Part 3: Resistance to Trump’s Populism prior to the Presidential Election, the 2020 Election, the January Insurrection, and the Transition to the Biden Presidency.
Resistance to Trump’s Populism prior to the Presidential Election. A perfect storm, consisting of the COVID 19 pandemic, a massive civil rights movement, and a national economic collapse, created a backlash beginning in February and March of 2020 that Trump found extremely difficult and ultimately impossible to manage. National crises require a leader who can unify the country. Trump, as a populist, was incapable of providing that type of leadership. To remain powerful, he had to continue to blame “others” while the evidence of his own failings became more obvious to most during the perfect storm.
As of Election Day on November 3, the facts of the pandemic, the more than 230,000 deaths, could no longer be ignored despite the lies and misinformation of the President and his enablers. The President was informed in January, 2020 of the seriousness of the pandemic but did not want to “worry” the American population. He played down the deadly virus and refused to implement a comprehensive national policy. The fact that he, his wife, and many of his close advisers came down with COVID undermined his message that the public should not worry. The pandemic’s disproportionate impact on the elderly, the working poor, and people of color could not be hidden. The failure of presidential leadership and complete mismanagement of the national government’s feeble and fumbling responses to the pandemic became painfully aware to even his closest mobilized supporters, the white evangelic Christians and the working and middle class from the south and midwest. National polling organizations indicated that there was growing dissatisfaction within this group with the President in his handling of the pandemic prior to the election. Evangelicals also came face to face with the Faustian bargain they made with Trump. While Trump filled the courts with social conservatives, Evangelicals lost all future rights to claim that “character matters” in future elections and they have done irreparable damage to their Christian witness to Millennials and Generation Z. Trump could not afford to lose any of the white evangelical vote in the election. Even some of his complicit Republican Senators expressed their dissatisfaction with his mishandling of the pandemic. His most vocal and visible detractors to his failure to lead during the pandemic were the growing chorus of so-called “Lincoln Project Republicans” who left Trump’s Republican Party and endorsed Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden.
While Trump used his executive powers to politicize the governing institutions, as discussed earlier, a few experts within these institutions began to push back against the President during the pandemic. Dr. Anthony Fauci, an expert on pandemic diseases who advised six presidents as the head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, publicly countered the misinformation of the administration concerning the pandemic, despite the attempts by the administration to discredit and silence him. The public recognized his expertise and trusted him much more than the President. Other career public health experts within and outside the government continued to speak out against the President’s misinformation.
Another factor that fueled the backlash to Trump’s populism was his racist rhetoric and policies and the use of “dog whistles” in his law and order response to the massive political demonstrations against police violence and institutional racism. Trump rarely, if ever, spoke out against right wing violence. He encouraged Michigan militias to “liberate” their state government and told the Proud Boys to “stand by.” During the election campaign, he constantly used the dog whistle reference of “saving the suburban way of life” from “low income housing” and to “protect suburban housewives.” Despite this, by mid-June of 2020, two-thirds of Americans understood and were supportive of the efforts of Black Lives Matter to address institutional racism. This was greater support than at any point since its founding in July 2013 (Pew Research Center and Monmouth University). Dozens of states and cities began to enact and address police reforms as a result of the street demonstrations. Large majorities of Americans began to support police reforms such as requiring the use of body cameras, banning choke-holds, the creation of a national police-misconduct data base, limiting the qualified immunity of the police, greater police transparency, and shifting of the responsibilities of non-violent related community events away from police officers to social workers, mental health officials, and others. The President publicly opposed the renaming the ten US Army bases named after Confederate leaders, but Army Secretary Ryan McCarthy endorsed this. Trump’s opposition to tearing down monuments to Confederate leaders was ignored by many mayors across the south.
The President’s “law and order” response, reminiscent of Nixon’s “law and order” response to Vietnam War and civil rights protests, was seen in his use of federal military forces to “protect federal property” from the dramatic number of anti-racism public demonstrations. It was rebuked by Governors and Mayors across the country. Sending federal military forces to Portland only exacerbated an already tense situation and increased the violence. Former Secretary of Defense, Marine General Jim Mattis admonished the President’s threat to use the military to “dominate the streets” where public demonstrations were held and then referred to Trump as a threat to American democracy. Republican Governors, such as Charles Baker of Massachusetts, rejected the use of federal troops in their states to manage the political demonstrations. General Mark Milley, Chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, publicly apologized for appearing alongside the President in a blatant political photo opportunity at St. John’s Church after federal forces had used tear gas and rubber bullets to clear Lafayette Square of peaceful protestors.
The national economic collapse disproportionately affected minority-owned businesses, the working poor, and people of color of whom many are front line, minimum or near-minimum wage workers during the pandemic. From February through April of 2020, 41 percent of black businesses closed compared to 22 percent of businesses overall (Robert Fairlee, UC Santa Cruz). Black businesses were especially vulnerable because they were less likely to access government aid because of their lack of relationships with the big banks that distribute such aid. Studies showed that when requesting federal aid during the pandemic, white requestors were offered more loan products and were more likely to be encouraged to apply for them compared to black requestors (National Community Reinvestment Coalition). This, on top of the fact that economic gains by black Americans since 1968 were virtually wiped out by the Great Recession of December 2007 to June 2009 ( Pew Research Center), helped to fuel the massive political demonstrations that initially were a response to police violence toward minorities, but expanded their goals to include a focus on institutional racism.
As indicated earlier, populists politicize governing institutions to work in their favor rather than supporting the rule of law. There was growing opposition to Trump’s attempts to politicize institutions within the executive branch. Former commander of US forces in Afghanistan, Marine General John Allen, who is now head of the Brookings Institute, was most outspoken against the President’s attempts to politicize the military. A host of retired military leaders spoke out against the President including former Secretary of Defense, Marine General James Mattis; former commander US Southern Command and chief of staff to Trump, Marine General John Kelly; former chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS), Admiral Mike Mullen; former chair of JCS, Air Force General Richard Myers; former chair of JCS Army General Martin Dempsey; former commander of Special Operations Command, Navy Admiral William McRaven, and former supreme commander of NATO, Navy Admiral James Stavridis to name a few. Retired Admiral Steve Abbot, former commander of the 6th Fleet and acting Homeland Security Adviser under President Bush, stated that Trump was guilty of “clear manipulation of our military to serve his personal needs.” More than 200 retired Generals and Admirals in September signed a letter endorsing Biden and stated that Trump “failed to meet challenges large and small.” Polls showed that those serving in the military preferred Biden to Trump.
In August, more than 70 former senior national security advisers, mostly Republicans, issued a letter in support of Biden and stated that Trump had undermined America’s role in the world. Despite dramatically increasing the number of lower court appointments by Trump and having three appointees on the Supreme Court, to the surprise of many, the Court and the lower courts ruled against the President in several key cases involving presidential powers. In particular, it ruled that Trump must turn over his personal financial records to the state of New York in its investigation of his company. To put it another way, some of the governing institutions during this national crisis began to assert or reassert their autonomy, expertise, and knowledge base to counter Trump’s continuing attempts to politicize them. The major exception was the Department of Justice under William Barr who showed no hesitancy to publicly defend the political and personal goals of Trump.
The media continued to push back against Trump. While he had created his own reality show bubble supported by social media echo chambers, FOX news, other media outlets, and Russian foreign disinformation campaigns, he was incapable of silencing what he called mainstream or the “fake news” media. Evidence of the erosion of democracy under Trump was published on a daily basis in both politically left and right leaning media outlets, despite the rhetoric of the populist president. Dozens of books written by those who worked in the Trump administration and respected journalists all painted a common, unflattering characterization of the president as a corrupt populist who eroded American democracy.
The 2020 Election, the January Insurrection, and the Transition to the Biden Presidency. Joe Biden won the 2020 presidential election by winning several key states, in particular Arizona, Georgia, Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania, that Trump had won in 2016. It was the largest voter turnout in history with Biden winning the popular vote by more than six million votes. The primary reason for Biden’s win was the increased turnout in the racially diverse cites and increasingly diverse suburbs in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Nevada, Arizona, and Georgia. Republicans voted overwhelmingly for Trump who won the majority of white men and women, in particular, his mobilized supporters, the evangelical and working class (non-college educated) voters. Trump was unable to expand his voting base in the election.
Throughout the lame duck session, Trump made little mention of the dramatic increase in deaths due to COVID, which on a daily basis rivaled the number of deaths on 9-11. He abused the pardoning power by using it to help those of his supporters who had violated laws under the Mueller investigation of Russian influence peddling and obstruction of justice by the Trump administration. He disputed the election through more than 60 baseless law suits that ultimately were dismissed by the courts or dropped. He and his Republican enablers incessantly waged a public opinion war by claiming electoral fraud through lies and conspiracy theories via his reality show media bubble. Calling for his supporters to come to Washington DC on January 6 so they could change the outcome of the “fraudulent” election, Trump played the primary role in inciting the violent riot and insurrection against the Capitol building in an attempt to prevent the Congress from certifying the election results. This led to his second impeachment by the House of Representatives. On inauguration day, more than 60 percent of Republicans still believed the “Big Lie” that Biden won illegally, that the election had been “fixed.”
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