By Robert Reich
On the evening of December 7, minutes after a local Indiana
union leader, Chuck Jones, criticized Trump on CNN for falsely promising to
keep Carrier jobs in the U.S., Trump tweeted, “Chuck Jones, who
is President of United Steelworkers 1999, has done a terrible job representing
workers. No wonder companies flee country!”
Since that tweet went out, Chuck Jones says “I’m getting
threats and everything else from some of his supporters.”
A few days before, Boeing’s CEO Dennis Muilenberg was quoted in the Chicago Tribune gently chiding
Trump for being against trade. Muilenberg noted that trade is essential to the
U.S. economy, as reflected in the “large and growing percentage of our
business” coming from international sales, including commercial jet orders from
China.
Moments later, Trump tweeted: “Boeing is
building a brand new 747 Air Force One for future presidents, but costs are out
of control, more than $4 billion. Cancel order!”
Boeing shares immediately took a hit. As it turns out,
Boeing doesn’t even have a $4 billion order to make Air Force One planes.
Trump doesn’t take kindly to anyone criticizing him – not
journalists (whom he refers to as “dishonest,” “disgusting”
and “scum” when they take him
on), not corporate executives, not entertainers who satirize him,
not local labor leaders, no one.
The President-elect’s tendency to go after people who criticize
him by sending false and provocative statements to his 16 million twitter
followers not only imperils those people and their organizations.
It also poses a clear and present danger to our democracy.
Democracy depends on the freedom to criticize those in power
without fear of retribution.
No President or President-elect in history has ever before publicly condemned individual citizens for criticizing him. That occurs in two-bit dictatorships intent on stamping out dissent.
No President or President-elect has ever before bypassed the
media and spoken directly to large numbers of his followers in order to
disparage individual citizens who criticize him. That occurred in the fascist
rallies of the 1930s.
America came closest to this in the 1950s when Senator Joseph
McCarthy wrecked the lives of thousands of American citizens whom he
arbitrarily and carelessly claimed were communists.
McCarthy’s reign of terror ended when a single man asked him
publicly, during the televised hearings McCarthy was conducting, “have you no decency, sir?”
In that moment, Americans began to see McCarthy for the tyrant he was.
McCarthy’s assistant was Roy Cohn, an attorney who perfected the
art of character assassination. Roy Cohn was also one of Donald J. Trump’s mentors.
Trump’s capricious use of power to denigrate and even endanger
his critics must end. He is not yet our President. When he becomes so, he will
have far greater power. Our freedom and our democracy could be gravely jeopardized.
We must join together to condemn these acts. Has Trump no
decency?
ROBERT B. REICH is Chancellor's Professor of
Public Policy at the University of California at Berkeley and Senior Fellow at
the Blum Center for Developing Economies. He served as Secretary of Labor in
the Clinton administration, for which Time Magazine named him one of the ten
most effective cabinet secretaries of the twentieth century. He has written
fourteen books, including the best sellers "Aftershock", "The
Work of Nations," and"Beyond Outrage," and, his most recent, "Saving
Capitalism." He is also a founding editor of the American Prospect
magazine, chairman of Common Cause, a member of the American Academy of Arts
and Sciences, and co-creator of the award-winning documentary, INEQUALITY FOR
ALL.
