TRUMP: THE EMPEROR HAS NO CLOTHES

History is punctuated by epiphanies as depicted in the fairy tale, Emperor’s New Clothes, by Hans Christian Anderson. There a small child innocently explodes with the obvious truth that all are too terrified to mouth, “..he isn’t wearing anything at all”. Up till then no one had dared to challenge the vain monarch, rather cowering and colluding, with his boast that he was wearing the finest set of clothing. The revelation is greeted by the crowd with wild agreement. Modern examples abound where loud mouthed powerful autocratic individuals, who out of fear do not have their obvious atrocious behavior challenged. The offenders are seemingly omnipotent, till someone states the self evident truth or there is an event which releases a safety valve in society so that all can simultaneously agree that the “Emperor has no clothes”.  

Anderson’s story gives us no clue as to how long the delusion can continue for. The fable chronicles the reality that long before the chicanery is finally revealed the “truth” has been out there for a long time. It is useful to realize that this societal fugue like state can only exist in an abnormal period of history. So before the readers go to sleep let us apply the message of the famed Danish author of children’s books to two major events in recent American history and finally to the Trump saga. The latter in the light of the call for his removal by the editor of the influential Christian Evangelical Magazine, “Christianity Today”, which was founded by the icon of the movement, Billy Graham. 

America has faced major crises that were seemingly resolved in the wake of a simple statement that was a revelation of the perfidy of a powerful individual. Watergate is the classical case when the Nixon finale was heralded in by the production of the missing tapes that revealed what everyone knew - Nixon was central to the Watergate cover up. Jay H. Ell will briefly discuss two other seminal moments that were credited to change history - one involving Bill Cosby the other Joe McCarthy and then muse over whether Donald Trump will ever have one.

BILL COSBY, HANNIBAL BURESS AND THE ME TOO MOVEMENT

The fact that men have discriminated against and abused women with no consequences since time immemorial is just that - a fact. It was only in 1921 that women were granted the franchise and since then there has been gradual progress. However their exposure to a man’s world increased their vulnerability to sexual abuse which was met by silence by the women and society. The MeToo hashtag has been around since 2006 when the phrase was introduced by a Taranya Burke in a an attempt to empower young women who had been victims of sexual crimes. The movement gained prime prominence in 2014 when an African American comedian Hannibal Buress, in answer to Crosby’s criticism of young black men, told the world what they already knew, “Bill Cosby has the f…..ing smuggest old black man public persona that I hate….   Yeah but you raped women, Bill Cosby”. 

They had been allegations of the Cosby misconduct for years but the Cosby mystique had not even been slightly dented. America resisted shattering its life long love affair with the man who had come to epitomize the poster child American father and husband. However this time round Buress’s comments were posted on the “Philadelphian’ website and the story went viral. It was a media sensation. News channels featured stories such as the one on CNN where scores of women claimed that Cosby had molested them. The bohaai became the focus of an election of the Attorney General in Philadelphia where the subsequent winner ran on the vow that he would prosecute Cosby. Cosby had been given a let off by a previous Attorney General who issued “America’s Dad” a pass after he settled a civil case with a former employee of Temple University who he had allegedly drugged and then sexually assaulted. The Judge ruled that the law officer’s promise not to prosecute was invalid. The upshot was Cosby with a succession of five other women testifying to his misconduct was sentenced to three to ten years in prison.

So Buress’s statement of the truth set into motion the takedown of one of the greatest American’s TV icons. The fact that the truth was well known and the world suddenly said, “Yes of course everyone knew” is testimony to two factors - the prevailing social attitude towards women and Cosby’s hold over American society with the all round fear of exposing him. The Me Too movement had received a boost which encouraged further victims to come forward.

After a half century of silence all would agree that Bill Cosby is a sexual predator who needed exposure and punishment. The icon was found to be undressed.

JOE MCCARTHY, JOE WELCH AND SENATE CENSURE

Senator Joe McCarthy a charismatic young politician from Wisconsin was elected to the Senate in the immediate post war period where there was a heightened and growing fear of Communism. By 1950 he had already established himself as the number one agent for rooting out the “red scourge” and was ruthless and indiscriminate in his approach. He gained national prominence when he announced, in a well publicized speech in Virginia, that he processed the names of two hundred and five card carrying members of the Communist Party in the State Department. As early as 1950 he was challenged by a Republican Senator Margaret Chase Smith to produce the evidence for his wild claims which of cause he couldn’t. Ms. Smith made a speech which was labelled a “Declaration of Conscience”.

When her expose got no where the brave Senator maintained that was a fear of criticizing McCarthy which created mental paralysis and muteness. She argued that the Senate that had earned worldwide respect had become a forum for hate and character assassination. Freedom of speech she contended had been abused. Her observations were supported by six other Republicans but she was subject to more vitriol. McCarthy in his invective sneered that she was “Moscow - loving”. He was to continue his reign of terror in what came to be known as ‘McCarthyism” for another four years.

McCarthy backed by public opinion which was fueled by the expanding Soviet imperialism in Eastern Europe became more and more brazen in his mostly unsubstantiated allegations. In 1952 he was re elected in Wisconsin with a resounding majority. Emboldened by national popularity he attacked President Truman calling for his impeachment, all but calling him a fellow traveller. Eisenhower held back on criticism in his Presidential election but the latter’s failure to endorse McCarthy’s wildcat attacks incurred his wrath who added the newly elected Republican President to the conspiracy.

IN 1953 McCarthy turned the Senate Internal Committee on Investigations into his vehicle for further outlandish persecution of anyone with liberal opinions whom he argued was a Communist. He hauled them before them Committees forcing some to take the Fifth Amendment because if they themselves denied being Communists they no longer had immunity and would be forced to name names of those who allegedly were Communists. He was joined by a notorious lawyer who had gained national recognition as the Counsel to Donald J. Trump Senior. Cohn believed in taking no prisoners.

McCarthy wrecked havoc with the Hollywood film industry as a result of which actors and directors could not obtain work as they had been defamed by the Senator and or his Counsel. He nearly put an end to the influential “Voice of America”with his wild accusations. 

Cohn toured the libraries in Europe and examined the State Department’s recommendations as to what books should be on the shelves. McCarthy ordered the librarians to remove the books written by “Communists, fellow travelers and controversial persons. If all this wasn’t enough McCarthy appointed to his staff the author of an article that had written an article “Reds and the Churches”, which had maintained that Protestant clergy were the largest single group in America that supported Communism.

In all this McCarthy did not loose his popular support till he initiated an investigation into the Army. This served to show him at his worst and Republicans began openly attacking him. The transformative exchange occurred when the Army’s Chief Legal Officer, Joseph Welch, responded to yet another blatant smear that a certain Fred Fischer who had once belonged to “The National Progressive Lawyers Association” should be “looked into”. This retort was in response to Welch’s demand to Cohn that that he provide the list of 130 Communists in the defense plants that he was referring too. McCarthy continued with his unproven attack on Fischer, Welch interrupted him with the oft quoted line, “Senator you have done enough. Have you no sense of decency”. Cheers broke out and that signaled the beginning of the end.

Within a few months after the army hearings the Wisconsin Senators national approval ratings dropped from fifty percent to the mid thirties. In December 1954 the Senate voted to censure McCarthy by a vote of sixty - seven to twenty - two. His reign of terror had ended and he died in 1957 with his legacy of McCarthyism a pejorative in the American lexicon of politics.

WHERE DOES TRUMP FIT IN?

So like with Cosby it was not as if McCarthy’s totalitarian destructive behavior was not common knowledge, it was. The inquisitor had been from almost the word go been called out. The media had labelled his persecution a witch hunt. Respected journalists such as the legendary Ed Murrow had exposed his perfidy again and again. However rightly or wrongly history gives the credit to Joe Welch for the nation’s epiphany ignoring the role that several of his Republican colleagues played in his downfall. 

So how does Donald J. Trump fit into these two examples and Nixon’s Watergate? However this bleak period in history turns out his role will be seen to have heralded a departure from the traditional form of American Government as enshrined in the American Constitution with his Presidency heralding a radical change from being the Uniter in Chief to the Divider in Chief.

DONALD TRUMP, ABUSE OF OFFICE AND IMPEACHMENT

Donald J. Trump, a controversial real estate wheeler dealer television star extrovert braggart and showman whose business and personal behavior was unashamedly on the fringe was elected President in a tumultuous time in American and world history. He ran an unabashed racist campaign playing into society’s fears that those who were white and Christian were about to become the minority in the United States and that those were not white, especially if they were immigrants, were responsible for taking their jobs. His campaign was in sync with a world war fear that their identities was at risk. 

Trump also successfully tuned into the anger that was directed at the political establishment both Republican and Democratic that had stood by in the economic meltdown and subsequent housing crisis. Moreover not only did they not prosecute the financial establishment for their greed and irresponsibility they bailed their institutions out and allowed the executives to claim their bonus packages. Moreover he promised to reverse history back to the industrial/mining era. He was the billionaire representative of the blue collar worker. Added to all this he used his attack mode and projection style on his opponent labelling her “Crooked Hillary” using a sustained personal slander style which had successfully gained him the Republican nomination, (Obama was a Kenyan) and promises to render him a second term, (Joe Biden is a crook). 

He packaged his demagogic bile by utilizing social media with a skill as yet unseen in a political campaign and with Nuremberg style mass rallies.Trump welcomed, called for and received help from a sophisticated Russian hack and propaganda infiltration of the internet. All of this, with the help of an antiquated electoral system, allowed Trump with a minority of votes to become the forty - fifth President of the United States. 

Predictably his Presidency was more and more of the same. While he obstructed justice in the investigation of his campaign he could not prevent several of his campaign staff from being convicted of various crimes. He was named as the instigator of an illegal payment to a porn star where his personal lawyer was sent to jail for carrying out his instructions. In his first thousand odd days in office he lied over fifteen thousand times, he believed the Russian Premier over his own intelligence and law agencies, was found guilty during his Presidency of defrauding his own charitable organization of moneys he had not even put into it and generally behaved in a more unbefitting to the Office of the President of a banana republic.

 While much of this would have resulted in impeachment in any other time the Democratic Leader of the House held back. She realized that with the slavish backing of the Republican Party which had now morphed into a Trump cult the process would keep him in office. She was motivated to withstand the pressure to impeach by the interim election results which indicated that the Democrats had more than a credible shot at defeating Trump in the 2020 presidential election. Speaker Pelosi believed that impeachment was a risk not worth taking. 

However Trump abused his power in plain sight by leaning on an ally, the Ukraine President Zelensky to do his personal bidding to aid him in the 2020 election. He then withheld public monies in attempt to extort Zelansky. If that wasn’t enough he then obstructed justice to prevent the lawful oversight of Congress. So Speaker Pelosi had no choice. In the subsequent impeachment process the Republicans offered no defense of Trump’s behavior, rather they adopted his technique to attack and smear the Democrats and the hearings themselves. Not one of the close on three hundred Republican legislators have, to this day, claimed that Trump was an honest and honorable man and would never have committed such gross improprieties. 

What was plain and obvious to all was denied by the Republican establishment. His cult following wore T Shirts that told all “To Read a Transcript” which in fact is where Trump detailed his corrupt behavior. Trump, of course, alleged that he was being subjected to “fake news” and by criticism from the “Never Trump” Republican intelligentsia.

ENTER MARK GALLI - EDITOR OF CHRISTIANITY TODAY

 What however shook the POTUS to the core was an editorial by the editor of an Evangelical Publication, Mark Galli. Evangelicals, who make up twenty - five percent of the electorate, are the core of Trump’s support - eighty percent of them having voted for him in the 2016 election. Galli’s editorial was as obvious and as unchallengeable as the child who claimed that the Emperor has no clothes.

In describing, what had been already proved, the editor of Christianity Today claimed that, “The President attempted to use his political power to coerce a foreign leader to harass and discredit one of his political opponents. That is not only a violation of the Constitution, more importantly it is profoundly immoral”.  He went to exhort his fellow Evangelicals, “To the many evangelicals who continue to support Mr. Trump in spite of his blackened moral record, remember who you are and whom you serve. Consider how your justification of Mr. Trump influences your witness to your Lord and Savior”. Galli summed Trump up as a “near perfect example of human being who is morally lost and confused”. He argued that the fact that Trump should be removed was not a matter of partisan loyalty but loyalty of the Creator of the Ten Commandments”

AT THE END OF THE DAY

The editorial did not produce a societal “aha” moment but this saga still has to play out in the Senate and probably in the 2020 election. If a similar number of Republicans that backed Senator Chase are emboldened by Mark Galli’s principled stand then who knows whether or not this might lead to one or other piece of information being central to Trump’s downfall and an acknowledgment that the “Emperor has no clothes”.

One fact is for certain the editorial has broken the Evangelical white monolith support for Trump. Christian Today lost two thousand subscribers but gained five thousand, mainly younger, readers. Another journalist left the Christian Post publication because it planned to attack the Christian Today editorial, while two hundred Trump supporters including Mike Huckabee, Michelle Bachman, Jerry Falwell Jnr. and  Evangelical leaders signed a letter in support of the President… to be continued.