Author: John Jay

Wag the Dog

In past years the phrase “wag the dog” has been used to characterize the action of United States presidents, who—besieged by domestic tumult and challenges—might seek foreign adventures (perhaps foreign war) to distract the public and thereby get himself out of hot water. Bill Clinton was suspected of just such a motivation when he unleashed bombing attacks on Sudan and Afghanistan in August 1998. A headline in the Baltimore Sun read, “Clinton’s Airstrike Motives Questioned: Many Wonder if Attack Was Meant to Distract from the Lewinski Matter.”[1] The article that followed referred to the wag-the-dog scenario, popularized in a recent movie by that name, in which a U.S. president embroiled in a sex scandal stages a way to distract the nation.[2] In reality the Clinton bombing raids—which he defended as important to confront Al Qaeda—appeared to have no effect, one way or the other, on the evolution of the Clinton/Lewinski matter.

Trump pulled the United States out of the Iran Agreement, formally known as the Joint Program of Action (JCPOA), saying that it was a terrible deal and Iran would agree to a better one on his watch. Instead, as we now know, Iran went back to its former policies and has now stockpiled low-enriched uranium for power reactors far in excess of what they were allowed under the JCPOA. Also, Iran is in the process of buying and installing improved uranium centrifuges to make more enriched uranium—thus moving (at least technically) closer to having a bomb production capability. Trump’s policy there, like most other parts of his foreign policy, has been a complete failure.

Trump has decapitated the top levels of the Defense Department and replaced them with stooges who know nothing about defense or national security. Our military naturally worries that with all the disarray created by Trump’s blatant attempt to overturn our free and fair election—itself a would-be coup and a direct assault on the Constitution—that some foreign enemy might seize this moment to launch an attack. A B-52 strategic bomber task force recently flew a sortie from Minot Air Force Base in North Dakota to the Middle East and is planning to send an aircraft carrier task force to the Persian Gulf.[3] These moves appear to be cautionary at this time.

President-elect Biden has said that, when he assumes office, he will seek to revive American participation in the JCPOA. The Iranians say they are open to considering a rapprochement. Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said recently that “Iran would revert to the 2015 limits [set by the JCPOA] if the new administration returns to the deal, too. ‘This needs no negotiations and needs no conditions,’ he said.”

Anti-Iran hawks in the United States and Israel see the window closing on the possibility of a preemptive U.S.-Israel strike against the Iranian nuclear program. Likely supporters of such an attack include Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and some hardline officials around Trump. Netanyahu has said often that the potential Iranian nuclear threat represents an existential issue for Israel, and the chance to land a knockout punch may expire Jan. 20.[4]

So, might the current administration move against Iran? Do Trump and the senior officials around him believe that the Iran program could be terminated with one strike, even a day-long attack involving waves of bombers and missiles? The answer to this question is, almost certainly, no. The surgical-type strike is a myth. To actually stop the Iranian program, it would likely take a war of several or many months and perhaps occupation. Iran’s program is too big and too dispersed for a small special forces attack to be effective. And what of the wag-the-dog effect? Does Trump think that the American public would respond to an on-going war by accepting the need for him to stay in place until the emergency is over? Not likely. The American people do not want war with Iran. If the president dragged the United States into a war with Iran to stay in office, the American people would want Trump gone sooner than January 20 rather than later. If there is an emergency, let Biden handle it. There would be no wag-the-dog effect. The American people might be distracted from other things but not from ousting Trump as soon as possible. Perhaps Trump is thinking in terms of a limited attack—just enough to make revitalization of the JCPOA more difficult, like the Israeli assassination of the Iranian nuclear scientist, Dr. Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, a few days ago. But, a bombing attack is not the same as an assassination. Even a limited strike would likely spiral unpredictably out of control. At a Washington Post editorial puts it:

The people who do right by the country have one thing in common: They are guided by real-life experience, not by loony conspiracy theories tapped out on a keyboard somewhere. Their service is based on an idea expressed in the title of a long-enduring definition of purpose from the American Revolution: Thomas Paine’s ‘Common Sense,’ which is still a bestseller. It is common sense that has got us through dangerous times in the past. . . . It is common sense that we must now hope will prevail in days and years to come.[5]

“…war contains so much folly, as well as wickedness, that much is be hoped from the progress of reason; and if any thing is to be hoped, everything ought to be tried [to avoid it].” — James Madison, 1792

“War is an instrument entirely inefficient towards addressing wrong, and multiplies instead of indemnifying losses.” — Thomas Jefferson, 1798

“War is not the best engine for us to resort to, nature has given us one in our commerce, which, if properly managed, will be a better instrument for obliging the interested nations of Europe to treat us with justice.” — Thomas Jefferson, 1797

John Jay

[1] Susan Baer, “Clinton’s Airstrike Motives Questioned: Many Wonder if Attack Was Meant to Distract from the Lewinski Matter,” Baltimore Sun, August 23, 1998, https://www.baltimoresun.com/news/bs-xpm-1998-08-23-1998235021-story.html.

[2] Ibid., https://www.baltimoresun.com/news/bs-xpm-1998-08-23-1998235021-story.html.

[3] David Ignatius, “A Lame-duck Test of Wills with Iran,” Washington Post, November 26, 2020, https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/trump-remains-in-a-battle-of-wills-with-iran/2020/11/26/d79aa046-3020-11eb-96c2-aac3f162215d_story.html.

[4] Ibid., https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/trump-remains-in-a-battle-of-wills-with-iran/2020/11/26/d79aa046-3020-11eb-96c2-aac3f162215d_story.html.

[5] “This Tragic Year, Give Thanks to Those Who Safeguard our Health and Democracy, editorial, Washington Post, November 25, 2020, https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/this-tragic-year-give-thanks-to-those-who-safeguard-our-health-and-democracy/2020/11/25/6c00b076-2e60-11eb-96c2-aac3f162215d_story.html.

November 22, 2020

Donald Trump has virtually abandoned governing. In the face of vicious rampages of the pandemic and other crises, he concentrates only on an illegal and evil effort to overthrow the recent fair election in which both he and his visions of becoming dictator for life were roundly defeated. In the process he would destroy our democracy, crush liberty, and abolish the rule of law. Hopefully, he will not succeed. So far, he has utterly failed in his legal challenges—his court attempts to reverse election results have ended up 27 to zero against him. However, his failures have largely been unacknowledged by Republicans in Congress, some of whom urge him to exercise all of his legal options.

Legal challenges repulsed, Trump is now trying to persuade state legislatures in Biden-won states—contrary to law and in many cases the explicit words of their own state Constitutions—to override the votes of the people and to send Republican electors to the Electoral College. In doing so, he is attempting a coup. As Professor Laurence Tribe, America’s foremost constitutional scholar, tweeted yesterday (November 21), “What’s unfolding now is an attempted coup by a con. It’s a bigger political scandal than Russian interference four years ago. And yes, it is likely to fail, and the system is likely to prevail. But the American majority cannot rest.”[1] So far, this effort has met with failure also. Georgia has certified its vote and senior Michigan and Pennsylvania legislators have made it clear that their legislatures will in no way intervene to thwart the decision of the people. The largest county in Arizona has certified its vote and Nevada expects to certify soon. Most of the opposition to Trump has come from senior state officials (who happen to be Republicans) carrying out their duties conscientiously, recognizing the importance to America’s democracy of honesty in government.

What Trump is hoping for is the destruction of democracy in America and the country’s conversion into a northern version of Venezuela’s banana republic. Trump would be “El Supremo” or dictator for life and his children the princes and princesses of the realm with unlimited wealth. In addition to becoming a horrible place for its citizens to inhabit, such a state would likely accord El Supremo no respect and undercut his governance. Nevertheless, the majority of Republicans in both Houses of Congress either support the coup attempt openly or are complicit by their silence (like the “good Germans” of the Third Reich). Three Republican Senators and a small number of House Republicans have recognized Joe Biden as the President-elect and three or four others have said at least he should receive necessary transition materials.

House Democratic Majority Leader, Steny Hoyer, has called Trump’s acts “close to treason.” In contrast, House Minority Leader and Republican House Leader Kevin McCarthy has said, “President Trump won this election. So everyone who’s listening, do not be quiet. Do not be silent about this. We cannot allow this to happen before our very eyes.”[2] McCarthy subsequently suggested that it doesn’t matter what is true, only what Republicans can make Republicans believe is true. When he was asked by Jonathan Martin of the New York Times as to Biden’s prospects of bringing the country together, McCarthy said, “It depends how it turns out. If you have 70 percent of Republicans who thought he cheated, he’s still going to have a hard time.”[3]

Assertions that the vote was fraudulent are monstrous lies. New York Times reporters surveyed election administrators in all 50 states and reported that the officials (Republicans and Democrats) have found no evidence of significant voting issues.[4] Of course, many Republicans are going to believe that there was cheating when the senior most Republican in the House of Representatives untruthfully tells them it is so and the President they voted for fills the TV airways with lies and insane conspiracy stories about a stolen election. When McCarthy pedals electoral fraud, he appears to be a banana republic man. (Perhaps he could be Court Jester—a post that is a position of influence.) Trump should be permanently excluded from public life and McCarthy should join him if he doesn’t deliver to the American people the apology he owes.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has a different culpability. He said, “What we all say about [the election] is frankly irrelevant. All [the transition] will happen right on time, and we will swear in the next administration on Jan. 20.”[5] McConnell intimates that it is OK to tell outlandish and malicious lies about our election process and about the President-elect while alienating 70% of the Republican Party since Biden will be sworn in on schedule. This ignores the huge damage done to confidence in our democracy. Mitch is sort of half banana republican and half Leader. You might say he is a banana split.

Both McCarthy and Mitch should keep in mind the short poem by the beloved sportswriter of long ago:

“When the One Great Scorer comes

to mark against your name,

He writes not that you won or lost,

but how you played the game!”[6]

 

 

“It is substantially true, that virtue or morality is a necessary spring of popular government.” – George Washington, 1796

“…the first of qualities for a great statesman is to be honest.” – John Quincy Adams, 1809

“Tricks and treachery are the practice of fools, that have not wits enough to be honest.” – Benjamin Franklin, 1749

John Jay

[1] https://twitter.com/tribelaw/status/1330154898168680450

[2] Karen Tumulty, “Republican leaders need to tell Trump it’s over,” The Washington Post, November 21, 2020.

[3] Jonathan Martin, “Kevin McCarthy, the House Minority Leader, Doesn’t Think Trump Is Going Away,” The New York Times, November 18, 2020.

[4] Steve Coll, “Failures of Duty,” The New Yorker, November 23, 2020.

[5] Tumulty, op. cit.

[6] Grantland Rice.

Judging by past comments, Donald Trump has long dreamed of becoming the U.S. president for life like his former friend, President Xi of China. As president for life, he could indulge to the fullest his obsessive narcissism, penchant for corruption and indifference to the hundreds of thousands of Americans who have died from the coronavirus. The one thing he didn’t want—his greatest fear—was to be a loser. But that is what he is. He was decisively beaten by Joseph Biden with a six-million-vote margin and 306 Electoral College votes, 36 more than necessary to win the presidency.

After the abject failure of almost 30 legal actions directed toward changing the result, he has changed course and is now directing his efforts towards directly overturning the election—in no way acknowledging the suffering of Americans as the pandemic surges toward a new peak. He is attempting to pressure state legislatures to override the will of the voters in states that Biden won by getting them to send an alternative Republican slate of Electoral College electors to the Congress—contrary to the will of the people. Georgia has certified the results of the election there and its Governor has signed the certification, formalizing Biden’s win in that state. Trump has been working to subvert the vote in Michigan, a state won by Biden by more than 150,000 votes. Trump had summoned the Michigan Senate Majority Leader and the House of Representatives Speaker, both Republicans, to a White House meeting yesterday (November 20) in an attempt to pressure them to overturn the vote in Michigan and to declare the state for Trump. Upon emerging from their meeting with the president, the two legislators issued a joint statement indicating that they had learned nothing to warrant reversing the outcome in their state. Michigan Senate Majority Leader Mike Shirkey (R) and Speaker of the House Lee Chatfield (R) said, “We will follow the law and follow the normal process regarding Michigan’s election, just as we have said throughout this election.” These two men are heroes like many other state officials who have stood up for democracy in these trying times.

There were strong words from the United States Congress on Trump’s efforts to overthrow the people’s electoral decision. The House of Representatives Majority Leader, Steny Hoyer, said, “I think this borders on treason. He is undermining the very essence of democracy, which is: you go to the poll, you vote, and the people decide. There is no doubt that the people decided.”[1] Senator Mitt Romney, former Republican candidate for president said, “Having failed to make even a plausible case of widespread fraud or conspiracy before any court of law, the President has now resorted to overt pressure on state and local officials to subvert the will of the people and overturn the election. It is difficult to imagine a worse, more undemocratic act by a sitting American president.”[2]

Trump intends also to pressure Pennsylvania and Georgia officials. Pennsylvania has rebuffed Trump pressure before. A spokesperson for the Secretary of State of Georgia, Brad Raffensperger, a Republican official, said yesterday that there is a “zero” chance he would take a telephone call from the president or his advisors.[3]  He is another stalwart state legislative official, also a Republican, who has determined to carry out his duties.

Trump’s latest legal strategy was presented on November 19 by Rudolph Giuliani, his chief lawyer, and his two assistants Jenna Ellis and Sydney Powell. After Giuliani’s wildly irrational presentation, Sidney Powell pointed to its central claim, “that the voting system used in many states, including those manufactured by Dominion Voting Systems, use software ‘created in Venezuela at the direction of Hugo Chavez to make sure he never lost an election . . . .’ There is no evidence to support this theory.” [4] It is one of a number of far-right conspiracy theories spread widely on social media and right-wing websites. It has been confirmed as false by the Georgia hand recount, which recorded what vote each voter actually did cast.

Tucker Carlson interviewed Ms. Powell for Fox News on Thursday. During a press conference earlier that day Ms. Powell had made her argument about the Venezuelan origin of the software utilized by Denver-based Dominion Voting System, which originally had been developed to benefit President Hugo Chavez, who died in 2011. According to the account in The Hill,

[Powell] claimed votes were manipulated overseas to favor President-elect Joe Biden. There is no evidence to [Ms. Powell’s] claim that votes were manipulated, and it has been criticized by a number of conservative officials, including Senator Joni Ernst (R-Iowa) who on Thursday called it ‘absolutely outrageous.’ Carlson said he frequently reached out to Powell for evidence for her claim and invited her on the show. . . . ”When we kept pressing, she got angry and told us to stop contacting her.’ Carlson said, ‘When we checked with others around the Trump campaign, people in positions of authority, they told us Powell has never given any evidence either. Nor did she provide any today.”[5]

“Day by day,” says The Washington Post, “President Trump’s efforts to overturn the results of a free and fair election grow more brazen. Day by day, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky) and other so-called leaders of the Republican party grow more complicit in this banana republic assault on democracy. . . . “ His earlier legal challenges having failed, Trump is now trying to directly pressure state officials and legislatures to corrupt the process of vote certification, ignore the will of the people and flip the election to him, the loser, not the winner. Says the Post of this effort,

. . . it is a pathetic spectacle when the burden of defending democracy is falling on such state leaders, as well as principled secretaries of state such as Georgia Republican Brad Raffensperger, while the likes of Mr. McConnell and Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) — who, having both just won reelection, have no conceivable excuse for such spinelessness — hide behind platitudes about allowing Mr. Trump to play out his legal options. Mr. Trump is not playing out legitimate legal options. He is maneuvering to undo his defeat through lies and chicanery. Let us all remember who abetted this disgrace and who stood up to it.[6]

Thomas Friedman in his recent New York Times article raised a closely related question with regard to Republican support for Trump’s efforts to overturn the election and destroy our democracy: “How do you trust this version of the Republican Party to ever hold the White House again?” In its leadership and through its representatives in Washington, it is no longer the party of Lincoln or even a party of principles. It has become a party that loves power for its own sake. As Freidman says of the party,

Its members sat mute while Trump, rather than using the federal bureaucracy to launch a war against our surging pandemic, has launched a war against his perceived enemies inside that federal bureaucracy. . . . A political party that will not speak up against such a reckless leader is not a party any longer. It is some kind of populist cult of personality. That’s been obvious ever since this GOP was the first party to conclude its presidential nominating convention without offering any platform. It declared that its platform was whatever its Dear Leader said it was.” That is why Biden’s mission—and the mission of all decent conservatives—is not just to repair America. It is to marginalize this Trumpian version of the GOP and help to nurture a healthy conservative party—one that brings conservative approaches to economic growth, infrastructure, social policy, education, regulation, and climate change, but also cares about governing and therefore accepts compromise.”[7]

So, there you have it, a criminal president, a largely supine party enabling him in any way they can and a general neo-fascist attack on our liberty, our values, our democracy and our country. We need a president with principles and competence and, hopefully, we will soon have one in office. We need a strong Democratic party supporting him with the backing of the principled conservatives that remain in the Republican party. That party in its present form has disqualified itself from future participation in American national governance. It is no longer a party that supports or cares about America. It is a party that has tried to sell us out to Russia to enrich its senior members. One of its prominent senate members is reported to have urged voter tampering in Georgia during the recount—probably thus engaging in a criminal act. Its majority leader in the Senate is in many ways indistinguishable from Trump. The GOP must be dismantled or split—with one part evolving into a party of principled, tough, pragmatic and patriotic conservatives and the rump left to sink further in its morass of neo-fascism, fake conspiracy tales and limitless lies. There are strong Republican leaders at the state level but few at the national level in Washington. If principled patriots in this country stay together, nothing can defeat us.

Now let’s consider views from our Founders.

“But if the laws are to be trampled upon—with impunity and a minority (a small one too) is to dictate to the majority—there is an end put at one stroke, to republican government and nothing but anarchy and confusion is to be expected thereafter…” — George Washington, 1794

“If it be asked, What is the most sacred duty and the greatest source of our security in a Republic? The answer would be, an inviolable respect for the Constitution and Laws—the first growing out of the last…a sacred respect for the constitutional law is the vital principle, the sustaining energy of a free government.” — Alexander Hamilton, 1794

“A government of laws, and not of men.” — John Adams, 1780

“That people who pay a greater respect to a wealthy villain than to an honest, upright man in poverty, almost deserves to be enslaved, they plainly show that wealth however it may be acquired, is in their esteem, to be preferred to virtue… Surely you never will tamely suffer this country to be a den of thieves.” — John Hancock, 1774

“A Constitution of Government once changed from freedom, can never be restored. Liberty once lost is lost forever.” — John Adams, 1775

“The liberties of our country, the freedom of our civil constitution are worth defending at all hazards and it is our duty to defend them against all attacks.” — Samuel Adams, 1771

“It is  a very great mistake to imagine that the object of loyalty is the authority and interest of one individual man, however dignified by the applause or enriched by the success of popular actions.” — Samuel Adams, 1748

“I have sworn on the altar of God eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man.” — Thomas Jefferson, 1880

“If there be a principle that ought not to be questioned within the United States, it is that every man has the right to abolish an old government and establish a new one.” — James Madison, 1793

A lady asked Dr. Franklin, “Well Doctor, what have we got, a republic or a monarchy?”  “A republic,” replied the Doctor, “if you can keep it.” — Benjamin Franklin, 1787 (outside Constitution Hall)

John Jay

[1] Rucker, Philip, Gardner, Amy, Dawsey, Josh, “Trump wages full assault to overturn election,” The Washington Post, November 20, 2010.

[2] Ibid.

[3] Ibid.

[4] Ibid.

[5] The Hill.com, November 20, 2020.

[6] Editorial. The Washington Post, November 20, 2020.

[7] Friedman, Thomas L. “How can we trust this GOP in power again?” New York Times, Op-Ed page, November 17, 2020.

On November 3, 2020 Joseph Biden, the nominee of the Democratic Party, decisively won the election for President of the United States, along with his running mate for Vice President, Kamala Harris. Biden won the national vote by more than five million votes along with 306 Electoral College votes. There is no doubt about the result of this election; it was more conclusory than President Trump’s election in 2016. Biden is indisputably the choice of the American people.

Yet Trump is contesting the election. During the campaign, he always declined to agree to the peaceful transfer of power, the essence of democracy. He defined a fair election as an election where he was the winner. Any other result would be fraudulent, he said. During the early hours of the vote counting he tweeted, “Stop the counting! Stop the counting!” in states where he was initially leading and “Keep counting” in Arizona where he was behind.

The result? Biden’s clear victory in a free and fair election as envisaged by the Constitution. The Department of Homeland Security, charged with protecting the integrity of the election, on November 11^th released the following statement:

The November 3rd election was the most secure in American history. Right now, across the country, election officials are reviewing and double checking the entire election process prior to finalizing the result. When states have close elections, many will recount ballots. All of the states with close results in the 2020 presidential race have paper records of each vote, allowing the ability to go back and count each ballot if necessary. This is an added benefit for security and resilience. This process allows for the identification and correction of any mistakes or errors. There is no evidence that any voting system deleted or lost votes, changed votes, or was in any way compromised.

Yet, despite the overwhelming evidence supporting Biden’s victory and without producing any evidence himself, Trump continued to insist that he won the election and that the Democrats stole it from him. He continues to reach out to his own committed followers, largely through the extremist TV channel Newsmax and via social media, with his most ardent supporters increasingly using Parler to spew a cascade of blatant, fantastical lies and conspiracy theories, reminiscent of lies propounded by the far right in Germany after its defeat in World War I. By promoting the so-called “Stab in the Back” theory that Germany had been winning the war until traitorous “communists and Jews” in the government surrendered to the other side, a permanent violent opposition to the government was established and subsequently exploited by Hitler to support his Third Reich. Given his current TV campaign of lies, Trump could create something similar in America, supporting the destruction of democracy now or in 2024.

Trump has abandoned governing (as has much of his government), choosing instead to spend his time agitating for the overturning of the recent election. Trump is behaving this way while the people, whose president he still is, pursuant to the Constitution, until January 20, 2021, are suffering severely from a huge escalation of the Pandemic. Millions are becoming sick, thousands are dying. Trump is paying no attention to this crisis and his government is doing nothing to ameliorate it. In normal times this neglect would be grounds for impeachment. Trump continues his unhinged, illegal incitement to violence. Long ago Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes of the United States Supreme Court said in a famous opinion that the protection of free speech found in the First Amendment to the Constitution does not extend to shouting “Fire” in a crowded theater. Trump is shouting “Fire.”

Does such behavior make Trump a modern-day Don Quixote, the Man of La Mancha, causing chaos and tilting at windmills to cover his ignominious and embarrassing (as he sees it) exit from the government? Or is he the Manchurian Candidate (Russian Candidate) aiming at the destruction of American life and democracy and his establishment as dictator in alliance with Vladimir Putin of Russia? Is this all just fantasy or is it a coup plot, however improbable? A comment by Masha Gessen in a November 11, 2020 New Yorker article by David Rohde, “William Barr Can Stop Trump’s Attempted Coup” is worth noting here. She said that—

Trump is trying to achieve an ‘autocratic breakthrough’ and to discredit the election results that would end his rule. His chances of succeeding appear low, but it is important to state that the President of the United States is attempting to carry out a coup.[1]

Gessen should know; she was a journalist in Russia for many years and was an acquaintance of Putin. And, if Trump’s chances are low in 2020, what might they be in 2024 after four years of inciting his base? Rohde goes on to say that “a new Politico/Morning Consult survey finds seventy percent of Republicans do not think that the 2020 election was ‘free and fair.’ False vote-fraud claims are gaining enormous audiences on Facebook, energizing and enraging the president’s supporters.[2]

The president is refusing to allow Biden’s presidential transition team to begin working with the incumbent government. He has fired the Defense Secretary, the official who oversees the nuclear arsenal, and replaced much of the top echelon at Defense, all of whom have been succeeded by sycophants. The Directors of CIA and FBI appear to be next on the to-be-fired list. This not only gives Trump a large degree of control over the national security part of the government, but it also fills this important branch of the government largely with incompetent stooges.

Rohde also comments that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell “. . . in a speech on the Senate floor defended the president’s right to challenge the election results.”[3] Several prominent Republicans also have said that the president is within his rights to do so. Only four Senate Republicans have called Biden to congratulate him as President-Elect and four or five others have called for Trump to at least allow the transition process to begin so that Biden can receive necessary intelligence information. Statements by Senators in response to the question, “Have you congratulated Mr. Biden?” suggest either that “maybe Biden didn’t really win” or “maybe there is nothing to congratulate him for.” They are of a sort one would expect in Hungary or Turkey but not in America. The remaining more than forty Republican senators have not publicly recognized Biden as the President-Elect. They are joined by Vladimir Putin. As Glasser notes, “. . . when Governor Mike DeWine, Republican of Ohio, said on CNN, ‘Joe Biden is the President-elect,’ it was treated as breaking news. Merely acknowledging basic math, it seems, is now considered an act of political courage.”[4] Thus, Republican leaders have responded to Trump’s trashing this most sacred rite of democracy, the peaceful passage of power, just as they have “to virtually all of Trump’s norm shattering behaviors for the last four years: by enabling it.”[5]

When Rohde concludes near the end of his article that “there is no excuse for allowing a sitting president to flirt with authoritarianism,[6] he illuminates the problem with the Republican Party itself. It appears to have become an anti-democratic party interested only in power, with a minority that is pro-democracy—a minority in every situation like this one. In the interest of democracy and as a better reflection of political reality, It would be better to split the party in two—one authoritarian, the other conservative democratic.

Continuing further on the issue of whether Trump is seeking a coup now or perhaps later in 2024, Fareed Zakaria in the November 13 Washington Post, after referring to the so-called “stab in the back” myth in Germany in 1920, quotes Newt Gingrich as follows, “I think [Biden] would have to do a lot to convince Republicans that this is anything except a left-wing power grab financed by people like George Soros, deeply laid in at the local level. . . . It’s very hard to understand how we’re going to work together.”[7] Zakaria notes,

A political system is not simply a collection of laws and rules. It is also an accumulation of norms and behavior. When Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky) says Trump is ‘100 percent within his rights’ to behave as he is, he is missing this crucial distinction…Democracy is above all about the peaceful transfer of power. Trump is destroying this norm and his present actions . . . will have a large and lasting effect on this country’s politics for decades, creating a cancer that will metastasize in gruesome ways.[8]

Michael Gerson concurs:

What America is experiencing is a massive failure of character—a nationwide blackout of integrity—among elected Republicans. From the president, a graceless and deceptive insistence on victory after a loss that was not even close. From Congressional Republicans a broad willingness to conspire in President Trump’s lies and to slander the electoral system without consideration of the public good. Only a few have stood up against Republican peer pressure of contempt for the constitutional order.[9]

The Washington Post lead editorial on November 13 asserts:

President Trump is attempting to overturn the lawful results of a free election by spreading lies and suborning local officials to abet the conspiracy. He is not likely to succeed, but the toxic effect on U.S. democracy will not soon dissipate. Republicans such as Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (KY) who think they can pander to Mr. Trump’s lies with no harmful effect, are complicit in the damage.[10]

On the assumption that Trump is trying now for a coup, there are three possible routes. The first would be to persuade Republican dominated state legislatures to override the results of their state election and introduce a Republican slate of electors to send to Congress when the voters of that state cast their ballots in the majority for certification by the Election Commission of a Democratic slate. Few if any state legislatures are likely to do this as it would be a blatantly illegal act, frustrating the will of the people. State courts, federal courts and, if necessary, ultimately the Supreme Court would not allow it. The one place where this strategy seems to have been seriously advanced has been Michigan, won by Biden by 148,000 votes. The Election Commission is composed of two Democrats and two Republicans. If the two Republicans could be pressured to fail to agree to certification for whatever reason, perhaps the legislature would intervene. This is most unlikely. On November 13, a state judge at the County level in Detroit dismissed the Republican suit saying he saw “no convincing evidence of election fraud.” Similar action was taken by courts in Arizona and Pennsylvania.[11] All other legal efforts in the states have fallen flat.

Second, there could be a direct appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court alleging some kind of fraud, which could be said to justify disallowing the entire election. This legal appeal appears to be a non-starter.

Third, with his decimation of the top defense and intelligence officials and installation of presidential stooges, Trump could order the Army to occupy the cities and declare the election disallowed because of some fabricated domestic emergency. Or he could order the military to do something like invading Iran with Special Forces and destroying its nuclear installations, claiming there was a clear and present danger to the national security, possibly with a war following. The response of our military almost certainly would be, “We were trained and educated not to obey illegal orders. Our loyalty is to the Constitution, not to Donald Trump.”

Thus, whereas Trump may be a Manchurian Candidate desirous of carrying out a coup and abolishing our freedoms and our democratic way of life, his chances of success are small. In the relatively near future he is likely to leave and Joe Biden be sworn in as our next president.

2024 could be a different matter. Quite possibly Trump will try over the next four years to follow Hitler’s game plan and influence his base to support him in establishing some sort of neo-fascist type dictatorship after being reelected in 2024. Of course Trump must first somehow get past two significant criminal actions pending against him in New York State as well as his hundreds of millions of debt. Likely, if past history is a guide, the Republicans in the Senate will try during this timeframe, to prevent the Biden administration from accomplishing anything that would make things better for our country. This would set the stage.

The above concerns are a subject the media and analysts must closely follow now and for the next four years. Sunshine is the cure for evil and corruption. Sam Adams (leader of the Boston Tea Party, co-founder of the Sons of Liberty, signer of the Declaration of Independence and Governor of Massachusetts) enjoined:

“The liberties of our country, the freedom of our civil Constitution are worth defending at all hazards; and it is our duty to defend them against all attacks… Let us remember that if we suffer tamely a lawless attack on our liberty, we encourage it and involve others in our doom.” – Samuel Adams, 1771

“It is a very great mistake to imagine that the object of our loyalty is the authority and interest of one individual man, however dignified by the applause or enriched by the success of popular actions.” – Samuel Adams, 1748

“Rebellion to tyrants is obedience to God” – Benjamin Franklin, 1776

“I have sworn upon the altar of God eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man.” – Thomas Jefferson, 1808

“Tyranny can scarcely be practiced upon a virtuous and wise people.” – John Adams, 1796

“It is substantially true that virtue or mortality is a necessary spring of popular government.” – George Washington, 1796

John Jay

---

[1] Rohde, David. “William Barr Can Stop Trump’s Attempted Coup,” The New Yorker, November 11, 2020.

[2] Ibid.

[3] Ibid.

[4] Glasser, Susan B. “Is this a Coup or Just Another Trump Con,” The New Yorker, November 13, 2020.

[5] Ibid.

[6] Rohde, op. cit.

[7] Zakaria, Fareed. “The damage he is causing will far outlast Trump himself,” The Washington Post, November 13, 2020.

[8] Ibid.

[9] Gerson, Michael. “A massive failure of character,” The Washington Post, November 13, 2020.

[10] Editorial. “Mr. Trump and his GOP Enablers,” The Washington Post, November 13, 2020.

[11] Knowles, Hannah, Farenthold, David A. Halderman, “Courts reject Trumps claims”, The Washington Post, pp. A-1, 6, November 14, 2020.

 

Many centuries in the past there was a French knight named Pierre Terrail, the Chevalier of Bayard (his castle). Bayard was widely known for great bravery and brilliant leadership. This fearless and faultless knight was known to his contemporaries and to his successors as the Chevalier sans peur et sans reproche—the knight without fear and beyond reproach. He is considered perhaps one of the greatest cavalry leaders of all time. A kind man, his happy spirit contributed to his many victories over dangerous enemies.

America is now faced with possibly the greatest crisis in its history and it is indeed fortunate to be able to call on the services of another such man to lead it safely away from the many threats that press upon it.

In his column of October 20, 2020, Roger Cohen, the distinguished New York Times opinion writer asks if it is unreasonable to see renewal of the 77-year old Joe Biden. His answer:

No. We live in the real world, where the perfect is the enemy of the good…The choice was starkly evident in the televised town hall event Thursday (October 15) as Trump spouted wild far-right conspiracy theories while Biden had the self-depreciating honesty to say that if he lost, it could suggest that he’s a ‘lousy candidate.’ Biden is not a lousy candidate; he is a good man, a brave man.[1]

Max Boot, the well-known conservative writer and columnist says that Biden has been both tested and strengthened by adversity. As a result:

He has emerged from these trials with empathy and resilience. . . . Biden believes in compromise and bi-partisanship. . . . he is the only person who spoke at the funerals of three very different senators—John McCain, Strom Thurmond and Frank Lautenberg. . . . I now believe he is the right man to lead the United States at one of the most perilous moments in our history.

Boot also quotes Senator Lindsay Graham as follows: “If you can’t admire Joe Biden as a person, you’ve got a problem. . . . He’s as good a man as God ever created.”[2]

The United States is currently beset with three enormous crises: climatic, economic and pandemic. All three are highly important, but the most immediate one—with the other two close behind—is the pandemic. We can’t do much in any other areas until the virus is brought under control. As The Washington Post points out, “once again under the feeble stewardship of President Trump, the nation is plunging into an abyss of unnecessary suffering and loss. Election or not, strong measures are required now to brake the virus from killing an additional 100,000 people in the next few months.” Almost everywhere, Covid-19 cases are increasing rapidly. Test positivity rates are up more than 5 percent in over 30 states, hospitalization rates have jumped and the “surge in new cases may soon top 100,000 a day.” That would mean a million more every 10 days. “Either a determined battle is waged now—meaning in November and not January or February—or the virus will spread exponentially.”[3]

For Trump to change course in his handling of the pandemic appears impossible. For the first three months of the pandemic—even though he knew that it was extremely deadly and dangerous—Trump belittled it, saying it would vanish like magic. Then, for two or three weeks, he was persuaded to following medical guidelines. Then, reversing again, he discouraged mask wearing and other recommended medical measures, which policy he has followed ever since. This is still his policy in what is now the worst phase of the Pandemic yet. But now, this reckless, dangerous self-serving behavior must stop. We need a national mask mandate, required social distancing, a strict ban everywhere on any indoor social gatherings in excess of perhaps ten people.

Whatever happens in the election, President Trump will remain president until January 20. As The New York Times posits: “Nothing suggests he will change direction after a year of catastrophic denial and negligence.”[4] Doing the math, we can expect nine million more cases by Inauguration Day and perhaps 125,000 more American deaths. And should Trump be re-elected and the virus continue in full force for another year—given the fickle nature of vaccine development a distinct possibility—the math would suggest 36 million more cases of Covid-19 and perhaps close to 600,000 deaths. That won’t happen should Biden be elected on November third. Biden is disciplined, organized, stays on message, relies on scientific advice, and he knows how to fight epidemics (having fought two). Americans should not even consider re-electing Trump given the huge risk he represents for catastrophe.

The New York Times on November 1 reported a conversation with Dr. Anthony Fauci, America’s leading epidemiologist on what lies ahead for the United States with respect to the pandemic. The article notes that

President Trump’s repeated assertions the United States is ‘rounding the turn’ on the novel coronavirus have increasingly alarmed the government’s top health experts, who say that the country is heading into a long and potentially deadly winter with an unprepared government unwilling to make tough choices. . . . “We’re in for a whole lot of hurt. It’s not a good situation,” Anthony S. Fauci, the country’s leading infectious disease expert, said in a wide-ranging interview late Friday. “All the stars are aligned in the wrong place as you go into the fall and winter season, with people congregating at home indoors.”[5]

The most recent issue of the New Yorker issues a similar warning: while Trump insists that the virus is “going away,” “the official toll of dead Americans is approaching a quarter of a million, and will perhaps reach four hundred thousand by the end of the year—numbers that Biden said should, by themselves, disqualify Trump for the presidency.”[6]

It seems clear beyond the shadow of a doubt that the reelection of Trump would represent a very serious threat to the lives of hundreds of thousands of Americans, eventually perhaps millions. Nothing will get better under Trump as far as public health is concerned. All voters who care about their fellow citizens should think about this.

More time for Trump in office is hugely dangerous in other ways: and Congress can’t help much absent the election of a large Democratic majority given the state of the Republican Party. The New York Times editorial of October 25 articulates the dangers in these ways:

• Of all the things President Trump has destroyed, the Republican party is among the most dismaying. ‘Destroyed’ is perhaps too simplistic, though. It would be more precise to say that Mr. Trump accelerates his party’s demise, exposing the rot that has been eating at its core for decades and leaving it a hollowed out shell devoid of ideas, values or integrity, committed solely to preserving its own power even at the expense of democratic norms, institutions and ideals. . . . Its ideology has been reduced to a slurry of paranoia, white grievance and authoritarian populism. . . .
• With this dark gospel, the president has enthralled the Republican base, rendering other party leaders too afraid to stand up to him. But to stand with Mr. Trump requires a constant betrayal of ones own integrity and values. . . .
• Having long preached “character” and ‘family values,” the Republicans have given a pass to Mr. Trump’s personal degeneracy. The affairs, the hush money, the multiple accusations of assault and harassment, the gross boasts of grabbing unsuspecting women—none of it matters. . . . For all this talk about revering the Constitution, Republicans have stood by, slack-jawed, in the face of the president’s assault on checks and balances. . . . Most horrifically, Republican leaders have stood by as the president has lied to the public about a pandemic that has already killed more than 220,000 Americans. . . .
• Some echo his incendiary talk fueling violence in their own communities. In the campaign’s closing weeks, as case numbers and hospitalizations climb and health officials warn of a rough winter, Mr. Trump is stepping up the attacks on his scientific advisors, deriding them as ‘idiots’ and declaring [Dr. Fauci] a “disaster.” Only a smattering of Republican officials has managed even a tepid defense of Dr. Fauci. Whether out of fear, fealty or willful ignorance, these so-called leaders are complicit in this national tragedy. . . .
• But many . . . disillusioned Republicans also acknowledge that their team has been descending into white grievance, revanchism and know-nothing populism for decades. Mr. Trump just greased the slide, “He is the logical conclusion of what the Republican party has become in the last 50 or so years,” the long-time party strategist Stuart Stevens asserts in his book, “It was All a Lie.’”
• The scars of Mr. Trump’s presidency will linger long after he leaves office. Some Republicans believe that, if those scars run only four years deep, rather than eight years, their party can be nursed back to health. Others question whether there is anything left worth saving.[7]

But how can these men and women do this? They have families, some have children, others have children and grandchildren. These politicians have surrendered themselves to corrupt, evil and wrongful politics, highly destructive of American democracy and to the land they live in and love. Do they want their grown children and grandchildren to deny them in the future? Do they want to be considered pariahs in their own country or by historians? Most of them must see the right side of things and have the courage to defend their land and people. They must do it.

Now to return to the candidate himself. The New York Times published a multi-paged editorial on October 18, 2020. Its assertion—“He is a man unworthy of the office he holds—says it all, but a few comments are listed below.

• Donald Trump’s re-election campaign poses the greatest threat to American democracy since the Second World War.
• He has abused the power of his office and denied the legitimacy of his political opponents, shattering the norms that have bound the nation together for generations.
• But even as Americans wait to vote in lines that stretch for blocks through their towns and cities, Mr. Trump is engaged in a full-throated assault on the integrity of that essential democratic process. Breaking with all his modern predecessors, he has refused to commit to a peaceful transfer of power, suggesting that his victory is the only legitimate outcome, and if he does not win, he is ready to contest the judgement of the American people in the courts or even on the streets.
• Trump stands without any real rivals as the worst American president in modern history.
• He is a racist demagogue, presiding over an increasingly diverse country; an isolationist in an interconnected world; a showman forever boasting about things he has never done, and promising to do things he never will.

And just to make sure that the pain he is inflicting and the evil he is embracing have worldwide effect, as the world runs out of time to confront climate change (which threatens to irreparably destroy human civilization and at some point become irreversible):

• Trump has denied the need for action, abandoned international cooperation and attacked efforts to limit emissions.”[8]

It is also important to note that, in Trump’s mind, reelection in 2020 will be the equivalent of being elected president for life. He has several times said he thinks that, as it is with President Xi of China, president for life would be good for him and good for the country. He would have four years to subvert and eliminate the 2024 election. He imagines he never need leave the presidency. As Jane Mayer explains in her just released article in New Yorker article,

Trump has famously survived one impeachment, two divorces, six bankruptcies, twenty-six allegations of sexual misconduct and an estimated four thousand lawsuits. . . . That run of good luck may end, perhaps brutally, if he loses to Joe Biden. Two of the investigations into Trump are being led by powerful state and city law enforcement officials in New York. Cyrus Vance, Jr., the Manhattan District Attorney, and Letitia James, New York’s Attorney General, are independently pursuing potential criminal charges related to Trump’s business practices before he became president. Because their jurisdictions lie outside the federal realm, any indictments or convictions resulting from their actions would be beyond the reach of a presidential pardon. Trump’s legal expenses alone are likely to be daunting. . . . And Trump’s finances are also under growing strain. During the next four years, according to a stunning recent Times report, Trump—whether reëlected or not—must meet payment deadlines for more than three hundred million dollars in loans that he has personally guaranteed, much of this debt is owed to such foreign creditors as Deutsch Bank . . . . The Financial Times, meanwhile, estimates that, in all, about nine hundred million dollars’ worth of Trump’s real estate debt will come due within the next four years. At the same time, he is locked in a dispute with the Internal Revenue Service over a deduction that he has claimed on his income tax forms; an adverse ruling could cost him an additional hundred million dollars.[9]

His net worth, says Mayer, is estimated to be about two and a half billion dollars, comprised to a large degree of his hotels and resorts, which have been hit hard by the Pandemic and the controversies stemming from his political career. Timothy Snyder, a history professor at Yale who is an expert on authoritarianism says, “It’s the office of the presidency that’s keeping him from prison and the poorhouse.”[10]

That is the highlights of the very great crisis that the United States faces today—the most significant, most dangerous, and most threatening since the Civil War. Tomorrow, November third, the country will make a decision whether, in response to this crisis, the country proceeds to a happier future led by the man without fear and beyond reproach or continues down the dark path of the recent past, where sickness, economic ruin and tyranny lurk and that could lead in the direction of its ultimate destruction. Let us all pray to the Spirit that guides us that the road to a brighter and happier future under sound and resolute leadership is chosen.

Our Founders would be sympathetic and would urge upon us the courage and dedication to American principles to triumph over these several highly adversities.

“A government of laws, and not of men.” — John Adams, 1780

“Government is frequently and aptly classed under two descriptions, a government of FORCE and a government of LAWS: the first is the definition of despotism—the last, of Liberty.” — Alexander Hamilton, 1794

“If it be asked, what is the most sacred duty and the greatest source of our security in a Republic? the answer would be, an invincible respect for our Constitution and Laws—the first growing out of the last—a sacred respect for the constitutional law is the vital principle, the sustaining energy of a free government.” — Alexander Hamilton, 1794

“In questions of power, then, let no more be heard of confidence in men, but bind him down from mischief by the chains of the constitution.” — Thomas Jefferson, 1798

“That people who pay greater respect to a wealthy villain than to an honest, upright man in poverty almost deserve to be enslaved; they plainly show that wealth, however it may be acquired is, in their esteem, to be preferred to virtue… Surely you never will tamely suffer this country to be a den of thieves.” — John Hancock, 1774

“The liberties of our  country, the freedom of our civil constitution are worth defending at all hazards and it is our duty to defend them against all attacks… Let us remember that if we suffer tamely the lawless attack upon our liberty, we encourage it, and enslave others in our doom.” — Samuel Adams, 1771

A lady asked Dr. Franklin, “Well Doctor, what have we got, a republic or a monarchy?” “A republic,” replied the Doctor, “if you can keep it.” — Benjamin Franklin, outside of Constitution Hall in Philadelphia after the signing of the Constitution, 1787

John Jay

[1] Cohen, Roger, “Trump’s Last Stand for White America.”Opinion. The New York Times, October 26, 2020.

[2] Boot, Max, “I’m not just voting against Trump, I’m voting for Joe Biden. Here are eight reasons.” The Washington Post, October 29, 2020, p. A-27.

[3] Editorial. “The coronavirus emergency is worsening by the second. We must take immediate action,” The Washington Post, October 30, 2020.

[4] Ibid.

[5] Dawsey, Josh and Abutaleb, Yasmeen, “’A whole lot of hurt’: Fauci warns of covid-19 surge, offers blunt assessment of Trump’s response,” The Washington Post, October 31, 2020.

[6] Sorkin, Amy Davidson, “Last Round,” The New Yorker, November 2, 2020.

[7] Editorial, The New York Times, October 25, 2020.

[8] Editorial, “End our National Crisis: The Case against Donald Trump,” New York Times, Sunday Review, October 18, 2020.

[9] Mayer, Jane, “Why Trump Can’t Afford to Lose,” The New Yorker, November 1, 2020.

[10] Ibid.

 

Mitch McConnell has been a fixture of Kentucky politics for nearly two generations—over forty years—the last 36 in the United States Senate. In the early years Mitch did good things in government, but he has gradually drifted to the Dark Side of American politics. This is not an unknown development among people who overstay their time in power. Mitch McConnell’s contribution to the American people’s right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness is now so negative as to be a leading advertisement for term limits.

Ralph Nader, a college classmate of a good friend, described McConnell as follows:

I have studied and interacted with many members of Congress. McConnell is the most brazen, evil, cruel and powerful legislator in the last 50 years. His lack of empathy for the vulnerable and disadvantaged is stunning. Ultra-wealthy himself, McConnell’s monetized mind, marinated with corporate campaign cash, believes whenever corporate demands conflict with people’s necessities, he should put Wall Street over Main Street.[1]

A good example of McConnell’s commitment to evil was his recent action concerning an economic relief package for the country. The president has long since removed any doubt that he cares anything about the American people. People are badly hurting, suffering under the ravages of the pandemic and simultaneous economic decline. In a crisis mostly caused by his catastrophic mismanagement of the pandemic and economic policy, Trump cares nothing for the 225,000 Americans who died on his watch. He personifies the Dark Side—ultimate evil. McConnell is his enabler. Indeed, he characterizes himself as the “Grim Reaper.”

McConnell recently demonstrated that he does mean death for many people in the country. With the president, he pushed for an instant replacement—using a sort of kangaroo-court-in-reverse process—for recently deceased Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg by Amy Barrett. Trump saw Barrett’s far right legal stance as possible future support for turning his defeat in the November 3^rd national election into his victory. With only a few days remained in the Senate session, Trump and McConnell believed it imperative to have Barrett confirmed before the election so that she could vote on any attempt at overturning the election.

At the same time agreement on a new economic relief package to help the sick, hungry and despairing Americans appeared near completion in the House. On Tuesday, October 20^th, as reported in The Washington Post on Wednesday, October 21^st, McConnell warned the White House “not to strike an agreement with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi before the November 3^rd election.” In remarks at a private Senate Republican lunch, McConnell told his Senate colleagues”

…any deal they reached could disrupt the Senate’s plans to confirm Amy Barrett to the Supreme Court next week. Republicans have voiced concerns that a stimulus deal could splinter the party and exacerbate divisions at a time when they are trying to rally behind the Supreme Court nominee.

McConnell put the brakes on negotiations at same time Pelosi’s office confirmed that the most recent conversation with the administration “provided more clarity and common ground as they moved closer to agreement,” the White House reported that the two sides had recently made “good progress” and a national poll had reported “overwhelming support for a $2 trillion stimulus package.”[2]

Amy Barrett was confirmed by the Senate early the next week by a vote of 52-48 and McConnell promptly adjourned the Senate to prevent any attempt to take up economic stimulus legislation.  Thus, Americans continue to suffer while, as we see it, Trump attempts to stack the Supreme Court.

This is a terrible episode of malfeasance, corruption and dark politics by the Republican Party generally and Trump and McConnell in particular. For the party this sort of politics has been par for the course since McConnell became Majority Leader a decade ago and for Trump since the day he took office. It is far past time for both of these evildoers to leave public office.

“The essence of government is power; and power as it must be lodged in human hands, will ever be liable for abuse.” — James Madison, 1829

“Neither the wisest constitution nor the  wisest laws will secure the liberty and happiness of a people whose manners are universally corrupt.” — Samuel Adams, 1749

“It is substantially true that virtue or morality is a necessary spring of popular government.” — George Washington, 1796

“Avarice, Ambition, Revenge…would break the strongest cords of our Constitution, as a whale goes through a net, our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government by any other.” — John Adams, 1798

“If worthless men are sometimes at the head of affairs, it is—I believe—because worthless men are at the tail and in the middle.” — John Adams, 1806

“Let me add, that only a virtuous people are capable of freedom. As nations become corrupt and vicious, they have more need of masters.” — Benjamin Franklin, 1787

“Tyranny can scarcely be practiced upon a virtuous and wise people.” — John Adams, 1796

John Jay

[1] Nader, Ralph, Opinion Contributor, Louisville Courier Journal, October 27, 2020.

[2] Stein, Jeff, Wagner, Erica, “McConnell warning puts cloud over stimulus talks,” The Washington Post, October 21, 2020, page A-1, 26.

In his brilliant, profound Washington Post column of October 13, 2020,[1] Michael Gerson describes a magical garden, a rose garden, where once a mad king gathered his most loyal supporters. This lover of fairy tales recounts how the mad king told this group of supporters and sycophants that he would give each of them a golden apple (aka a conservative Supreme Court justice) representing what they wanted most in life if they would simply accept in their lives a harmless virus, which would trouble them little and soon go away. Their acceptance of this virus would help him advance his plans for the kingdom. He said that the apple—as they themselves could see—was without outward flaw. Such an offer his most loyal and obedient subjects could not decline. The golden apple would set things right for each of them in a world populated by so many unbelievers.

In offering this golden apple to pro-life subjects, the mad king would possibly give them a reliable fifth vote on the Supreme Court to overturn Roe v. Wade. Overturning that ruling, however, would not end abortion as they may believed, but simply return it to the uncertainties of state regulation. These subjects would receive this wonderful gift if they simply would ignore the tens of thousands (becoming hundreds of thousands) deaths from the virus. “But wouldn’t we save many more lives by banning abortions?” his supporters thought to themselves.

For those subjects whose primary interest was establishing a nation with a broad conservative judiciary, the king offered a generation-long dominance of the Supreme Court by prompt Senate confirmation of the golden apple to take a seat on the Court. In 2016 Republicans had blocked the confirmation of a highly qualified candidate for the Court nominated in February of that year, loudly declaiming that the nomination was much too close to the presidential election for the Senate to take a step with such long-term potential consequences. Now in 2020 a golden apple is nominated in October while citizens are already voting! The nomination of one whose legal views are essentially diametrically opposed to the much-loved Justice whose seat she would assume underscores the hypocrisy of the Republican Senate majority. Such hasty action taken without any real explanation or justification except the corrupt use of power invites retribution and will be long remembered—far longer than anyone’s present tenure in the Senate or on the Supreme Court.

The king’s golden apple would be a gift to subjects with a conservative legal ideology—the Federalist society—giving them a Supreme Court committed to judicial restraint, keeping the current legal structure in place despite changes in the country—contrary to the wishes of our founders who gave us a Constitution that could move with the times. In return for this prize the mad king simply asked that the Federalists continue to support him, a king who has always despised any restraint or check on what he wants to do, a king who cares nothing for the rule of law. Even now he is targeting his political enemies through false and fantastic charges, even threatening to jail his election opponent. This mad king will never agree to any peaceful transition from his royal place. Thus, his offer is tainted for these subjects, as well as the others. He will give them the gifts of power that they want, but only if they abandon all of their own principles and sense of honor.

Is it worth it? Michael Gerson had this to say in closing:

In the final, decadent days of the mad king’s rule, all these groups within the Republican coalition are being made the same offer: power in exchange for the public disgracing of their ideals. The response was evident in the garden: the hand-shaking and air-kissing of the maskless, the faithless and the doomed.

Even if our Founders never encountered any human being as evil, corrupt, unhinged or incompetent as the mad king, they nonetheless had something to say about the possibility:

“If there be a principle that ought not to be questioned within the United States, it is, that every man has a right to abolish an old government and establish a new one. This principle is not only recorded in every public archive, written in every American heart, and sealed with the blood of American martyrs; but is the only lawful tenure by which the United States hold their existence as a nation.” — James Madison, 1793

“If the federal government should overpass the just bounds of its authority and make a tyrannical use of its powers, the people whose creature it is, must appeal to the standard they have formed, and take such measures to redress the injury done to the Constitution as the exigency may suggest and prudence justify.” — Alexander Hamilton, Federalist Paper, Number 33, 1788

“Judges should always be men [and women] of learning and experience in the laws, of exemplary morals, great patience, calmness, coolness and attention. Should not have their minds distracted with complicated jarring interests, nor be subservient to any man or body of men, or more complaisant to one than another.” — John Adams, 1776

“The natural cure for an ill administration in a popular or representative constitution is a change of men.” — Alexander Hamilton, Federalist Number 21, 1787

“Change of men,” for sure!

John Jay

[1] Gerson, Michael, “Dark trade-offs of a fairy tale,” The Washington Post, October 13, 2020, p. A-23.

The following seems important to include in this journal.

Unlike all presidents before him President Trump dislikes, maybe even hates, our military establishment, the best in the world. Whatever Trump’s views of the military over the years, when he became president and swore an oath to protect the Constitution, at the same time, he became Commander in Chief of the nation’s military force, who are sworn to defend our Constitution. As Commander in Chief Trump has an obligation to suppress any personal views that interfere with his sworn duty to effectively lead our troops, thereby protecting the Constitution and our people. He emphatically has not done that. A commander is supposed build confidence in his troops. Trump emphatically has not done that. These actions alone justify his removal from office.

Jeffrey Goldberg, in his article, “Trump: Americans who Died in War are ‘Losers’ and ‘Suckers,’” included in the September issue of the Atlantic magazine, notes that Trump has “repeatedly disparaged the intelligence of service members and asked that wounded veterans be kept out of parades…” According to Jennifer Griffin, Fox News reporter, Trump has said about the wounded veterans in parades, “that’s not a good look.”

In 2018 Trump was in Paris and cancelled a visit to the Aisne-Marne American Cemetery at the last-minute asserting truthfully that it was raining and falsely that his helicopter wouldn’t fly. He was concerned that his hair would become disheveled in the rain, writes Goldberg, and he did not believe it was important for him to honor American war dead. In a conversation with members of his senior staff that morning Trump reportedly said “Why should I go to that cemetery? It’s filled with losers.” In a separate conversation on the same trip he referred to the 1,800 U.S. Marines buried on the sacred ground of Belleau Wood, a consequential battle in World War I, as “suckers” for getting killed. Trump denied this report once it became public, but it was confirmed by Fox News, among others, much to his unhappiness.

There are other like examples. When the great Senator John McCain died in August of 2018, Trump said of his funeral at Washington National Cathedral, “We’re not going to support that loser’s funeral.” He likely was happy not to have been invited to the funeral as had been all other living ex-presidents. There are many, many other examples, but—according to Goldberg—no precedent in American politics for expressing this sort of contempt.

The precedent to which all previous presidents adhered was perhaps best expressed by a president in 1863.

“Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

“Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting-place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

“But in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate—we cannot consecrate—we cannot hallow—this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here have consecrated it far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us—that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that the nation shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”

All these thoughts logically lead us to today’s principal editorial in The Washington Post, a long editorial entitled “Four more years of Mr. Trump’s contempt for competence would be catastrophic.” Quoted here is the final paragraph of that opinion—a good final assessment of the Trump administration.

“But the degradation of data collection [by Trump administrators] serves one obvious purpose: If we don’t gather information, we cannot see the depth of Mr. Trump’s failures. Another term could allow Mr. Trump to complete the demoralization, politicization, and destruction of a workforce that once was the envy of the world: the U.S. civil service, health service, Foreign Service, and uniformed military. In everything from consumer safety to air quality, to life expectancy, the results would be catastrophic. But there would be nobody left to measure them.”

John Jay

 

President Trump has turned in the most incompetent and destructive presidential performance ever in the last four years, indeed worse than anyone could have imagined in 2016. As a result, a sizeable majority of Americans are “strongly opposed” to giving him a second term. A majority of the country does not want four more years of a coronavirus response engineered by Trump’s overpowering ignorance and incompetence. They want an end to the scandals, the trashing of American institutions and principles, the steady weakening of the country and precipitous drop in our reputation as a country that can get things done and which actually does have principles. The only way to reverse course is to show Trump the door on January 20, 2021. Four more years of monumental misrule would be beyond catastrophe for America.

Recognizing how widely he is disliked and how likely he is to lose a fair election, Trump by his own acknowledgement is trying to steal the election by defunding the Post Office to prevent mail-in votes from being counted, among other plans. He has set out to undercut postal services in the midst of a dangerous viral pandemic—for the mismanagement of which he bears primary responsibility. Trump’s winning the election in a fair vote is one thing. His blatantly stealing the election is quite a different thing. That way lies violence, insurrection, civil war and secession. The American people won’t stand for such a thing and they will make sure any such usurpation doesn’t last long. No one should even want to be president under such conditions. A stolen election is Nixon’s last year times 10 and then some.

Almost everything Trump says is a lie or (assuming he knows what truth is) a shading of the truth. An excellent book documenting Trump’s lies has been published by the Fact Checker reporter at the Washington Post, Glenn Kessler.  The Fact Checker and his two assistants Salvador Rizzo and Meg Kelly begin their book, Donald Trump and his Assault on Truth” with a quotation from Jonathan Swift’s The Art of Political Lying published in 1710: “As the vilest writer hath his readers, so the greatest liar hath his believers, and it often happens, that if a lie be believed only for an hour, it hath done its work.” From the start of Trump’s presidency, The Washington Post authors have “catalogued every false or misleading statement he has made.” As of January 20, 2020, three years after Trump took the oath of office, the count stood at 16,241, making Him the greatest and the most mendacious of political liars in the history of this country. “That works out to 15 [false] claims a day. But the pace of deception has quickened exponentially. He averaged about six claims a day in 2017, nearly 16 a day in 2018 and since then 22 a day in 2019,” say the factcheckers.

Trump lies to cover up (among other failures) his sorry leadership during the pandemic. As of August 15^, the U.S. has recorded well over five million cases and seen 170,000 consequent deaths—approximately a quarter of the world total, with only five percent of the world’s population. Were one to look at the scope and moment of Trump’s lying on a scale of artistic political lying, it would not be inappropriate to refer to Trump as the Mona Lisa of political lying. If there were a Nobel prize for mendacity, this politician would win it every year. Nothing he says can ever be believed.

To drive home the magnitude of harm Trump’s lying has occasioned, I turn to Dana Milbank’s August 9 column in The Washington Post, “Suffering the Consequences of Trump.” In mid-March when there was a relatively small number of COVID cases, Trump said that his program was the most aggressive and comprehensive effort to confront a foreign virus in modern history. (Viruses do not have nationalities. Trump now calls COVID-19 the China virus.) Milbank cites an extensive new study conducted by British and Malaysian researchers, rating countries in terms of active cases of the virus, tests, detection, reporting, mitigation and infrastructure. Based on the ratings, countries are assigned a “Recovery Index.” On the Recovery Index, the U.S. ranked 127 of 184 countries. Quoting Milbank, “Here in the United States, testing, isolation and tracing capability lag badly while (as we contemplate opening schools again) Trump falsely claims children are ‘almost immune’ from the virus and his so-called education secretary claims children are ‘stoppers’ of the disease. How was the most powerful and advanced nation on earth brought so low? Of the various possible causes one rises above all: the incompetence and selfishness of just one man.”

There are many reasons for voters to say no to a Trump second term.

• Trump is trying to rig the election by defunding and destroying the Post Office in an attempt to make voting by mail impossible during a deadly pandemic. The Washington Post notes in an editorial on August 14 that rather than helping to make the democratic process stronger, “A desperate demagogic president, behind in the polls, would sow confusion and conspiracy theories, trying to delegitimize in advance any result other than a victory for him. That is what Mr. Trump is doing.”
• Trump is wrecking the effort in this country to mitigate the effects of climate change, thereby ensuring that the world will not be able to mount a defense against this terrible existential threat. The result will quite likely be a fiery end to human civilization as we know it, in a few decades. Trump’s latest move is the repeal of the rules controlling methane leaks during operations in the energy sector. The Washington Post denounced such actions in its August 15 editorial: “With climate change an ever-growing threat, and the United States paralyzed in its response, the willful negation of a useful and obviously needed remedy is perverse almost beyond imagination.”
• Trump endangers Americans by his mismanagement of the coronavirus pandemic as described above, with a resulting approx. 5,325,000 cases and 170,000 deaths by August 15, most of which might have been avoided but for Trump’s failure to lead.
• Trump has mismanaged our national economy, reducing its operations to near Great Depression levels, and necessitating a long recovery ahead and ultimately a serious effect on the stock market, which is currently holding (at least at the Dow Jones level) close to pre-pandemic numbers on the basis of hope and computer manipulation.
• Trump lies incessantly, cannot be believed and, as a result, has neither the capability nor the credibility to advise and lead the American people.
• As Foreign Affairs editor Gideon Rose argues, “After nearly four years of turbulence [under Trump], the country’s enemies are stronger, its friends are weaker, and the United States itself is increasingly isolated and prostrate. . . . Most of the world looks at Washington with horror and pity rather than admiration and respect and the one thing many of Trump’s domestic supporters and critics agree to there is no going back.”
• Ben Rhodes, another author of the September-October Foreign Affairs, “agrees that the liberal international order is defunct. Rather than try to revive it, he [Rhodes] warns Washington to shape a new and better one [order] by checking its privilege, avoiding hypocrisy and attacking global inequality.” Obviously, this would have to be done under new management after January 20.

Other reasons: Mr. Trump’s racist and fascist policies and attempted elimination of American democracy; his urging foreign countries to illegally intervene in the election on his behalf; the seemingly daily scandals and endless corruption; his belittlement of women; the degradation of immigration policy into savagery at our southern border with attacks on minority citizens, and policies to eject hard working residents who have lived in the United States for years—but not as citizens—who have nonetheless contributed much to our society and economy. Then, there is the deliberate encouragement of hatred and mistrust among us all.

There is yet one more issue worth discussing here—one Michael Gerson lays out in his August 11 Washington Post column, “See no Russia, hear no Russia.” Gerson writes, “President Trump’s ongoing attempt to dismiss or minimize Russian interference in U.S. elections is self-serving to the point of subversion. It is difficult to determine where vanity ends and betrayal begins.” Trump in public invited Russia to interfere in the 2016 election and in a public press conference with President Putin in 2018 accepted Putin’s denials over the considered consensus view of his own intelligence community. He said, standing beside Putin in front of the world press, “I have great confidence in my intelligence people, but I will tell you President Putin was extremely strong and powerful in his denial today.” In 2020 he dismissed as a hoax the intelligence community’s conclusion that Russia offered bounties to the Taliban in Afghanistan for killing American soldiers and refused to even ask Putin about the subject. Gerson asks, “Why has an American president ceased to defend his own country from sustained aggression?” And in the wake of all that had been revealed about 2016, how does the fact that the Russians are doing the same thing and perhaps more in 2020 and Trump’s indifference to such activity square with President Trump’s constitutional oath to protect the nation? Gerson concludes, “As much as anything, this is the reason Trump must be defeated in November.”

America has had many different types of people as her president, but never until now has she had a chief executive who behaves like an employee of the chief executive of our country’s principal enemy. Why Trump’s subservience to Putin? Some have suggested ego, others admiration of dictators, still others speculate about financial reasons. Noting Trump’s refusal to make his tax returns public as all other presidents and presidential candidates in the last 30 years have done, can we assume that Trump and his company are substantially indebted to Putin?

Whatever the cause, think of the terrible influence on the younger generation of seeing our country regarded as a tool of our principal enemy. Think of the impact on the morale of career government officials, indeed on all citizens of seeing our beloved America dragged through Russian mud and not defended by our own president. Such debasement must change and hopefully it will begin to do so after the third of November. Trump’s accession and performance is exactly what Alexander Hamilton in Federalist Paper, Number 68 warned against in 1788 as one of the greatest dangers that our Republic must always be on guard against:

“Nothing was more to be desired than that every practical obstacle should be opposed to cabal, intrigue and corruption. These most deadly adversaries of republican government might naturally to have been expected to make their approaches from more than one quarter, but chiefly from the desire in foreign powers to gain an improper ascendant in our counsels. How could they better gratify this than by raising a creature of their own to the chief magistery of the Union?” – Alexander Hamilton, 1788

November 3^rd is now not far away. Many fear that President Trump will undermine the integrity of our elections. He knows that a decisive majority “strongly opposes” him and he has refused to pledge that he will accept the outcome of the election, claiming without evidence that it will be rigged. David Ignatius in his July 24 Post column gives some advice on “How to avoid the worst in November.” He advances two guiding principles:

Be prepared. Assume that there might be one or more attempts to overturn or steal the election. State election officials must take every precaution to ensure that every citizen has a safe and secure way to cast his or her vote in person or by mail and also to provide safe, secure and reliable means to accurately and promptly count the vote.

Be patient. It may take a week or more to confirm a reliable national count. Partisans on both sides should remain calm, “law and order—and their essential companion,—justice, will be the people’s friend.

The people have two other allies—the military’s allegiance to the Constitution and the independence of the courts. No matter what president-for-life fantasies President Trump may entertain, the United States isn’t Russia or China. Our top military leaders—from General Mark A. Milley, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff on down—have stated emphatically that their oath is to the Constitution, not to Trump. The Supreme Court under Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. this year reaffirmed the independence and the integrity of our judicial system.

Fellow Citizens, as we consider our November 3^rd elections and its significance, let us remember what distinguishes us as Americans: our adherence to the ideals of the Declaration of Independence:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness;—that, to secure these rights governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.

And when approaching the voting booth or putting our signature on our mail-in ballot, let us remember Abraham Lincoln speaking on the field of Gettysburg. We must “highly resolve” “that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—that the government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”

Do these things, trust one another and all will be well.

John Jay

 

I am trying to get inside the minds of congressional Republicans, but it is nearly impossible to discover what is squirreling around in there. Why do they continue to stand behind our President of little brain and no conscience? He may be the leader of the Republican Party, but he also has caused untold numbers of deaths by his ineptitude and apparent lack of interest in the current pandemic. He has disgraced the United States by pulling out of such international efforts as the Paris Climate talks and the World Health Organization, and he threatens to withdraw from NATO.

Perhaps most dangerous for our democracy, he has sent, uninvited, his unmarked stormtroopers deep into some of our cities—far beyond the federal buildings they were ostensibly sent to protect. He has put our elections at risk by concealing the danger of foreign threats and disabling the effectiveness of the United States Post Office just as the pandemic has encouraged the use of mail-in ballots.

Yet, Republicans do nothing. Does their desire for re-election “trump” character, conscience, and the risks to the very survival of our democracy? Where are you, Lindsey Graham? Before his 2016 nomination, you referred to Trump as a “jackass, kook, and race-baiting bigot.” Now you act as if he could do no wrong. Is being re-elected in 2020 more important than saving your country from this would-be autocrat? We are reminded of James Madison’s cautionary note: “Enlightened statesmen will not always be at the helm. . . . When a majority is included in a faction, the form of popular government, . . . enables it to sacrifice to its ruling passion or interest both the public good and the rights of other citizens.” – Federalist Paper, Number 10

Mitch McConnell? Are you hiding behind that mask you have finally donned? Rumor has it that you despise our President. But you are two of a kind when it comes to your sole interest, that of winning at all costs. We are told that you are unpopular in Kentucky and need the President’s coattails to win there. But the rest of us need our country back.

Asked by Anderson Cooper in April 2018 whether he had ever heard President Trump tell a lie, Representative Jim Jordan said, “I have not” and “nothing comes to mind.” He also said, “I don’t know that [Mr. Trump has ever] said something wrong that he needs to apologize for.” Really?

Mitt Romney dares to speak out, and Liz Cheney has risked a dissenting position or two, but most of the rest of the Grand Old Party is not behaving in such grand style as its name would suggest. As Samuel Adams said, “If ever the time should come, when vain and aspiring men shall possess the highest Seats in government, our country will stand in need of its experienced patriots to prevent its ruin.” – to James Warren, October 24, 1780

The President and his party continue to break laws and thwart our venerable Constitution. Who among this faction will have the moral fiber to stand up for our democracy?  Remember Alexander Hamilton, who said, “If  it be asked, what is the most sacred duty and the greatest source of our security in a republic? the answer would be, an inviolable respect for the constitution and laws – the first growing out of the last. . . . A sacred respect for the constitutional law is the vital principle, the sustaining energy of a free government.” – Tully No. III, August 28, 1794

Mercy Warren