Eli Lake offers a commentary on Trump’s firing Secretary of Defense Mark Esper (who publicly disagreed with Trump about the wisdom of using the nation’s military to scatter peaceful demonstrators so the President could stroll to Lafayette Square for a photo op). Lake criticizes Donald Trump’s score-settling as “shocking, but predictable.” He suggests that, if Trump fires CIA Director Gina Haspel and FBI Director Christopher Wrey, this “would again be shocking, but not surprising.”
It appears now that he will leave office in the manner in which he has governed: recklessly. The difference is that, now that he has lost his bid for re-election, his outbursts are not the tirades of a tyrant, but the tantrums of a toddler. Trump could have accepted defeat and focused on the fact that his presidency has remade both the Republican Party and the American political map. If he wished to run in 2024, he could start making that argument now.
By pronouncing Trump’s eruptions this week as “the tantrums of a toddler,” rather than “the tirades of a tyrant,” Lake diminishes their significance. A reckless president is capable of doing ample damage in the next two months. Furthermore, this is unconvincing:
… Trump did not prove himself to be the authoritarian menace that his opposition claims. Trump could have fired Esper then and there. Instead he waited and seethed, sounding like a dictator but not acting like one. Only now, when he actually is a lame duck, is Trump choosing to settle scores.
A tyrant isn’t defanged simply because he chooses when to retaliate.
Moreover, something more consequential goes unmentioned: the compliance — whether eager or reluctant, over four years of erratic “outbursts” — of the Republican Party with the wannabe autocrat. That compliance, coming again and again, has ensured that the ongoing damage to our national interests and security is altogether predictable. If not for their willingness to countenance Trump’s off the rails words and deeds, Republican leaders might have kept him in check.
Instead, Republicans have folded. While Trump is still subject in some measure to institutional constraints, we can expect to see more unsurprising, reckless conduct over the next two months because Republicans are content to play along.
The elephant in the room
“What is the downside for humoring him for this little bit of time?” asked a Republican about playacting while Trump refuses to admit that he lost the election. This is identical to the calculation Republicans have made regarding the bluster, bullying, and incoherence throughout Trump’s entire term in office.
Today in Washington, Republican officials — in particular those who foresee a possible Republican primary in their future — are rallying around Trump. They’re either all-in with the nonsense about voting irregularities and fraud, or they pretend that his lies, delusions, complaints, and resistance are standard procedure after a presidential election. What they won’t do is push back. With this refusal, they enable.
Eli Lake credits Donald Trump with these accomplishments: “his presidency has remade both the Republican Party and the American political map.”
Lake doesn’t acknowledge that Trump’s remaking of the Republican Party has placed the United States in peril. The most significant threat to a wise, prudent foreign policy (as well as to wise, prudent domestic policies) from January 2016 through January 2021 is the servility of the Republican Party to an insecure, vengeful president and a base willing to do his bidding. It is disappointing that Lake hasn’t noticed this pattern.
(Photograph by Doug Mills of the New York Times.)