Over the past few years, I’ve watched the vast majority of
the Republican Party rally around President Trump. As the 2020 election heats
up, I’ve even seen many staunch opponents of the president come over to endorse
Trump for 2020, sometimes reluctantly and sometimes enthusiastically. This is
something that I have a hard time understanding because the Donald Trump who is
a candidate in 2020 is much worse than the Donald Trump who ran in 2016.
I confess that I wavered on my opposition to President Trump
as well. During the first year of his presidency, he governed reasonably well
even though I found plenty to disagree with, such as his decision to withdraw
from the Trans-Pacific Partnership. Even though his focus seemed to be on
Twitter rather than legislative competence, his heart often seemed to be in the
right place. I appreciated his regulatory reform (courtesy of Mick Mulvaney),
his pro-life Executive Orders, and his appointment of Neil Gorsuch to the
Supreme Court. Even though he ultimately failed at repealing and reforming
Obamacare, Republicans were able to pass much-needed corporate tax reform. At
the same time, Trump’s worst instincts were tempered by advisors who were from
a traditional Republican background, who persuaded him not to abandon NAFTA
and NATO,
for example, or the courts, which rejected the first versions of his “Muslim
ban” Executive Order. Things were looking much better under Trump than I
thought they would.
Then came 2018.
In 2018, Trump came into his own and his Administration’s
policy became more inconsistent as Trump began to second-guess and push back
against the advisors who had helped him, if not succeed then at least not fail,
the previous year. Sometimes the traditional Republicans won, such as when the
president was persuaded not to cut and run in Syria. Sometimes Trump won, as
was the case when he launched a trade war on multiple fronts and embraced North
Korean dictator Kim Jong Un with almost nothing to show for it. 2018 saw Trump
attack America’s allies
while siding
with Vladimir Putin over the American intelligence community.
The nadir of Trump’s presidency (to date) occurred in the
summer of 2018 with the policy of intentionally separating immigrant children
from their parents, including families of legal asylum-seekers. The policy was
so unpopular, even among Republicans, that Trump quickly issued an Executive
Order reversing the practice, which had been implemented as a zero-tolerance
policy by then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions in April. Despite the
Executive Order, there are disturbing indications that family
separations are still taking place on a smaller scale and some families
still have not been reunited. Interestingly, CBS
News reported that 80 percent of reunited families were released rather
than deported, begging the question of why the separations were necessary in
the first place.
Immigration also figured heavily in the 2018 elections.
After the battle over Brett Kavanaugh’s nomination to the Supreme Court, the
midterm election suddenly looked winnable for Republicans. Rather than focusing
on the economy or Democratic extremism, however, President Trump chose to make
the Republican final appeal to voters a somewhat xenophobic argument against
migrant caravans and illegal immigration. The strategy resulted in the loss of
the House of Representatives, but Republicans managed to increase their margin
in the Senate thanks to a favorable map in which many red state Democrats were
up for re-election. Nevertheless, Republicans lost several winnable Senate
races and saw the erosion of their support in suburbs around the country.
2018 was also the year in which the men who had restrained
President Trump in his first year all fell by the wayside. After the departure
of such underwhelming appointees as Mike Flynn and Steve Bannon in 2017, the
seasoned experts were sent packing in 2018. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson
was first to go in March, later tacitly confirming reports that he had called
the president a “moron.”
In an interview
with Bob Schieffer, Tillerson described Trump as someone who is “pretty
undisciplined, doesn’t like to read, doesn’t read briefing reports, doesn’t
like to get into the details of a lot of things, but rather just kind of says,
‘This is what I believe.’”
“So often, the president would say, ‘Here's what I want to
do and here's how I want to do it.’ And I would have to say to him, ‘Mr.
President, I understand what you want to do, but you can't do it that way. It
violates the law,’” Tillerson added. This is a troubling insight into the mind
of a president who is increasingly ignoring his advisors to follow his own
instincts.
Before the end of the year, two more of President Trump’s
most senior and respected advisors were shown the door. Both Secretary of
Defense James Mattis and Chief of Staff John Kelly, once proudly referred to by
Trump as “my generals,” left the Trump Administration in December 2018. Mattis’
made public his resignation
letter, a polite yet blistering document that excoriated Trump’s foreign
policy worldview. The Atlantic
recently reported that Mattis’ closing words to the president were, “You’re
going to have to get the next secretary of defense to lose to ISIS. I’m not
going to do it.”
However, it has been 2019 that has so far been the worst for
conservatives who respect the rule of law. This year was ushered in with the
government shutdown that began in December 2018. Unlike previous government
shutdowns, the Trump shutdown was not intended to cut spending; it was intended
to increase the federal budget as President Trump demanded that Congress
appropriate money for his border wall. However, as with previous shutdowns, the
Trump shutdown also ended ignominiously. At 35 days, the shutdown was the
longest in US government history and achieved precisely nothing except
embarrassment for the Administration.
The president’s capitulation on the shutdown led directly to
his next affront to the rule of law: the national emergency on the border. President
Trump’s declaration of a national emergency was a blatant attempt to bypass
Congress rather than attempting to compromise with the opposition party. After
passing up at least three
border deals with Democrats, the president decided to use the emergency
declaration to force his will on the legislature.
No constitutionalist should back such as obvious ploy to
subvert the role of Congress. David
French ably pointed out the legal flaws to the plan, but there are logical
flaws as well. Almost two decades have passed since September 11, 2001, with no
firm evidence that Islamic terrorists have ever tried to cross the porous
southern border. At the time of the national emergency declaration, illegal
border crossings from Mexico were at a 50-year
low. Despite Trump Administration claims, there was also no epidemic of
violence from immigrants, either legal or illegal. Immigrants, even the illegal
ones, are statistically
less likely to commit violent crimes than native-born Americans and border
counties had some of the lowest
crime rates in the country. Six
times as many suspected terrorists were captured crossing the border from
Canada than from Mexico.
There is also the matter of the Mueller report. While Mr.
Mueller did not find a criminal conspiracy involving President Trump, he did
find evidence of attempted obstruction of justice by the president. Mr. Trump’s
defenders ignore the fact that Mueller
specifically cited the Justice Department policy that the president cannot
be indicted in deciding not to make a judgment as to whether Trump broke the
law.
In claiming “no obstruction,” President Trump’s defenders
also gloss over the fact that the president was saved from successfully
obstructing justice by subordinates who ignored his orders. The Mueller report
cited ten instances where President Trump ordered members of his administration
to obstruct the Russia investigation. Fortunately, Mr. Trump’s appointees were
more trustworthy than the president himself. Unfortunately, as we inch toward a
possible second Trump Administration, many of those trusted officials are no
longer in the White House.
It is the revelations of 2019 that truly disqualify Trump
and even make impeachment a legitimate course of action. While Trump has
engaged in bad policies such as the one-sided détente with North Korea or the
trade war against the rest of the world or the looming trillion-dollar deficit,
it is his subversion of the Constitutional role of Congress and his general
untrustworthiness with power as revealed by the Mueller report that are the
most serious marks against the president. Since successful impeachment is
politically impossible with Republicans in control of the Senate, it is up to
voters send a message that President Trump’s abuses of executive power and lack
of respect for the law will not be tolerated.
President Trump’s worst excesses relate to his abuses of
executive power and the failure of Republicans in Congress to hold him
accountable. President Trump’s statement in July 2019 that, “I have an Article
2, where I have the right to do whatever I want as president,” should strike
terror into the hearts of conservatives and libertarians. This is especially
true as White House officials with the strength to say “no” become increasingly
rare.
The abuses of a second-term Trump would be worse. As we’ve
seen, many of the responsible members of the Trump Administration have been
shown the exit and the president, more confident after three years in office,
is less likely to listen to those who remain. If Donald Trump is rewarded with
a second-term, his behavior will be even more reminiscent of Barack Obama, who
famously whispered to then-Russian President Dmitri Medvedev that he would have
“more
flexibility” after winning his second election. The prospect of President
Trump, who has already surpassed President Obama’s abuses of executive
authority, with more flexibility should be disquieting to any
constitutionalist. This is especially true in light of the president’s
increasingly unhinged behavior over the past few weeks.
There are many reasons that I can’t support President Trump’s
reelection effort. As a conservative, I disagree with much of his policy,
particularly with respect to the trade war and international relations. I don’t
like Trump’s divisive politics or his tendency to embrace top-down, big-government
solutions. Further, I have the same concerns about Trump’s mental and moral
fitness to lead that I had four years ago.
But, by far, the worst part is the president’s disregard for
the rule of law. In his first term, we learned that Donald Trump has no qualms
about issuing illegal orders or violating the constitutional order. If he is
re-elected after having suffered no meaningful consequences for his abuses of
power and with Republicans standing staunchly behind him, Mr. Trump will return
to the well of executive overreach again and again over the next four years. Conservatives
should act to stop him before he does.
Originally posted on The
Resurgent
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