Trump has made breaching norms normal
Critics worry U.S. president is increasingly operating from an ‘authoritarian playbook’
WASHINGTON— On Monday morning, the president of the United States urged his attorney general to investigate his election opponent.
It was a remarkable breach of democratic norms. It barely made news.
Donald Trump has spent so long attacking the institutions and traditions underpinning America’s political system that some of his new attacks no longer receive widespread attention. But they are increasing in frequency and gravity, renewing concerns about what scholars call democratic backsliding.
Trump’s tweeted advice Monday to Attorney General Jeff Sessions — “So why aren’t the Committees and investigators, and of course our beleaguered A.G., looking into Crooked Hillarys (sic) crimes & Russia relations?” — was only the latest part of a wide-ranging recent effort to undermine the people and entities he perceives as threats.
Sessions. Special counsel Robert Mueller. The Congressional Budget Office. The electoral system. The news media. All have been disparaged by the president over the past seven days.
Trump’s critics warn of a pressing threat to the rule of law. Matthew Miller, chief spokesperson’s for the Department of Justice during the Obama administration, said he sees a worrisome public complacency about Trump acts that he believes are reminiscent of a “banana republic” strongman.
“The president has done so many things that crossed the red line with respect to the rule of law that people just get kind of used to it,” Miller said, invoking the tale of the frog who does not notice he is being boiled to death in gradually warming water.
“Firing the FBI director (James Comey), attacking the AG because he recused himself as he was required to do by the rules, openly speculating about prosecuting your political opponent — these are all the types of things that are dangerous warning signs,” Miller said.
Ruth Ben-Ghiat, a New York University professor who studies authoritarianism, said Trump is operating from an “authoritarian playbook.” She said she fears he will pay even less heed to democratic traditions if he faces a deeper crisis.
“It’s very alarming, because he’s escalating all of the things he’s been doing,” she said. “And what unites all these manoeuvres is his back is increasingly against the wall.”
Perhaps Trump’s most serious threat in the past week was to Mueller, who is probing any links between Trump’s campaign and the Russian government.
In a New York Times interview last week, Trump alleged that Mueller was compromised by “conflicts,” and he warned the respected former FBI director not to probe the Trump family’s financial dealings unrelated to Russia. Trump also complained that Sessions had recused himself from the Russia probe, thus allowing the deputy attorney general to hire the special counsel.
The pair of remarks led to a new round of speculation that Trump would find a way to fire Mueller.
Such a move would trigger a Washington “cataclysm,” Democratic Senate leader Chuck Schumer told ABC, and represent a severe breach of the rule of law.
Sources told The Associated Press on Monday night that Trump had spoken with advisers about terminating Sessions, which would make it easier to fire Mueller.
House Speaker Paul Ryan defended Mueller on Monday, saying the former George W. Bush appointee is “a Republican who was appointed by a Republican.” Other Republicans have warned Trump against a firing, with homeland security committee chairperson Michael McCaul promising a “tremendous backlash.”
On Saturday, Trump floated the possibility of another way to avoid accountability: issuing pre-emptive pardons of himself and his aides. He tweeted: “While all agree the U.S. President has the complete power to pardon, why think of that when only crime so far is LEAKS against us. FAKE NEWS.”
There is not, in fact, a consensus that the president has the power to pardon himself.
Trump made at least four other mentions of “fake news” over the course of the week. The media, though, was not the only independent source of information to draw his ire. His administration continued assailing the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office, saying in a White House tweet Thursday that its conclusions on health care “simply can’t be trusted.”
The day prior, Trump stopped by a meeting of a voter fraud commission launched as a result of his false claim that millions of people voted illegally in 2016. Once again, he claimed, baselessly, that the election was compromised — saying people “saw” irregularities “having to do with very large numbers of people in certain states.”
“What he’s doing with the media gets the most attention, but it’s a larger strategy,” Ben-Ghiat said. “This is at the core of this authoritarian playbook, where you sow the seeds of uncertainty around everything to build the idea that you can’t know the truth.”
Trump raised eyebrows again on Saturday with an unusual public suggestion that Republican lawmakers owe him fealty.
“It’s very sad that Republicans, even some that were carried over the line on my back, do very little to protect their President,” he tweeted.
“He sees ‘loyalty’ as a personal matter — not to American institutions, rule of law, the Constitution and traditions,” Robert Zoellick, the former World Bank chief and senior official in both Bush administrations, told CNBC.
Trump did announce that he was giving up one particular attempt to convince people to question the truth.
For the entirety of his campaign, Trump called the low U.S. unemployment rate a hoax. He said Wednesday that he has changed his mind.
“I said for a long time, they don’t matter. But now I accept those numbers very proudly,” he said.
“I say they do matter.”