The Politics of Cruelty and Intimidation

Cruelty and intimidation have long been the modus operandi employed by authoritarian governments to remain in power. By contrast, democratic governments seek to continue in control by pursuing programs that will improve the lives of their nation’s citizens. Nevertheless, politics in the U.S. has long been something of a blood sport with candidates for public office devoting a majority of their efforts to disparaging their opponents and their political agendas. While this may not be how the nation’s founding fathers envisioned our political elections would be conducted, it has become a fact of life and most Americans have become accustomed to it and generally discount the veracity of personal attacks and even political promises of the candidates. As we are now witnessing conditioning a populace to accept uncivil behavior can itself be destructive to democratic governments.

In recent years, false allegations and assertions have not only grown more prevalent, but have taken on a different character. Today, they are constantly repeated by other members of the accusers political party as well as a host of sympathetic members of the media, creating what has become a veritable“echo chamber” of lies and deception. It even causes many highly competent and successful men and women to stay out of politics which in itself is detrimental to democratic governments.

 ​ Just when you might have thought (or, at least, hoped) that politics in America couldn’t get worse, Donald Trump entered American politics and moved our nation closer to an authoritarian model. To appreciate this change, you need to understand that Trump’s values and ethical standards were shaped by his father, Fred Trump who was a successful real estate developer, and by Roy Cohn, a highly unscrupulous attorney who was active in U.S. politics. Fred Trump ingrained into Donald a belief that the world is divided into “winners” and “losers” and that winners use every means at their disposal to advance themselves.

  Cohn, whom Trump regards as a “genius”, taught him that he should never feel constrained by ethical standards or even laws and regulations. Cohn also counseled that the “truth” is whatever you can make others believe. To this end, he admonished young Donald that he should never admit a lie or a mistake. Instead, he should just keep repeating his beliefs until others came to accept them. In addition, Cohn instructed Trump to use vacuous threats and unfounded lawsuits to intimidate others. Fred Trump and Roy Cohn were also the likely role models for our 47th president’s insatiable desire to attain and utilize power as well as his highly vindictive nature. Today, Trump’s role model seems to have become Vladimir Putin who rules with little regard for the health and welfare of the Russian people.

  Although Trump obtained a bachelor’s degree in economics from the University of Pennsylvania, he was not an accomplished student. This may have been because he has a short attention span or simply because he felt that academic pursuits were not important to his achieving money and power. In this connection, you should understand that by the time Donald reached the age of 20, he had already become his father’s choice to take over the family’s highly successful real estate business. Accordingly, history, literature, philosophy and even the sciences would be of little use to him in running that business.

Unfortunately, a little more effort in pursuing economics might have helped him in building that business which he guided to its collapse. One of the important lessons he did manage to learn at an early age was that successful individuals often “fake it until they make it”, leading him to become quite adept at self-promotion. He incessantly exaggerated his achievements and frequently masqueraded as his own press agent touting his various endeavors. He even claimed that one of his buildings was ten stories higher than it actually was.

  ​In the process of losing virtually all of the wealth that his father had built and accumulated, he became known as the owner of large and elaborately furnished hotels and casinos. He even began Trump Airlines, competing with Eastern Airline’s New York-Washington Shuttle. Even though each of these endeavors ended in failure, they did enable him to win the leading role as a successful business mogul on NBC’s weekly TV show entitled “The Apprentice” which ran for  eleven years. As a result, even though he was regarded as an abject failure by the New York and New Jersey business communities, he was considered a successful business executive in the remainder of the country. His work on “The Apprentice” also enabled him to earn back some of the wealth that he had lost in his business dealings as well as develop his skills as an entertainer.

  ​Those skills, as well as his wide-spread public recognition, became the foundation for his political career, enabling him to become one of the few individuals to become the President of the U.S. without having any prior public service. He achieved that goal by campaigning on the assertion that, as a non-politician, he alone could re-invigorate the federal government which had done little to improve the economic well-being of the vast majority of working-class Americans during the preceding 40 years. He boasted that he would “drain the swamp” and “make America great again.” During his first term in office, however, he displayed little interest in actually running the government and was more focused on building his image of a successful political leader. He insisted that his appointees constantly praise him and he terminated those who didn’t.

​Trump’s proclivity to use cruelty and intimidation was revealed early in his presidential campaign when he called for those in attendance at one of his rallies to “beat the crap out of” an individual who voiced opposition to him. Such utterances also furthered his image as a no-nonsense strongman who knew how to get things done.

  A foundational issue to his initial presidential campaign was the influx of Central American immigrants seeking refuge in the U.S. from crime, political corruption and declining economic conditions in their home countries. Specifically, he claimed that Mexico was sending its “murderers, rapists and drug dealers” across our southern border. In addition, once in office, he immediately embarked on a campaign to discourage immigration by confining asylum-seekers in unsheltered cages and separating them from their children who were dispersed throughout the country with no records of their placement.  

  Trump’s brutal and inhumane handling of asylum-seekers was nevertheless popular among working-class Americans who viewed immigrants as competitors for their jobs. This enabled him to quickly achieve a cult-like status among them. He, in turn, used his popularity among dispirited working-class Americans as a basis of threatening to back primary competitors against Republican House and Senate office holders who were not loyal to him. In addition, he purged his own administration of individuals who were not 100% loyal to him, including numerous Inspector Generals who were duty bound to report their findings of governmental malfeasance to the Congress. This was both a punishment for those who reported malfeasance within his administration as well as a warning as to what awaited those who continued to feel constrained to report their findings to Congress.

  By the beginning of 2020 he enjoyed favorable polling data and was well positioned to be re-elected. At that point, however, the nation was besieged by the Covid virus; and his mishandling of the Covid pandemic led to an estimated 400,000 unnecessary deaths and ultimately to his defeat in the 2020 presidential election.

  Constitutionally incapable of admitting defeat, Trump not only insisted that he had won the 2020 presidential election by millions of votes, but he enlisted the help of others to repeat his assertions. He also directed a multifaceted plan to overturn the result of the election, which efforts culminated in the January 6th attack on the Capitol spear-headed by the members of three paramilitary groups. Unlike other former presidents, Trump did not step back and allow his successor, Joe Biden, to restore the nation’s devastated economy back to health. Instead, he immediately embarked upon a continuous campaign to attack the Biden administration and to cast aspersions on Biden’s declining physical and mental abilities.

  During the Biden presidency, Trump became a defendant in four criminal proceedings and a handful of civil damage actions.Although he continued to proclaim his innocence and assert that he was the victim of a conspiracy to weaponize the federal government against him, these cases involved serious accusations and he was found guilty in one of the criminal cases and assessed over $85 million in compensatory and punitive damages in two of the civil cases. He was nevertheless aided by a friendly U.S. Supreme Court decision which, contrary to the intention of the nation’s founders and 238 years of judicial precedents, declared that Trump could not be held criminally responsible for his actions taken as president, including his incitement of the January 6th insurrection and his misappropriation of government records including over 130 classified documents.

​ In response, Trump announced that if re-elected he would pursue a campaign of “retribution” against those law enforcement officials and judges who were assigned to the legal proceedings against him. Claiming that he was unfairly being prosecuted he used his social media network to incite his supporters to harass lawyers, judges and witnesses in the cases he was defending. In fact, his actions prompted a host of judicial order prohibiting his efforts to intimidate, judges, lawyers, witnesses and jurors. Trump also encouraged actions against members of Congress whom he believed had wronged him. These actions led numerous Republican legislators not to run for re-election and to Senator Mitt Romney’s having to hire security guards. It also led to a physical attack on House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband in their San Francisco home.

  Despite an assassination attempt and his own declining mental acuity, Trump was able to defeat Kamala Harris, the then Vice President, in the 2024 presidential election. He immediately embarked on a new multi-faceted campaign of cruelty and retribution. Every employee of the Department of Justice and FBI who had worked on any of the cases against him and the January 6th insurrectionists has now been terminated. In addition, he has targeted lawyers and entire law firms that opposed any of the actions of his administration, threatening to deprive them of the right to appear in federal courts or before agencies of the federal government. The fact is that a president does not have the power to take such action did not deter him from making such threats.

  Other present and former employees of the federal government who were not supportive of Trump have also been targeted for retribution. For example, Trump has caused the Department of Justice to initiate an investigation of Chris Krebs, his former director of the nation’s cybersecurity agency. As a result, Krebs must now devote his time and personal resources to defending himself in an extended and wide-ranging investigation which potentially could lead to a criminal prosecution. This is for his sole sin of having declared that “the 2020 Presidential elections was the safest in the nation’s history”, a statement which has been thoroughly investigated by both state and federal officials and found to be true.

  As a reward for his loyal supporters, Trump commuted the sentences of all individuals found guilty of participating in the January 6th Capitol insurrection and pardoned all others who may have been involved in that event. This action not only rewarded those who had answered his call to stop the confirmation of President Biden’s election, but also enabled him to assemble a para-military organization that would threaten physical harm against his political enemies. These individuals, and others whom they might recruit, would act in the same thuggish manner as Hitler’s “Brown Shirts” and Mussolini’s “BlackShirts” fortified in the knowledge that Trump would pardon them for their misdeeds. It makes one wonder whether the U.S. Supreme Court realized that its decision in U.S. v. Trump, granting immunity to a president with pardoning power could pave the way for our nation’s descent into authoritarianism.

  The result is now being evidenced in a series of threats of physical attacks against federal judges who have rendered opinions opposing elements of Trump’s agenda. Such threats are typically triggered by Trump’s simply posting on his social media site that such judges should be impeached. Trump no longer has to appoint federal judges to assure that they will rule in his favor, he need only voice his unhappiness at their decisions to assure that virtually all members of the federal judiciary will find a way to rule in his favor.

  He has also demonized businesses and organizations that employ DEI policies which he claims discriminate against white citizens; and he has threatened to take away the grants made to fund research at a dozen elite universities ostensibly because of their policies relating to DEI. While these latter actions do not actually benefit his voting base, his supporters nevertheless seem to derive pleasure from his “sticking it to the libs.”

  This brings us back to Trump’s cruel and inhumane treatment of illegal (and sometimes legal) aliens. This facet of his personality was evident in a number of his past actions. For example, he has long advocated that law enforcement officers shouldn’t be solicitous of the safety and well-being of individuals they take into their custody. He has also advocated that police officers should not hesitate to use force and weaponry when seeking to break up civil protests. Recall that he summoned the U.S. military (including soldiers armed with stun grenades and tear gas along with a helicopter gun ship) to disperse a crowd of peaceful protesters in Lafayette Park just so he could walk to a church on the other side of the park for a Photo Op. More recently, he has suggested a day in which law enforcement personnel carry out their efforts using extreme brutality as a means of discouraging any infractions of the law.

  The very notion that harsh criminal sanctions will deter unlawful behavior by others has already been proven false. During the Nixon administration, a “tough on crime” policy was adopted which led to a greater use of capital punishment and high mandatory minimum sentences. Unfortunately, those actions did not have a significant effect on reducing crime but instead caused our nation to incarcerate a higher percentage of its population than other countries. At the same time, it imposed greater costs on the nation’s governments and reduced the size of the nation’s workforce.

  In the first 100 days of his current presidency Trump has had immigration officials round up and quickly fly over two hundred Venezuelan men to El Salvador where they were placed in a notoriously brutal prison with no legal means to secure their release. There are several aspects of this operation which are causes for concern. First, these action were purportedly taken based upon the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, a law authorizing the President to deport individuals from a country that has invaded the U.S.   That contention is undermined by the fact that the illegal entry of individuals not acting on behalf of a foreign government is not comprehended by that statute. Secondly, before the planes even took off, the President of Venezuela offered to receive the deportees, an offer which was ignored by the Trump administration. Thirdly, while the planes were still in the air and the deportees were in the custody of U.S. officials, a federal judge ordered that the planes return to the U.S. so the deportees could have an opportunity to defend themselves. That court order was ignored. Lastly, at least one of the deportees taken into custody was admited to have been deported in error because he was not a member Trend de Aragua, the gang of Venezuelan criminals which has been the ostensible target of the deportations. Even a unanimous ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court to secure his return has been ignored by the Trump administration.

  The administration’s determination not to ship these individuals back to their home country or to even seek their return to this country as ordered by the Supreme Court seems to be a part of a calculated plan of cruelty and intimidation. To be sure, the selection of the Salvadorian prison was prompted by its notoriously hash reputation. This choice was clearly intended to discourage other immigrants from entering our country even though seeking asylum is not a criminal offense and, at worse, a failed attempt to do so only warrants a punishment of deportation, not incarceration in harsh conditions without “due process.” Now that the federal courts are challenging the Trump administration’s deportations to El Salvador, it is seeking to deport asylum seekers to an equally brutal prisons in Libya. Anticipating that deportations to Libya will also be blocked by the courts, the Trump is now considering reopening Alcatraz, a similar prison located in San Francisco’s harbor which was closed in 1963.

Perhaps a second motive underlying these action is that the Trump administration is seeking to demonstrate to its loyal supporters that it is serious about deporting aliens even though the U.S. both lacks the resources to deport even a million illegal aliens (much less the 11 million he has promised to deport) and that mass deportations will prove injurious to our nation’s economy. It’s also possible that the intentionally harsh treatment accorded to these deportees is designed to encourage other illegal aliens to accept Trump’s recent offer to pay $1,000 to each illegal alien that voluntarily leaves our country. It’s hard to believe that $1,000 would entice many aliens to come out of the shadows and chance being unceremoniously locked up and deported to a prison with little chance of regaining their freedom.

A third possible motive is to condition Americans to the administration’s incarceration of individuals without according them “due process of law” as required by the U.S. Constitution. This motive seems to be supported by the fact that individuals who are U.S. citizens or are protected by court orders have been swept up and incarcerated by immigration officials. This raises the specter that U.S. citizens might soon be deported or incarcerated without due process of law.  Indeed, it may not be a coincidence that Stephen Miller, the White House Deputy Chief of Staff, has suggested that the Constitution permits the suspension of the writ of Habeas Corpus, which affords persons with the right to have their incarceration reviewed by a court.

This, however, does not explain why the Trump administration has simply ignored the multitude of court decisions seeking to reverse the current deportations. The answer seems to be that the Trump administration is simply testing whether the courts will back down in cases involving non-citizens and thereby open the door to similar treatment of U.S. citizens. This is a serious problem because the courts are not able to enforce their decisions and neither the Trump administration nor the Republican controlled Congress seems willing to come to the aid of the courts should their orders be defied.

The New York Times recently published an article by Steven Levitsky, Lucan Way and Daniel Ziblatt, three political scientists who study how democracies come to an end. This article concludes that the U.S. has entered into a period of “competitive authoritarianism” and is rapidly descending into authoritarianism. They conclude that such a transformation will occur when “political opposition comes at a price” such as when the Mayor of Newark, New Jersey was arrested for having tried to inspect a prison facility located in Newark and judges who issue critical decisions become of targets of threats of physical violence. In case you haven’t noticed, this has already begun to happen.