James Madison asked, “what is government itself, but the greatest of all reflections on human nature? If men were angels, no government would be necessary.”[1] He and other members of the Founding generation believed that human potential for evil required effective governmental powers. But they also believed in limiting those powers. Accordingly, they adopted the principles of federalism, bicameralism, and the separation of powers, as well as bills of rights at the state and federal levels. Underlying their support for limited government was their confidence that Americans, most of the time, could overcome the dark side of human nature and behave decently. In his Farewell Address, George Washington said: “It is substantially true that virtue or morality is a necessary spring of popular government. The rule, indeed, extends with more or less force to every species of free government. Who that is a sincere friend to it can look with indifference upon attempts to shake the foundation of the fabric?”[2] John Adams famously wrote: “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious People. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”[3] At the Virginia ratifying convention, Madison asked: “Is there no virtue among us? If there be not, we are in a wretched situation. No theoretical checks—no form of government can render us secure.”[4] If the people lacked certain moral qualities, he declared in Federalist 55, “nothing less than the chains of despotism can restrain them from destroying and devouring one another.”[5]
The moral sense includes such elements as fairness, sympathy, self-control, and duty.[6] Fairness is about the Golden Rule: do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Sympathy is the capacity to take part in other people’s feelings, to experience sorrow for their misfortune. Self-control is the ability to restrain impulses, emotions, and desires, to rein in all kinds of greed. And duty is faithfulness to one’s obligations, especially those that carry a steep cost. These elements help explain why Americans typically do not kill, rob, or cheat their neighbors even when there is no chance of getting caught. As novelist Robert Heinlein put it: “I believe in my fellow citizens. Our headlines are splashed with crime yet for every criminal there are 10,000 honest, decent, kindly men. If it were not so, no child would live to grow up. Business could not go on from day to day. Decency is not news. It is buried in the obituaries, but is a force stronger than crime.”[7]
The president of the United States needs a moral sense more than anyone else, which is why Alexander Hamilton wanted the office “filled by characters pre-eminent for ability and virtue.”[8] Despite all the safeguards that the Founders built into the Constitution, a chief executive can do great and lasting harm by abusing the immense powers of the office. Moreover, that person’s behavior can bring the government into disrepute and set a poor example for the people. Of course, moral perfection is an impossible standard. All presidents have had their faults and failings, sometimes grievous ones. But they have generally tried to show themselves as worthy of the esteem of their fellow citizens. George Washington was acutely aware of his hot temper and other flaws, so he made a lifelong project of building a character that others could admire. As a teenager, he copied out 110 rules of civility and decent behavior, and until the end of his days, he strove to follow those rules. Presidents who behaved badly in private still tried to act with decorum in public. Lyndon Johnson was nasty and crude in the Oval Office, but restrained his tone and language when he spoke to the American people.
A sense of duty is especially important. Presidents must honor the spirit of our democratic system, observing norms that fill in where the spare language of the Constitution is silent. Washington embodied this principle. In his everyday activities as president, he took pains to avoid the trappings of monarchy while maintaining the dignity of his office and defending its legitimate prerogatives. “There is scarcely an action, the motive of which may not be subject to a double interpretation,” he explained in a letter. “There is scarcely any part of my conduct, which may not hereafter be drawn into precedent.”[9] His successors followed his precedents and built upon them.
Washington was great because of his moral strength and commitment to duty, concepts that are foreign to Donald Trump. When he toured Mount Vernon in 2019, he showed more interest in Washington’s personal wealth than his presidential accomplishments. At one point, he reportedly voiced puzzlement as to why Washington did not name the estate after himself: “If he was smart, he would’ve put his name on it. You’ve got to put your name on stuff or no one remembers you.”[10]
Trump is deficient in the other elements of the moral sense. It is hard to think of another president who was so indifferent to fairness, so bereft of sympathy, and so shameless in his lack of self-control. The problem is not just that he is a bad man who does bad things, but that he is oblivious to moral concepts. When he writes “Bad!” in a tweet, he is merely referring to something that fails to serve his interests. He has no idea that sacrifice means giving up something of value for the sake of others. Khizr Khan, the father of an Army captain who died in combat, gave a fiery 2016 convention speech that addressed Trump: “You have sacrificed nothing and no one.”[11] When George Stephanopoulos asked Trump to respond, he said: “I think I’ve made a lot of sacrifices. I work very, very hard. I’ve created thousands and thousands of jobs, tens of thousands of jobs—built great structures. I’ve done—I’ve had—I’ve had tremendous success. I think I’ve done a lot.” Stephanopoulos asked him if those things were genuine sacrifices. “Oh, sure. I think they’re sacrifices. I think, when I can employ thousands and thousands of people, take care of their education, take care of so many things, . . . I raised, and I have raised, millions of dollars for the vets.”[12] Making a great deal of money is not a sacrifice, especially when it involves cheating workers, contractors, vendors, and customers. His “charity” also involved cheating, too.
Trump’s defenders might say that his bad character is a private matter, unrelated to his public actions. But Trump himself has thrust it into public view. For decades, he has flaunted his greed and immorality and has made little effort to change since taking the oath of office. Trump’s dishonor has left a mark on the government and the people around him.
The word rigged appears in more than a hundred of Trump’s tweets. He deploys it whenever he is frustrated with an outcome in business or politics. For example, he repeatedly claimed that the Emmy awards were rigged because his reality show failed to win one. The complaints are phony: Trump does not care about fairness, only winning. For all his adult life, he has tried to rig processes to his advantage, usually abusing the law and sometimes breaking it.
Perhaps his first major adult decision consisted of cheating his way out of the Vietnam-era military draft. As mentioned earlier, his father reportedly arranged for a Queens podiatrist to write him a dubious medical excuse claiming that he had bone spurs. As with other forms of cheating, this act had consequences, because somebody else had to take Trump’s place in Vietnam. Trump’s replacement was probably a working-class man without any college education—the kind of person he claimed to champion in the 2016 campaign.
After he graduated from Wharton, he joined his father’s business. He made the news by discriminating against African Americans in apartment rentals, but he cheated many other people as well. Michael Cohen testified about Trump’s approach to vendors and contractors: “It should come as no surprise that one of my more common responsibilities was that Mr. Trump directed me to call business owners, many of whom are small businesses, that were owed money for their services and told them that no payment or a reduced payment would be coming. When I asked Mr. Trump—or when I told Mr. Trump of my success, he actually reveled in it.”[13] There is plenty of corroboration. A 2016 USA Today review found more than 200 mechanic’s liens by contractors and employees who claimed that Trump, his properties, or his companies owed them money for their work. That figure was surely just a tiny sample. The Trump technique was to stiff individuals and companies, tie them up in court, and then wait until they either gave up or went broke.[14] In several high-profile cases, he abused bankruptcy law to renege on his debts. It took one small business three years to recover money for its work on the Trump Taj Mahal in Atlantic City. The firm nearly went under, and in the end, got only 30 cents on the dollar. “Trump crawled his way to the top on the back of little guys, one of them being my father,” said the current co-owner and daughter of the company founder. “He had no regard for thousands of men and women who worked on those projects. He says he’ll make America great again, but his past shows the complete opposite of that.”[15]
In a 2015 debate, Chris Wallace pointed out that his bankruptcies had cost his lenders billions of dollars. Trump saw nothing wrong. “I have used the laws of this country just like the greatest people that you read about every day in business have used the laws of this country, the chapter laws, to do a great job for my company, for myself, for my employees, for my family, et cetera.” He exulted in what he had done: “I made a lot of money in Atlantic City, and I’m very proud of it.” He disparaged the people whose money he took: “Let me just tell you about the lenders. First of all, these lenders aren’t babies. These are total killers. These are not the nice, sweet little people that you think, OK?”[16] As usual, he was lying. In a 2009 case, unsecured creditors, including low-level investors, got less than a penny on the dollar, for claims against Trump Entertainment Resorts. “He defaulted, and he walked away,” said an 87-year-old man who had lost $91,000 in retirement savings. The man’s wife added that Trump “did do great. He walked away with our money.”[17]
With the help of his lawyers and political contacts, he unfairly exploited programs meant to benefit others. On September 11, 2001, he told radio station WWOR: “Forty Wall Street actually was the second-tallest building in downtown Manhattan, and it was actually before the World Trade Center the tallest, and then when they built the World Trade Center it became known as the second-tallest, and now it’s the tallest.”[18] On this tragic day, Trump was thinking less about the suffering of his fellow Americans than about the relative value of his own property (and his claim about its height was not close to being true).[19] He soon figured out a way to make money from 9/11, collecting $150,000 in federal recovery grants that Congress had earmarked for small businesses.[20] During the 2016 campaign, he claimed that he had received the money for helping others recover from the attacks. That claim was false. Records showed that his company sought the “small business” funds to cover cleanup, rent loss, and repair.[21]
Trump also abused eminent domain, the government’s power to take property for public use. In the mid-1990s, Trump planned to build a limousine parking lot in Atlantic City, so he bought some nearby properties. But three owners, including an elderly widow, refused to sell. So he had the Casino Reinvestment Development Authority (CRDA) make her an offer. When she declined, CRDA went to court to claim her property under eminent domain. With the help of the Institute for Justice, the widow and her neighbors fought back and eventually won, but it took them several years.[22] Trump later applauded the Supreme Court’s infamous Kelo decision, which held the door open for such abuses of eminent domain. As one conservative commentator wrote: “Kelo was a dreadful decision. It had anti-private property rights, anti-capitalist and anti-growth stains all over it, and the political system is repudiating it (as it should) just about everywhere. . . . To put it simply: Kelo was un-American.” The writer was Lawrence Kudlow, who would go on to work in the Trump White House.[23]
Trump University was such a flagrant fraud that it has become a national punchline. But it was no joke to the people who spent thousands of dollars on worthless courses. During the 2016 campaign, he vowed that he would keep fighting lawsuits relating to the scam, but then he settled. In typical Trump fashion, there was an asterisk. Trump had dragged out the class-action litigation for so long that some former students had died while waiting to get their money back. For instance, an 85-year-old man passed away in January 2017 before receiving a refund for his $34,995 Trump University “mentorship program” tuition.[24]
Trump takes pride in avoiding taxes. At a 2016 debate, Hillary Clinton noted that he had failed to disclose his returns and “the only years that anybody’s ever seen were a couple of years when he had to turn them over to state authorities when he was trying to get a casino license, and they showed he didn’t pay any federal income tax.” Trump cut in: “That makes me smart.”[25] When Trump got a $10 million tax refund while slashing employee pay, recalled Michael Cohen in congressional testimony, “he said that he could not believe how stupid the government was for giving ‘someone like him’ that much money back.”[26] He was not merely making cynical use of lawful tax loopholes. A 2018 investigation by the New York Times found: “President Trump participated in dubious tax schemes during the 1990s, including instances of outright fraud, that greatly increased the fortune he received from his parents.”[27]
Cohen himself pleaded guilty to evading taxes, and in his sentencing memorandum, federal prosecutors seemed to be sending a signal to Trump. They said that a prison sentence would send “the important message that even powerful individuals cannot cheat on their taxes and lie to financial institutions with impunity, because they will be subject to serious federal penalties.” They added that the United States loses billions because tax cheats— “who otherwise take full advantage of all that taxes bring, such as schools, paved roads, transit systems, and Government buildings—shirk their responsibilities as American taxpayers.”[28] In at least one instance, a Trump tax scheme imposed specific costs on specific people. He and his siblings set up a phony business to pad the cost of things that their father bought for his buildings, and they divided the money among themselves, thereby evading gift taxes. The inflated cost also enabled them to charge more for rent-regulated apartments. “The higher the markup would be, the higher the rent that might be charged,” Trump’s brother Robert admitted in a deposition.[29] The Trumps eventually sold the buildings, but the artificially high rents became part of the basis for future rent increases. Because of the Trumps’ unfairness, thousands of renters have long kept paying more than they should.
The grift goes on. Just before he became president, Trump said that he would not divest from interests in the Trump Organization. He then brazenly used his office and political status to make money, creating unprecedented conflicts. Foreign emoluments, which the previous chapter discussed, were just part of the sordid picture. During his first two years in office, at least 13 special interest groups spent money at Trump properties at about the same time they were lobbying the White House.[30] Meanwhile, Republican candidates and campaign committees laid out more than $4 million at Trump properties, with more than a quarter of the money coming from Trump’s campaign coffers.[31] People who thought they were contributing to political causes were actually making a rich man richer.
After his election, his Mar-a-Lago resort doubled its initiation fee to $200,000. Buyers expected something for their money. At least eight current or former members received nominations or appointments to important federal offices.[32] “The Mar-a-Lago club has turned into a pay-for-access to the president club, with a president with almost no knowledge of governmental policy,” the head of Public Citizen told The Guardian. “If you can whisper in his ear and tell him anything, he may well think it’s sensible and he may well act upon it.”[33] In 2019, the House Veterans Affairs Committee opened an investigation into a trio of Mar-a-Lago members. The committee chair wrote: “Top Department [of Veterans Affairs] officials apparently treated these Mar-a-Lago members as having decision-making authority, and emails demonstrate these powerful men weighed in on candidates to lead the Veterans Health Administration, and organized meetings and summits between VA and commercial entities.”[34]
Trump used official travel and communications to promote his interests. He visited his properties hundreds of times, thus bringing them more attention. In planning a 2019 trip to Ireland, the White House sought to arrange a meeting with the prime minister at Trump International Golf Links, Doonbeg. The prime minister objected, so they settled on a gathering at the airport. Trump did visit his property, however, and in a press availability with the prime minister, he worked in a plug for it: “I thought this would be the best place. I love to come to Ireland and stay at Doonbeg.”[35] In 2019, he announced plans to host the G-7 international summit at his Doral, Florida, golf resort. He changed his mind after this obviously corrupt move drew criticism from across the political spectrum.
Alexander Hamilton warned us about someone like Trump. “An avaricious man, who might happen to fill the office, looking forward to a time when he must at all events yield up the emoluments he enjoyed, would feel a propensity, not easy to be resisted by such a man, to make the best use of the opportunity he enjoyed while it lasted, and might not scruple to have recourse to the most corrupt expedients to make the harvest as abundant as it was transitory.”[36]
We have already seen Trump’s stunning lack of sympathy for disabled people, including his own great-nephew. He also lacks sympathy for women who do not meet his ideal of physical perfection. The terms that he has publicly hurled at specific women include: “ugly,” “fat,” “horseface,” “pig,” “dog,” and “extremely unattractive,” among many others.[37] Worse yet, he has insulted women who have credibly accused him of sexual assault and harassment. In 2016, he told a cheering rally that one accuser “would not be my first choice, that I can tell you.”[38] In 2019, he dismissed E. Jean Carroll’s statement that he had raped her in the 1990s. “I’ll say it with great respect: Number one, she’s not my type. Number two, it never happened. It never happened, OK?”[39] Trump not only hurts his targets, but girls and women in general. For boys and young men, he is setting an obnoxious example that echoes through playgrounds, schoolrooms, and workplaces all over the country. He has never shown a moment’s concern that his words and deeds may be metastasizing.
There is no evidence that he has much sympathy for anyone at all. In 2008, he told Howard Stern about an old man who fell during a ball at Mar-a-Lago. “So what happens is, this guy falls off right on his face, hits his head, and I thought he died. And you know what I did? I said, ‘Oh my God, that’s disgusting,’ and I turned away,” Trump said. “I couldn’t, you know, he was right in front of me and I turned away. I didn’t want to touch him . . . he’s bleeding all over the place, I felt terrible. You know, beautiful marble floor, didn’t look like it. It changed color. Became very red.” Marines attending the ball carried the old man out. Trump acknowledged that he ordered a cleanup but forgot to check whether the old man died. “It’s just not my thing.”[40]
After Khizr Khan criticized him at the 2016 Democratic convention, Trump kept going after him and his wife. A campaign adviser reportedly warned him: “You do know you just attacked a Gold Star family?” Trump asked, “What’s that?”[41] He did not care enough to learn that the term refers to relatives of Americans who have died in battle. He carried this lack of sympathy into the Oval Office. In an October 17, 2017, radio interview, he said, “I think I’ve called every family of somebody that’s died and it’s the hardest call to make. . . . I’ve called virtually everybody. . . . I can tell you my policy is I’ve called every one of them.”[42] That claim was far from accurate, and the White House did not even have an updated list of those who had died. Presidential aides scrambled to get such a list and make good on his claim.[43] The goal was not to offer condolences but simply to contain a bad media narrative.
As this example indicates, Americans expect their president to show sympathy for the suffering of others. Trump has a hard time faking it. When he held a White House meeting for survivors of the Parkland school shooting, he needed note cards to feign a human response. A photographer caught him holding White House stationery with five talking points written in black marker: “‘1. What would you most want me to know about your experience?’ ‘2. What can we do to help you feel safe?’ and ‘5. I hear you.’”[44] (His fingers covered the fourth.)
Most normal human beings express sympathy through acts of kindness and giving, and the United States ranks among the most charitable nations in the world.[45] Many Americans of modest means dig deep to donate their time and money, and billionaires such as Bill Gates have given a big portion of their wealth to the needy. Trump is different, seeing charity as strictly transactional. When New York Military Academy, his high school alma mater, was facing financial trouble in 2010, a fellow alumnus asked Trump for a $7 million contribution. Trump replied: “What do I get for my $7 million?” The school was willing to name buildings after him, but he rejected the plea: “It’s not a good business proposition,” he said.[46]
Trump knows that Americans believe in charity, so his strategy has always been to look charitable without being charitable. In the fall of 1996, the Association to Benefit Children held a New York ribbon-cutting event for a new nursery school serving AIDS-affected children. Trump barged his way onto the podium so that he would appear in news photographs sitting alongside major donors. He had never given a dime to the charity.[47]
In 2016, his campaign tried to back up his claim to be an “ardent philanthropist” by listing thousands of purported Trump contributions. The Washington Post found that none of the donations on the list came from Trump’s personal funds. Many of the gifts that the Trump camp cited were such things as free rounds of golf that his courses gave for charity auctions and raffles.[48] The Post did find some contributions that Trump had once made, but none since 2009. And of the pre-2009 giving, about 70 percent went to the Trump Foundation. From then on, the foundation got its money entirely from other sources.[49]
Although he had stopped donating personal funds, Trump might have been able to claim credit for organizing a charitable enterprise—if the foundation had been on the level. It was not. Trump used its assets to pay off legal obligations, to promote Trump properties, and to buy personal items. In 2007, for instance, he used $20,000 of foundation money to buy a six-foot-tall painting of himself at a fundraiser auction.[50] In 2018, as a result of a lawsuit by the New York Attorney General, the foundation agreed to dissolve under judicial supervision. Attorney General Barbara Underwood said: “Our petition detailed a shocking pattern of illegality involving the Trump Foundation—including unlawful coordination with the Trump presidential campaign, repeated and willful self-dealing, and much more. This amounted to the Trump Foundation functioning as little more than a checkbook to serve Mr. Trump’s business and political interests.”[51] In 2019, the New York Supreme Court ordered him to pay $2 million in damages.
As with Trump’s other misdeeds, there are victims. Every fraudulent charity undercuts the credibility of the entire nonprofit sector, making it harder for legitimate organizations to raise money. Even worse, it also tainted the Eric Trump Foundation, which once had a fair reputation for supporting cancer research. A donation from the father’s foundation to the son’s foundation ended up in the coffers of Trump’s businesses.[52]
After Trump entered the presidential race, he started making personal contributions again, or at least he promised to do so. In January 2016, he skipped a GOP primary debate and instead held a televised fundraiser for veterans, where he proudly claimed to have given the group a million dollars. Trump did not write a check until months later, and only after the media raised questions about whether he had gone back on his commitment. When David Farenthold of the Washington Post asked him if he made the donation in response to the criticism, he said: “You know, you’re a nasty guy. You’re really a nasty guy. I gave out millions of dollars that I had no obligation to do.”[53] More recently, Trump has donated his government salary to charities. But the amount is small compared with the millions that he has made from corruptly using the presidency for his business interests.
Trump’s sympathy deficit has affected his conduct in office. After a hurricane struck Puerto Rico in 2017, Trump made the obligatory trip to the disaster area. “I hate to tell you, Puerto Rico, but you’ve thrown our budget a little out of whack because we’ve spent a lot of money on Puerto Rico,” he said before adding for cover, “and that’s fine.”[54] In a bizarre scene, he tossed rolls of paper towels to survivors as if they were wedding bouquets. Even though thousands died in the months after the storm, he insisted that the federal response was a roaring success and that the death toll was minimal. “The missing part was empathy,” former homeland security adviser Thomas Bossert later told the New York Times. “I wish he’d paused and expressed that instead of just focusing on the response success.”[55] Trump’s coldness to Puerto Rico entailed more than optics. He tweeted: “Puerto Rico got 91 Billion Dollars for the hurricane, more money than has ever been gotten for a hurricane before, & all their local politicians do is complain & ask for more money. The pols are grossly incompetent, spend the money foolishly or corruptly, & only take from USA.”[56] He lied: actual federal aid was barely one-tenth the amount he claimed. He had held up additional disaster funds for months, but he nonetheless followed with another tweet: “The best thing that ever happened to Puerto Rico is President Donald J. Trump.”[57]
If the Puerto Rico hurricane response was a case of incompetence and neglect, family separation was a case of deliberate cruelty. In 2018, the administration announced a “zero tolerance” policy for illegal immigration, which forced the separation of migrant children from their families. (It had actually been separating families for months before the announcement.) When Laura Ingraham asked Attorney General Jeff Sessions if the administration meant family separation as a deterrent, he said, “So yes, hopefully people get the message and come through the border at the port of entry and not break across the border.”[58] John Kelly, then serving as Trump’s chief of staff, was more direct, saying that “a big name of the game is deterrence.” When a reporter asked if it was cruel to separate children from their mothers, Kelly said, “I wouldn’t put it quite that way. The children will be taken care of—put into foster care or whatever.”[59] As it turned out, “whatever” included forcing children to sleep on the bare floor of metal cages. As a series of horror stories turned public opinion against the policy, Trump showed no sympathy, instead raising fears about the adults who brought the children. “They could be murderers and thieves and so much else,” he said. “We want a safe country, and it starts with the borders, and that’s the way it is.”[60] But as the policy generated opposition from Republicans and even his own family members, he backed down.
“America the Beautiful” includes a verse that gives voice to a long-standing ideal: “America! America!/God mend thine every flaw/Confirm thy soul in self-control/Thy liberty in law!” Holding George Washington as an exemplar, the members of the Founding generation placed great emphasis on restraint, steadiness, and temperance. Americans have traditionally expected such characteristics in a chief executive. As head of state as well as head of government, the president embodies the nation’s respectability and legitimacy. A rash and undignified president makes the country look bad. As we saw in the previous chapter, Trump has caused reputational damage to the United States.
Presidential impulsiveness has more direct costs. Hamilton cautioned against “a disgraceful and ruinous mutability in the administration of the government,”[61] which would make it hard for Americans to understand public policy and act accordingly. Hamilton’s description could fit the Trump regime. Trump makes and unmakes policy on the fly, confusing citizens, and hindering negotiations with other officials. He promised lawmakers that he would work for gun control, then retreated under pressure from the National Rifle Association. He angrily told the Senate Democratic leader that he would shut down the government to get funding for his border wall, then blamed the Democrats when the shutdown took place. By 2019, the mutability of Trump’s policy views had reached the point where aides routinely ignored his more outlandish orders in hopes that he would soon forget.[62] There is one worrisome exception to this pattern. Uniformed military officers are duty bound to follow orders from the commander in chief, so if he impulsively decided to launch missiles, then the missiles would fly.
Some presidents, such as compulsive adulterers John Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson, have lacked self-control in their personal lives. Some writers observe that private sins do not necessarily spill over into public life.[63] With Trump, though, that distinction is meaningless. Throughout his pre-presidential career, he advertised his louche lifestyle, telling the media about his purported sexual adventures and appearing in soft-core Playboy videos (albeit fully clothed).[64] Just before the 2016 election, the Access Hollywood tape showed Trump delighting in his sexual impulses. “You know, I’m automatically attracted to beautiful—I just start kissing them. It’s like a magnet. Just kiss. I don’t even wait. And when you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything. Grab ’em by the pussy. You can do anything.”[65] He offered a forced and insincere “apology” and then responded to additional stories of his sexual harassment not only by insulting the women but by threatening to sue them. Sexual harassment is a pervasive problem in American society. It has reached into the military, where women find it difficult to report harassment by superiors. It does not help them that their commander in chief is America’s most notorious harasser, and that he has gotten away with it.
Trump’s lack of self-control has had other public consequences. The humiliation of his wives never troubled him, so exposure of his infidelity was hardly much of a threat—that is, until he was running for president. Some of the Christian conservatives who had stuck with him after Access Hollywood might have ditched him after hearing that he had cheated on Melania right after she gave birth. So he directed Michael Cohen to make the hush money payments that later came to light and landed Cohen in prison.
Unchecked impulses may draw the scrutiny of foreign intelligence officers who seek compromising information. Salacious stories about Trump sex videos are unverified and seem improbable. Another Trump impulse—greed—is a much more likely vulnerability. In the 1990s, Trump’s weak management skills combined with his reckless spending to produce corporate bankruptcies. Ivanka Trump said of that time: “I remember once my father and I were walking down Fifth Avenue and there was a homeless person sitting right outside of Trump Tower and I remember my father pointing to him and saying, ‘You know, that guy has $8 billion more than me,’ because he was in such extreme debt at that point, you know?”[66] Because he was such a deadbeat, American banks shunned him. He later got financing from foreign sources such as Deutsche Bank. According to New York Times reporter David Enrich, Trump-connected transactions set off alerts in a Deutsche Bank computer system that flags suspicious activity. Compliance staff members drafted reports for submission to the Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network. Bank executives never sent the reports.[67] The details of these dealings could prove damaging to Trump, either because they involve violations of the law or because they would show that he is less wealthy than he has claimed. Either way, possession of such information could give foreign entities a great deal of leverage over Trump. Presidents do not undergo background checks for security clearances, but if they did, Trump would surely flunk. According to the National Counterintelligence and Security Center, “foreign influence” is the top reason for clearance problems, followed by “financial considerations.”[68]
At a minimum, duty involves a willingness to exert oneself and accept tough aspects of a job such as candidly dealing with unwelcome news. During the summer of 2016, Trump posted 16 different tweets with the promise, “I will work hard and never let you down.”[69] More specifically, he pledged that he would be so devoted to duty that he would not have time for his golf courses in Scotland and Miami: “I love golf, but if I were in the White House, I don’t think I’d ever see Turnberry again I don’t think I’d ever see Doral again. I don’t ever think I’d see anything—I just want to stay in the White House and work my ass off, make great deals, right?”[70] During the first two and a half years of his presidency, he visited golf courses at least 198 times.[71] As of November 2019, he had done so on 23 percent of the days that he had been in office.[72]
Leaked copies of his schedule revealed that he spent about 60 percent of his “workday” in unscheduled “Executive Time,” much of which goes to watching cable television.[73] Trump often skips in-person intelligence briefings and barely glances at written materials from national security aides.[74] And worse still, he rejects information that is not consistent with his attitudes, and he has openly insulted intelligence officials for providing it. In January 2019, he tweeted: “Perhaps Intelligence should go back to school!”[75] Former CIA brief David Priess told NBC: “This is the first president that the intelligence community has had to deal with whose instinctive departure point is not the truth. He goes from his belief first.”[76]
Some duties are unique to the president, especially the constitutional responsibility to “take care that the laws be faithfully executed.” We have already seen how Trump has violated this duty by obstructing justice, inviting foreign interference in our elections, and advising Border Patrol officers to lie to judges. After the 2018 Democratic takeover of the House, he also stonewalled legitimate congressional inquiries and requests for information. Undoubtedly the remainder of his tenure will supply other examples.
Over and above the duty to the letter of the Constitution, a president also has broader responsibilities to the democratic system itself.[77] One is respect for the rights of Americans. We have seen how he has tried to use the machinery of government against his political opponents, but his rhetoric is just as disturbing. In 2019, he tweeted: “Do you believe that the Failing New York Times just did a story stating that the United States is substantially increasing Cyber Attacks on Russia. This is a virtual act of Treason by a once great paper so desperate for a story, any story, even if bad for our Country.”[78] National security officials told the Times that they had no security concerns with the report. Trump accused the paper of a capital crime because of another revelation: the officials were reluctant to tell Trump about the details of the operation, lest he either scuttle it or reveal sensitive information to the Russians.[79] Around the same time, the premiere of a new film prompted reporters to ask him about his role in railroading the Central Park Five. He refused to acknowledge the violation of their rights. “You have people on both sides of that,” he said. “They admitted their guilt.”[80]
Acceptance of responsibility is another duty of the commander in chief and head of the executive branch. “The buck stops here,” read the famous sign on Harry Truman’s desk. After the Bay of Pigs, Kennedy said: “There’s an old saying that victory has 100 fathers and defeat is an orphan. Further statements, detailed discussions, are not to conceal responsibility because I’m the responsible officer of the Government.”[81] Trump, by contrast, always tries to blame others for bad outcomes. After Navy SEAL Willian “Ryan” Owens died during a secret mission in Yemen, the commander in chief pointed at the brass: “Well, this was a mission that was started before I got here. This was something that was, you know, just—they wanted to do. And they came to see me and they explained what they wanted to do, the generals, who are very respected. My generals are the most respected that we’ve had in many decades, I would—I believe. And they lost Ryan.”[82] He blamed his predecessor for his family separation policy at the border: “You know, under President Obama you had separation. I was the one that ended it.”[83] Wrong: in contrast to his “zero tolerance” policy, family separations rarely occurred under Obama. Perhaps Trump’s most telling abdication of responsibility came when reporters asked him about the 2019 government shutdown. Turning Truman’s famous saying on its head, he said: “The buck stops with everybody.”[84]
As head of state, the president has to serve all the people, not just co-partisans. As head of a political party, the president must often fight with the opposing party. These roles are always in tension, but chief executives have usually tried to reconcile them by refraining from practices such as calling names or making partisan comments at nonpartisan events. Trump crosses these lines all the time. He regularly attacks “Crooked Hillary” Clinton, “Crazy Nancy” Pelosi, and “Crying Chuck” Schumer. He tosses partisan red meat into places where it does not belong, including a gathering of Boy Scouts. Introducing Secretary of Health and Human Service Tom Price at the 2017 Boy Scout Jamboree, Trump said, “hopefully, he’s going to get the votes tomorrow to start our path toward killing this horrible thing known as Obamacare that’s really hurting us, folks. By the way, you going to get the votes? He’d better get them. He’d better get them. Oh, he’d better—otherwise, I’ll say, Tom, you’re fired.” And then he free-associated about Michigan in the 2016 election. “My opponent didn’t work hard there, because she was told [AUDIENCE BOOS], she was told she was going to win Michigan, and I said, well, wait a minute, the car industry is moving to Mexico.”[85] Even worse than goading teens and preteens into booing a former secretary of state, he brought partisanship right into the Pentagon. “The federal government remains shut down because Congressional Democrats refuse to approve border security,” he said to uniformed military and civilian staff of the Defense Department in January 2019. “The Party has been hijacked by the open borders fringe within the Party. The radical left becoming the radical Democrats.”[86]
Trump’s attitude toward John McCain offers a fitting summary of his character and his scorn for presidential duty. McCain’s courage and integrity stood in stark contrast to Trump’s cowardice and sleaze. During the 2008 fall campaign, McCain treated his opponent with respect, swatting down the fears that Trump would later stoke. At a town hall meeting, McCain sought to reassure an audience member who said that he was “scared” of an Obama presidency: “I have to tell you he is a decent person and a person that you do not have to be scared (of) as president of the United States.” To a woman who said that she could not trust Obama because he was an “Arab,” he replied: “No, ma’am, no ma’am. He’s a decent family man, citizen that I just happen to have disagreements with on fundamental issues, and that’s what this campaign’s all about.” And to questioners who said that he should hit Obama harder, he said: “We want to fight and I will fight. But we will be respectful. I admire Senator Obama and his accomplishments. I will respect him.”[87] McCain was a loyal American leader who showed how to express loyal opposition. Trump resented him for it. Four years later, he complained in a tweet: “The @BarackObama campaign keeps highlighting a web video of John McCain being nice & respectful”—as if respect were a bad thing.[88]
Trump kept lashing out. “He’s not a war hero,” he said in 2015 of McCain. “He was a war hero because he was captured. I like people who weren’t captured.”[89] It struck many people as odd that a man who had dodged the Vietnam draft—and lied about it—would belittle an American hero who had endured years of torture in Vietnam and passed up early release out of duty to his comrades. Lindsey Graham tweeted: “If there was ever any doubt that @realDonaldTrump should not be our commander in chief, this stupid statement should end all doubt.”[90] He continued: “At the heart of @realDonaldTrump statement is a lack of respect for those who have served—a disqualifying characteristic to be president.”[91]
In 2017, McCain enraged Trump by casting the decisive vote against a Republican healthcare bill, and giving a thumbs-down gesture for emphasis. McCain could not have had ulterior political motives for the vote, because he knew that he would never run for office again. He had just learned that he had an aggressive brain cancer that would kill him. Instead of acknowledging that McCain had cast a vote on principle, Trump repeatedly attacked him, often with insults that had nothing to do with the healthcare issue. The attacks continued as McCain lay on his death bed, and even after he died. Three postmortem tweets tell us much about their author:
“Spreading the fake and totally discredited Dossier ‘is unfortunately a very dark stain against John McCain.’ Ken Starr, Former Independent Counsel. He had far worse ‘stains’ than this, including thumbs down on repeal and replace after years of campaigning to repeal and replace!”[92]
“So it was indeed (just proven in court papers) ‘last in his class’ (Annapolis) John McCain that sent the Fake Dossier to the FBI and Media hoping to have it printed BEFORE the Election. He & the Dems, working together, failed (as usual). Even the Fake News refused this garbage!”[93]
“He was horrible with what he did with repeal and replace. What he did to the Republican party and to the nation and to sick people who could have had great healthcare, was not good. So I’m not a fan of John McCain and that’s fine.”[94]
For comparison, consider Lyndon B. Johnson and Robert F. Kennedy, whose deep mutual hatred left a mark on Democratic Party politics throughout the 1960s. LBJ cursed RFK in private, but was always circumspect in his public comments about his rival. And when RFK lay dying from an assassin’s bullet, Johnson spoke to the nation: “At this moment, the outcome is still in the balance. We pray to God that He will spare Robert Kennedy and will restore him to full health and vigor. We pray this for the Nation’s sake, for the sake of his wife and his children, his father and his mother, and in memory of his brother, our beloved late President.”[95] Unlike Trump, he did not subsequently whine about a dead man who had opposed his policies. Johnson knew how to talk like a president, buttoning up his private feelings for the sake of the country.
In 2019, the Trump White House was planning a presidential trip to Japan. Staffers asked the Navy to keep the U.S.S. John S. McCain out of sight during the visit. Contradicting initial denials from the White House, the Navy eventually acknowledged that it had received a request to minimize the warship’s visibility, but that it kept all ships in their proper places. It probably irked Trump that the Navy responded this way. John McCain once explained the difference between the Trump mindset and the military mindset: “He is in the business of making money and he has been successful both in television as well as Miss America and others. I was raised in a military family. I was raised in the concept and belief that duty, honor, country is the lodestar for the behavior that we have to exhibit every single day.”[96]
The president has a responsibility to seek the best people for jobs in the executive branch. In the 18th-century prose of Federalist 76, Hamilton wrote that the chief executive should “investigate with care the qualities requisite to the stations to be filled, and to prefer with impartiality the persons who may have the fairest pretensions to them.”[97] Anyone entering the White House with a normal human sense of duty would try to meet this standard. Trump did not. His 2016 transition process was scandalously slapdash, and when it came to researching potential appointees, he delegated much of the work to young and inexperienced staffers at the Republican National Committee. Even their cursory review of potential nominees revealed red flags. The vetting form for Scott Pruitt, under consideration as EPA administrator, warned about “allegations of coziness with big energy companies.” Representative Tom Price (R-GA), a contender for Health and Human Services secretary, reportedly faced “criticisms of management ability.” [98] Trump did not care. He appointed both of them anyway, and both eventually had to resign in disgrace. Many other officials also got into trouble as well. Trump had promised to drain the swamp, but all he did was bring in more alligators.
For Trump, a key consideration in personnel choices is loyalty—not loyalty to the Constitution and laws of the United States, but personal loyalty to Donald Trump. He will favor job candidates who flatter him and parrot his views, even if they are unfit. In 2019, he planned to nominate a pair of sycophants to the Federal Reserve, and their qualifications were so poor that they ran into opposition from otherwise-compliant Republican senators. They pulled out. Trump did name a highly competent chair of the Federal Reserve, but then his policies diverged from Trump’s preferences. Disregarding the century-old principle of Federal Reserve independence and talking like a mob boss chewing out an unruly henchman, Trump said: “Here’s a guy, nobody ever heard of him before, and now I made him, and he wants to show how tough he is? O.K. Let him show how tough he is.”[99]
Trump’s contempt for the rule of law sends powerful signals throughout the executive branch. From her departmental account, HUD official Lynne Patton retweeted a defense of Secretary Ben Carson that also attacked Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY). Her Twitter post likely violated the Hatch Act, which forbids federal employees to use government time or resources for political activities. “Just retweeted this amazing tweet from both of my Twitter accounts—professional and personal,” she then wrote on Facebook. “It may be a Hatch Act violation. It may not be. Either way, I honestly don’t care anymore. These people are determined to try to ruin and discredit a good man.”[100] Under criticism for disregarding the law, she then tweeted: “What part about ‘I don’t give a shit’ don’t you understand?”[101]
After Trump aide Kellyanne Conway attacked Joe Biden, reporters pointed out to her that the Office of Special Counsel (OSC) had found that some of her previous comments violated the Hatch Act. Conway was dismissive. “Blah, blah, blah,” she said. “If you’re trying to silence me through the Hatch Act, it’s not going to work. Let me know when the jail sentence starts.”[102] In mid-June, OSC recommended her removal:
Ms. Conway’s disregard for the restrictions the Hatch Act places on executive branch employees is unacceptable. If Ms. Conway were any other federal employee, her multiple violations of the law would almost certainly result in removal from her federal position by the Merit Systems Protection Board. As a highly visible member of the Administration, Ms. Conway’s violations, if left unpunished, send a message to all federal employees that they need not abide by the Hatch Act’s restrictions. Her actions erode the principal foundation of our democratic system—the rule of law.[103]
“In interview after interview, she uses her official capacity to disparage announced candidates, which is not allowed,” said Special Counsel Henry Kerner, a Trump appointee. “What kind of example does that send to the federal workforce? If you’re high enough up in the White House, you break the law, but if you’re a postal carrier or a regular federal worker, you lose your job?”[104] The chief executive saw no problem, however, and Conway stayed on the job.
When future dictionaries define the term “bad influence,” they need only show a picture of Donald J. Trump. Some of his underlings and appointees were obviously bad right from the start, as is clear from the felonies of campaign chair Paul Manafort and national security adviser Michael Flynn. More generally, he brings out the worst in the people around him, baring their weaknesses and encouraging their darkest impulses. His administration rewards obsequious praise for the boss and discourages critical thinking about issues. Following the president’s lead, political appointees expect that they should be harshly partisan, legal restrictions be damned. For Trump, there is no such thing as right and wrong, only winning and losing. In his eyes, the winners are strong, and the losers are weak. When he conveyed to subordinates under investigation that they should “stay strong,” he was not urging them to show moral courage by telling the truth. Instead, he was adopting Mafia language suggesting that they could beat the rap if only they did not rat him out. His example teaches that ethical transgressions are no big deal, unless they hurt Trump. In place of “always do right,” the operative motto is “never get caught.”
As Michael Gerson writes, “Trumpism is an easygoing belief system that indulges and excuses the stiffing of contractors, the conning of students, the bilking of investors, the exploitation of women and the practices of nepotism and self-dealing. A faith that makes losing a sin will make cheating a sacrament.”[105]
James Madison, Federalist 51, https://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/fed51.asp.
George Washington, Farewell Address, September 19, 1796, online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project, https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/farewell-address.
From John Adams to Massachusetts Militia, October 11, 1798, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Adams/99-02-02-3102.
James Madison, Virginia Ratifying Convention, June 20, 1788, http://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/documents/v1ch13s36.html.
James Madison, Federalist 55, https://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/fed55.asp.
James Q. Wilson, The Moral Sense (New York: Free Press, 1993).
Robert A. Heinlein, “Our Noble, Essential Decency,” 1952, https://thisibelieve.org/essay/16630.
Alexander Hamilton, Federalist 68, https://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/fed68.asp.
From George Washington to Catharine Sawbridge Macaulay Graham, January 9, 1790, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Washington/05-04-02-0363.
Eliana Johnson and Daniel Lippman, “Trump’s ‘Truly Bizarre’ Visit to Mt. Vernon,” Politico, April 10, 2019, https://www.politico.com/story/2019/04/10/donald-trump-mount-vernon-george-washington-1264073.
Khizr Khan, speech to Democratic National Convention, Philadelphia, July 28, 2016, https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/full-text-khizr-khans-speech-2016-democratic-national/story?id=41043609.
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House Oversight, Hearing with Michael Cohen, 19.
Steve Reilly, “USA Today Exclusive: Hundreds Allege Donald Trump Doesn’t Pay His Bills,” USA Today, June 9, 2016, https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/elections/2016/06/09/donald-trump-unpaid-bills-republican-president-laswuits/85297274.
Russ Buettner and Charles V. Bagli, “How Donald Trump Bankrupted His Atlantic City Casinos, but Still Earned Millions,” New York Times, June 11, 2016, https://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/12/nyregion/donald-trump-atlantic-city.html.
“Annotated Transcript: The Aug. 6 GOP Debate,” Washington Post, August 6, 2015, https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2015/08/06/annotated-transcript-the-aug-6-gop-debate.
Reuben Kramer and Christian Hetrick, “Donald Trump in Atlantic City: Jackpot or crackpot?” The Press of Atlantic City, February 10, 2016, https://www.pressofatlanticcity.com/news/donald-trump-in-atlantic-city-jackpot-or-crackpot/article_7ae16c2c-3d14-11e5-aa3b-5b415c6c45e9.html.
Timothy Bella, “‘And Now It’s the Tallest’: Trump, in Otherwise Somber Interview on 9/11, Couldn’t Help Touting One of His Buildings,” Washington Post, September 11, 2018, https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2018/09/11/and-now-its-the-tallest-trump-in-otherwise-somber-9-11-interview-couldnt-help-touting-one-of-his-buildings.
Philip Bump, “On 9/11, Trump Pointed Out He Now Had the Tallest Building in Lower Manhattan. He Didn’t,” Washington Post, September 11, 2018, https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2018/09/11/trump-pointed-out-that-he-now-had-tallest-building-lower-manhattan-he-didnt.
Ross Buettner, “Feds Gave Donald a Quick Bundle,” New York Daily News, January 29, 2006, https://www.nydailynews.com/archives/news/feds-gave-donald-quick-bundle-titans-9-11-funds-set-small-biz-article-1.558429.
Cameron Joseph, “Donald Trump’s Claim He Got $150G in Post-9/11 State Funds for Small Businesses Because He Helped People in Need Is Unfounded, Docs Show,” New York Daily News, September 10, 2016, https://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/exclusive-trump-didn-post-9-11-funds-helping-people-article-1.2786879.
David Boaz, “Donald Trump’s Eminent Domain Love Nearly Cost a Widow Her House,” The Guardian, August 19, 2015, https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/aug/19/donald-trumps-eminent-domain-nearly-cost-widow-house.
Larry Kudlow, “Kelo Was Un-American,” National Review, July 28, 2006, https://www.nationalreview.com/kudlows-money-politics/kelo-was-un-american-larry-kudlow.
Nick Penzenstadler, “Elderly Trump University Plaintiffs Die Waiting for Checks,” USA Today, May 26, 2017, https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2017/05/26/elderly-trump-university-plaintiffs-die-waiting-checks/102193734.
Commission on Presidential Debates, September 26, 2016, Debate Transcript, https://debates.org/voter-education/debate-transcripts/september-26-2016-debate-transcript/.
House Oversight, Hearing with Michael Cohen, 14.
David Barstow, Susanne Craig, and Russ Buettner, “Trump Engaged in Suspect Tax Schemes as He Reaped Riches from His Father,” New York Times, October 2, 2018, https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/10/02/us/politics/donald-trump-tax-schemes-fred-trump.html.
US Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York, sentencing memorandum in United States of America v. Michael Cohen.
Russ Buettner and Susanne Craig, “As the Trumps Dodged Taxes, Their Tenants Paid a Price,” New York Times, December 15, 2018, https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/15/us/politics/trump-tenants-taxes.html.
“Presidential Profiteering: Trump’s Conflicts Got Worse in Year Two,” Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, January 17, 2019, https://www.citizensforethics.org/presidential-profiteering-trumps-conflicts-got-worse.
Reid Wilson, “Republicans Spend More Than $4 Million at Trump Properties,” The Hill, May 24, 2019, https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/445307-republicans-spend-more-than-4-million-at-trump-properties.
Brad Heath, “Trump Picks Golf Club, Mar-a-Lago Members as Ambassadors,” USA Today, February 8, 2019, https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/investigations/2019/02/08/donald-trump-picks-ambassadors-golf-club-mar-lago-members/2748260002.
Richard Luscombe, “‘Pay-for-Access to Trump Club’: Mar-a-Lago Faces Renewed Ethics Concerns,” The Guardian, March 16, 2019, https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/mar/16/mar-a-lago-trump-season-end-controversy-ethics-concerns.
Representative Mark A. Takano, letter to Secretary Robert Wilkie, February 8, 2019, https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/5732493-2019-02-08-Letter-Fr-Chairman-Takano-to-VA-Sec.html.
Remarks by President Trump and Prime Minister Varadkar of Ireland before Bilateral Meeting, Shannon, Ireland, June 5, 2019, https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/remarks-president-trump-prime-minister-varadkar-ireland-bilateral-meeting-shannon-ireland.
Alexander Hamilton, Federalist 72, https://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/fed72.asp.
Michael D. Shear and Eileen Sullivan, “‘Horseface,’ ‘Lowlife,’ ‘Fat, Ugly’: How the President Demeans Women,” New York Times, October 16, 2018, https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/16/us/politics/trump-women-insults.html.
“Trump on Accuser: She Would Not Be My First Choice.” CNN, October 14, 2016, https://www.cnn.com/videos/politics/2016/10/14/donald-trump-on-accuser-she-not-my-first-choice-sot.cnn.
Jordan Fabian and Saagar Enjeti, “Trump Vehemently Denies E. Jean Carroll Allegation, Says ‘She’s Not My Type,’” The Hill, June 24, 2019, https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/450116-trump-vehemently-denies-e-jean-carroll-allegation-shes-not-my-type.
Marlow Stern, “The Time Donald Trump Turned Away in Disgust While a Man Was Bleeding to Death in Front of Him,” The Daily Beast, September 28, 2017, https://www.thedailybeast.com/the-time-donald-trump-turned-away-in-disgust-while-a-man-bled-to-death-in-front-of-him.
Gabriel Sherman, “Final Days,” New York, October 29, 2016, http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2016/10/trump-campaign-final-days.html.
Brian Kilmeade, “President Donald Trump on Tax Reform: We’re the Highest Taxed Nation in the World, We Need the Tax Cuts,” Fox Radio News, October 17, 2017, https://radio.foxnews.com/2017/10/17/president-donald-trump-on-tax-reform-were-the-highest-tax-nation-in-the-world-we-need-the-tax-cuts.
John M. Donnelly, “Pentagon Document Contradicts Trump’s Gold Star Claims,” Roll Call, October 20, 2017, https://www.rollcall.com/news/politics/after-trump-claim-white-house-still-lacked-casualty-list.
Betsy Klein, “Trump’s Note Card for Parkland Shooting Discussion: ‘I Hear You,’” CNN, February 21, 2018, https://www.cnn.com/2018/02/21/politics/trump-parkland-notecard/index.html.
Charities Aid Foundation, CAF World Giving Index 2018, October 2018, https://www.cafonline.org/docs/default-source/about-us-publications/caf_wgi2018_report_webnopw_2379a_261018.pdf.
Marc Fisher, “‘Grab That Record’: How Trump’s High School Transcript Was Hidden,” Washington Post, March 5, 2019, https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/grab-that-record-how-trumps-high-school-transcript-was-hidden/2019/03/05/8815b7b8-3c61-11e9-aaae-69364b2ed137_story.html.
David A. Farenthold, “Trump Boasts about His Philanthropy. But His Giving Falls Short of His Words,” October 29, 2016, Washington Post, https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-boasts-of-his-philanthropy-but-his-giving-falls-short-of-his-words/2016/10/29/b3c03106-9ac7-11e6-a0ed-ab0774c1eaa5_story.html.
David A. Fahrenthold and Rosalind S. Helderman, “Missing from Trump’s List of Charitable Giving: His Own Personal Cash.” Washington Post, April 10, 2016, https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/a-portrait-of-trump-the-donor-free-rounds-of-golf-but-no-personal-cash/2016/04/10/373b9b92-fb40-11e5-9140-e61d062438bb_story.html.
Farenthold, “Trump Boasts about His Philanthropy.”
David A. Farenthold, “This Is the Portrait of Donald Trump That His Charity Bought for $20,000,” Washington Post, November 1, 2016, https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2016/11/01/this-is-the-portrait-of-himself-that-donald-trump-bought-with-20000-from-his-charity.
“A.G. Underwood Announces Stipulation Dissolving Trump Foundation under Judicial Supervision, with AG Review of Recipient Charities,” December 18, 2018, https://ag.ny.gov/press-release/ag-underwood-announces-stipulation-dissolving-trump-foundation-under-judicial.
Dan Alexander, “How Donald Trump Shifted Kids-Cancer Charity Money into His Business,” Forbes, June 6, 2017, https://www.forbes.com/sites/danalexander/2017/06/06/how-donald-trump-shifted-kids-cancer-charity-money-into-his-business.
David A. Farenthold, “Trump Boasts about His Philanthropy. But His Giving Falls Short of His Words,” Washington Post, October 29, 2016, https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-boasts-of-his-philanthropy-but-his-giving-falls-short-of-his-words/2016/10/29/b3c03106-9ac7-11e6-a0ed-ab0774c1eaa5_story.html.
Remarks by President Trump in Briefing on Hurricane Maria Relief Efforts, October 3, 2017, https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/remarks-president-trump-briefing-hurricane-maria-relief-efforts.
Peter Baker, “As a New Hurricane Roars In, Trump Quarrels over the Last One,” New York Times, September 13, 2018, https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/13/us/politics/trump-denies-puerto-rico-death-roll.html.
Donald J. Trump, Twitter post, April 2, 2019, https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1113041708730802176.
Donald J. Trump, Twitter post, April 2, 2019, https://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/1113044765405315073.
“Sessions Says He Hopes Child Separation Policy Will Serve as a Deterrent,” Axios, June 18, 2018, https://www.axios.com/sessions-says-he-hopes-child-separation-policy-will-serve-as-a-deterrent-e1b7d3b2-60ef-4099-a3d2-2c3ce986dca3.html.
John Burnett, “Transcript: White House Chief of Staff John Kelly’s Interview with NPR,” National Public Radio, May 11, 2018, https://www.npr.org/2018/05/11/610116389/transcript-white-house-chief-of-staff-john-kellys-interview-with-npr.
Remarks by President Trump at a Meeting with the National Space Council and Signing of Space Policy Directive-3, June 18, 2018, https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/remarks-president-trump-meeting-national-space-council-signing-space-policy-directive-3.
Hamilton, Federalist 72.
Aaron Blake, “Trump Says ‘Nobody Disobeys My Orders.’ Here Are 15 Recorded Instances of Exactly That,” Washington Post, April 22, 2019, https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2019/04/22/trump-says-nobody-disobeys-my-orders-heres-how-wrong-he-is.
Dennis F. Thompson, “Constitutional Character: Virtues and Vices in Presidential Leadership,” Presidential Studies Quarterly 40 (March 2010): 23–37.
Itay Hod, “Note to Rudy Giuliani: Trump Appeared in 3 Playboy Videos,” The Wrap, June 7, 2018, https://www.thewrap.com/note-rudy-giuliani-trump-appeared-3-soft-core-porn-videos.
“Transcript: Donald Trump’s Taped Comments about Women,” October 8, 2016, https://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/08/us/donald-trump-tape-transcript.html.
Alyssa Fisher, “Ivanka Talks about Her Father Admitting He Was in Massive Debt in Old Clip,” Forward, May 9, 2019, https://forward.com/fast-forward/424037/ivanka-trump-president-trump-samantha-bee-debt.
David Enrich, “Deutsche Bank Staff Saw Suspicious Activity in Trump and Kushner Accounts,” New York Times, May 19, 2019, https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/19/business/deutsche-bank-trump-kushner.html.
National Counterintelligence and Security Center, “Fiscal Year 2017 Annual Report on Security Clearance Determinations,” August 27, 2018, p. 10, at https://www.dni.gov/files/NCSC/documents/features/20180827-security-clearance-determinations.pdf.
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