The most damning verdict on Trump is delivered by his
own aides
Opinion by
Columnist
September 23, 2020 at 9:24 a.m. CDT
News
moves so fast in the Age of Trump that it’s hard to remember what happened last
week. It is worth remembering in this case, because it is so important.
Last
Thursday, Olivia Troye, a lifelong Republican who until two months ago had been
Vice President Pence’s representative to the administration’s coronavirus task
force, endorsed Joe Biden
because President Trump had shown a “flat-out disregard for human life.” She
blamed Trump for the failed pandemic response and said, “He doesn’t actually
care about anyone else but himself.” She even reported that, early on,
Trump said “maybe this
covid thing is a good thing” because it meant he wouldn’t have to shake hands
with “these disgusting people” — e.g. his supporters.
Troye
joins a long line and growing list of former Trump aides —
including former national security adviser John Bolton, former defense
secretary Jim Mattis, former White House chief of staff John Kelly, former
director of national intelligence Dan Coats, former Navy secretary Richard
Spencer, former National Security Council staffer Alexander Vindman, former
chief of staff at the Department of Homeland Security Miles Taylor, former
White House communications director Anthony Scaramucci and Trump’s former
lawyer Michael Cohen — who have spoken out in scathing terms about Trump. All
but Mattis, Coats and Kelly have publicly called for Trump’s defeat in
November.
This. Is. Not. Normal.
We
should not lose sight of how unprecedented these denunciations are, coming from
those who have worked so closely with Trump. There have certainly been aides
before who have publicly criticized a president who was still in office, but
all pale by comparison with what these former aides are saying about Trump.
President
Ronald Reagan’s budget director, David Stockman, admitted in 1981 that he had
his doubts about whether supply-side economics added up. “None of us really
understands what’s going on with all these numbers,” he told the Atlantic.
George
Stephanopoulos, a former senior White House adviser, released a memoir in
1999 criticizing President Bill Clinton “for selfishly risking his Presidency
on a foolish dalliance and arrogantly trying to fix it himself, for lying about
it and sending others out to lie for him, for paralyzing his policy agenda and
making his accusers look like prophets instead of fools.”
Former
defense secretary Robert Gates rebuked President Barack Obama in a 2014 memoir,
writing that he wasn’t committed to his own strategy in Afghanistan: “I never
doubted Obama’s support for the troops, only his support for their mission.”
All
these revelations shocked Washington at the time, but they are remarkably mild
compared with what we are hearing now. None of these officials called the
president they served unfit, nor did any of them endorse an opposing candidate.
Imagine the apoplexy if any of these insiders had said what so many former
Trump aides now say.
Mattis: “Donald Trump is
the first president in my lifetime who does not try to unite the American
people — does not even pretend to try. Instead, he tries to divide us. We are
witnessing the consequences of three years of this deliberate effort. We are
witnessing the consequences of three years without mature leadership.”
Asked
about Mattis’s comments, Kelly said: “I agree with
him.” The Post has reported that in private Kelly is even more scathing,
describing the president “as a narcissist who does not understand the military,
cares only about his political fortunes and is unqualified to be president.”
Kelly has not spoken out to
dispute these characterizations or to defend the president in any way — even
when Trump was quoted calling the nation’s war dead “suckers” and “losers.”
Bolton: “I’m very
clearly of the view that Donald Trump’s not competent to be president. He’s not
up to the job.”
Taylor: “I came away completely convinced
based on firsthand experience that the president was ill-equipped and wouldn’t
become equipped to do his job effectively — and what’s worse, was actively
doing damage to our security.”
Some of
the former officials even question Trump’s loyalty to the United States.
Vindman told the Atlantic: “President
Trump should be considered to be a useful idiot and a fellow traveler, which
makes him an unwitting agent of [Russian President Vladimir] Putin.” Bob
Woodward reported in his new book that Coats believed “that Putin had something
on Trump,” because this was the only way to explain the president’s behavior.
The
standard White House spin is to disparage the critics as “disgruntled”
ex-employees. The implication is that all have some dark, mysterious motive for
disparaging Trump. Maybe they all have fee disputes at Trump’s golf clubs?
(That was the absurd innuendo Trump
employed to discredit special counsel Robert S. Mueller III.) It seems more
likely that the reason they are all disgruntled is that they realized they were
working for a president who is incompetent, ill-intentioned and irredeemable.
It
would be good if more former Trump officials — especially Mattis and Kelly —
publicly urged voters not to give Trump another four years to damage our
country. But even if they don’t, what the administration veterans have already
said constitutes the most damning verdict ever delivered of any president by
his own aides. Voters should pay heed.
