Under this president, loyalty and populism trump the rule of law
The Donald will sacrifice anyone and everything to keep his base happy – even constitutional norms
To order prints or signed copies of any Telegraph cartoon, go to telegraph.co.uk/cartoonprints or call 0191 603 0178 the country lack a basic understanding of the Constitution or the rule of law. This exceeds anything we have seen before, even in the desperate lawbreaking of a Richard Nixon or the famously crude abusiveness of a Lyndon Johnson. This is in another league: not just thuggish populism or crass bravado but a flouting of the fundamental principles that have made the United States the most stable democratic republic in the world.
To take the most outrageous example: the president is now relentlessly demeaning Jeff Sessions – a senator who was fiercely loyal to Trump from the earliest days of his campaign for the Republican presidential nomination. But once Mr Sessions was appointed attorney general – that is, the chief law officer of the nation – his personal loyalty to Mr Trump had to be relegated to his duty to the country. This is something that Trump and his coterie seem not to grasp. In fact, not only do they fail to understand it, they regard it as an infernal impertinence. The president apparently believed that putting good old reliable Sessions in place was like hiring a mafia consiglieri whose chief function would be to protect his back.
That Sessions has, in fact, been very effectively supporting Trump’s contentious policy on illegal immigration is being ruthlessly discounted. The unforgivable transgression is that the attorney general recused himself from that endlessly troublesome Russia investigation and therefore failed to deliver the quick fix – the sacking of Robert Mueller, the special counsel leading the inquiry – which might have put the whole grumbling matter to bed. The hapless Sessions is determined to carry on through the www.telegraph.co.uk/bobprints flood of Trump invective partly because he is receiving considerable support from conservative Republican figures among whom he is immensely respected. Even ferociously faithful Trump allies like Newt Gingrich have pitched in for Sessions. Senator Lindsey Graham, a Republican who admittedly has never been much of a Trump fan, went about as far as it is possible to go: some of the things the president was saying about Sessions, he stated in an on-camera interview, “go way beyond what is acceptable in a rule-of-law nation”.
The discrediting of Sessions creates a bigger threat to the Trump presidency than any of the wilder embarrassments that the White House has survived by maintaining its war cry against the mainstream media. Because Sessions has impeccable credentials as a committed conservative stalwart, the president’s vendetta raises the suspicion among his electoral “base” that Trump is not sincerely on their side. He isn’t just making a fool of himself in ways that working class America might accept as deliberate anti-establishment buffoonery: he is attacking one of their own. This is serious. Keeping a strong hold on his base has been the Trump insurance plan – the absolute protection against removal from office or defeat at the next election either of which would make him, in his own inimitable terminology, a “loser”.
So long as he can hang on to the voters who put him in power, he believes he has nothing to fear from his favourite enemies: the #failingfakenews merchants. But his approval ratings are now at 36 per cent, a historic low for a president in what should be the honeymoon first year in office. So that base on which he
at telegraph.co.uk/ opinion has staked everything is shrinking and however undiminished its fervour might be, the numbers tell an alarming truth. Which is why he suddenly sprang into action last week with that startling, unexpected decision to bar transgender people from the military. Here was a gesture of solidarity to that conservative working class constituency that might have been wondering whether Trump – who was until very recently a New York social liberal – was actually one of them. To appreciate the impact of this unilateral decision (which caught the joint chiefs of staff quite unprepared and on which they have no intention of taking immediate action) it is necessary to understand its symbolic significance. Gender equality issues in the US are the civil rights arena de nos jours. So this was a move that took considerable nerve – and politically incorrect defiance – for which Mr Trump clearly expects to be rewarded by that indispensable base.
The question that enlivens Washington conversation now is
– who will get thrown under the bus next? Sean Spicer is gone. Reince Priebus whom Mr Scaramucci described only days ago as being like “a brother” (in the “Cain and Abel” sense, he later clarified), is out too. Trump’s Rasputin figure, Steve Bannon, we know to be also on the Scaramucci hit list. For Trump, loyalty yesterday counts for nothing: usefulness today is all that matters. As I said, the US Constitution embodies the principles of the Age of Reason. Confronted by an insoluble problem, it responds with temporary paralysis then recovers. It has survived some outrageous shocks but its most dangerous enemy is wilful ignorance. I hope it hasn’t met its match.
‘Loyalty yesterday counts for nothing: usefulness today is all that matters’