Trump: All politicians are "saps and weaklings"

Would you trust your democracy to this man?

Sycophant: a servile self-seeking flatterer.

In the earliest days of the primaries leading up to the 2016 election, Donald Trump spoke openly to Atlantic writer Mark Leibovich about his strategy for capturing the Republican Party.

Trump said

he was used to dealing with “brutal, vicious killers”—by which he meant his fellow ruthless operators in showbiz, real estate, casinos, and other big-boy industries. In contrast, he told me, politicians are saps and weaklings.

“I will roll over them,” he boasted…. They were “puppets,” not strong people. He welcomed their contempt, he told me because that would make his turning them in supplicants all the more humiliating.

“They might speak badly about me now, but they won’t later,” Trump said. They like to say they are “public servants,” he added, his voice dripping with derision at the word servant. But they would eventually submit to him and fear him. They would “evolve,” as they say in politics. “It will be very easy; I can make them evolve,” Trump told me. “They will evolve.”

The rest of the article shows how, one-by-one, the “spineless ciphers” of the Republican Party went from bitter Trump critics to pathetic lackies. The article is accompanied by a row of photographs of the culprits, with quotes criticizing and then capitulating to their new master. Marco Rubio is a particularly sad example. He called Trump a con artist and “the most vulgar person ever to aspire to the presidency” in 2016 and this year said electing Trump is “the only way to make America wealthy and safe.”

But the most detailed account of a transition from Trump critic to enthusiastic member of the Trump “brownnoser brigade” appeared in a profile of Utah Senator Mike Lee by Tim Alberta, also in the October Atlantic.

Lee may have been the Republican who worked harder than any other to keep Trump from the party nomination in 2016. At the Republican convention that summer he tried to change the rules to allow Trump’s delegates to switch their vote. When that failed, he organized a floor protest of Trump’s nomination, which also flopped. After the Access Hollywood video came out in October, he posted a four-minute video calling for Trump to “step aside” and hand the nomination to a more worthy candidate.

Once Trump assumed the presidency, Lee changed his tune. The candidate whose attitude toward women and disdain for Democracy made him unfit for office became a “genuinely likeable person” who “has deep empathy for Americans.” From that point on, Lee’s ass-kissing knew no bounds. He

* compared Trump to an icon of his Mormon faith;

* collaborated with the president’s defense team during the first impeachment;

* participated in the administration’s attempt to overturn the 2020 election by recommending the now notorious, indicted attorneys Sydney Powell and John Eastman to lead the legal team, devising the “alternative electors” strategy, and spending “hours” on Jan. 4 calling state legislators on Trump’s behalf;

* continues to defend his and Trump’s actions in those efforts, calling them “unconventional” but perfectly legal.

Trump has offered to make Lee his attorney general and Lee has signaled a willingness to do Trump’s bidding in that position. When asked if he would insulate the DOJ from political pressure, he dismissed the notion as “romantic.”

The MAGA movement is portrayed by its enemies as first and foremost, a threat to democracy. I would suggest, however, that it is better understood as a threat to politics, the activity—the craft—through which democracy is practiced, which involves conciliation, discussion, deliberation, compromise,  toleration of opposition and acceptance of election results. It is how we manage conflict and opposing interests without resorting to violence or coercion. It is how complex, diverse societies establish stability and order while preserving "essential freedom" (Bernard Crick).

Trump may be a populist or a demagogue. He is also a crusader against politics and politicians and he has tapped a deep well of anti-politics in American society. What’s most disturbing about him is not his policy agenda or his offensive speech but his ability to so easily dispatch the political leaders of a venerable American institution and turn it—and them—into instruments of his will.

What remains to be seen is whether Trump is one of a kind or if others will follow using his playbook. Could the Democratic Party be just as vulnerable to such a hostile takeover, or was the Republican Party somehow ripe for the pickin’.