Since beginning this blog, I have been concentrating
primarily on the danger that Donald Trump and his presidency present to our
democracy. It has seemed to me that amidst
the ongoing tidal wave of the President’s coarse, demeaning and outrageous
comments, commentators have been distracted from adequately exploring his
deeper danger to the democratic process.
That seems to be changing. In the past several days an editorial
(which I’ll examine today) and an opinion
column (which I’ll review in the next post) have appeared in the Washington
Post focusing on this specific
threat.
The Post
editorial suggests that Trump’s
“toxic influence” goes well beyond the “awful things” he says and does; more
importantly, the danger “lies in how he undermines democratic values in less
spectacular ways that go relatively unchallenged.” The editorial deserves to be extensively
quoted:
● Following the publication of an unflattering book, Mr. Trump insisted that the country should have tougher libel laws that would make it easier for powerful public figures such as himself to sue writers who say things that are “false” — that is, to gag critics the president does not like.● The president continued his paranoid smear campaign against the Federal Bureau of Investigation, suggesting that the FBI influenced the 2016 presidential election to his detriment and accusing a senior FBI investigator of committing treason for privately sending anti-Trump texts. He also implied that law enforcement scrutiny should focus on a political opponent, Hillary Clinton. The president’s assault on a nonpartisan law enforcement agency and his insistence on prosecuting political opponents suggest he does not understand the differences between advanced democracies and authoritarian states. So, too, did his contention that the “Court System” is “broken and unfair,” following a ruling he did not like.● With similar contempt for facts and fairness, the president called the Russia probes “the single greatest Witch Hunt in American history.” The inquiries include a formal law enforcement investigation based on ample evidence of Russian involvement in the 2016 election … [that] is is compelling. Nevertheless, Mr. Trump suggested that Republicans should “take control,” presumably to end the probes before they have fully accounted for the actions of a hostile foreign power and any Americans who may have helped. Congressional inquiries and special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s investigation into the hostile acts of an unfriendly foreign foe should be insulated from political pressure; instead, the president is demanding the pressure be ramped up.● Mr. Trump’s obsession with the Russian probes also was manifested in his suggestion that a U.S. senator, Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), broke the law by releasing non-classified testimony at the request of the witness who delivered it to lawmakers. Mr. Trump’s real objection was that the testimony undermined a conspiratorial narrative he had been building about the FBI’s Russia investigation.
While I have previously written in this blog about
these issues (with the exception of the last), it is, of course, much more
important that the mainstream press is, on the one-year anniversary of Trump’s
inauguration, highlighting them and their implications for our democracy.
