Donald Trump’s inaugural this week had some of the trappings of the dozens of other times an American president has assumed office, but swearing on a Bible wasn’t among them. Nor was the almost immediate violation of his oath to uphold the Constitution, a solemn promise that lasted about as long as some of his first-term Cabinet members.
It is not constitutional to “suspend” a law passed by Congress and signed by the president, as Trump has done with the TikTok ban. It is not constitutional to effectively suspend a portion of the 14th Amendment to the Constitution, ratified in 1868, which is what Trump has done with an executive order regarding “birthright” citizenship.
Trump, as the writer Jonathan Last observed, began the week acting like a wartime president: “It’s just that he’s going to war against America.”
Or, as political scientist Jonathan Bernstein wrote: “Donald Trump’s biggest campaign promise was to govern as a lawless authoritarian, and on his first day of office he showed everyone that he intends to keep that promise.”
Every authoritarian in the history of the world — and Trump certainly qualifies — requires for his success a cadre of little, characterless, fearful men — always overwhelmingly men — who willingly debase their reputations, their sense of morality, indeed their very identity in service to the authoritarian.
This was a week of behavior and action egregious even by Trump’s authoritarian standards, including especially the unconditional pardons of more than 1,500 Americans convicted or charged for their roles in the Trump-inspired Capitol riot of Jan. 6, 2021. Still, his little, fearful men snapped smartly to attention or, in many cases, simply acted as though pardoning a crowd of police-assaulting thugs was somehow within the mainstream of American democracy. It’s not.
You’re not among the crazy ones if you believe this is appallingly, horribly wrong.
One American who had every possible reason to be outraged was former Washington, D.C., Metropolitan police officer Michael Fanone, who suffered a heart attack and brain injury after being shocked with a Taser by one of the rioters Trump pardoned.
“The only thing going through my mind is that this is what the American people voted for,” Fanone told CNN. “I have been betrayed by my country, and I have been betrayed by those who supported Donald Trump.
“Whether you voted for him because he promised these pardons or for some other reason, you knew that this was coming. And here we are.”
Speaking of small, characterless, fearful men, let’s talk about Idaho Sen. James Risch. The criminal who used a Taser on Fanone — his name is Daniel “D.J.” Rodriguez — is the same man who vandalized Risch’s Senate hideaway office on our national day of infamy.
Rodriguez, as the New York Times summarized, “fired the stun gun at Fanone’s neck, twice. He also sprayed a fire extinguisher at the police and shoved a wooden pole at a line of officers.”
Judge Amy Berman Jackson, who sentenced Rodriguez to 12 years in prison, called him a “one-man army of hate, attacking police and destroying property” at the Capitol.
Trump pardoned Rodriguez and Risch said not a word, signaling to all the world that the current chairperson of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and a ranking member of the Intelligence Committee is nothing more than a fearful, toadying apparatchik for our American authoritarian.
By way of reminder, when NBC reported on the videotape of rioters trashing Risch’s office, the senator was asked why he hadn’t said a word about the personal affront to him from the rioters. “I don’t do interviews on Jan. 6, but thanks,” Risch said.
Imagine an earlier Risch: “I don’t do interviews on South Carolina seceding from the Union,” or “I don’t do interviews on presidents who resign to avoid impeachment, but thanks.”
You can count on one hand the Republicans who, even mildly, expressed disapproval of the Trump pardons. The rest know that criticism would bring down the wrath of Trump just as they know that pardoning leaders of the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers markedly increase the chances of more political violence.
If you believe, as Risch has always said — he began his 50-year life in politics as a prosecutor in Idaho’s largest county — that strong laws deterring bad behavior are the foundation of our legal system, then pardons of violent lawbreakers who beat and kill cops is an especially heinous abuse of power.
And before you fall for the false equivalency of “Biden issued pardons, too,” consider the vast difference between what Trump has done and what former President Joe Biden did with protective pardons of people who have done nothing wrong beyond standing up to Trump. Both men have abused the pardon power but for hugely different and not equivalent reasons.
With his pardons Trump has empowered his own “Brownshirts.” Risch and so many other little, fearful men know that with one social media post, Trump can sic his mob on them. And they know he would do just that. So they cower and refuse interviews that might touch on the abysmal abuses of our authoritarian.
Few voices were raised this week in defense of decency, but one slight and very courageous woman did speak. Bishop Mariann Edgar Budde, the leader of the Episcopal diocese of Washington, D.C., spoke directly to Trump at a prayer service: “Let me make one final plea, Mr. President,” Budde said as Trump looked on in apparent discomfort. “In the name of our God, I ask you to have mercy upon the people in our country who are scared now. There are gay, lesbian and (transgender) children in Democratic, Republican, and independent families, some who fear for their lives.”
The bishop went on to say that “the vast majority of immigrants are not criminals. They pay taxes and are good neighbors.”
But the cowardly little men of the GOP can’t speak truth to power; indeed they hardly speak at all. Senate Majority Leader John Thune, of South Dakota, to cite just one example, was asked for his reaction to Trump’s pardons. “We’re not looking backwards, we’re looking forward,” Thune said.
Thune didn’t bother to add that we have now seen what forward looks like.
Johnson, of Manzanita, Ore., served as chief of staff to the late former Idaho Gov. Cecil D. Andrus. His new book on the U.S. Senate in the 1960s — “Mansfield and Dirksen: Bipartisan Giants of the Senate” — has been published by the University of Oklahoma Press.
