How Trump is undermining democracy
Americans who came of age after World War II have enjoyed living in a republic with a certain sense of invincibility. Sure, there were challenges — the Cold War, Vietnam, Watergate, 9/11 — but nothing comparable to the existential threat to our freedom and way of life that summoned the the Greatest Generation to save civilization from an encroachment of fascism. The red flags of the threats from within, from McCarthyism hysteria to Nixonian overreach, were recognized and checked before they metastasized into irreversible harm to our democratic institutions.
Now comes another test of our system’s resiliency.
The actions of the 45th U.S. president, Donald J. Trump, have challenged us to defend the defining traits of the great American experiment in ways we have rarely confronted. He has scoffed at the conclusion reached by every U.S. intelligence agency that Russia tried to interfere in the 2016 election. He has called investigations into suspicions that his campaign colluded with the Russians “a hoax” and a “taxpayer funded charade” motivated by sore losers.
Then, in a move of stunning audacity, last week he fired FBI Director James Comey, who was leading that investigation. It was reminiscent of Oct. 20, 1973, when President Richard Nixon ordered the firing of the Watergate prosecutor in the “Saturday Night Massacre.” The red flags are rippling anew. Trump has claimed that Comey assured him that he was not a subject of the investigation. Trump told NBC News last week that he posed the question during a dinner meeting in which Topic A was Comey’s desire to stay on as FBI director.
Consider the implication. A president, holding the power to retain or fire an FBI director, sought inside information about his personal status in one of the most significant and politically sensitive investigations in the land. Remember, obstruction of justice was Article I in the 1974 impeachment case against Nixon and Article III in the 1998 impeachment of President Bill Clinton.
“If a local mayor was under investigation and he fired the police chief and the city manager, most people would say, ‘That stinks. That’s not how it works in this country.’ ” said Rep. Eric Swalwell, D-Dublin.
I reached out to Swalwell and Rep. Jackie Speier, D-Hillsborough, each a member of the House Intelligence Committee, which has been looking into the Trump-Russia allegations.
“In many respects it is — how do I put this? — a textbook analysis of how to destroy a democracy,” Speier said. “If you look at the things he’s done: He’s sowed discontent, dismay, disregard, disillusionment in the American people. He has undermined the media . ... He has this sense of omnipotence that is not well placed.”
Swalwell added three more Ds: “deceive, distract, disrupt.”
Speier cited Trump’s attacks on the judiciary and his “scapegoating of minorities” — specifically mentioning the travel ban from selected nations with Muslim-majority populations — as further attempts to undermine the traditions of pluralism and democracy.
Swalwell has been gathering co-sponsors — he just gained his second Republican last week — for legislation to create an independent commission to look into the Russian meddling in the 2016 election. “If we do nothing, if we create a permissive environment for adversaries to carry out interference in campaigns like that, we’re going to lose the free and fair elections that we cherish,” he said. “Part of what makes our country special is that we have spirited fights all the way to the ballot box, but once a winner is declared, the losing side accepts the result and the winning side is able to govern with legitimacy.”
A cloud engulfs the Trump presidency, not because any objective analysis has concluded that the Russian interference decided the result, but because of Trump’s curious coziness with Russia’s government and the Trump family empire’s potential financial entanglements.
“The 800-pound gorilla is: How much does Russia have on the president?” Speier said.
If there is a note of optimism from the two House Intelligence Committee members, it comes from the decided uptick they have seen in public interest and participation. Swalwell detected the surge of resistance in the pink hats for the women’s march he saw coming off planes at Dulles Airport right after the Trump inauguration. Speier recently drew 1,900 people at a town hall at a middle school in Half Moon Bay.
“People are anxious in our country,” Swalwell said. “Their faith in critical pillars of our democracy has been shaken.”
The framers of the U.S. Constitution created three equal branches of government for moments like this: to assure the rule of law would prevail over the whims of any ruler.