In the aftermath of the terrible riot at our nation's Capital Building last Tuesday, there has been an exodus of President Trump's cabinet members from his administration. From the well known (like Betsy DeVos, Education secretary) to the not so well known (farewell Ryan Tully, senior director for European and Russian affairs at the National Security Council, we hardly knew ye) the nine and counting cabinet members are the rats deserting the sinking ship. And most of them are openly saying that Trump's rally on Tuesday morning that lead to (and inspired) the riot is the reason they're leaving. As De Vos wrote in her resignation letter to the president that she also released to the press, “There is no mistaking the impact your rhetoric had on the situation, and it is the inflection point for me." While I certainly agree with her words (and I hope most people do), she and the others leaving are no profiles in courage. No matter what they may say, what happened on Tuesday, as terrible as it was, came as no real schock when you look at what Trump has been saying and doing for years now, not only as president but also as a candidate. The Republican party's belated attempt to improve its image by ditching Trump now that he is soon to leave the White House is only a reminder of all terrible things they have been putting up with from him for almost a decade now.
Remember that for years Trump was just a bragging mid level celebrity who did lots of TV appearances and cultivated an image of himself as the pinnacle of American success (even if that success had more to do with his father's money than anything else). Then in two thousand and five he became a full fledged reality television star on the show The Apprentice. Again. at that point he was a mostly apolitical celebrity. That all changed in two thousand and eleven when he decided to embrace birtherism, the crazy conspiracy hanging over then President Barack Obama that said that he was actually born in Kenya. Of course it was really just a way to demonize the nation's first African American president, but that obviously didn't matter to him. He started tentatively mentioning the conspiracy at first, but when he saw the attention and adulation he got from conservatives, he went all in. Clearly he basked in the glow of being the only prominent celebrity in the country to promote the conspiracy, returning to it time and time again, even claiming that he had paid investigators in Hawaii who were finding out "incredible things". After spending a lifetime in which he donated money to both political parties, the love he got from the conservative voters pushed him firmly into the Republican party.
His popularity with the Republican voters grew so much that there was talk of him running for the presidency in two thousand and twelve. Obviously that didn't happen, but his connection with the voters had gotten so strong that the party's candidate, Mitt Romney, had to bow and scrape for an endorsement from him, even while trying to dismiss birtherism. Trump gave it reluctantly, clearly relishing his position as party king maker. It was truly a pathetic moment that Romney would live to regret, and it was just the first of many times that an elected member of the Republican party was forced to kiss the ring of Trump.
Here's a quick timeline of the things Trump said as a candidate that the party was forced to accept, on top of his constant boasting and childish insults: that Mexican immigrants were all drug dealers and rapists. That John McCain was not a real war hero because he was captured. That Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama were the co founders of Isis. That Ted Cruz's father was involved in the Kennedy assassination. He called out members of the press by name at his rallies and encouraged the attendees to verbally assault them, while often calling the media "the enemy of the people". He also encouraged violent behavior from his followers at his rallies ("Knock the crap out 'em!"). He said that a judge of Mexican heritage should not be allowed to rule on a case involving him (something that former House Member Paul Ryan called "the textbook definition of racism."). They ignored it when he refused to condemn former Klu Klux Klan member David Duke. They even stood behind him after the release of the infamous Access Hollywood recording, which revealed him bragging about getting away with sexual assault. And when that lead to over twenty women rising up to say that he had assaulted them, the party still stuck with him. Just as they ignored the spike in hate crimes that his candidacy and presidency would cause.
And, of course, things just got worse after he won. With the exception of Mitt Romney, the one lone voice of reason in the wilderness of the cult of Trump, the Republican party would look away or endorse every crazy tweet or rally for the next four years. They stood by him as he fired James Comey as head of the FBI and admitted he did so to end the investigation to his campaign's ties to Russia. They also stuck with him as he separated children from their parents at the border, haphazardly tried to ban Muslims from coming to the country, tried to get money for his wall with Mexico, and then wound up taking money from the defense budget for it, referred to African countries as "shit holes", said there were "fine people on both sides" when talking about a white supremacist march, and held rally after rally laden with lies, brags and bluster. Six members of his campaign or administration either plead guilty or were found guilty of crimes, all of them going unmentioned by the Republicans even as Trump pardoned some of them.
And there there were the everyday corruptions he engaged in: how he violated the emoluments clause of the Constitution by having his sons run his business while he was in the White House. This included the Trump Hotel in Washington DC, which foreign dignitaries could stay in and run up a huge bill as a roundabout bribe. He also made sure to spend as much time as he could on his own properties, charging the expense of the secret service members staying there to the taxpayers. And I'm just scratching the surface on the level of criminal, indecent and brutish behavior the president constantly engaged in.
And, of course, the party drew ranks around him after his was impeached by the House of Representatives in twenty twenty for his clearly illegal phone call with the Ukrainian Prime Minister. They also accepted his disastrous response to the Covid 19 virus, from ignoring it to suggesting that people inject bleach,. No one in the party could admit that his ineptitude was costing American lives, even as the death toll soared. Then they turned the Republican National Convention into the Trump show, with a resolution stating that whatever he stood for, the party stood now stood for. Even after he lost, most of the party supported him as his assertions about the election being "rigged" became more and more delusional and deranged. To top it off, with the violence of Tuesday's riot still reverberating through the walls of congress, one hundred and forty seven Republicans in congress voted against the Electoral College vote count that affirmed Joe Biden's victory.
Given all the Republican capitulation ever since he became the most famous birther in the country, the fact that some of them are finally turning on him now seems like a pathetic, far too late, face saving maneuver than any real kind of honest reckoning. I was glad to see that the editors of the business magazine Forbes have released a statement warning companies from hiring anyone involved in the Trump administration, stating that "Forbes will assume that everything your company or firm talks about is a lie. We're going to scrutinize, double-check, investigate with the same skepticism we'd approach a Trump tweet." He also got a lifetime ban from Facebook and Twitter. That's a good start, but I hope the fallout from the Trump years goes far beyond that. Hopefully there will be investigations into the various corruptions that his administration committed, with possibly jail time for even Trump himself. Furthermore, I hope that the collective Republican adulation of Trump will fade into a crazy memory for both the party and the country, with the stench of his presidency cursing the party into irrelevancy, until its ready to move away from its extremist views and accept the reality of climate change, LGBTQ rights and tax increases on the rich, among other things. Ever since Trump first announced his candidacy, I thought that he might doom the Republican party. I still may be right.
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