Goes well with the tweets......................
Donald Trump is sabotaging America's democracyBy Joe Lockhart
Updated 12:53 PM ET, Fri April 12, 2019
Editor's Note: Joe Lockhart was White House press secretary from 1998-2000 in President Bill Clinton's administration. He co-hosts the podcast "Words Matter." The opinions expressed in this commentary are his own. View more opinion at CNN.
(CNN)For decades Republicans have railed against the size and scope of the federal government. GOP candidates regularly promise to eliminate government agencies, cut waste and fraud in spending and get government out of decisions that, they say, should be left to states, markets and individual families. They argue for smaller, more efficient and better government.
But since Donald Trump's election that principle has turned sideways. Trump and his Republican backers now don't want smaller and better; they seem to want to sabotage the actual work of government. They appear hell-bent on making it less transparent, less responsive and less effective.
And this effort is accelerating.
It was somewhat subtle at first: Trump Republicans started early by trying to strangle the Affordable Care Act without offering a viable alternative to replace it. Courts have repeatedly blocked these attempts, and so the administration and Republicans have worked to kill the law with a thousand cuts.
They've cut the advertising budget, making it harder for people to find the plan and sign up. They removed the individual mandate, have undermined -- at every turn -- a program aimed at attracting young people to the ACA, and shortened the enrollment period for consumers to sign up. And late last month, Trump's Justice Department said it would file a legal brief with a federal appeals court to wipe out the entire law.
One might argue that these are just policy differences between the parties. You can make no such argument about another series of moves.
Trump publicly berated Jeff Sessions, then his attorney general, for not being loyal and eventually fired him. He fired FBI Director James Comey for doing what the FBI does: investigate. He fired his secretary of state, Rex Tillerson, for actually practicing diplomacy, and forced out his defense secretary, James Mattis, and national security adviser -- H.R. McMaster -- for the crime of providing professional advice.
That's just the start. He's arguably used his office to continue to build his private business (see Trump's Washington, D.C., hotel), and reportedly overruled his intelligence officials to give daughter Ivanka Trump and son-in-law Jared Kushner security clearances.
And as long as we're on the subject of national security, he has repeatedly given more weight to the word of foreign adversaries over the professionals in the US government's intelligence community. It's not just Vladimir Putin and Russia. When it came to who killed Jamal Khashoggi, the President was quick to side with and defend Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and the Saudis.
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The most charitable explanation that Trump supporters always float for all this chaos is that the President doesn't really understand how government works and how Washington operates. I think it is something profoundly worse.
The problem isn't that Trump doesn't understand how our democratic government works: He fundamentally doesn't believe in or trust in democracy as an operating principle for our entire system. I believe he is intentionally undermining faith in our system as a precursor to changing it. Let's all remember what he said at the Republican National Convention in 2016: "I'm the only one who can fix our problems."
He didn't say we had to work together; he subtly said, without saying, that authoritarian government, or the cult of personality, was the only thing that could save our country.
I hope I'm wrong. But if I'm not, it sure does explain his affinity for foreign dictators and illustrates just how dangerous a position our country is in.
Lot more at link:
www.cnn.com/2019/04/12/opinions/donald-trump-is-sabotaging-americas-democracy-lockhart/
