Their manner of departure speaks volumes. Slinking out of the White House ahead of schedule for one more fancy plane ride to their gaudy playground in Florida (on the taxpayers’ dime, of course), the Trumps will be demonstrating one last bit of the crude, no-class behavior that’s been emblematic of their entire wretched tenure.
Donald couldn’t even bring himself to attend the inauguration of the man who beat him. Never mind that in failing to do even this bare minimum he’d be thumbing his nose at a solemn national tradition, a hallmark of our democratic process. Never mind that instead of an affirmation of national unity, we instead got a showcase for Donald Trump’s insecurities. Hell, Melania couldn’t even be bothered to do the small courtesy of conducting a simple tour for her successor. Both honors, I might add, were bestowed on them with dignity and grace four years ago by their own predecessors, Barack and Michelle Obama. Talk about total lack of class. But in truth, these people never had any to begin with.
The Trumps are just bad people. Gilded, tacky, ostentatious, gold-leafed bad people, but bad people nonetheless.
The press should be relieved. It will be the last time they have to utter the cringe-worthy descriptor of “president” or “first lady” in front of their names. It will be the last time they have to face a thoroughly obnoxious boor who’s more interested in showering abuse on them than providing information for the American public. It will be the last time they have to pretend that either one of these people demonstrated any of the redeeming qualities we rightfully expect from a president and his spouse.
The career workers in our government agencies should be relieved. They no longer have to duck and cover to preserve their jobs against the whims an unbalanced sociopath who is trying to dismantle their work through deliberate sabotage and intentional disregard.
Our intelligence services should be relieved. They’re no longer forced to serve someone so obviously compromised and contemptuous of their jobs.
For the rest of us, Trump leaves a nation racked with hundreds of thousands of wholly unnecessary deaths in his wake, deaths that leave in turn millions of grieving spouses, sons, daughters, sisters, and brothers whose lives have been forever wrecked by his narcissism and sheer incompetence. He leaves an economy staggering and moribund for tens of millions of people. He leaves a population horrified and traumatized by the spectacle of seeing their most sacred institutions trashed in his name, just so he could watch from the Oval Office and feed his bottomless ego.
Of course he also leaves behind a long shit stain of corrosive, malignant policies, many of which (thankfully) will be reversed in the early hours of the Biden presidency, others which will take months or even years to wipe away. He leaves hundreds—if not thousands—of children permanently damaged by his forced separation policy. He leaves our federal agencies hollowed out as the political lackeys he appointed jump ship for their next sinecure—all except for the ideological fanatics who he appointed as lifetime judges, ensuring a continued, rabid conservative movement wholly unwanted by the vast majority of the population.
He leaves a country disgraced and distrusted, with good reason, by its former allies.
He leaves a generation of American schoolchildren with the lesson that Americans will reward racism, misogyny, crude and boorish behavior, and criminal disregard as long as it’s wrapped in an arrogant, bullying, insouciant package. He’s taught them to never admit when they’ve done something wrong. He’s taught them it’s acceptable to treat others, particularly the marginalized, like so much dirt. He’s taught many adults who should know better that they can practice such behavior as well, with no personal consequences.
As for his wife—well, I’ll try to be kind. She leaves nothing worth mentioning for a role to which she was manifestly unsuited. She’ll be forgotten, which is probably A-OK with her at this point.
Kevin Baker, for The New York Times, wrote the following in 2017, two months after Trump’s election, when every bad quality of this person had pretty much been revealed. At the time, Baker was in a state of despair at what had been wrought by the American people.
[W]hen I say that I have lost the America I knew, I’m not talking about policy, or even fundamental rights, disorienting as their loss would be. I mean a greater, almost spiritual faith that I had in my fellow citizens and their better instincts, something that served as my north star in all I wrote and all I did...
From assorted commentators I have heard that it is unfair or condescending to say that all Trump voters were racists, or sexists, or that they hated foreigners. All right. But if they were not, they were willing to accept an awful lot of racism and sexism and xenophobia in the deal they made with their champion, and demanded precious few particulars in return...
Today’s passive, unhappy Americans sat on their couches and chose a strutting TV clown to save us.
What they have done is a desecration, a foolish and vindictive act of vandalism, by which they betrayed all the best and most valiant labors of our ancestors. We don’t want to accept this, because we cannot accept that the people, at least in the long run of things, can be wrong in our American democracy. But they can be wrong, just like any people, anywhere. And until we do accept this abject failure of both our system and ourselves, there is no hope for our redemption.
What we saw on Jan. 6 was one last trashing of the country by a person who should have never been allowed near our government to begin with, let alone sitting at its pinnacle. At no time during his entire tenure did Trump exhibit the slightest ability to learn or grow from the experience, even as he was provided with opportunity after opportunity.
The fact that he now can’t even muster enough character to sit for his own sendoff as power is transferred to his successor illustrates perfectly just how grievous of a mistake Americans made four years ago.
It was, just as Baker says, a “foolish and vindictive act of vandalism.” And like all acts of vandalism, it left us with nothing but a huge mess to clean up.