I have a few questions for the most passionate supporters of the person currently occupying the Oval Office. If you happen to be a “forever Trumper,” please don’t reflexively elevate your dudgeon before hearing me out. I’m offering these queries with sincere respect for your opinions on public policy matters, irrespective of whether or not we agree on those issues. I ask them with no less regard for whichever of the endless buffet of pseudo-informational amuse-bouches you choose to sate your appetite for news about world events. (Sorry, that was an unnecessary and gratuitous shot at media outlets like Fox News and “InfoWars.” Force of habit.)
My first question is: How is it that your political sovereign can quantifiably, provably, lie to you (and the whole of the American public) on a frequent, near-daily, basis – with no loss of esteem by you for his personal credibility? Was rolling back a handful of regulations, enacting a top-heavy tax cut and appointing judges you find palatable — really worth the pretzeling you have to do with your personal values to make them comport with your leader’s endless prevarications?
I am thoroughly mystified at that. I’ve operated under the notion that the cadre of Trump loyalists is comprised of men and women with the same levels of intellectual heft as the general population. They are as sophisticated and guileless, as lucky and unlucky in love and everything else, as everyone else of every other ideological persuasion.
In sum, they are near-doppelgängers of the majority of Americans who didn’t vote for Donald Trump, and who don’t take at face value the magical claims and melodramatic exhortations, “Putin’s choice for President,” vomit tweets every day during his morning ablutions. What, then, accounts for the millions who take a deep dive into furniture-level naïveté when it comes to the mutterings of the man-child from Trump Tower? (Sorry again. The lexicon of my inner, “Never Trumper,” occasionally surfaces, despite my best efforts to the contrary.)
Take, for example, the assertion from Trump that Robert Mueller hired a group of “14 Democrats,” as lead prosecutors in his investigation. The implication, if not the explicit accusation, is that the whole undertaking is little more than a political “put-up job,” a ruse to unjustly wrangle the “Orange Donald,” into an orange jumpsuit.
The truth is that the career law enforcement and judicial professionals Mueller has hired are among the most accomplished - and incorruptible - criminal prosecutors and civil litigators our nation has to offer. While a few have made small, entirely legal and properly reported contributions to Democratic candidates, the majority do not have public, direct or substantive ties to any candidate, campaign committee, PAC, or other political organization. (Excepting, of course, Robert Mueller himself, who is, and always has been, a Republican.)
Furthermore, even if they were, “14 Democrats,” that fact alone would not automatically disqualify them from participating in the Mueller inquiry. Justice Department regulations don’t require federal prosecutors to have no identifiable party connections in order to do their jobs. Virtually all of the U.S. attorneys in the 94 prosecutorial districts around the country are political appointees. Trump himself fired nearly all of the previous administration’s U.S. attorneys on a single day and began nominating Republican-leaning replacements almost immediately. According to the DOJ’s rules (promulgated during the Reagan Administration), the test is whether those connections impede their ability to fairly and impartially pursue justice in the matter at hand. It’s undeniable that Trump is nakedly, and falsely, trying to discredit the lawful examination into whether a major American political campaign may have provided active assistance to a hostile foreign power in an unprecedented attack against our electoral infrastructure. Why are so many of you so blasé about this?
There are other factors to consider beyond the law. Over the last century or so, Americans have come to want their commander-in-chief in times of conflict to be the nation’s commiserator-in-chief during times of shared challenges and national tragedy. Think Ronald Reagan on the night of the Space Shuttle Challenger explosion. Think George W. Bush on the smoking rubble after 9/11. Think Barack Obama at the prayer vigil for the victims of the Sandy Hook shooting. A people who, thanks to mass transportation, mass media, and mass communications, instantaneously share every high and low of their daily lives - expect their national leader to help knit together their psyche when it’s shattered by horrific events and unspeakable terrors.
Now, think Trump in the hours and days after Charlottesville. Think Trump mindlessly firing rolls of paper towels at the hurricane-homeless in Puerto Rico. Think Trump’s grudge tweets about the teenaged survivors of the Marjorie Stoneman Douglas shooting. We’ve never had a smaller, darker soul, a less empathetic, more morally bankrupt figure in the presidency than we do now. To those of you who still daven to the Donald, how is it okay with you that your president constantly shrinks from the cultural and emotional expectations of his job?
I apologize for asking these questions, but I think they’re important. There are others that are every bit as worthy of being asked, as well. We have the most potentially dangerous dichotomy in our history between the aspirational nature of our national character and the malignant flaws of our purported leader. Much of the damage he is doing is deliberately inflicted in pursuit of cheap, partisan advantage (or worse, temporary gratification of the man’s eggshell thin ego). Trump turns for personal solace, for emotional oxygen, to you, the Trumpolytes who uncritically applaud every untruth and exaggeration he utters. But, if you begin to openly doubt him when what he says is beyond doubtful, to publicly condemn his assaults against common decency, to definitively part with him when he parts with ethical, and even legal, behavioral norms - he’s more likely to take a different path to find the external meaning his empty life lacks.
If you answer these questions, you will be doing your homeland – and its heritage of hope - a world of good.