Democrats fighting to preserve our Constitution and our democracy from the likes of Trump should not get stuck thinking that facts and reason will win the day, because Trump makes up his own facts and his followers don't care. There was a time you called a person like Trump a liar.
But that's not the word I have in mind because all the pinocchios from all the fact checkers in all the world don't seem to slow Trump down.
Another word or two comes to mind when I read journalist/historian Peter Range Ross who writes about clear similarities between Trump's rise and that of an earlier politician:
. . .to any serious student of Hitler’s frightening and unforeseen rise to power in Germany, the recurring echoes in Trump’s speeches, interviews and his underlying thinking have become too blatant to overlook.
Peter Range Ross isn't the only one making this comparison. Lev Raphael, who writes about survivors of the Holocaust also says it.
As does conservative writer Kathleen Parker, who listened to Hitler's speeches as a child and now sees a clear similarity to Trump (read her column and it makes sense).
Even Erik Erikson of right-wing RedState blog tweeted this:
Trump’s speech sounded better in the original German.
But Peter Range Ross made one error in his Washington Post Trump-Hitler comparison:
Trump seems profoundly ignorant of history . . . Although Trump may know nothing of Hitler’s techniques, his instincts are uncannily reminiscent of them.
According to Ivana Trump in a 1990 Vanity Fair article, Trump is very familar with Adolf Hitler.
Donald Trump appears to take aspects of his German background seriously. John Walter works for the Trump Organization, and when he visits Donald in his office, Ivana told a friend, he clicks his heels and says, “Heil Hitler,” possibly as a family joke . . .
It isn't just tasteless Hitler jokes. There is also this:
Last April, perhaps in a surge of Czech nationalism, Ivana Trump told her lawyer Michael Kennedy that from time to time her husband reads a book of Hitler’s collected speeches, My New Order, which he keeps in a cabinet by his bed. Kennedy now guards a copy of My New Order in a closet at his office, as if it were a grenade. Hitler’s speeches, from his earliest days up through the Phony War of 1939, reveal his extraordinary ability as a master propagandist.
“Did your cousin John give you the Hitler speeches?” I asked Trump.
Trump hesitated. “Who told you that?”
“I don’t remember,” I said.
“Actually, it was my friend Marty Davis from Paramount who gave me a copy of Mein Kampf, and he’s a Jew.” (“I did give him a book about Hitler,” Marty Davis said. “But it was My New Order, Hitler’s speeches, not Mein Kampf. I thought he would find it interesting. I am his friend, but I’m not Jewish.”)
Later, Trump returned to this subject. “If I had these speeches, and I am not saying that I do, I would never read them.”
Ivana's account fits with the close similarity in political thought between Trump and Hitler. So add too more words to the pile. Nazi. And fascist. But neither of those are the word I mean.
I'm also going to skip ”crazy”, ”insane” and ”irrational”. Because simply laughing at Trump won't do it. Don't expect John Stewart or John Oliver to save us. We aren't in the Bush years or the McConnel stonewalling of Obama's program where satire was a useful political tool. Fascism is immune to ridicule, if anything ridicule is making the Trump movement stronger.
But I also don't use those words because I don't think Trump is crazy, insane or irrational. He knows exactly what he is doing – just as he knew what he was doing when he refused to rent to African Americans in the 70s or when he led a lynch mob to hang the Central Park Five in the 90s – young African American men who were innocent of the crime for which Trump wanted them executed. And Trump certainly knew what he was doing when he more recently became ”Birther-in-chief”. So add bigot and racist to the list, but those aren't the words I’m talking about either.
The word I'm looking for, that now best fits Trump and his followers is traitor.
With his disrespect of the constitution, his promise to ignore laws and institutions (he will torture, for instance, even if it is illegal) Trump is a traitor to our democracy. And the ”constitutional conservatives” who follow him are traitors to their own political philosophy. Suddenly they follow a man who says he'll fix everything all by himself. He'll just do it ”so fast”. A man who doesn't even know what Article I of the Constitution says:
When asked by one of the people in attendance about how he would protect Article I of the Constitution, which outlines the powers of the legislative branch, he said he would "protect Article I, Article II," and even "Article XII." Sounds good, until you realize that there are only seven articles.
I never especially liked Barry Goldwater's partisan creed: ”Extremism in defense of liberty is no vice”. But it was far better than the Trump screed: ”Extremism is no vice”.
The Christian conservatives who follow Trump betray an even higher power, turning traitor to their own God when they follow a man who claims ”you have to be wealthy in order to be great”.
As opposed to the actual founder of their religion who said, ”It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God.”
Of course these sorts of Christians long ago threw that quote overboard and instead emphasize a narrow version of personal sexual morality. But Trump stomps on that as well, with his constant bragging about his sexual prowess, both inside and outside his multiple marriages. There are many quotes I could use, but this one serves as well as any:
. . . it really doesn’t matter what the media write as long as you’ve got a young, and beautiful, piece of ass . . .
The ultimate definition of traitor, however, is co-working with enemies of the nation. The Republican Party under Trump has now thrown in their lot with Russia and Vladimir Putin. Trump called NATO obsolete and recently said he may not abide by NATO Treaty obligations should Russia invade the Baltics. Putin – an unrepentant communist turned fascist – wants to reclaim the land of the former Soviet Union and has already grabbed the Crimea Penisula. Fears that Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania could be next are not far-fetched.
The Republicans – thanks to Trump – just changed their platform to make it more Russia friendly when it comes to the Ukrainian war.
Trump has been very complimentary of Vladimir Putin, saying the Russian autocrat is a “strong leader” and adding that he and Putin could have “a very good relationship”.
Putin in his turn has praised Trump. But Putin has gone far beyond compliments. He is also meddling in our election, trying to tilt things to favor Trump. Evidence is strong that Russians connected to Putin's government broke into Democratic computers and leaked emails in an attempt to damage Hillary Clinton.
This from the Washington Post:
Credit for the internecine furor that disrupted the Democratic Party on the eve of its convention should go to Vladimir Putin. As The Post has reported, cybersecurity experts say Russian intelligence operatives were likely responsible for the hacking of the Democratic National Committee’s computer network, as well as for leaking to the Moscow-friendly WikiLeaks website some 20,000 emails. The trove appeared online Friday, just in time to create discord between supporters of Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders as they headed to Philadelphia . . .
One of the few changes in the GOP platform pushed by the Trump campaign was the weakening of language calling for support for Ukraine’s current democratic government . . . The DNC emails appeared on WikiLeaks the next week.
Some political analysts doubt that KGB-style tricks will ultimately sway votes in a wide-open U.S. election — especially as Moscow has barely bothered to disguise its authorship. Yet the fact that Mr. Putin is trying is remarkable and disturbing — as is the motivation Mr. Trump has given him to meddle.
Trump's reaction?
Trump on Monday dismissed as a "joke" claims by Hillary Clinton's campaign that Russia is trying to help Trump by leaking thousands of emails from the Democratic National Committee.
"The new joke in town is that Russia leaked the disastrous DNC emails, which should have never been written (stupid), because Putin likes me," Trump wrote as part of a series of Tweets. "Hillary was involved in the email scandal because she is the only one with judgement (sic) so bad that such a thing could have happened."
Trump laughs it off as a joke and ignores the fact that Putin is implicated in the hack.
If Russia had broken into Republican computers in an attempt to help the Democrats, Trump and his Republicans would be calling it treason.
Shouldn't our side call it that? Richard Nixon was forced to resign over his physical break-in of Democratic headquarters in the 1972 election. Are there really going to be no repercussions when Trump's friend Putin steps in to try and rig our election?
The best word for Trump, given that he refuses to condemn Putin and Russia for their actions? Traitor.
Traitor Trump.
Traitor is also the right word for the Republicans who continue to enable a man who ignores everything they have claimed to believe all these years — and then on top of it subverts our democracy on a weekly basis.