Destroying Democracy?

The left has scant evidence of such actions by President Trump.

What is it about Trump that poses a danger to “democracy”?

This seems to be a pertinent question since this is central to every single attack on him.

Politicians like Extreme Hakeem Jefferies can’t write a sentence without implying “extreme” MAGA Republicans are out to enslave everybody. Not a single Democrat this election cycle, no matter how far down the totem pole the contested office is, can record a campaign commercial without talking about “threats” to “democracy” or how they are going to fight to “defend” it.

Googled the phrase “Trump destroy democracy” returns an infinite number of responses spanning from Trump’s announcement he was running in 2015 to today, and while all of them were long on rhetoric, they were woefully short on specifics just how Trump did, or planned to, “destroy” democracy. I found several analyses from the left side of the aisle claiming that he wasn’t a threat – most were in the theme of this analysis from the Brookings Institute in July of 2021:

“Did Trump permanently damage American democracy? This question has spawned a veritable cottage industry of hand wringing over the state of American democracy—understandably so. Never before have we had a president who schemed to overturn legitimate election results, who attacked the press and the civil servants who worked for him, who admired dictators, who blatantly profited from his public office and who repeatedly lied to the public for his own selfish purposes. But while Trump’s four years of rhetoric have been a shock to democratic norms, did they inflict permanent damage on our democracy? My answer is a qualified no. The guardrails of democracy held. The institutions designed to check autocracy are intact.”

This Brookings analysis also includes the primary basis for all the 40 or 50 articles I’ve read in the past several days that claim destruction of “democracy” is imminent if Trump wins in November:

“Those who bemoan Trump’s effect on democracy complain that he did not adhere to the established norms of the presidency. That is correct; he is, at heart, a dictator.”

That seems to be thin gruel when it comes to the scope and span of the Democrat attacks on the man. To say that he “didn’t adhere to norms”, was mean to the press, that he didn’t act the way Democrats thought he should act, is hardly a substantive argument that he was “destroying democracy”.

A sampling of articles, most written after the 2020 election, define “not adhering to norms” as relating to his reaction to the 2020 election results. Critics argue that some of Trump's actions, such as challenging the results of the election and making unsubstantiated claims of widespread voter fraud, could undermine public trust in the electoral process. Additionally, his approach to the media, including labeling unfavorable coverage as "fake news" and attacking journalists, has been criticized for eroding trust in the free press, a crucial component of a healthy democracy.

The people who continue to say that 2020 was “the most secure in history” out of all elections ever, are the same ones who claimed that Russia interfering in 2016 changed the outcome. These are also the people who 1) tried to influence Trump electors to change their votes to Hillary, 2) tried to prevent the certification of the vote in Congress, 3) spied on Trump’s campaign, 4) began a two year FBI investigation based on lies, 5) impeached a duly elected president not once, but twice, based on little more than the criminalization of political differences, 6) have tried to use lawfare to disqualify Trump and 7) use the 14th Amendment to keep him off primary ballots.

I’ve said it before: I have no evidence the 2020 election was corrupt but on the other hand, those claiming 2020 was the “most secure” have none it wasn’t. To this day, they have worked to prevent any sort of inquiry into that election. 2020 was certainly unusual to say the least and in my opinion, voters have a right to know the impact of those changes and how they lead to a guy who campaigned from his basement garnering 81 million votes.

If they wanted to “defend” democracy, the processes before, during and after elections would be secured with clean voter rolls, identification of the person and their eligibility to vote and direct casting of votes on a designated day rather than mailing out ballots and then relying on signature validation after the fact.

But they don’t – and a legitimate question is “Why not?”

The Brookings analysis concluded that Trump did not weaken the power of Congress, did not damage the system of shared power between the federal and state governments, did not weaken the judiciary, did not damage the press (he was a financial boon for left-leaning outlets), and didn’t exert control over the civil service (as much as we might have wanted him to).

In short, Trump did not “tear down the major guardrails of democracy.” 

Trump didn’t “enrich himself”. His net worth fell during the presidency, bucking the trend of Democrat Presidents Clinton, Obama and Biden, all who saw substantial increases in personal net worth. Obama was especially adept, allegedly still having student loans when entering the White House and owning at least 5 multimillion dollar mansions when exiting.

All information indicates what the Democrats mean when they say anyone is “destroying democracy”, they mean those people are opposing the Democrat anti-constitutional agenda.

That’s the bottom line.