3 Years of Donald Trump
Published in Le Devoir
(Canada) on 20 January 2020
by François Brousseau (link to original)
Exactly three years ago, the Trump era began with a huge lie about the weather in Washington and the size of the crowd at the new president’s inaugural address. The fact is that it started to rain as soon as Donald Trump started speaking. Both witness accounts and weather reports leave no room for doubt.
It is also undeniable that far fewer people attended Trump's inauguration than Barack Obama's, held eight years earlier in the same place.
These were two trivial facts that were easy to verify, but facts that Trump still mercilessly railed about at the same evening at the traditional inaugural ball. "The crowd was unbelievable today. I looked at the rain, which just never came, you know, we finished the speech, went inside, it poured then we came outside."
A ridiculous debate ensued in the days afterward about the size of the crowd on that Jan. 20, 2017 day in the capital. But it was just a taste of the presidency to come, obsessed by trivial details and indifferent to the objective truth.
The White House press secretary − we have forgotten his name as there have been several others since − then defended Trump’s far-fetched crowd estimates. The new president claimed that the crowd that day was “the largest audience ever to witness an inauguration.”
Two days later, Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway announced on TV that the new presidency would rely on "alternative facts" so that others – first and foremost the press as a whole, perceived as lying and hostile – could not determine what is true or not.
In essence, she said that the administration would decide what was true and what was a lie. Three years later, we can only observe that the administration consistently followed that strategy ... and it works!
As he was impeached by the House of Representatives for high crimes and misdemeanors in mid-December, the president’s Gallup approval rating peaked at 45%, having been in the high 35%-45% bracket for the last three years.
One could say that is low for an institution that was able to achieve much higher ratings (three-fourths or even nine-tenths of the voters) and where the usual rating is somewhere between 50%-55%.
However, it is a lot if we account for the extraordinary strength (in this context) and the ability to rally supporters using an archaic indirect electoral system that is exploited to the maximum by suburban and rural Republicans.
The same disdain for reality persists, on this three-year anniversary and with 10 months to go before the presidential election, and this disdain affected the impeachment trial set to start this week in Washington.
All but a handful of Republican senators – or even fewer! – are ready to vote unanimously, without considering any facts, to reject any guilty verdict against Trump in this Ukrainian matter despite a damning case file.
In Washington, we are witnessing a true attack on democracy as it has been practiced for the past two centuries: alternative truth, superbly proud ignorance, rejection of the division of power, the deeming of critics as illegitimate, treating opponents as enemies, a political party reduced to being the tool of a single man, the systematic appointment of friends to the courts, the neglect of traditional allies and the collusion with or soft approach to foreign powers that have traditionally been enemies (Russia, North Korea).
The danger to democracy comes from the combination of not just two or three of these distinctive characteristics in a single man, in one administration and in one place, but a collection of all these characteristics.
So goes the presidency of Trump, the man who calls the shots, who makes the sun shine or makes it rain, and the man who more than two out of five Americans will support blindly and unconditionally come rain or come shine.
It is also undeniable that far fewer people attended Trump's inauguration than Barack Obama's, held eight years earlier in the same place.
These were two trivial facts that were easy to verify, but facts that Trump still mercilessly railed about at the same evening at the traditional inaugural ball. "The crowd was unbelievable today. I looked at the rain, which just never came, you know, we finished the speech, went inside, it poured then we came outside."
A ridiculous debate ensued in the days afterward about the size of the crowd on that Jan. 20, 2017 day in the capital. But it was just a taste of the presidency to come, obsessed by trivial details and indifferent to the objective truth.
The White House press secretary − we have forgotten his name as there have been several others since − then defended Trump’s far-fetched crowd estimates. The new president claimed that the crowd that day was “the largest audience ever to witness an inauguration.”
Two days later, Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway announced on TV that the new presidency would rely on "alternative facts" so that others – first and foremost the press as a whole, perceived as lying and hostile – could not determine what is true or not.
In essence, she said that the administration would decide what was true and what was a lie. Three years later, we can only observe that the administration consistently followed that strategy ... and it works!
As he was impeached by the House of Representatives for high crimes and misdemeanors in mid-December, the president’s Gallup approval rating peaked at 45%, having been in the high 35%-45% bracket for the last three years.
One could say that is low for an institution that was able to achieve much higher ratings (three-fourths or even nine-tenths of the voters) and where the usual rating is somewhere between 50%-55%.
However, it is a lot if we account for the extraordinary strength (in this context) and the ability to rally supporters using an archaic indirect electoral system that is exploited to the maximum by suburban and rural Republicans.
The same disdain for reality persists, on this three-year anniversary and with 10 months to go before the presidential election, and this disdain affected the impeachment trial set to start this week in Washington.
All but a handful of Republican senators – or even fewer! – are ready to vote unanimously, without considering any facts, to reject any guilty verdict against Trump in this Ukrainian matter despite a damning case file.
In Washington, we are witnessing a true attack on democracy as it has been practiced for the past two centuries: alternative truth, superbly proud ignorance, rejection of the division of power, the deeming of critics as illegitimate, treating opponents as enemies, a political party reduced to being the tool of a single man, the systematic appointment of friends to the courts, the neglect of traditional allies and the collusion with or soft approach to foreign powers that have traditionally been enemies (Russia, North Korea).
The danger to democracy comes from the combination of not just two or three of these distinctive characteristics in a single man, in one administration and in one place, but a collection of all these characteristics.
So goes the presidency of Trump, the man who calls the shots, who makes the sun shine or makes it rain, and the man who more than two out of five Americans will support blindly and unconditionally come rain or come shine.
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