The damage Trump has done

By Rick Holmes

Feb. 10, 2020

For some time I’ve been keeping a list of institutions that have been attacked, politicized or undermined by Donald Trump.

The list started before the first day of his presidency, when Trump tried to bully the National Park Service into inflating its estimates of the size of the crowd at his inauguration, purely to soothe the new president’s fragile ego.

Other agencies associated with nonpartisan public service followed. Trump tried to twist the Census to his political ends. Scientists throughout the federal government have been muzzled, threatened and driven from public service for citing facts that disagree with White House talking points. Trump took a Sharpie to a National Weather Service map when the official forecast differed from his own. The dishonor he brought to the Navy SEALS by pardoning and embracing a man disciplined by his superiors for war crimes prompted both the head of the SEALS and the Secretary of the Navy to resign.

Trump has threatened big institutions – the independence of the judiciary, the Federal Reserve, the Justice Department and the FBI; birthright citizenship and the Constitution’s impeachment clause. He’s also assaulted unofficial institutions that traditionally have been sources of unity. Because he can’t take a joke, Trump refuses to attend the White House Correspondents Dinner. Because the guests might not like him, he doesn’t attend Kennedy Center Honors programs. He tried to politicize the Fourth of July.

Last week I added no fewer than four institutions to my list:

1. The State of the Union Address: The SOTU has always been political and has long had some show biz elements. But Trump turned it into a reality TV show so self-serving it does more to divide the union than unite it. Up until Woodrow Wilson, presidents just submitted a written report. Let’s go back to that.

2. The Presidential Medal of Freedom: Now that Rush Limbaugh has one, no one else should want one.

3. The architectural standards for new federal buildings, which since 1962 have encouraged innovation, diversity and appreciation of context: A new executive order will require classic designs, with pediments and stone columns. The order’s title: “Making Federal Buildings Beautiful Again.”

4. The National Prayer Breakfast: Mixing politics and piety has always been problematic, but mere hypocrisy is preferable to the whiny, hateful speech Trump gave last week, in which he went out of his way to dissent from Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount. Love your enemies? No way, said the president.

The list of threatened institutions continues to grow. Ethical norms have been trashed. Behavioral norms carry no weight. This week the president also called concerns raised by his opponents “bullshit” – in a midday White House speech, on live TV – yet another affront to the standards traditionally expected of national leaders.

Once we get rid of this man, there’s a lot of rebuilding to do.