Over the course of the last twenty years, a ceaseless, petulant litany rose from the off-center of popular culture to the apex of American power. Once it was merely the B-list celebrity whining of a great big baby; people laughed at it. Now Donald Trump’s bawling and bitching can move global markets, strike fear among high officials of our government, and inspire his fiercest loyalists to mayhem and sedition.
It can also turn grown men and women into spineless worms.
From the 2004 Emmys (“I got screwed out of an Emmy”) to the 2011 Emmys (“It’s a con game”); from Senator Ted Cruz’s victory in the 2016 Iowa caucuses (“He illegally stole it”) to Trump’s presidential approval ratings in 2017 (“They are rigged”); to the 2020 election (“The Election was Rigged. I concede NOTHING!”) and so much more—Donald Trump has shown he can’t handle the truth.
He’s a childish man who looks at the world in a childish way. If the the truth hurts, he cooks up a lie to comfort himself and defend his fragile ego. This has been obvious for years to anyone who has been paying attention to American life. We have all long since gotten used to it, and Trump has won two presidential elections in spite of it.
But what remains astounding to me is how so many men and women are able to abandon principles they have held with conviction their entire adult lives—simply for Trump. Deep down, these people, many of whom are powerful politicians, likely still believe what they always believed, and they may hope that one day they will be able to stand upon their principles in public once again. But who are we, if not our commitments? What is your truth, if not your beliefs?
I respect authentic MAGA folks a lot more than the time-servers and soul-shifters that make up so much of the GOP establishment in Washington and beyond. Donald Trump was able to change American politics because it needed changing. Millions of Americans were demanding a radical departure from a bipartisan status quo that had failed them, and in Trump they found the instrument of their deliverance. Protectionist on trade and an avowed economic nationalist (not that far from John Edwards in 2003), restrictionist on immigration and a fierce cultural revanchist—Trump seized the populist position in politics that had been sitting there empty and open for the taking for a generation, along with the enormous, inchoate constituency that had been longing for someone to fill it. Senator Bernie Sanders made a great run at this transformative constituency (minus the cultural vengefulness), but the Democratic Party establishment blocked him in favor of Hillary Clinton. Imagine, for a moment, how different American populism would be if, instead of Trump’s version, the populist campaign that changed America had been the one that gave us this wordless ad, one of the best political ads of my life, instead.
So I get it. I get why people sincerely voted for Trump, believing he would deliver to a sclerotic system the big changes they’d been seeking. Now, they were wrong, from my point of view. Trump has always looked to me like a con artist and a fake populist. But at least he called bullshit on the whole system, just like they did.
Not so the Mike Johnsons and Ted Cruzes of the GOP.
“Donald Trump…lacks the character and the moral center we desperately need,” Johnson wrote in 2015, reflecting a career rooted in Christian activism and his professed Christian view of character and leadership. “I am afraid he would break more things than he fixes.”
Now? “If he’s the head coach, I’ll be the quarterback,” Johnson says. Jettisoning his Christian concerns about character and ethics in leaders helped make Mike Johnson Speaker of the House. It’s a living, I guess.
As for Ted Cruz—you know the story. Donald Trump called his wife ugly and said his dad might’ve helped kill JFK. Now Cruz giggles at Trump’s jokes and grovels before him. What would you do if someone went after your wife or husband, or your father, like that? In front of the world? In front of your children? I don’t understand a man like Ted Cruz. Truly, I don’t consider him a man at all. He also tosses aside his principles to align with Trump like he tosses aside his constituents for a luxury vacation whenever disaster strikes Texas.
What kind of men are these? And what kind of women are the Republicans who make the same awful bargain?
Some people will do or say anything for their careers. For the rest of us, there’s a line. Crossing it costs too much.
With Donald Trump, the cost is astronomical; once Trump has you, once you have given him your honor, your civic soul—it’s over. You are on for the whole wild ride towards the Trumpian autocracy that is already coming into view, you are crashing through what you used to think were your “red lines” and running roughshod over ideals and even people you once held precious, and somewhere in some parallel universe, or maybe somewhere deep inside you where the ghosts of your dreams have gone to die altogether and be erased, you are despising yourself. What on God’s good earth is worth that?
I don’t know. But spinelessness has been for years now the best career move an ambitious Republican can make.
What I do know is that the personal interior dramas of establishment Republicans aren’t the real casualties in this dangerous moment in our history. The stability, safety, and decency of our country are all being battered by the day because of the way Trump alters the characters, and even bends reality, for so many of his followers.
Look at the firing last Friday of Erika McEntarfer, the commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Once again, Trump couldn’t handle the truth, that the jobs numbers are softening, in large part because of the disruptions and uncertainties caused by his policies. At first, Labor Secretary Lori Chavez Deremer hailed the jobs report, declaring, “Wages are up, investments are pouring into our nation, and native-born workers have accounted for ALL jobs gains since January!”
But hours later, Trump threw one of his ALL CAPS tantrums, demanding once again that the world agree with him that the sky is green and the grass is blue, and like good apparatchiks, the entire Republican establishment instantly went on Fox News and anywhere else they could to announce proudly to the world that, Yes! The sky IS green! The grass IS blue! McEntarfer must go!
Secretary Deremer changed her tune so much it would be laughable if it weren’t so awful: “I agree wholeheartedly with POTUS…”
Now the world will know going forward not to trust the economic numbers coming out of the US government, and our country’s reputation and reliability in the world will take another hit. For years ahead, we will be paying a price for the damage being done by this administration, and by all those who sold their integrity and abandoned what they know to be right for—for what?
Be true to yourself. Turns out, it might help save our country.