In the 230-year history of the American presidency, the chaos, turnover and blistering critiques from aides in the Trump administration are entirely unprecedented. Rarely, if ever, has an administration suffered so much “friendly fire” from its own lieutenants and party members. Details.
“The sheer volume of allegations lodged against Mr. Trump and his circle defies historical parallel, possibly eclipsing if they were all proved true, even Watergate, the nonpareil scandal of scandals,” wrote Peter Baker in The New York Times.
New revelations have come at least monthly since Trump’s presidency began.
In December 2019, the US House approved two articles of impeachment against Trump, asserting that he “ignored and injured the interests of the nation” and that his behavior amounts to a “clear and present danger to fair elections and national security.” They charged him with:
- abuse of power, for trying to force Ukraine, a vulnerable ally, to dig up dirt on a potential political opponent Joe Biden and “enlist a foreign power in corrupting democratic elections.”
- contempt of Congress, refusing to explain his actions or be accountable, showing “unprecedented, categorical and indiscriminate defiance” in the face of multiple subpoenas. In the words of a NYT editorial, he “made it impossible for Congress to carry out fully its constitutionally mandated oversight role, and, in doing so, he violated the separation of powers, a safeguard of the American republic.”
“In the history of the republic, no president has ever ordered the complete defiance of an impeachment inquiry or sought to obstruct and impede so comprehensively the ability of the House to investigate ‘high crimes and misdemeanors,’” the obstruction article stated.
Acting strategically to help House Democrats in swing districts, they did not include other articles of impeachment, charging Trump with bribery or obstruction of justice for attempting to thwart Robert S. Mueller III’s investigation into his campaign’s ties to Russian election interference in 2016. Moderate Democrats also suggested instead of impeaching Trump on a purely partisan vote, they censure him. But “lawmakers agreed it had little real chance of success (in the Senate) and dismissed the move,” according to the NYT. Censuring him could not address Trump’s obstruction of Congress.
The House vote was 230 in favor of impeachment and 197 against. Only six out of 435 House members dissented from the partisan party positions — three Democrats and one (former) Republican. Now an independent, Justin Amash of Michigan voted in favor of impeachment. “Two Democrats voted with Republicans. One of them, New Jersey Rep. Jeff Van Drew, is poised to leave the Democratic Party. The other, Rep. Collin Peterson of Minnesota, opposed impeachment but will remain in the party. A third Democrat, Rep Jared Golden of Maine, voted to impeach Trump for abuse of power, but not for obstructing Congress,” the NYT reported. Two representatives, one Democrat and one Republican, abstained from voting.
Predictably, in January 2020, Senate Republicans remained mostly unified, refusing to even hear from witnesses against Trump. Only Mitt Romney, the 2012 Republican nominee, showed the integrity and independence to vote to convict Trump. His brief address will go down in history:
After Trump was “acquitted,” in February 2020 he moved to exact revenge and to strike fear into the heart of any government employee who might have an independent thought. A US Foreign Service Officer was forced to retire after Trump’s authoritarian goons stalked her.
The character of independent-minded military officers was smeared.
Trump tried to politicize the Civil Service and the legal system so that they would only act in his favor.
In November, 2019, during public impeachment testimony in the House of Representatives, several non-partisan foreign service and intelligence officers, as well as administration officials, accused the president of attempted bribery, obstruction of justice, intimidating and tampering with witnesses, violating national security, and favoring America’s adversary Russia over ostensible ally Ukraine.
In early October 2019, Trump invited China to intervene in the 2020 elections on his behalf, and to investigate Biden and his son Hunter.
In September 2019, Trump acknowledged that he asked the Ukrainian president to investigate potential rival Biden and his son’s business relationships with the country, while withholding $400 million in military aid to Ukraine, appropriated by Congress, until Ukraine obeyed. Whistle-blowers in the intelligence community, stationed at the White House, filed a complaint against Trump, charging that he improperly pressured a foreign government to investigate a political opponent, “using the power of his office to solicit interference from a foreign country” in the 2020 election. Trump’s former Homeland Security Advisor Tom Bossert expressed strong concerns about the president’s phone call and said it could bring him down. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi called this a “new chapter in lawlessness.” After the whistleblower’s complaint was made public in September, the aid to Ukraine due in July was suddenly released.
Earlier in the month, US intelligence services revealed that they removed a high-level agent from Russia out of fear that Trump would identify the agent to Vladimir Putin.
In August 2019, Trump called himself the “chosen one”, asserted that Jews who support Democrats are “disloyal”. The Washington Post reported that aides as well as as Republican consultants observed that the president’s summer was one of missed opportunities, self-sabotage, incompetence, indecision, and intolerance, quite possibly inspiring a mass shooter. Trump’s tariffs have not helped the US economy, which seems on the verge of faltering.
In July 2019, Trump announced his extremely divisive re-election strategy to divide-and-conquer Americans along racial and ethnic lines. He first tweeted that four women of color, members of Congress and American citizens, should go back to the “corrupt” countries they came from. In particular, he suggested a Muslim, Somalian-American citizen should go back to Africa. At a rally in North Carolina, his supporters chanted “Send her back!” Trump praised these supporters as “very patriotic.” Next he tweeted that Elijah Cummings, an African American congressman from Baltimore, was “racist,” a “brutal bully,” who along with other Baltimore political leaders was guilty of stealing and mismanaging federal funds. He should clean up his district, a “disgusting, rat and rodent infested mess” where “no human being would want to live,” Trump tweeted. NYT coverage. Forty Republican members of Congress criticized Trump’s tweets.
In June 2019, Trump said he openly welcomed the assistance of a foreign adversary such as Russia in winning the 2020 election, just as he did in 2016, and would not alert the FBI. He accused former White House counsel Don McGhan of lying under oath. Stuart Stevens, a longtime Republican campaign strategist who advised five presidential campaigns, told The Washington Post Trump’s comments were “mind-boggling.” “It’s incredibly corrosive,” he said. “I mean, if the president can do it, why can’t everyone do it?” Democrats seek legislation to require candidates to report to the authorities any effort by foreign governments to influence American elections. But Republicans are blocking it. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell apparently welcomes Russian or other foreign interference in the 2020 elections, since he won’t do much to prevent it.
In May 2019, more than 600 federal prosecutors, both Democrats and Republicans, said they would indict Trump for obstruction of justice if he were not the president. Meanwhile, The New York Times punctured severe holes in Trump’s well-cultivated image as a successful businessman. Drawing on print-outs of his tax returns, the Times revealed “that from 1985 to 1994, Donald J. Trump’s businesses were in far bleaker condition than was previously known. He had more than one billion in business losses. “Year after year, Mr. Trump appears to have lost more money than nearly any other individual American taxpayer.” Essentially, he burned through a huge inheritance from his father. The Times epic investigation exposed the fraud of Trump’s business success. The Times worked on this investigation for years, and continues to play a very effective long game.
In April 2019, after Trump and his lieutenants repeatedly denied any contact between his campaign and Russian operatives, an investigation led by attorney Robert Mueller, a Republican, revealed and examined 16 face-to-face meetings between the Trump campaign, or Trump business staff and numerous electronic communications with Russians in 2015-16, some of which had been deleted or encrypted and were therefore inconclusive. It also examined 11 episodes of potential obstruction of justice on the part of the president. While Mueller said he could not prove conspiracy or obstruction of justice, his report stated explicitly that it did not exonerate Trump on obstruction of justice. Trump in turn falsely declared “total and complete exoneration” by Mueller. “No collusion, no obstruction of justice,” Trump declared. On numerous occasions, Trump made up bald-faced lies about Mueller, which Factcheck.org debunked.
In March 2019, 12 Republican senators joined with all 47 Democrats to oppose President Trump’s declaration of a national emergency in order to defy Congress and shift military construction funds to build a wall on the Mexican border. Seven Republican senators joined with all 47 Democrats to instruct Trump to withdraw American troops from the civil war in Yemen.
In February 2019, former Trump fixer and attorney Michael Cohen testified before Congress and accused Trump of at least five felonies: conspiracy to defraud the United States; lying to the FBI and the Justice Department; suborning perjury; violating campaign finance laws; bank, wire and tax fraud.
In January 2019, former Trump communications aide Cliff Sims published a 384-page tell-all, “Team of Vipers.” According to The Washington Post, “Sims, who enjoyed uncommon personal access to Trump, recounts expletive-filled scenes of chaos, dysfunction and duplicity among the president, his family members and administration officials.” Details.
Earlier in January, Mitt Romney, senator from Utah, excoriated Trump’s character in a Washington Post op-ed, saying “he has not risen to the mantle of the office.”
In December 2018, Trump’s widely-respected Secretary of Defense James Mattis resigned in protest of the president’s decision to withdraw 2000 US troops from Syria prematurely, abandoning Kurdish fighters and leaving important territory to Russia and Iran. Mattis was also upset that Trump essentially rejected critical international alliances. Details.
Also in December, White House Chief of Staff John Kelly resigned after 18 months, asserting frequently that Trump was not up to the job of being president, and that his tenure is best measured by how he prevented Trump from doing things that damaged the country.
Former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said his boss “is pretty undisciplined, doesn’t like to read, doesn’t read briefing reports, doesn’t like to get into the detail of a lot of things, rather says ‘this is what I believe,’ ” and regularly pushed him to take illegal actions.
In 2018:
Republicans overwhelmingly lost the House of Representatives to the Democrats by 43 seats.
Republican consultant Steve Schmidt said Trump is a threat to democracy. Trump will “burn down everything” to save himself, he says, and America is headed for a constitutional crisis. Below, he says Republicans are “blindly loyal” to Trump, have “surrendered their intellectual autonomy” to the president and are on their way to creating “grave and lasting damage” to the country.
Former CIA Director John Brennan said Russia may have compromising information on Trump. “When the full extent of your venality, moral turpitude, and political corruption becomes known, you will take your rightful place as a disgraced demagogue in the dustbin of history,” Mr. Brennan wrote on Twitter. Senator Jeff Flake (R-AZ) threatened Trump with impeachment. Conservative columnist Mona Charen deplored the betrayal of conservative values by Trumpism. Fox News Military Affairs Analyst Ralph Peters resigned with scathing criticism of the “propaganda machine” that is “assaulting our constitutional order and the rule of law.” Former CIA Director Michael Hayden slammed Trump for “autocrat envy.”
“Trump is Woody Allen without the humor,” wrote Peggy Noonan, former Reagan speechwriter, in the WSJ. She described him as a weak man’s idea of a strong man. “Half his tweets show utter weakness. They are plaintive, shrill little cries, usually just after dawn.” This link is not behind a paywall.
In “Everything Trump Touches Dies,” Republican strategist Rick Wilson described Trumpism as a “disease that is destroying the conservative movement and burning down the GOP.”
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