“The decision on Sergeant Bergdahl is a complete and total disgrace to our Country and to our Military,” tweeted President Trump immediately after a military court ruled that Bowe Bergdahl would not receive a prison sentence for desertion.
In June of 2009 Bergdahl walked off his military base in Afghanistan. Twenty-four hours later, the Taliban picked him up and held him for five years, during which time he was caged and tortured. The military tried to rescue him at least once, and a soldier was seriously wounded in the unsuccessful attempt. Sergeant Bergdahl was ultimately tried and convicted in a military court. He was dishonorably discharged but received no prison time. Trump’s tweet was in response to the military ruling.
Whatever one’s opinion of the court’s ruling, it’s important to focus on the President’s tweet and his later words also condemning the decision. In the American constitutional system, separation of powers (judicial, legislative, and executive [presidential]) provides an important structure for keeping one branch of government from becoming too powerful. As I pointed out in my September 24, 2017 post, Toward a Constitutional Crisis, this separation is a bedrock of our democracy.
While not technically an attempt to interfere with the judiciary, Trump’s tweeted critique of the Bergdahl decision is a direct challenge to the legitimacy of the judiciary and the structure of our democracy.
This is not, of course, his first attack on the judiciary. During Trump’s campaign, Federal Judge Gonzalo Curiel, overseeing a lawsuit against Trump University, made a ruling favoring the plaintiffs. Trump tweeted that the judge was a “hater.” Although Curiel was born in Indiana, Trump called him a “Mexican,” whose heritage meant he could not impartially oversee the case.
After a another federal judge blocked Trump’s executive order withholding funds from “sanctuary cities,” Trump tweeted that the ruling “undermines faith in our legal system and raises serious questions about circuit shopping,” and he called the decision “egregious overreach by a single, unelected district judge.” He had similar criticisms against several judges in the decisions against his attempted Muslim immigration bans.
It’s easy enough to think that these tweets are “just words” and, since the President says a lot of outrageous things, we shouldn’t dwell on his outrageous speech. But much of the power of the presidency lies in the words he speaks. We call that power the “bully pulpit,” and, especially in a polarized country that so little respects the media, what the president says has an out-sized impact, particularly on his followers.
It’s also been easy to say that the President doesn’t understand the power of his words. Almost a year after his inauguration, however, he has no such excuse. His continual critique of the judiciary is part of the larger attempt to further weaken our trust in government as I described in this previous post.
We take our democracy for granted, but democracy is fragile. It depends completely on our faith in it. Mistrust will destroy this precious gift.
