Trump was asked for what he is thankful this Thanksgiving. His answer says it all. He is thankful for himself and how he has made this country so much better and stronger. With this, how could he award himself anything other than an A plus, putting himself in the same league as George Washington, Abe Lincoln and FDR.
What is as bizarre as any sitting president saying this with a straight face is that this is what we have come to expect from Donald Trump. Behavior that would normally be expected in a comedy routine is now expected from this president, and becoming normal in real life. Except that it is not funny.
Added to what could be a comedy routine is his explanation of why Republicans lost so many House races. It was because of fraud, he says — all those people voting for Democrats, then disguising themselves, and voting again, over and over — very unfair. Unexplained is how poll workers would allow the same person to vote again once they signed the register. Trump is implicitly accusing poll workers of total incompetence, or being complicit in a vast conspiracy. But then, ignorance is normal for this president.
It has become normal for this American president to praise dictators. It’s not that the U.S. hasn’t supported dictators in the past. We have, just as long as they proclaimed themselves to be “anti-Communist.” But Trump’s praise of dictators and his expressed envy of their authoritative power have reached new levels with his explicit attacks on institutions that are constitutionally designed to prevent the seizure of such power.
Trump’s continuing attack on the court system as an independent co-equal branch of government was menacing enough to solicit a rare blowback by Supreme Court Chief Justice Roberts. Instead of acknowledging the court system as a co-equal branch of government, Trump either does not understand that role, or understands that role but simply would prefer that the court be an instrument of presidential power.
Justice Roberts was correct in asserting the rationale for an independent court system. But his case was weakened by asserting that there is no such thing as an “Obama appointee” or a “Bush appointee.” Actually, there is such a thing, and in the vast majority of cases with partisan implications, one can predict how each appointee will vote.
It should also be pointed out that continuing court appointees by one party over a long time period, in this case Republican, can tilt the system toward that party.
Blowback such as the rebuke of President Trump by Chief Justice Roberts is rare. Republicans, with the aid of vapid media clones who insist on false equivalence reporting, remind us that President Obama during his 2010 State of the Union speech, criticized the Court’s Citizen United Decision, and received blowback from the Court.
This is another classic case of false equivalence. Many observers, including the late Senator McCain and former Senator Russ Feingold, criticize court decisions. Conservatives do it and liberals do it. Obama was criticizing the decision of the court. In contrast, Trump hates the existence of the Court system as a check on his power. There is absolutely no equivalence of criticizing decisions of the court vs. trashing the court as a check on presidential power.
Just as it is normal for a president to criticize decisions of the court, it is normal for presidents to be irritated with their media coverage. There are plenty of reasons to criticize performance of the media, as these columns criticize the shallow and false equivalence reporting of, especially, the electronic media chattering class. But criticizing the performance of the media is not equivalent to trashing an independent free press as an “enemy of the people.”
No past president, however much criticized by the media, has referred to the press as “enemy of the people,” has insisted that reporters are “terrible people,” or urged followers to punch them or rough them up during his rallies. No past president has praised a politician for physically attacking a journalist for asking a tough question. Trump’s praise of the Montana congressman for such an act has come to be expected of him — normal behavior for this president.
Even as attacking institutions that are intended to be a check on presidential power is becoming normalized, there were obvious warnings of this to come — warnings that were ignored by the very media that would itself soon come under attack.
When General Michael Flynn whipped up Republicans during the GOP convention to lynch mob type frenzy, with “lock her up,” the nation should have paid more attention. Powerful politicians lock up political prisoners in a banana republic, not in a democracy. Even more ominous and depressing than an army general leading the charge to lock up a political adversary was the ensuing national silence on this undemocratic spectacle. Other than a few journalists reminding us that this was “unusual,” there was hardly a peep from the media at the time.
Flynn’s fascistic performance at the Republican convention, to cheers of the delegates, was a harbinger of things to come. Trump is totally frustrated that he cannot order the Department of Justice to investigate Hillary Clinton. He is shocked and angry that the system is not designed to work that way. Of greater concern is that if Trump had his way, the system would work that way.
Not all contingencies could have been anticipated in the Constitution, nor are they all codified in law. The system depends on those in power adhering to unwritten norms, including norms of the Department of Justice. For the sake of this democracy, those wielding power must be especially wary, and guard against a president who violates those norms in the quest for absolute power.
A democracy cannot afford a march to dictatorial power to become normal.
— John Waelti of Monroe, a retired professor of economics, can be reached at jjwaelti1@tds.net. His column appears Saturdays in the Monroe Times.
