Democrats in Congress and talking
heads on television will be consumed in the coming weeks by whether the
evidence in the Mueller report, especially of obstruction of justice, merits
impeachment.
In addition, the question of
“wink-wink” cooperation with Russia still looms. Mueller’s quote of Trump, when
first learning a special counsel had been appointed – “Oh my God. This is
terrible. This is the end of my presidency. I’m fucked” – has already become a
national tagline.
Why, Americans wonder, would Trump be “fucked” if he hadn’t done something so awful as to cause its revelation to “fuck” him?
Why, Americans wonder, would Trump be “fucked” if he hadn’t done something so awful as to cause its revelation to “fuck” him?
We’ll also have Mueller’s own
testimony before Congress, and Congress’s own investigations of Trump.
But let’s be real. Trump will not be
removed by impeachment. No president has been. With a Republican Senate
controlled by the most irresponsible political hack ever to be majority leader,
the chances are nil.
Which means Trump will have to be
removed the old-fashioned way – by voters in an election 19 months away.
The practical question, then, is whether the Mueller report and all that surrounds it will affect that election.
Most Americans already hold a low
opinion of Trump. He’s the only president in Gallup polling history never to
have earned the support of majority for single day of his term.
Yet Mueller’s report probably won’t
move any of the 40 percent who have held tight to Trump regardless.
So how to reach the 11 percent or 12
percent who may decide the outcome?
Reveal his moral loathsomeness.
Democrats and progressives tend to
shy away from morality, given how rightwing evangelicals have used it against
abortion, contraceptives and equal marriage rights.
But that’s to ignore Americans’ deep
sense of right and wrong. Character counts, and presidential character counts
most of all.
Even though Mueller apparently
doesn’t believe a sitting president can be indicted, he provides a devastating
indictment of Trump’s character.
Trump is revealed as a chronic liar.
He claimed he never asked for loyalty from FBI director James Comey. Mueller
finds he did. Trump claimed he never asked Comey to let the “Michael Flynn
matter go”. Mueller finds he did.
Trump claimed he never pushed the White House counsel Don McGahn to fire Mueller. Mueller finds he did. Trump even lied about inviting Comey to dinner, claiming falsely, in public, that Comey requested it.
Trump claimed he never pushed the White House counsel Don McGahn to fire Mueller. Mueller finds he did. Trump even lied about inviting Comey to dinner, claiming falsely, in public, that Comey requested it.
Trump treats his subordinates
horribly. He hides things from them. He lies to them. He yells at them. He
instructs them to lie. He orders them to carry out illegal acts.
He’s a thug. He regrets his
lawyers are not as good at protecting him as was his early mentor Roy Cohn – a
mob lawyer. When reports surface about the now infamous Trump Tower meeting of
June 2016, Trump directs the cover-up.
Trump is unprincipled. The few
people in the White House and the cabinet who stand up to him, according to
Mueller – threatening to resign rather than carry out his illegal orders – are
now gone. They resigned or were fired.
In other words, Mueller makes it
official: Trump is morally bankrupt.
We still don’t have the full story
of Trump’s tax evasion and his business dealings with Russian financiers. But
we know he has lied to business associates, stiffed contractors, cheated on his
wife by having sex with a porn star, paid the porn star hush money, and boosted
his wealth while in office with foreign cash.
It continues. In recent weeks he
willfully endangered the life of a member of Congress by disseminating a
propaganda video, similar to those historically used by extremist political
groups, tying her to the 9/11 tragedy because she is a Muslim American speaking
up for Muslim Americans. She has received death threats, including one by a
supporter of Trump who was arrested.
He has also attacked the deceased
senator John McCain, whom he falsely accused of leaking the Steele dossier and
finishing last in his class at Annapolis. Then Trump retweeted a note from a
supporter saying “millions of Americans truly LOVE President Trump, not
McCain”. Americans know McCain was tortured in a prison camp for five years, in
service to this country.
How many of Trump’s followers or
those who might otherwise be tempted to vote for him in 2020 will recoil from
this moral squalor?
Donald Trump is the living
embodiment of the seven deadly sins – pride, greed, lust, gluttony, wrath, envy
and sloth – and he is the precise obverse of the seven virtues as enunciated by
Pope Gregory in 590 AD: chastity, temperance, charity, diligence, patience,
kindness and humility.
Legal debates about obstruction of
justice are fine. But no voter in 2020 should be allowed to overlook this basic
reality: Donald Trump is a morally despicable human being.
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 fifteen books,
including the best sellers "Aftershock", "The Work of
Nations," and "Beyond Outrage," and, his most recent, "The
Common Good," which is available in bookstores now. 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." He's co-creator of the Netflix
original documentary "Saving Capitalism," which is streaming now.