The Disaffected
This past Wednesday, as the the joint session of Congress was meeting to count the votes of the Electoral College, a few thousand Trump supporters, armed with flags, banners, MAGA hats and placards, stormed the Capitol building and overwhelmed the Capitol police. They made their way to the floors of the House and Senate chambers and into many congressional offices, all in an effort to prevent the Congress from carrying out its constitutionally mandated function. This was not a spontaneous event as for weeks the President had been encouraging his supporters to rally in Washington to protest the scheduled meeting of the Congress. His messages were echoed on social media sites where his supporters were encouraged to come prepared to do battle. Then, at the rally held that morning, the President, assisted by Rudy Giuliani and his two older sons, energized his supporters with complaints of how the election had been stolen from him and urged them to take their grievances to the Congress.
It’s understandable why white supremacists and those who look upon their automatic firearms as their principal source of personal security voted for the President. He has been an outspoken advocate for both groups -- even though he has actually done little to help either of them. He’s wrecked the nation’s economy and placed their health in jeopardy by mismanaging the coronavirus pandemic, while taking steps to limit their ability to obtain health insurance. In short, if they had feelings of insecurity before he took office, those feelings can now only be worse. Yet, they were not only standing by Trump, but in participating in a siege of the Capitol, they demonstrated their willingness to go to war for him to overturn the results of the election.
On its face, this seems wholly illogical and can only be explained in terms that they are operating on the basis of a different set of facts. They obviously believed Trump’s protestations that he was being wrongfully denied a second term not just because they had repeatedly heard that message (not just from Trump, but also from his Congressional enablers), but also because they wanted to believe it. Accordingly, there is little anyone can say that will dissuade them. One can only hope that they will eventually realize that they have been maliciously manipulated into participating in an unlawful insurrection.
Everyone has to be impressed that President Trump received over 74 million votes in the November election. By any standard, that was a remarkable achievement for any presidential candidate, and even more so for one who had single-handedly turned a dangerous, but otherwise controllable, communicable disease into an unmitigated disaster. Thus, the enthusiastic support the President received in the election is undeniable evidence of his extraordinary powers of persuasion. Surely everyone who supported his re-election is deeply disappointed even though the facts say they shouldn’t be. The ability to energize popular support is an important trait of a political leader, but when that ability is placed in someone who subordinates the nation’s interests to his own and who declines to take advice from those with greater knowledge it can lead to bad results as recent history has demonstrated.
Of the 74 million Americans who voted for the President, roughly 10 million are among the nation’s wealthiest individuals and they admittedly would have benefitted financially from a second term for the President. That’s because his principal achievements were intended to benefit himself and those similarly situated. Those achievements include his 2017 tax legislation and his rescission of a multitude business and environmental regulations that protect the nation’s citizens but inflict additional costs on those who are regulated. While it’s easy to understand why these individuals chose to vote for Trump, what may be good for them is not necessarily good for the vast majority of Americans and for the nation as a whole. The monies that the federal government gave away in tax reductions could have been much more productively applied to improvements in the nation’s infrastructure that would have fueled the nation’s economy in years to come, benefitting all of the nation’s citizens.
Many of the President’s supporters are deeply religious individuals and are undoubtedly appreciative of the President’s willingness to appoint judges who support laws banning abortions. What is difficult to understand is how forcing poor women to give birth to children they either don’t want or can’t afford to raise is going to make this a better world or somehow please the deity they worship. The evidence is overwhelming that children raised in poverty have a very high chance of living the remainder of the lives in poverty and imposing economic costs on their fellow Americans. It is also difficult to understand how religious individuals who are taught to love and respect their fellow man can feel comfortable being led by a president who preaches hate and sows division within our nation.
While many of the President’s supporters originally accepted his assertion that the coronavirus was a hoax, by the time of the November elections they unquestionably had already received ample evidence (in the form of 225,000 COVID deaths) that this pandemic was anything but a hoax. Even those who were willing to acknowledge the danger posed by the pandemic seem to have been willing to accept the President’s assertions that his administration had done a credible job containing the virus. Accepting those assertions, however, required a wholesale disregard of the facts. The U.S. has now had roughly 23 million confirmed cases of the coronavirus which is twice as many as India (a far more populous country which has the second highest number of confirmed cases). Similarly, the U.S. has now had over 385,000 COVID deaths which is almost twice as many as Brazil (the country with the second largest COVID death toll). Even viewing our nation’s COVID death toll against the roughly 200 other nations on a per capita basis, the U.S. ranks 14th from the bottom and 18th out of 24 when measured against the world’s developed nations. Considering the fact that the U.S. has the world’s most advanced medical facilities and its Center for Disease Control (CDC) is considered the world’s finest public health agency, this can only be regarded as a dismal performance.
It is also truly amazing that people who were so emotionally devastated by the attacks our nation experienced on 9/11 which killed almost 3,000 Americans appear almost unconcerned about the staggering number of Americans that have died from COVID. Over the past month the 9/11 death toll has been exceeded on an almost daily basis. Nor is it easy to understand why those same people are quick to credit Donald Trump for a growing a thriving economy which he inherited from Barack Obama but are unwilling to hold him responsible for the economic crisis which began during his presidency.
A few of the President’s supporters who are willing to recognize these issues nevertheless credit him for his handling our nation’s relationships with foreign countries. Some even credit him with being tough against Russia. These views are even more difficult to understand. Trump walked away from the Paris Climate Accord which had been adopted by all of the nations on this planet save Syria (which is in the middle of a civil war) and Nicaragua. He did this while proclaiming climate change a hoax and asserting that the Paris accord would have adversely affected our nation’s economy. He also pulled the U.S. out of the Transpacific Partnership (generally referred to as the “TPP”) which united the economic power of twelve Pacific rim nations to form a trading bloc to deal with China. He then started a trade war with China proclaiming that “Trade wars are good and easy to win.” To date, there has been no victory to celebrate in that ongoing conflict. Instead, Americans have not only had to pay an additional $60 billion for Chinese goods because of the tariffs he imposed, but have also had to bail out the nation’s farmers to the tune of another $50 billion when they were hurt by China’s retaliatory tariffs.
Trump’s handling of the Iran nuclear disarmament deal (or “JCPOA”) is yet another example of a Trump foreign policy fiasco. Yes, Trump was right in pointing out that Obama lifted economic sanctions on Iran allowing it to recover $100 billion of its own monies without getting Iran to agree to cease its mischief making efforts throughout the Middle East. The problem is that Trump’s re-imposition of sanctions has not caused Iran to cease those actions and his disavowal of the JCOOA has put it back on the road to developing its nuclear weapons. While all of this was going on, through his dealings with North Korea, he taught Iran an important lesson; namely, that having nuclear weapons is the way to win the respect and cooperation of the United States.
Trump’s foreign policy failures go well beyond a handful of misguided actions. Throughout his presidency he has rejected our decades-old policy of trying to achieve world order by working side by side with other leading nations. Instead of trying to build coalitions with other nations that seek common goals, Trump has consistently chosen to conduct the nation’s foreign policy through bilateral negotiations. It’s not just that he has turned his back on working through international alliances; Trump has gone out of his way to insult the leaders of our closest Democratic allies (like Germany, Canada, Australia and the United Kingdom), while at the same time embracing the planet’s most ruthless dictators (like Vladimir Putin, Kim Jong Un, Mohammed Bin Salmon, Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Rodrigo Duterte). I would like to think that his preference for bilateral dealings is simply a product of his confidence in his own powers of persuasion, coupled with our nation’s economic and military might. My fear, however, is that his preference for bilateral negotiations is because he seeks to make deals that are beneficial to his personal interests, as opposed to those of the nation he represents.
This brings me to his actions toward Russia which have not only been detrimental to our nation’s interests, but have been so solicitous of Russia as to be a total embarrassment. His first action toward Russia as President was to roll back some of the sanctions that the Obama administration had imposed on Russia in response to Russia’s meddling in our 2016 elections. In doing this, he accepted Putin’s word over that of all of the U.S. intelligence agencies. This action was followed by his infamous meeting in the Oval Office with Russia’s Foreign Minister and its U.N. Ambassador during which he disclosed some top secret intelligence provided by Israel. He next held up the military aid to Ukraine approved by Congress in an effort to coerce that country into assisting him in his re-election efforts even though doing so had the effect of compelling Ukraine to accept the disadvantageous peace terms then being offered by Russia. Then he ordered the withdrawal of U.S. forces in Syria which left our Kurdish allies in that conflict unprotected and gave Russia a free hand in helping the Syrian government crush its opposition. When Russia violated the terms of our short-range nuclear weapons treaty, rather than confront Russia, he simply agreed to abandon the treaty. On top of all of this, his obsequious behavior in each of his meetings with Putin was so over-the-top that it made everyone wonder whether he was being blackmailed by Putin. Of course, we won’t ever know because Trump excluded all of his aides from those meetings and seized the notes of the translator who was the only other person present.
Some may feel that the foregoing assessment of Trump’s foreign policy forays is unfair because it doesn’t mention Trump’s efforts to help Israel achieve peace with its Arab neighbors. I addressed those efforts in my article entitled “Israel’s New Path To Peace.” At this point, at least one Arab country (the United Arab Emirates) has agreed to exchange ambassadors with Israel and three others (Bahrain, Morocco and Sudan) have agreed to begin to “normalize” their relationships with Israel. While these are symbolic steps, they change very little as Israel has not been at war with any of these countries and has been quietly engaged in trade with them. The problem is that these steps further weaken the position of the Palestinians which might sound like a good thing, but which undermines the likelihood that there will ever be a separate state for the Palestinians. That will inevitably lead to the Israelis’ ultimately having to incorporate the Palestinians within their nation’s borders, leaving them with the uncomfortable choice of being either a Jewish state or a democracy. Thus, while Trump’s achievement may have been a tactical success, it may yet prove to be a strategic blunder.
All of this raises one question: if Trump allowed the pandemic to spread virtually unchecked, caused our economy to go into a tailspin, and upended our nation’s foreign policy while aggravating income and wealth inequality, what was the message he delivered in his reelection campaign that caused so many voters to support his candidacy? It couldn’t have been his party’s political platform as the Republican Party departed from tradition and failed to even formulate a platform for the 2020 election. Nor did Trump even say what he planned to do during a second term. That question was posed to him during the presidential debates and he repeatedly declined to answer.
Even as the coronavirus pandemic was wreaking havoc throughout the nation, he rarely mentioned it, giving only assurances that the nation would soon have vaccines that would quickly eradicate it. As for the nation’s economy, he promised a quick rebound without mentioning any programs he intended to pursue to achieve that outcome or what he proposed to do in the meantime to relieve the plight of millions of Americans experiencing financial distress. While he did permit his Treasury Secretary and Chief of Staff to negotiate new economic stimulus legislation, he made no effort to engender Republican support for what they were negotiating and when an economic stimulus bill was eventually negotiated in late December, he immediately announced that it wasn’t to his liking.
The reality is that Trump’s campaign had no affirmative agenda. It consisted solely of mischaracterizing and besmirching the agenda of his opponent and seeking to attack the character of his opponent’s son. Trump warned that under a Biden administration the police would be defunded and the nation would be overrun by left-wing extremists. He further asserted that Biden would bow to the will of Progressives within his party and make the U.S. a socialist country. Of course, nothing in Biden’s past or published policy statements gave any indication that his administration would act as described by Trump. Because Trump constantly repeated this message which was echoed on right-wing media his supporters nevertheless came to believe it.
Perhaps the greatest misdeed perpetrated by Trump was his recent efforts to fleece his own supporters. Since the results of the November election were first confirmed in the media, Trump has raised donations totaling more than $200 million ostensibly for the purpose of contesting in the courts the elections in certain battleground states which he has asserted were tainted by massive voter fraud. It’s now become apparent that this was simply a “big con” and the lawsuits were just a ruse to convince Trump supporters to believe that they were contributing to a real effort to rectify an election that had been usurped by wrongful means. The important factor, however, is that only a small fraction of the money raised was actually expended in this futile undertaking, and 60% of the balance (likely to be in excess of $200 million) now resides in accounts controlled by the President and which can be used for his personal benefit. Perhaps someday those who contributed to this scam will recognize that they, and not Trump, are the ones who have been defrauded. Unfortunately, this is not likely to happen soon.
Meanwhile, the ambivalence among Democrats regarding whether to pursue Trump for his long list of misdeeds may have been shattered by the Capitol siege. Both Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer, who will be leading the House and Senate during the incoming Congress, have demanded that President Trump resign (which is highly unlikely) or that Vice President Pence invoke the 25th Amendment and remove him. That too is unlikely to happen. As a fallback they are in the process of pursuing another impeachment proceeding. These actions are likely to be followed by criminal proceedings and Congressional hearings into the Capitol siege and other Trump misdeeds which will go a long way to rectifying the stream of misleading information that Trump and his co-conspirators in the Congress and the right-wing media have been disseminating in recent months.
There are also other signs that the brand of demagoguery employed by Trump may be more difficult to practice in the future. Both Fox News and the Wall Street Journal (both owned by Rupert Murdock) have come to realize the dangers inherent in disseminating lies in order to build an audience of persons distrustful of government and longing for a Deus ex Machina to reverse their waning fortunes. Wednesday’s siege of the Capitol has also caused Facebook and Instagram to suspend Trump’s posting privileges and Twitter has permanently closed his account. In addition, Amazon has jettisoned Parler, a right-wing social media network, from its web hosting service. While these efforts will not extinguish right wing extremism, they will certainly make mobilizing it more difficult.
At this point, four Republican Senators (Romney, Sasse, Toomey and Murkowski) have belatedly admitted that President Trump is a danger to the nation and should be removed from office. Sadly, it took a failed revolution to cause them to make that admission. While all Americans hope that this nation can be made better, those who have supported Trump will now hopefully realize that his promises of restoring America’s greatness were nothing more than a demagogic appeal to return this nation to a time when it was less tolerant of minorities for the sole purpose of enhancing his own personal prestige and wealth.