The most hopeful sign Trump is headed for con-man oblivion

HALIFAX—For the 17th straight year, global freedom has declined. Despite Pierre Poilievre’s feckless rants, Canada continues to buck the trend. It is no accident that democracy is under attack worldwide. For years now, there has been a surge in the number of “strongmen” who have emerged with illiberal, populist agendas, a trend that accelerated with the emergence of that political porn star, Donald Trump. Trump’s calamitous presidency in the United States was the starting pistol for the incessant subversion of key democratic institutions, a frontal assault on the free press, and the general upending of the international system that has kept humanity from blowing itself up for 70 years. The “Angry Dorito” traded the NATO alliance for a huggy-bear, kissy-face relationship with the butcher of Ukraine, Russian President Vladimir Putin. He attacked his own intelligence agencies, accusing them of being part of a “deep state” working against conservatives. During his time in the White House, the Bully Pulpit became the Bullshit Pulpit. Trump vilified scientists like Dr. Anthony Fauci who tried, without success, to wake up the president about the immense dangers of the COVID pandemic. He politicized the Supreme Court, raged against the Constitution, and tried to weaponize the Department of Justice. He defended white supremacists as “good people” and urged that his political opponents should be “locked up.” And with the full support of evangelical Christians, he broke the seventh, eighth, and ninth Commandments with startling regularity. A strange basis for referring to himself as “the Chosen One," as he did when trying to defend his trade war with China. Trump also cozied up to democracy-wreckers outside the United States, all of whom were charter members of the Live Dictators' Society: Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah Aliza Al Saud; North Korea’s Kim Jong-un; Brazil’s Jair Bolsinaro; Turkey’s Recep Erdogan; and Viktor Orban in Hungary. These were Trump’s kind of people and he was theirs. With Trump providing the blueprint, many of these current and former leaders began using the phrase “fake news” whenever they were criticized. Trump’s horrendous record in office was studded with an almost supernatural ability to escape the consequences of his misdeeds. After thousands of lies, he added the Big Whopper to his resumé: that the 2020 presidential election had been stolen, that Joe Biden’s presidency was illegitimate, and that the American electoral system was corrupted by devilish voting machines and dastardly Democrats. That lie led to major consequences. The first one was the deadly riot at the United States Capitol Building in Washington, D.C. on Jan. 6, 2021, in which five people died and 140 police officers were injured. Next came Trump’s impeachment for turning the Capitol Riot into no more than an afternoon’s entertainment in the White House. While Rome burned, this modern-day Nero watched TV. The Big Lie, and all that flowed from it, should have been the end of Trump’s reign of error. But the GOP was no longer the party of cloth coats and sensible shoes, as Richard Nixon once said to deflect criticism of corruption. Pat Nixon’s modest attire has been replaced by the glamorous excesses of Melania Trump and her husband’s gaudy greed and soulless materialism. Which is just to say that Trump has killed off Republican values, and ushered in a period of peak cynicism with his win-at-all costs and the-facts-be-damned philosophy. Republicans in the Senate betrayed their oaths, their party tradition, and their country. They simply let Trump off the hook at his impeachment trial for no better reason than what they took to be their partisan self-interest. It was a monumental blunder. How they have paid for wrestling with their conscience and losing when it came to holding Trump to account. Instead of being banished from public life, as this twice-impeached president should have been, Trump became the first person to declare yet another run for president in 2024. Now the GOP is stuck with this shameless, unelectable huckster and the fascist image he has created for the party. Trump says he wants to “terminate” the U.S. Constitution. He bloviated about a “peace plan” to end the war in Ukraine. The key point? Trump would have done a “deal” allowing Russia to dismember parts of Ukraine. Not a word from Trump on consulting Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy about giving away parts of his country to the invader. That said, Trump has a big lead in the polls over his biggest rival, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis. But there is a ray or two of sunshine breaking through the gloom. There are a number of signs that the extreme right-wing politics of anger and aggrievement, of authoritarianism and lies, is waning. The Republicans flopped in the recent mid-terms, where a number of celebrity election-deniers like Dr. Oz and Herschel Walker were defeated. Trump was the star of the show at the recent Conservative Policy Action Conference, but the event was sparsely attended, and actively boycotted by senior Republican figures. Former vice-president Mike Pence, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, and Florida’s Ron DeSantis found other places to be, while Trump was telling Team Crazy that he was their “warrior," their “justice,” and their “retribution”. Although Fox “News” continues to shill for the former president, the network's stars have been outed as serial liars. It is hard to imagine that Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity, and Laura Ingraham will continue to front Fox’s slime time. How bad has this shit-show become? Carlson was given over 40,000 hours of Capitol Hill security videotape from that spineless political amoeba, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy. He reduced it to a four-minute item in which he portrayed the invaders of the Capitol as “sightseers.” Yes, and Attila the Hun was just a tourist when he invaded Gaul. But the most hopeful sign that Trump is headed for con-man oblivion is from the American justice system he tried so diligently to manipulate. Trump is facing multiple criminal investigations, including illegally retaining classified documents, inciting the Jan. 6, 2021, riot, election interference in the Georgia election, and paying hush money to porn star Stormy Daniels for her silence about their alleged affair. Last week, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg did something that legal experts believe signals Trump may soon become the first U.S. president to be indicted; Bragg invited Trump to testify, without a subpoena, before the New York grand jury. That is usually a sign that prosecutors have finished their case and are about to lay charges. No wonder Trump told the Conservative Political Action Conference that even if he is indicted, he will not drop out of the race for his party’s presidential nomination for 2024. As the GOP should already know, Trump is the gift that keeps on taking. Michael Harris is an award-winning author and journalist. The Hill Times