Trump, Giuliani have lost any pretense they care about the country
When Donald Trump's liar-for-hire Rudy Giuliani proclaimed last week that his master's election rejection was due to "a massive fraud," it wasn't only black hair dye that leaked out. It was Giuliani's last remaining droplets of credibility.
President Donald Trump, in insisting that he won an election he overwhelmingly lost, has abandoned any pretense of caring about the country he leads.
Added Giuliani: "I know crimes. I can smell 'em."
Trump is repeating over and over that the election was "stolen." In doing so, he hasn't merely enshrined himself as the most morally bankrupt public official in American history; he has made Joe McCarthy look like an Episcopal priest. By refusing to honor the most fundamental feature of democracy - the cooperative transfer of power by an incumbent to his elected successor - Trump has done more damage to American democracy than Russian President Vladimir Putin ever could, other than by military attack.
By blocking the incoming Joe Biden team from organizing to immediately address a pandemic that now strikes nearly 200,000 Americans each day, Trump is consigning many Americans to unnecessary sickness and, potentially, death. History will record that the 45th president did not merely ignore COVID-19; stupidly dismiss it; refuse to mobilize to protect his countrymen from it; and lie to them about it. It will record that Trump has actually prevented his elected successor from promptly acting to safeguard the American people from the raging disease.
Donald Trump will not enter our pantheon of shame by himself. He has been coddled and enabled by Republican politicians more disposed to cower and grovel than honor basic civics lessons we were taught in grammar school.
There have been rare exceptions. "Having failed to make even a plausible case of widespread fraud or conspiracy before any court of law," Sen. Mitt Romney said last week, "the president has now resorted to overt pressure on state and local officials to subvert the will of the people and overturn the election. It is difficult to imagine a worse, more undemocratic action by a sitting American president."
In Pennsylvania, federal judge Mathew Brann, a conservative Republican, did not permit personal politics to affect judicial review of Trump's attempt to invalidate millions of properly cast ballots. Brann likening the president's "strained" legal attempt to undo a fair election to "Frankenstein's Monster." Trump, he held, asks the court "to violate the rights of over 6.8 million Americans. It is not in the power of this court to violate the Constitution."
The grim truth is that the fault lies with us. By embracing a president who has subverted fundamental democratic norms, we have proved ourselves unworthy of the self-admiration with which we indulge ourselves.
It is hubris to suppose that what we have will long endure if we cavalierly permit the sort of travesty we have experienced over the past four years to recur. Nearly half of American voters have evinced a willingness to do just that. Plainly, America is in a hole it needs to dig itself out of.
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