Trump's war on American democracy

This is no love-in for Comey who has in the past himself been no stranger to political controversy. Instead, much of what is being written is a heartfelt and urgent plea for Americans to jar themselves out of a creeping complacency towards the Trump presidency, and guard against what many in the country see as a serious threat to American democratic values.

“We have the tin-pot leader whose vanity knows no bounds. We have the rapacious family feathering their nests without regard for the law or common decency. We have utter disregard for values at home and abroad, the disdain for democracy, the hunger for constraining a free press, the admiration for thugs and strongmen worldwide. We have all the makings of a banana republic,” opined David Rothkopf, editor of Foreign Policy magazine.

Many in the US echo Rothkopf’s views right now, and remain convinced that Trump’s sacking of Comey is inextricably connected to what has now been dubbed “Kremlingate.”

As the crisis deepened this weekend, there is the ever growing belief in many quarters that the FBI chief was kicked out because he was leading an active and aggressive investigation to get to the bottom of Moscow’s ties to the Trump presidential election campaign.

In some respects Trump himself almost admitted as much after acknowledging in a television interview last week that he had in mind “this Russia thing” when he decided to oust the FBI chief.

By firing Comey, Trump cast grave doubt on the viability of any further investigation into what could be one of the biggest political scandals in US history.

Comey’s FBI investigation, redolent as it is of the infamous Watergate scandal that brought down President Richard Nixon in the 1970s, has all the potential to do the same today to the Trump Presidency.

According to congressional officials, just days before Comey was sacked, the FBI director, asked the Justice Department for a significant increase in resources for the bureau’s investigation into Russia’s interference in the presidential election.

For his part Trump is having none of it, reverting to type and lashing out, as has been his political response to pressure in the past. In an NBC television interview last week shortly after the FBI chief’s sacking, Trump disparaged Comey as a “showboat” and “grandstander” who deserved to be axed.

On Friday Trump went further, threatening the release of White House “tapes” - real or imagined - in a tweet warning Comey not to speak against him.

Only a day after firing the man investigating Moscow’s role in helping him enter the White House, a smiling Trump welcomed Russia’s foreign minister Sergei Lavrov and its US ambassador Sergey Kislyak to the Oval Office on Wednesday.

The fact that Americans caught their only glimpse of this friendly, if surreal, get together from pictures supplied by Russia’s state run Tass news service, only added to the sense of unease.

All this is unnerving many in Washington, a feeling summed up by Washington Post columnist Jim Hoagland on Thursday.

“The Trump presidency now poses an existential threat to many of America’s most vital institutions. He has tried to tear down to his own tawdry level the intelligence community, the FBI, the media and the federal judiciary,” the twice winner of the Pulitzer Prize wrote.

“Just as he is at war with himself, Trump is at war with the nation he is supposed to lead,” Hoagland went on to warn.

Trump’s perceived war with America is really beginning to resonate. Some observers have even gone as far as to ask whether his actions are tantamount to “a coup in real time?”

According to Timothy Snyder, acclaimed Professor of History at Yale University and author of recent book ‘On Tyranny’, it would not be surprising if Trump staged his own version of Adolf Hitler’s, Reichstag fire.

In other words the Trump administration could create a manufactured crisis or some other type of political or social upheaval to enact a state of emergency - which could allow him to stay in office for more than two terms - or otherwise consolidate his power by subverting America’s political institutions.

“I think it’s pretty much inevitable that they will try. The reason I think that is that the conventional ways of being popular are not working out for them. The conventional way to be popular or to be legitimate in this country is to have some policies, to grow your popularity ratings and to win some elections. I don’t think 2018 is looking very good for the Republicans along those conventional lines,” says Snyder.

Snyder believes that try as Trump might to manufacture such a situation it would however inevitably fail because there are enough people and agencies of the US government who are alert to such a possibility and would not necessarily go along with it.

While this might well be the case, for the time being this has not assuaged fears over the Republican leadership’s lack of moral courage when it comes to drawing Trump’s fire.

Before last Tuesday’s sacking of James Comey, Trump’s presidency had shown itself limited in its ability to undermine competitor institutions and the larger system of checks and balances that exist within the US political infrastructure.

By and large courts have been able to beat back his power grabs. The media, for all its flaws, has been more sceptical of the claims and actions of the Trump administration than of any administration in recent history. Civil society too has flourished in response to the Trump threat with a civil protest movement both slowing the GOP legislative agenda, and forcing some Republicans in Congress to expect a measure of accountability from the White House.

But then along came Comey’s firing and those who thought the bulwark against Trump was working had to think again. Much now depends on the response of the wider Republican Party.

For Republicans, the situation is tricky. The balance between ensuring an objective analysis of the role Russia may have played in the 2016 race and protecting a Republican president has proved to be politically complicated for many on the right, who usually default to the latter position.

Some have expressed relief to see the moral consciences of party Senators like John McCain and Ben Sasse, express their dismay and demand answers on Trump’s actions. But the pressing question remains as to whether they stand alone or other Republicans will rally to their side.

In the main Republicans on Capitol Hill gave a muted response to Trump’s firing of Comey.

Some though, spooked by Trump’s impulsive dismissal of the FBI director, showed signs of disapproval or of tiptoeing away from the president.

Richard Burr, the Republican Senate intelligence committee chairman who is leading one of the congressional investigations into alleged collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia, bluntly contradicted the commander-in-chief and stood by former FBI director Comey.

“He is one of the most ethical, upright, straightforward individuals I’ve had the opportunity to work with,” insisted Burr.

He called the timing of, and reasons given for, Comey’s dismissal “troubling” and said it “further confuses an already difficult investigation” into alleged Russian interference with the 2016 election. John Kasich, the governor of Ohio and a primary opponent of Trump’s, went further, saying he was “extremely troubled by the circumstances surrounding the dismissal”.

But for all these expressions of concern, there remains substantial worry over the apparent inertia of Republicans.

As critics like foreign Policy magazine editor David Rothkopf point put, on a daily basis, Republicans watch their leader violate not only the traditions and standards of the high office he occupies, but through inaction they enable him to personally profit from the presidency.

Their inaction too helps to promote policies that benefit Trump’s cronies to the detriment of the majority of the American people, and serially attack the principles on which the country was founded.

For their part meanwhile, unsurprisingly, Democrats view the firing of Comey in stark terms, drawing parallels to Watergate, the scandal that brought down Richard Nixon in 1974.

Bob Casey, a moderate from Pennsylvania facing a re-election bid in 2018, called Trump’s actions “Nixonian”, while Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut explicitly compared Trump’s actions to those of the 37th president.

“The situation has very much the look and feel of Nixon’s dismissal of attorneys general in the 'Saturday night massacre',” he said, referring to the resignations of the then attorney general, Elliot L Richardson, and deputy attorney general, William D Ruckelshaus, in 1973 after they refused Richard Nixon’s order to fire Archibald Cox, the special prosecutor leading the Watergate investigation.

That Trump has a case to answer in relation to links with Moscow during his election campaign, and within his administration afterwards, is beyond doubt. The evidence garnered so far makes the need for a full investigation imperative now in the eyes of many.

In the last few weeks alone it’s become clear, among other things, that a federal grand jury was investigating Michael Flynn, Trump’s first national security adviser, who had not disclosed payments he had received from Russia and who lied about his conversations with the Russian ambassador.

It has been established too that the FBI had obtained a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act warrant to monitor Trump’s campaign advisor Carter Page, which means he was suspected of being a Russian agent.

Then there is the small detail of Trump’s one-time campaign manager, Paul Manafort, having received millions of dollars from a Russian oligarch close to President Vladimir Putin to influence American politics.

Most recently Trump himself has had to hire a law firm to fight allegations that he has business links to the Kremlin.

For many like Chauncey DeVega, a politics staff writer for Salon online magazine, Trump’s firing of Comey, his hostility to an independent judiciary, his authoritarian behaviour and his evident attempts to control or contain the investigation into his connections to Russia add up to a constitutional crisis.

“Trump’s supporters among the American people are deeply devoted to their leader, even if that means siding with Putin’s Russia and spitting in the face of American democracy. They are authoritarian lemmings,” insists DeVega.

This weekend far from showing signs of abating the crisis is intensifying. As the White House denies reports that Trump asked Comey to pledge loyalty to him, interviews to find a new FBI Director began yesterday. For many Americans the whole affair over the sacking of Comey and the Russia investigation is nothing less than a moment of stark crisis in the history of American democracy. Should the president prevail and Republicans let him nominate any new FBI Director he wants this, they fear, will be read by Trump as permission to run amok.

As The Atlantic’s Ron Brownstein wrote, Trump’s “appetite for shattering democratic constraints is only likely to grow.” Trump’s critics also argue that what they see as his blatant attempt to obstruct justice has only intensified the need for the appointment of a special prosecutor to investigate Russian meddling in last year’s presidential election.

“We haven’t had a president in a long time, maybe ever, who’s presented this kind of frontal assault on so many institutions,” was how Peter Wehner, a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Centre who worked in three Republican administrations summed up the crisis. “I always believed a Trump presidency would represent a stress test of our institutions… that’s happening now.”