The bill is coming due for those who
sold their souls to Trump
Opinion by
Columnist
July 15, 2020 at 11:30 a.m. CDT
Between
President Trump’s Rose Garden rant on
Tuesday (which Mary L. Trump should definitely include in the paperback version
of her book delving into her uncle’s erratic behavior) and the White
House’s excuse that it never authorized trade
representative Peter Navarro to write a screed attacking the world’s leading
infectious-disease expert, it has become a wee bit difficult for in-house
lackeys, elected Republicans and card-carrying members of the right-wing media
to keep up the pretense that Trump and his administration are functioning
normally — or even functioning at all. (One wonders how the Hogan Gidleys, the
Marc Shorts, the Mark Espers and the rest justify continuing to regurgitate his
lies and sing his praises.)
Increasingly,
the White House operates not so much as the head of the executive branch but as
a site for Trump’s personal and political breakdowns. It is hard to see that
any official business is performed in an administration obsessed with covering
Trump’s lies, catering to his ego, attacking his opponents and providing
emotional refuge for those whose identity depends on venerating the Confederate
flag and excusing systemic racism. There is almost no actual policy happening
and no rationale for the administration’s continued existence.
Let’s
turn, then, to the Senate Republicans who voted to acquit him (that would be
everyone except Utah Sen. Mitt Romney), the House Republicans who mouthed
Russian propaganda in his defense and the horde of right-wing pundits and media
figures who both financially sustain and humiliate themselves with never-ending
rationalizations for a president who struggles to complete a sentence, let
alone think through complex policy matters.
The
elected Republicans should be confronted at every turn by mainstream media and
voters:
·
Do you think President Trump is fit even to complete his term?
·
Do you regret supporting his exoneration in the Ukraine scandal?
·
How can you support a president who clings to the
Confederate flag and defends the killing of African Americans by police by
saying more white people are killed?
·
How can the administration address the pandemic when members of
the administration heap scorn on
Anthony S. Fauci, director of the National Institute for Allergy and Infectious
Diseases?
·
Why are you supporting a president who refused to respond
to Russian bounties placed
on U.S. servicemen and women?
·
Does the self-enrichment and corruption bother you, even a
little?
·
Is there anything he could do or say that would cause you to
renounce him?
The
right-wing media cohort — including both those helplessly corrupted by the
money and fame that goes with feeding Trump’s frenzied base and those with
pretensions of respectability (the “but Gorsuch” crowd, before Gorsuch
disappointed them) — have other concerns. As Laura Ingraham (who reportedly believes “we
have to be prepared for Trump losing”) and the utterly tone deaf Ivanka Trump
(“Find something new!”)
advise, they will have to come up with their next act. As in the Obama
administration, they will likely become the conspiratorialists and rancid
critics of the new administration. No accusation will be too far-fetched, no
source of gossip turned away.
The
spineless sycophants — who attacked Never Trumpers for their show of integrity,
who fashioned disingenuous excuses for Trump and who concoct elaborate
rationalizations to oppose voting for former vice president Joe Biden
(Socialist!) — will swear up and down that Hillary Clinton would have been
worse. (Really — denying a pandemic? Inducing supporters not to wear lifesaving
masks? Embracing white nationalists? Staffing the White House with a cohort of
incompetents? Giving Vladimir Putin a free pass on targeting U.S. troops?) Some
will insist they were against Trump all along. Some (a tiny few) will show some
modicum of remorse, and some will try to ignore the past four years of
intellectual hackery. What “polite society” (if there is such a thing) must not
do is forget their role in sustaining an un-American president whose
incompetency has resulted in more than 100,000 unnecessary deaths.
The
bill is coming due for those who sold their souls to Trump. The voters may boot
out a good number of incumbents. The rest of us, however, will have learned how
through silence and collaboration a cadre of well-educated comfortable men and
women can rationalize and excuse anything. It has been a
frightening lesson in human weakness and propensity to accommodate themselves
to evil, which should remind us the only thing that really matters in public
life is character.