As Donald Trump mouthed the presidential oath of office in 2017, I puzzled over how he could raise his right hand and put his left on the Bible with his fingers crossed behind his back. Guess what? He didn’t feel a need to. The reality-show host hit his mark and read his lines, that’s all. Trump doesn’t believe in the Constitution or the Declaration of Independence or honor or fidelity or God’s judgment. And certainly not in democracy. As for crosses, use your imagination.
Trump is the center of his own universe and the sun at the center of his followers’ heliocentric one. With his poll numbers continuing their slide into blowout territory, he is frightened. Frightened of losing the immunity from prosecution his office affords. And like frightened, cornered animals … dangerous. Beware the teeth and claws.
Kyle Murphy was until recently a senior analyst at the Defense Intelligence Agency (D.I.A.). He is also a citizen of these United States. Murphy was among thousands of peaceful Black Lives Matter protesters in Lafayette Square when Trump unleashed two-legged police dogs and tear gas on them so he could pose with a Bible in front of St. John’s Church. Probably the only time since his inauguration Trump has had a hand on one.
Murphy’s job at the D.I.A. was studying autocratic rulers across the globe to watch for signs of destablization that might lead to civil unrest and violent crackdowns. Like Ben in The Graduate, he is worried about his future. Murphy writes at Just Security:
I left government service after more than a decade because I lost faith in the courage of the Secretary of Defense and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff to refuse unlawful orders from the President. They effectively labeled me and other Americans expressing our views in a peaceful assembly as enemies. They authorized troops to use overwhelming force and set a dangerous precedent by enabling the president to ignore state and local officials’ objections and deploy federal forces in response to popular protests. While the military is, thankfully, out of the spotlight for now, the president has turned to other eager allies — in the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Justice — who believe their components of the federal government can clamp down on dissent with a veneer of legality.
I have seen up close the president’s disdain for democratic values, and recent events should be put in the context of a continuous slide toward authoritarianism. In 2015, I was detailed to the White House as an apolitical civil servant on the National Security Council (NSC) staff. My term was set to conclude in January 2017, but I agreed to extend for two months at the request of NSC leaders to support an orderly transition between administrations. I briefed President Donald Trump before several introductory calls to foreign heads of state, and as is customary, I listened in and prepared the official transcripts. I was appalled by the ways he actively undermined the democratic principles we have long aspired to model and to advance globally.
“Each day, Trump’s approach looks more like the autocrats I warned about as an analyst,” Murphy concludes.
Murphy refuses to work for the clampdown. His prescription is “massive turnout for elections and non-violent protest … basic acts of civic participation.”
But that recommendation is less than reassuring seeing that the acting president is working to prevent massive election turnout and to employ violence when his security police cannot provoke it. On Thursday, Trump again accused the Obama administration of spying on his political campaign, “which is treason.”
Trump is pulling out all the stops to kneecap the U.S. Postal Service ahead of an election amidst a pandemic in which a majority of citizens may vote by mail. Trump is clearly unhappy that his Department of Justice bodyguard, Attorney General Bill Barr, is not on the attack against domestic enemies in advance of November 3.
Steve Benen writes at Maddowblog:
“Bill Barr has the chance to be the greatest of all time, but if he wants to be politically correct, he’ll be just another guy, because he knows all the answers, he knows what they have, and it goes right to Obama and it goes right to Biden,” Trump said.
To the extent that reality still has any meaning, the conspiracy theory the president described is ridiculous. No one spied on his campaign. His perceived enemies did not commit treason. No one in the Obama White House, U.S. intelligence agencies, or federal law enforcement committed “the crime of the century.”
That is more likely to have been committed by Trump, writes admitted (former) Trump “fixer and designated thug,” Michael Cohen, in his upcoming book. Cohen released the forward Thursday:
He projects his own sins and crimes onto others, partly to distract and confuse but mostly because he thinks everyone is as corrupt and shameless and ruthless as he is; a poisonous mindset I know all too well. Whoever follows Trump into the White House, if the President doesn’t manage to make himself the leader for life, as he has started to joke about—and Trump never actually jokes- will discover a tangle of frauds and scams and lawlessness. Trump and his minions will do anything to cover up that reality, and I mean anything.
You’d best put your weekends to good use stopping the clampdown.
Correction: Defense Intelligence Agency.
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