Trump’s brand of politics by personal attack is creeping into our national conversation

HALIFAX–Ever since Donald Trump hit the ground slithering in his 2016 presidential bid, the bar in politics has sunk to rock bottom. Not that the political arena was ever a monastery. There have always been politicians who couldn’t keep their zippers up, who telephoned judges on active cases, who told the occasional whopper, who drove their cars while over-refreshed, who did favours for friends, and who accepted favours in return. But there has never been a time when misogyny was effectively a platform in a major party’s policy playbook, as it is now in the GOP in the United States. There has never been a time when a United States president lied reflexively on everything from his tawdry dalliances, to his sleazy fundraising—also based on barefaced falsehoods. The 2020 U.S. election wasn’t stolen. But the money sent in by naive Trump supporters to fight the electoral results in court—all $200-million worth—apparently was. One can only wonder why wire fraud charges haven’t yet been laid. And who ever heard of an indicted defendant in a criminal case vowing to continue his bid for the presidency, even if he is convicted of felonies? That is exactly what Trump told fellow serial liar Tucker Carlson of Fox News in a recent interview. Spoken like a man who wants to dump the U.S. Constitution and defund the FBI and the Department of Justice. Trump has driven tribalism and iconoclasm in politics to such extremes that his supporters in Congress have even subpoenaed Alvin Bragg, the district attorney of Manhattan, to appear before the House Judiciary Committee. Leaping lizards, Batman! Bragg is currently prosecuting Trump on 34 felony counts of falsifying business documents to hide a hush-money payment to an adult film actress he allegedly had an affair with. Think about it. In the middle of a state criminal prosecution, House Judiciary Committee chair Jim Jordan is demanding that Bragg provide his federal committee with testimony, and secret and sensitive documents about the Trump case, which Jordan has called "political"—without knowing a thing about the evidence. Bragg responded by suing Jordan in federal court for "illegal" and "unconstitutional" interference in an active criminal proceeding in a state jurisdiction. Trump himself has gamed the courts all his life as a businessman, a necessity, perhaps, for someone who favoured the shady side of the street in his dealings. Not only has he infected members of the Republican leadership like Jordan with the same instinct, he continues to try to bludgeon his way through his legal difficulties with lawsuits. In his "anything goes" universe of personal attacks and retribution, Trump is now suing Michael Cohen, his former lawyer, for $500-million. Cohen is the star witness against Trump in the Stormy Daniels hush-money case being prosecuted by Bragg. A new form of witness intimidation? Trumpism, like COVID-19, is ubiquitous. Benjamin Netanyahu, the prime minister of Israel, is under indictment on corruption charges, and recently touched off massive country-wide protests when his government introduced legislation that would have given the Knesset the power to override rulings of the Supreme Court by a simple majority vote. The move was widely seen in Israel as an attempt by Netanyahu to get out from under his longstanding legal difficulties. When you politicize the justice system, fascism isn’t far behind. Illiberal leaders in both Brazil and Hungary have, like Trump, adopted deeply anti-democratic policies. In the case of Viktor Orban and his Fidesz Party in Hungary, the prime minister has changed the constitution 10 times since coming to power. One of those changes allows Orban to place "loyalists" in crucial, long-term positions with veto powers over the action of any future government. That way, not even a democratic vote can defeat you. Canada has so far been spared the worst of extreme right-wing politics, mostly because Canadians have supported progressive parties at the polls federally. But there is growing evidence that some of the elements of Trumpian politics are creeping into our national conversation. For starters, the critiques of the current federal government have more to do with swiftboating than sober analysis. Pierre Poilievre and the Conservative Party of Canada have put the crosshairs on Justin Trudeau, highlighting his alleged unfitness to run the country in highly personal terms, as opposed to offering a counter vision of what a Conservative government would do differently. The examples abound. Trudeau’s blackface of yesteryear is proof he is a racist. Trudeau’s use of the Emergencies Act to end the “Freedom Convoy” and its chaotic occupation of Ottawa is proof he is a dictator. Trudeau’s handling of alleged Chinese interference in the last federal election shows he is covering up for the Chinese and is perhaps a traitor. This from the party that sold a Canadian energy company to the Chinese communists for $15.1-billion, and bartered away Canadian sovereignty in the Canada-China Investment Promotion and Protection Agreement. That is tawdry politics. The invitation to voters is to personally dislike and reject Trudeau, rather than embrace a better candidate with better policies and a better vision. The public dialogue is not so much a contest of ideas between political parties, as it has traditionally been, but a kind of cage fight of the Texas death-match variety. Apart from being distressingly Trumpian, the approach taken by the official opposition is totally unnecessary. After so much time in power, the Liberals are open to legitimate criticism on a number of policy fronts. Did the government get the balance right between prudent public health measures and civil liberties during the COVID-19 pandemic? Did the government react to the crisis of inflation quickly enough and with the right measures? Given the desperate problems facing many Canadians on the health-care front, did the government go far enough in its recent rescue package with hard pressed provincial governments? All of that is up for debate, and rightly so. But "Fuck Trudeau" signs, like "Fuck Biden" signs and "Fuck Ford" signs, put up by fanatical supporters incited by relentless personal attacks on political leaders, are not the way to conduct a democracy. They are the way to end it. Michael Harris is an award-winning author and journalist. The Hill Times

Trump’s brand of politics by personal attack is creeping into our national conversation

The public dialogue is not so much a contest of ideas between political parties, as it has traditionally been, but a kind of cage fight of the Texas death-match variety. Apart from being distressingly Trumpian, the approach taken by the Conservative Party is totally unnecessary.

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Trump’s brand of politics by personal attack is creeping into our national conversation

The public dialogue is not so much a contest of ideas between political parties, as it has traditionally been, but a kind of cage fight of the Texas death-match variety. Apart from being distressingly Trumpian, the approach taken by the Conservative Party is totally unnecessary.

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