Does democracy matter anymore?
Video: Crossroads (The Lincoln Project)
I often ask people I know who support Trump whether they’d prefer to live in a democracy with policies they don’t agree with, or in an autocracy (or theocracy) with policies they support.
Their answer is all too often “that’s a tough one”.
A “tough one”? Since its founding, America has been a shining beacon to the world. Truth, justice, and the American Way. In America,
Words matter.
Character matters.
Competence matters.
Democracy matters.
Words matter
As Vermont’s Republican Governor, Phil Scott, recently said
“Elected officials across the country, but especially at the top, must realize that words matter. We all need to be aware that violent groups exist and we must stop the rhetoric that incites this pather to violence…. We are reaching a boiling point in this country, so it’s up to all of us to lower the temperature.”
Death threats against the targets of the President’s wrath
Trump’s political adversaries often require security protection after receiving violent messages and death threats each time they are targeted in tweets or public remarks by the president.
After dedicating his career to saving American lives, Dr. Fauci now requires a security detail of federal agents just to go out in public. His daughters recently received death threats and now require bodyguards as well.
After being interviewed by CBS’s Lesley Stahl shortly before Election Day, Trump complained that she showed “bias, hatred and rudeness” towards him and was “always going for the kill.” A short time later, she began to receive death threats and now requires armed security protection. (The irony of the 60 Minutes interviews is that Biden faced much tougher questions.)
After filing the whistleblower report that led to Trump’s impeachment, the CIA analyst spent months living in no-frills hotels under surveillance by CIA security and was driven to work by armed officers. Senior officials say some threats were so serious that without security, “there is a strong possibility that grave harm would have come to him.”
Rep. Adam B. Schiff (D-Calif.)
During his presentation of the impeachment case against Trump in the Senate, Schiff faced so many threats that he required round-the-clock security, officials said.
Plot to kidnap and execute the governor of Michigan
Shortly after Trump tweeted out “LIBERATE MICHIGAN!”, the FBI thwarted a violent plot to kidnap and execute Governor Gretchen Whitmer.
Even after the plot was foiled, Trump ramped up his rhetoric, saying:
“Michigan, she has to open up. She wants to be a dictator in Michigan. The people can’t stand her. And they want to get back and want to get back to work.“
Character matters
Would you do a business deal with Trump?
Would you trust him with your money?
I wouldn’t. I am certain that he’d screw me out of my money the second he had a chance, especially if things went badly.
And if I can’t trust him as a business partner, I certainly don’t trust him to run the country.
Cruelty is the point
His sister Maryanne Trump Barry, a retired federal judge, was recorded telling his niece:
“He has no principles. None. None…. and this cruelty. Donald is cruel.”
The people I know who support Trump often tell me that they don’t like Trump or his style, but they like his policies.
I don’t believe that. I think that, for them, his nonstop cruelty is a feature, not a bug. They call it “fighting back” but I think they enjoy seeing him insult, disparage and lie about the “other side” in order to “own the libs”.
I can understand how it might be satisfying in a vindictive way, but embracing conspiracy theories and inflaming anger further divides our country and can only lead to the fall of our great American experiment.
In every instance, he has put his own interests ahead of our country’s:
Russian attacks on our soldiers and our election
Multiple intelligence sources, including the CIA, reported that Russian intelligence operatives had offered bounties to Taliban-linked militants to kill U.S. troops. After Navy SEAL Team Six raided a Taliban outpost and recovered roughly $500,000 in U.S. currency, interrogations of captured Taliban militants from opposite ends of the country revealed that the money came from Russia.
But because it dealt with Russia, Trump immediately dismissed it as a hoax and refused to confront Putin about it.
Pandemic response
The easiest way to reopen the economy is with widespread mask usage and readily available testing. Yet instead, Trump chose to turn wearing masks into a political statement.
The New England Journal of Medicine writes:
The United States came into this crisis with enormous advantages. Along with tremendous manufacturing capacity, we have a biomedical research system that is the envy of the world. We have enormous expertise in public health, health policy, and basic biology…. And much of that national expertise resides in government institutions. Yet our leaders have largely chosen to ignore and even denigrate experts.
The Atlantic writes:
Trump “downplayed the severity of the disease, misled the country repeatedly about it, tried to pin the blame on local governments, did not “take responsibility at all” for the anemic American response, held massive rallies against scientific advice, hammered on states to re-open before it was safe, rejected easy safety measures, and undermined trust in our public-health institutions.”
He called back Americans living abroad so that he could tout closed borders, without a plan for safely receiving them. US citizens returning from overseas waited for hours in close quarters at US airports to get screened, and were told to share pens. One passenger described being in “very close quarters” and commented that “if we didn’t have the virus before, we have a great chance of getting it now!”
The result is that the United States has five times the death rate of Germany and 75 time the death rate of South Korea.
Rapidly growing threat from domestic terrorist groups
A study released last week warned that Pennsylvania, Georgia, Michigan, Wisconsin and Oregon are at high risk of election-related armed violence by heavily armed right-wing terrorist groups. But since these groups are staunch supporters of his, instead of focusing on reigning them in, Trump encourages them. “Stand back and Stand by!”
Competence matters
Trump 2016 presidential campaign was led by the most corrupt group of grifters and criminals ever assembled:
- Steve Bannon: Trump’s 2016 campaign CEO and former White House chief strategist. Indicted on fraud charges.
- Michael Cohen: Trump’s longtime personal attorney. Pleaded guilty to eight federal campaign finance charges and another charge of lying to Congress.
- Chris Collins: The first congressman to endorse Trump in 2016. Pleaded guilty to two federal charges related to insider trading.
- Michael Flynn: Trump’s former national security adviser. Pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about his communications with Russian officials.
- Paul Manafort: Trump’s 2016 campaign chairman. Convicted on eight federal tax and bank fraud charges.
- Rick Gates: Trump’s 2016 campaign deputy chairman. Pleaded guilty to conspiracy and lying to the FBI, in connection with the case against Manafort.
- Duncan Hunter Jr.: The second congressman to endorse Trump in 2016. Pleaded guilty to using campaign funds for personal expenses.
- George Papadopoulos: Foreign policy adviser on Trump’s 2016 campaign. Pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about his contacts with Russia.
- Roger Stone: A 2016 Trump campaign adviser and Trump’s former lobbyist. Convicted on seven counts of obstructing a congressional investigation.
- Elliott Broidy: Trump fundraiser and former top RNC fundraising official. Pleaded guilty to violating foreign lobbying laws by accepting millions of dollars to influence the Trump administration on behalf of Chinese and Malaysian interests.
- Brad Parscale: Trump’s former campaign manager. Arrested after an apparent suicide attempt, with authorities seizing 10 firearms from his home. Also under investigation for ‘stealing’ between $25-$40 million from Trump’s 2020 presidential campaign
- Alexander Acosta: Trump’s Secretary of Labor. As Miami’s top federal prosecutor, struck a deal to shut down the FBI investigation into accusations that Jeffrey Epstein had been trafficking underage girls for sex parties and reduced Epstein’s sentence from life in a federal prison to just 13 months in the county jail.
Democracy matters
Trump is trying to do to America what China did in Hong Kong
Foreign Policy magazine provides a concise summary of his first term:
“Trump has openly defied Congress and the courts, twisted foreign policy to serve his personal political interests, and turned a terrified Republican Party into his plaything.”
A recent Swedish university study reported a ‘dramatic shift’ in the Republican party under Trump. It describes how the GOP now closely resembles autocratic parties in Hungary and Turkey by shunning democratic norms, demonizing political opponents, and encouraging violence
As a result, the entire world has shut their borders to us.
Trump administration officials are speaking out
This has never happened before. Former high-ranking Trump administration officials are now publicly endorsing his opponent.
Video: Trump Administration Officials for Biden (Republican Voters Against Trump)
Threat to rule of law
20 former Republican US attorneys warned of threat to rule of law and endorsed Biden
Phillip Halpern — Former federal prosecutor for the U.S. Department of Justice
“After 36 years, I’m fleeing what was the U.S. Department of Justice — where I proudly served 19 different attorneys general and six different presidents…. I have respected our leadership regardless of whether we were led by a Republican or a Democrat. I always believed the department’s past leaders were dedicated to the rule of law and the guiding principle that justice is blind. ”
“[Yet] Donald Trump has made it crystal clear that there’s simply no place in his administration for anyone who places loyal service to their country over blind obedience to him. And that’s troubling to me because these are the actions of a dictator and not a patriot.”
Nora Dannehy — Top prosecutor on John Durham team resigned from the DOJ “because of AG Barr’s politicization” of the department.
Ronald Sanders — Trump appointee and head of an advisory council on federal pay resigned from his post Monday in protest over President Donald Trump’s executive order stripping civil service protections from many federal workers.
“I simply cannot be part of an Administration that seeks…to replace apolitical expertise with political obeisance.”
Threat to national security
Elizabeth Neumann — Former assistant secretary of counterterrorism and threat prevention at the Department of Homeland Security. Resigned after three years, implicating Trump in the rise of white nationalism and a failure to address the threat posed by domestic extremism. Accused him of making the country “less safe today” by paving the way for even more violence. (Marty Lederman, a professor of Constitutional law at Georgetown, goes further and has directly accused Trump of promoting terrorism, which he defines as the unlawful use of violence in furtherance of political or social goals.)
Miles Taylor — Former Chief of staff for Trump’s Secretary of Homeland Security. Accused the Trump administration of creating the conditions for domestic extremism to flourish, using his office for political purposes (such as directing officials to cut wildfire relief funding to California because voters there overwhelmingly opposed him in 2016), and offering pardons to officials who broke the law in cracking down at the border.
Brian Murphy — DHS official in intelligence and analysis. Filed a whistleblower complaint reporting having been twice told to hold back intelligence on the Russian threat over concerns that such information would make Trump look bad, and alleging having refused directions to make sections on white supremacist terrorism look less severe and add in a section on “violent ‘left-wing’ groups” (like demonstrators aligned with antifa) to bring them in line with President Trump’s public comments.
Failed pandemic response
Olivia Troye — Former homeland security adviser to Vice President Pence and an aide to the White House Coronavirus Task Force. Accused President Trump of being routinely disengaged during coronavirus meetings and regularly making public statements that were in total opposition to the scientific evidence discussed at task-force meetings — on issues such as mask-wearing and coronavirus treatments.
“Towards the middle of February, we knew that it was not a matter of if COVID would become a big pandemic here in the United States, it was a matter of when. But the president did not want to hear that because his biggest concern was that we were in a reelection year and how is this going to affect…his record of success..”
“The mask issue was a critical one. If we would have gotten ahead on that and stressed the importance of it, we could have slowed the spread significantly. It was detrimental that it became a politicized issue. It still lingers today.”
Rick Bright — Former director of HHS’s Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority and one of the administration’s leading vaccine experts. Filed a whistleblower complaint and testified that “lives were lost” because the administration lacked a coherent coronavirus plan on things such as masks. He also said political pressure was applied to promote unproven treatments, such as hydroxychloroquine.
What does America stand for?
The urgent task of rebuilding the fabric of our country. We need to focus on the things that we can agree define American exceptionalism. While we may not agree on specific policies, we should all be able to unite around a common vision.
That’s why I — a lifelong Republican — am voting for:
Joe Biden for President
Video: Biden’s Moment (The Lincoln Project)
