Fire and fury
The whole world is watching as Trump drags our nation to dangerous depths.
It’s impossible to imagine Presidents Barack Obama or George W. Bush or any of their predecessors sending out for public consumption such a deeply disturbing, psychologically revealing and ultimately dangerous message as President Donald Trump’s recent “my nuclear button is bigger than yours” tweet to the North Korean dictator Kim Jong-Un. It’s impossible to imagine any of Trump’s 2016 competitors, Republican or Democrat, stooping to such ignominious depths.
Let’s say Texas Sen. Ted Cruz had been elected president instead of Trump. We can imagine disagreeing with him mightily on the issues, probably on a daily basis, but we have no doubt that he would serve the nation with probity, that he would respect the office and that he would honor the unspoken norms that have guided the Republic since its founding (norms such as not interfering with the work of the Justice Department, among numerous others).
The president’s reckless tweetjousting with an odious nuclear-armed dictator, a man whose instability rivals Trump’s, is not only unseemly and unsettling. It’s dangerous.
“These childish attacks raise the risk of stumbling into an avoidable war,” U.S. Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., tweeted last week. Some Republicans voiced similar concerns.
Susan Glasser, writing in Politico last week, reported that the whole world is watching and wondering what is happening in this country, to this country.
“Over the course of the year,” she wrote, “I have often heard top foreign officials express their alarm in hair-raising terms rarely used in international diplomacy — let alone about the president of the United States. Seasoned diplomats who have seen Trump up close throw around words like ‘catastrophic,’ ‘terrifying,’ ‘incompetent’ and ‘dangerous.’ ”
Glasser concludes: “When it comes to Trump and the world, it’s not better than you think. It’s worse.”
In his bombshell book, “Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House,” published Friday, Michael Wolff writes about similar levels of consternation and unease within the White House.
Wolff writes: “Donald Trump’s small staff of factotums, advisors and family began, on Jan. 20, 2017, an experience that none of them, by any right or logic, thought they would — or, in many cases, should — have, being part of a Trump presidency. Hoping for the best, with their personal futures as well as the country’s future depending on it, my indelible impression of talking to them and observing them through much of the first year of his presidency, is that they all — 100 percent — came to believe he was incapable of functioning in his job.”
Except for those among us who rely solely on Fox News for their politics, the basic outlines are familiar. We’ve known since Trump glided down that golden escalator in 2015 that he was incompetent, incapable and disturbingly incorrigible, although it was hard to imagine back then that he would ever get near the White House. (Wolff writes Trump himself never dreamed he would be elected president — until a few hours before the unthinkable happened.)
So, what do we do now? That’s the question for the nation as we begin the new year. It’s a question that transcends party and political leanings.
Those in a position to do something — members of the Republican majority in Congress — quail at the prospect. They know things are not right, and yet they refuse to call hearings, refuse to insist on financial disclosure, refuse to issue subpoenas. Instead they actively work to undermine the Mueller investigation. They seek to corrode this nation’s respect for the FBI.
History will take note, Sens. Cornyn and Cruz. The world is watching, Congressman Brady.
Not to be cynical, but we’re not expecting profiles in courage from our Texas delegation or from the Republican leadership in Congress (all of whom know things are not right).
What we can expect — and do expect — is that the people will rise up, beginning this fall. What happened in Virginia and Alabama is a portent.
Nearly 11 million more Americans voted against Trump last year than for him, including those who voted for Gary Johnson, Jill Stein and Evan McMullan. Those voters will be back, and they’ll be bringing millions of vexed and outraged voters with them. Angry — and optimistic — Americans will begin to set things right. The future of the nation depends on it.