The same transformation has happened to more public servants than I can count. They’ve forgotten their oath is to the US Constitution, not to a man nor to a political base. Consequently, the Oval Office has become a welcome sanctuary to members of Congress who say the magic words: “Yes, Mr. President.” Those who stand up to him, a small number, to be sure, aren’t welcomed back. The servile attitudes are a danger to the presidency, to the Congress as an independent branch, and to our democracy.
Think about the time the president dismissed a string of poor countries as “shitholes” in a private meeting with Cabinet officials, aides, and members of Congress. The public outcry over Trump’s remarks—he was quoted as saying, “Why do we need more Haitians, take them out,” and that we needed less immigrants from “all these shithole countries” in places like Africa in favor of places like Norway—led to a prompt denial from Trump himself. “That was not the language used,” he tweeted. Trump demanded aides and allies to support him on this, which they did. Former homeland security chief Kirstjen Nielsen told the press she did not “hear” him use those words, and Senators Tom Cotton and David Perdue went on television to flatly deny that he said “shithole” when referring to the mostly black nations. First they attacked Democrats for misrepresenting the meeting, and then it was reported that they believed Trump said “shit house” rather than “shit hole,” which allowed them to deny it on a technicality.
Of course, everyone in the room knew that Trump had used crude words to describe those foreign countries. We’ve heard him make comments like that all the time, and he’s actually harkened back to the term “shithole” in private since. So why did people go out and pretend otherwise? To please their patron. Ironically, after forcing people to stand behind Trump’s denial, the White House basically conceded that Trump used vulgar language about the poor non-white countries, with Sarah Sanders telling reporters, “No one here is going to pretend like the president is always politically correct.”
History has shown the consequences of a climate where officials focus more on attending to “the principal” than heeding their own first principles. Studying in London in the mid-1700s, one of America’s soon-to-be Founding Fathers, John Dickinson, was struck by how a follower mentality had infected Great Britain’s once-revered political capital. “Such is the complacency these great men have for the smiles of their prince,” he wrote of English public servants, “that they will gratify every desire of ambition and power at the expense of truth, reason, and their country.” The environment led to widespread corruption, disputed elections, and a nation that ultimately went to war with itself. Donald Trump is America’s smiling prince.
Republican detractors today are a dwindling band. Those who stick their necks out deserve credit, though they’ve rarely gotten it from Trump voters. On the Senate side, Mitt Romney issued a Washington Post op-ed critical of the president and vowed to maintain an ongoing appraisal of Trump’s conduct, writing, “A president should demonstrate the essential qualities of honesty and integrity, and elevate the national discourse with comity and mutual respect… And it is in this province where the incumbent’s shortfall has been most glaring.” On the House side, Representative Justin Amash has been a staunch critic of the president and called on Americans to join in “rejecting the partisan loyalties and rhetoric that divide and dehumanize us.” His attacks have isolated him from the Republican Party, which he ultimately announced he was leaving.
Some leading Republicans have sought to atone for their past public support of Trump. Former House Speaker Paul Ryan once said he would never defend Trump, but he wound up having to do so weekly as the top Republican in Congress. Now out of office, he described his attitude toward the president much more candidly with journalist Tim Alberta:
I told myself I gotta have a relationship with this guy to help him get his mind right. Because, I’m telling you, he didn’t know anything about government… I wanted to scold him all the time. Those of us around him really helped to stop him from making bad decisions. All the time. We helped him make much better decisions, which were contrary to kind of what his knee-jerk reaction was.
Ryan is the rare former official willing to speak up. Many have remained quiet outside of government, although their experiences align closely with those of the former Speaker. They share the concerns outlined in this book. They have more to add, if they’ll find the courage. But even those who’ve dared to say something still feel deep down that it’s not enough. Because it’s not. No one is immune. Anyone aiding the Trump administration is, or was, one of his Apologists. They’ve all waited too long to speak out and haven’t spoken forcefully enough. Myself included.
CHAPTER 8
We the Electorate
“Who will govern the governors? There is only one force in the nation that can be depended upon to keep the government pure and the governors honest, and that is the people themselves.”
The verdict is in. Despite some accomplishments, it’s evident Donald Trump is behaving immorally, weakening the party he professes to lead, undermining democratic institutions, abandoning crucial US alliances, emboldening our adversaries, dividing Americans with hateful rhetoric and chronic dishonesty, and surrounding himself with people who will only reinforce his defects. It was easy to dismiss a pile of insider accounts about the severity of the situation. However, the pile is now a mountain, and the stories paint the portrait of a leader who handles the nation’s affairs with persistent negligence. Donald Trump deserves to be fired.
Yes, top officials have frequently hit the brakes to forestall disastrous presidential decisions, but as I noted in the beginning of this book, my original thesis in the New York Times was dead wrong. Americans should not expect that his advisors can fix the situation. We cannot. The question is what to do next. There are good and bad approaches for handling the historic leadership failures emanating from the Executive Office of the President. We must address the second category first.
Firing a President
A psychological phenomenon is affecting a large portion of the country. Some call it “Trump Derangement Syndrome” (TDS). If this were a clinical diagnosis, it would best be characterized as the disturbance in normal cognitive function resulting in irrational animus toward the president of the United States. Said differently: people who hate Trump so much that they can’t think straight. There is no doubt President Donald Trump is living rent-free in all of our heads. He occupies more daily mindshare, argument, and concern for the average American than any prior chief executive, but feverish consternation about a president shouldn’t lead us to automatically pursue drastic measures.
Those who suffer from TDS have had dark fantasies for years about how Trump’s tenure can be cut short. They’ve imagined he will be forced to resign for doing something so terrible that it shocks the conscience of the nation. They’ve prayed his cabinet will evict him by invoking emergency Constitutional provisions. They’ve yearned for him to be impeached and removed by the US Congress, or they’ve had other disgraceful thoughts that don’t merit discussion whatsoever but which perhaps deserve a visit from the US Secret Service.
On this score, I want to speak to Trump’s political opponents and his harshest critics, the ones who want him thrown out of office at any cost. I understand your frustration. I, too, have developed strong opinions about the president’s performance and whether he deserves to continue leading our great nation. But when we engage in careless speculation about the president’s ouster, we are promoting a level of anti-democratic behavior on par with the conduct for which we are criticizing Trump. It’s time to restate the obvious. Although Donald Trump is undoubtedly prone to contemptible behavior, we should not wish upon our nation the crisis of premature presidential expulsion. It might be how the story ends, but we must be reluctant to fire a president in non-electoral ways and should only consider doing so as an absolute last resort.