The people who served under Trump
I’ve posted about democracy, and about country before party. Those were principled posts about things that could be said about any election, but rarely needed saying. Today, I’m going to post about one of the candidates, Donald Trump, in a way that has never been said in my lifetime, and that is many people who served under him now say he’s unfit to be President, and they say that repeatedly and in public.
This is new, and unique to Trump. I am lucky to have known several folks who have served in the White House, working for both Democrats and Republicans. Some of them have served under Presidents of both parties, others have chosen to not work for this administration or that. That was sometimes a political choice: They wanted to work on policies that were out of line with an Administration’s goals. Sometimes it was personal: There were candidates who they didn’t like. Not a single time have I ever heard anyone say “that person is unfit to be President.”
With Trump, many of the people that he chose to serve under him say he’s unfit. At the very most senior levels, it includes his Attorney General, his Chief of Staff, two of his National Security Advisors, his Director of National Intelligence, and his own Vice President.
He said he’d staff his administration with “the very best people.” So either he’s a poor judge of character (in which case, how will he do this time?) or he’s unfit to serve.
A lot of people point out, correctly, that there is a long list of “old guard Republicans” who are also against Trump. This is not that argument. If you believe in small government, free trade and international leadership, I’m with you. But the Republican party has shifted to an activist government, calls for massive tariffs, and cozying up to Russia, Hungary and North Korea over our allies. And to the extent those are policy choices, if my fellow Americans are voting for that, as I said in my post On Democracy, “your goal in a democracy is to get your fellow citizens to vote with you for those positions, so those who lose see that their positions are less popular, and that your positions gain legitimacy.” If the American people want to vote to send scarce Covid testing machinery to Putin before we share it with our traditional allies... well, it’ll be an interesting world. I’ll be sad that our leaders didn’t make an effective case for the international system that’s produced so much peace and wealth.
And if you’re a lifelong Republican, I encourage you to ask how the party has shifted since Ronald Reagan and if it represents the things you voted for then.
But that’s not the core argument I’m making in this post. The argument I’m making is that there’s a long list of Republicans who oppose Trump. (The article is a compilation of of “Republicans opposed”, but the first section catalogs those who worked directly for him.) These were “his” senior officials, and had the repeated and ongoing opportunity to see how he thought and behaved.
This is not not just one or a few people with an axe to grind. It’s an extensive list of his hand-picked staff who think he shouldn’t be given the reins of power. That choice takes courage, and we should believe the people who are telling us: Don’t vote for Donald Trump.
[Update: Bob Woodward says that Trump’s Director of National Intelligence, Dan Coates, believes that Trump is being blackmailed.]
Image from Brad Templeton, https://ideas.4brad.com/graphic-shows-strong-oldgop-opposition-trump, who was focused on a different set.