might lose his capacity after his appointment. He might pervert his administration into a scheme of peculation or oppression.”[54] When the House of Representatives voted to impeach him in 2019, Trump and his defenders said that it would overturn the will of the American people. But they neglected to mention that 54 percent of the electorate had voted against Trump in 2016, and a plurality supported Hillary Clinton. By and large, though, Clinton voters accepted the outcome because the electoral college is a constitutional process. So is impeachment.
Because a Republican Senate would be extremely unlikely to convict him in an impeachment trial, however, the most realistic remedy would consist of defeating him in the 2020 election. Trump’s lies about “rigged elections” raise the issue of whether he and his followers would be willing to concede. It is not an idle question. On the night of the 2012 election, he initially thought that Romney was winning the popular vote while Obama was winning the electoral vote. He tweeted: “He lost the popular vote by a lot and won the election. We should have a revolution in this country!” He later deleted that tweet, along with its sequel: “The phoney [sic] electoral college made a laughing stock out of our nation. The loser one [sic]!”[55] He did leave up other tweets:
“We can’t let this happen. We should march on Washington and stop this travesty. Our nation is totally divided!”[56]
“This election is a total sham and a travesty. We are not a democracy!”[57]
“Lets [sic] fight like hell and stop this great and disgusting injustice! The world is laughing at us.”[58]
During the 2016 campaign, he made groundless warnings. “November 8th, we’d better be careful, because that election is going to be rigged,” he told Sean Hannity. “And I hope the Republicans are watching closely, or it’s going to be taken away from us.”[59] At a debate, Chris Wallace asked him if he would accept the results. “I will look at it at the time,” Trump said. “I’m not looking at anything now. I’ll look at it at the time . . . this is coming from Pew Report and other places millions of people that are registered to vote that shouldn’t be registered to vote.” (He was referring to a Pew study of voter registration problems, which pointedly did not find evidence of fraud.[60]) Wallace followed up, asking if he would commit to coming together after the election for the good of the country. He said: “What I’m saying is that I will tell you at the time. I’ll keep you in suspense. OK?”[61] The Russians appeared to approve of his attitude. On the day of the 2016 election, when it still seemed likely that Trump would lose, WikiLeaks sent a private message to Donald Trump Jr.: “We think it is much more interesting if he DOES NOT conceed [sic] and spends time CHALLENGING the media and other types of rigging that occurred—as he has implied that he might do.”[62]
As for 2020, he has already hinted that he would not acknowledge the legitimacy of any result other than a Trump victory. In February 2019, he tweeted: “The Dems are trying to win an election in 2020 that they know they cannot legitimately win!”[63] His lawyer Michael Cohen testified that “given my experience working for Mr. Trump, I fear that if he loses the election in 2020 that there will never be a peaceful transition of power.”[64] The real danger is not that Trump would barricade himself in the White House but that he would encourage his followers not to accept the outcome. Alexander Hamilton had such a leader in mind when he wrote:
When a man unprincipled in private life desperate in his fortune, bold in his temper, possessed of considerable talents . . . known to have scoffed in private at the principles of liberty—when such a man is seen to mount the hobby horse of popularity—to join in the cry of danger to liberty—to take every opportunity of embarrassing the General Government & bringing it under suspicion—to flatter and fall in with all the non sense of the zealots of the day—It may justly be suspected that his object is to throw things into confusion that he may “ride the storm and direct the whirlwind.”[65]
For those of us who study American politics, the Trump administration has been a learning experience, much as horrible injuries are instructive to students of medical science. We have learned that traditions and norms are like internal organs: we only appreciate them when they stop working.
“Import Duties,” IGM Forum, October 4, 2016, http://www.igmchicago.org/surveys/import-duties.
Michael R. Pompeo, “Remarks at the Claremont Institute 40th Anniversary Gala: ‘A Foreign Policy from the Founding,’” May 11, 2019, https://www.state.gov/remarks-at-the-claremont-institute-40th-anniversary-gala-a-foreign-policy-from-the-founding.
David Farenthold, Josh Dawsey, Jonathan O'Connell, and Michelle Ye Hee Lee, “When Trump Visits His Clubs, Government Agencies and Republicans Pay to Be Where He Is,” Washington Post, June 20, 2019, https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/when-trump-visits-his-clubs-government-agencies-and-republicans-pay-to-be-where-he-is/2019/06/20/a4c13c36-8ed0-11e9-adf3-f70f78c156e8_story.html.
Trump and Schwartz, The Art of the Deal, 1.
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Carroll Doherty, Jocelyn Kiley, and Olivia O’Hea, “Wide Gender Gap, Growing Educational Divide in Voters’ Party Identification,” Pew Research Center, March 20, 2018, https://www.people-press.org/2018/03/20/wide-gender-gap-growing-educational-divide-in-voters-party-identification.
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Amy B. Wang, “Some Trump Supporters Thought NPR Tweeted ‘Propaganda.’ It Was the Declaration of Independence,” Washington Post, July 5, 2017, https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2017/07/05/some-trump-supporters-thought-npr-tweeted-propaganda-it-was-the-declaration-of-independence.
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Remarks by President Trump and President Duda of the Republic of Poland Before Bilateral Meeting, June 12, 2019, https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/remarks-president-trump-president-duda-republic-poland-bilateral-meeting-2.
Remarks by President Trump and Crown Prince Mohammad Bin Salman of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia Before Working Breakfast, Osaka, Japan, June 28, 2019, https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/remarks-president-trump-crown-prince-mohammad-bin-salman-kingdom-saudi-arabia-working-breakfast-osaka-japan.
Remarks by President Trump in Press Conference, Osaka, Japan, June 29, 2019, https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/remarks-president-trump-press-conference-osaka-japan.
Julian Borger, “Trump Jokes to Putin They Should ‘Get Rid’ of Journalists,” The Guardian, June 28, 2019, https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/jun/28/smirking-trump-jokes-to-putin-dont-meddle-in-us-election-g20.
Connor Mannion, “Putin, With Whom Trump Joked about ‘Fake News,’ Has Seen 26 Journalists Murdered during His Reign,” Mediaite, June 28, 2019, https://www.mediaite.com/trump/putin-with-whom-trump-joked-about-fake-news-has-seen-26-journalists-murdered-during-his-reign.
Remarks by President Trump and President Putin of the Russian Federation before Bilateral Meeting, Osaka, Japan, June 28, 2019, https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/remarks-president-trump-president-putin-russian-federation-bilateral-meeting-osaka-japan.
Remarks by President Trump in Press Conference, Osaka.
Remarks by President Trump and Chairman Kim Jong Un of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea in 1:1 Meeting, June 30, 2019, https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/remarks-president-trump-chairman-kim-jong-un-democratic-peoples-republic-korea-11-meeting.
Remarks by President Trump to US Service Members, June 30, 2019, https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/remarks-president-trump-u-s-service-members.
Megan Trimble, “America Perceived Less Trustworthy in Trump Era,” US News and World Report, January 23, 2019, https://www.usnews.com/news/best-countries/articles/2019-01-23/america-falls-in-trustworthy-countries-ranking-under-trump.
John Gramlich and Kat Devlin, “More People around the World See U.S. Power and Influence as a ‘Major Threat’ to Their Country,” Pew Research Center, February 14, 2019, https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/02/14/more-people-around-the-world-see-u-s-power-and-influence-as-a-major-threat-to-their-country.
Marc Bennetts, “Western Liberalism Is Obsolete, Warns Putin, Ahead of May Meeting,” The Guardian, June 28, 2019, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/jun/27/putin-skripal-attack-should-not-affect-uk-russia-relations.
Vladimir Isachenkov, “Putin Says Liberalism ‘Eating Itself,’ Migrant Influx Wrong,” Associated Press, June 29, 2019, https://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/music/putin-says-liberalism-eating-itself-migrant-influx-wrong/2019/06/29/15084dfc-9ad1-11e9-9a16-dc551ea5a43b_story.html.
Remarks by President Trump in Press Conference, Osaka.
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Niv Sultan, “Election 2016: Trump’s Free Media Helped Keep Cost Down, but Fewer Donors Provided More of the Cash,” Open Secrets, April 13, 2017, https://www.opensecrets.org/news/2017/04/election-2016-trump-fewer-donors-provided-more-of-the-cash.
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Donald J. Trump, Twitter post, November 6, 2012, https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/266035509162303492.
Donald J. Trump, Twitter post, November 6, 2012, https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/266034957875544064.
“Trump: If I Were President Khan’s Son Wouldn’t Have Died; Election in November Will Be Rigged,” Fox News, August 1, 2016, https://www.foxnews.com/transcript/trump-if-i-were-president-khans-son-wouldnt-have-died-election-in-november-will-be-rigged.
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Matt Ford, “Did Donald Trump Jr. Cross the Line with WikiLeaks?” The Atlantic, November 14, 2017, https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/11/donald-trump-jr-wikileaks/545894.
Donald J. Trump, Twitter post, February 9, 2019, https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1094242164857556992.
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Alexander Hamilton, “Enclosure: [Objections and Answers Respecting the Administration],”August 18, 1792, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Hamilton/01-12-02-0184-0002.