Spencer Critchley

Donald Trump

Trump’s Supporters Stick With Him—Even Now—Because of Psychology We All Share

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Donald Trump's star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame

People who still support Trump believe that despite all his other failings, he’s competent. He isn’t, and never has been, but it’s very hard for them to see this — even now — and one reason for that is a psychological trait we all share, though it shows up under different circumstances.

First a little background: Trump has been making it up as he goes along for his whole life, like he’s doing in his daily coronavirus briefings (see The Bulwark’s supercut below). Throughout his career he’s left wreckage in his wake, while managing to skim enough off the top of one failed scam after another to maintain the appearance of personal success.

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It’s Not Trump’s Fault, It’s Ours

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One of the most important influences on the Founders was Montesquieu, who came up with the idea of separation of powers — a pretty good day’s work, and a foundation of our Constitutional republic.

Montesquieu also identified a republic’s necessary, animating spirit: virtue.

Portrait of Charles-Louis de Secondat, Baron de La Brède et de Montesquieu by or after Jacques-Antoine Dassier
Charles-Louis de Secondat, Baron de La Brède et de Montesquieu, by/after Jacques-Antoine Dassier, via Wikimedia Commons

Virtue? I know, it sounds quaint.

That’s the problem.

If we citizens are to rule ourselves, each of us, as rulers, needs to care about doing what’s right in our civic life. But at the moment, too many of us, whether through inattention, ignorance, or outright cynicism, think having a Donald Trump as president is just fine.

In “The Spirit of Laws,” Montesquieu defines three kinds of government: monarchy, despotism, and republic. If a monarchy is to survive, it requires honor. Despotism runs on fear — sound familiar?

But a republic, since it is based on self-rule, requires virtue. For Montesquieu, virtue meant more than just morality, although it did mean that. He understood virtue in its classical sense, encompassing learning, judgment, and other capacities required of a citizen.

Portrait of Thomas Jefferson by Charles Willson Peale
Thomas Jefferson by Charles Willson Peale, via Wikimedia Commons

Jefferson was inspired by Montesquieu when he advocated for the primary importance of a free press and excellent public education. They were necessary to civic virtue:

“The basis of our governments being the opinion of the people, the very first object should be to keep that right; and were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter. But I should mean that every man should receive those papers & be capable of reading them.” (Letter to Edward Carrington, Jan. 16, 1787)

So how is it that all these years after Jefferson and Montesquieu, we find ourselves living under a wannabe despot?

It’s not Trump’s fault: he clearly can’t help being as low as he was made (by an abusive father, I’m guessing).

No, it’s our fault. It’s our fault for allowing it to become possible for a Donald Trump to even get close to the presidency.

Portrait of Benjamin Franklin by Joseph Duplessis
Benjamin Franklin by Joseph Duplessis, via Wikimedia Commons

For a country to reach a state as debased as the state we’re in, its rulers must have shirked their duty. And that would be us.

Benjamin Franklin, like Jefferson, like Montesquieu, saw this coming. When asked if America was to be a monarchy or a republic, he answered:

“A Republic, if you can keep it.”

The original model for the presidency was George Washington. Now it’s the Mafia.

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Portrait of George Washington
Portrait of George Washington by Gilbert Stuart (via Wikimedia Commons)

The most important, and most disturbing message of the Barr hearings and all the back and forth over the Mueller report:

The presidency was designed with George Washington as its model. The model we have now is, “Can you make the rap stick?” In other words, the Mafia.

You might think that’s hyperbole. But our current president enthusiastically agrees with it.

As he’s boasted repeatedly, his mentor — and his model for the the perfect US Attorney General — was the notorious mob lawyer Roy Cohn.

Mug shot of John Gotti
Roy Cohn client John Gotti (via Wikimedia Commons)

Throughout his real estate career, he did business with the New York mafia and then the Russian mafia — without them, he probably had no career. Building on a reported record of financial and tax fraud, stiffing creditors and investors, and six bankruptcies, he specialized in selling overpriced real estate in cash transactions to known Russian gangsters, or to anonymized entities in places like the Cayman Islands. No reputable business person does that. Money launderers do.

As the Mueller investigation and other proceedings have documented and as we see for ourselves in plain sight, Trump cajoles, pays off, or threatens witnesses who might testify against him. Those who do are “rats” who “flip.”

As he’s been telling us, over and over, he’s a mobster.

His cowering co-partisans have convinced themselves that’s the same as a president.

We’re supposed to as well. Will we?

The Time for Impeachment Is Here

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House of Representatives chamber
The chamber of the House of Representatives (public domain)

I think they were right to wait, but it’s now time for House Democrats to move forward with impeachment. Yes, it’s almost certainly doomed in the Senate by the Republican majority, which long ago chose power over patriotism. But sometimes doing what’s right requires doing what’s hard, and may even require accepting defeat.

If the rampant corruption documented by the Mueller report were to be accepted as unimpeachable, it would establish a terrible precedent and do further damage to our democracy.

And it may not be as politically costly as some fear:

1) The process begins, not ends, with a vote to impeach, and even that follows the proceedings that lead up to the vote. The airing of the evidence will take a long time. That time will not go well for Trump or his enablers.

2) The Trumpist strategy has been to count on the death of reading and overwhelm the public with video. Impeachment will turn the 400-plus pages of the Mueller report into months of very compelling video.

3) Yes, the Republicans will claim the impeachment vote was driven only by politics, but of course they will. If it’s not one lie, it’ll be another. Politics has always been rough, but the modern GOP is an ethical catastrophe.

4) In voting No to impeachment, Senate Republicans will put the failure of their integrity on the record — not just for this election season, but for all of history. Voters will be presented a clear choice (made much clearer by all those clips).

5) It will be a clear choice if, that is, Democrats don’t look like they too are afraid to stand up when it counts. If they do, they risk endorsing the core of Trumpism: nothing means anything, except power. Furthermore, they risk looking weak, which is as politically costly as it gets.

6) If and when impeachment is voted down in the Senate, yes, of course Trump will claim it as vindication. But he’s claiming vindication now. The Senate’s “vindication” will ring even more hollowly, and hopefully that doleful sound will wake up a few more voters.

But in the end, if voters have had every possible opportunity to see what Trump is and they still choose him again, that will be their democratic choice. We’ll have to accept that he really is what they want. As important as it is to defeat Trump, defending democracy is the reason.

Mueller Report: The “Fake News” Was Right

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Special Counsel Robert Mueller
Special Counsel Robert Mueller (public domain)

A few inescapable facts staring out of the Mueller report at anyone who still wants to believe in Trump:

(1) The “fake news” was right. Again and again, reporting by the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, CNN, NBC, and the rest is corroborated by contemporaneous records and the testimony of sworn eye-witnesses facing jail time if they lied — the same people who were the supposedly made-up anonymous sources for reporters. The “fake news” about Trump turned out to be as real as it gets.

(2) “Spying” (aka legal, court-ordered surveillance) doesn’t play a role in the report. As Watergate prosecutor Nick Akerman has pointed out, the federal indictments of Russians were full of evidence obtained by (legal) surveillance, but the Mueller report is based on testimony and documents.

(3) The same report that the president claims is a “complete and total” exoneration (BTW can someone explain the difference between “complete” and “total?”) can’t be phony, as the president also claims. Mueller can’t be both “honorable” and a “dirty cop.”

(4) The President of the United States is a fraud: both dishonest and incompetent. The report shows him repeatedly lying, instructing others to lie for him, attempting to commit crimes, and often being saved by how bad he is at it. President Trump is the demagogue the founders warned us about: corrupt and unqualified, possessed only of what Hamilton described as “talents for low intrigue, and the little arts of popularity” (Federalist 68). None of this is surprising to anyone who saw the reality of Trump’s business career as opposed to the reality TV show version — basically, the entire City of New York. But it should be shocking, and disqualifying, when seen in a president.