The End of Four Years Of A President Without Shame - President Donald Trump
By Thomas L. Friedman
Jan. 19,
2021
Folks, we
just survived something really crazy awful: four years of a president without
shame, backed by a party without spine, amplified by a network without
integrity, each pumping out conspiracy theories without truth, brought directly
to our brains by social networks without ethics — all heated up by a pandemic
without mercy.
It’s
amazing that our whole system didn’t blow, because the country really had become
like a giant overheated steam engine. What we saw in the Capitol last week were
the bolts and hinges starting to come loose. The departure of Donald J. Trump
from the White House and the depletion of his enablers’ power in the Senate
aren’t happening a second too soon.
Nor is Joe
Biden’s inauguration, but he has his work cut out for him. Because we haven’t
even begun to fully comprehend how much damage Trump, armed with Twitter and
Facebook and leveraging the bully pulpit of the presidency and the cowardice of
so many who knew better, has done to our nation’s public life, institutions and
cognitive immunity.
This Was A Terrible, Terrible Experiment.
It’s not
that Trump never did anything good. It’s that it was nowhere near worth the
price of leaving our nation more divided, more sick — and with more people
marinated in conspiracy theories — than at any time in modern history. We need
to be simultaneously reunited, deprogrammed, refocused and reassured. The whole
country needs to go on a weekend retreat to rediscover who we are and the bonds
that unite us — or at least once did.
I honestly
think we can again be our best selves, but it’s on all of us to make it happen.
How so?
To me, the
most striking feature of Trump’s presidency was that year after year he kept
surprising us on the downside. Year after year he plumbed new depths of
norm-busting, lying and soiling the reputations of everyone who entered his
orbit. But he never once — not once — surprised us on the upside with an act of
kindness, self-criticism or reaching out to opponents.
His
character was his destiny, and it became ours, too. Well, I’ve got good news.
We can recover, provided that we all — politicians, media, activists — focus on
doing what Trump never could: surprising each other on the upside.
Upside
surprises are a hugely underrated force in politics and diplomacy. They are
what break bonds of pessimism and push out the boundaries of what we think
possible. They remind us that the future is not our fate, but a choice — to let
the past bury the future or the future bury the past.
I still
remember where I was when Anwar el-Sadat arrived in Israel, surprising the
world with his willingness to make peace. It filled me with joy and a whole new
sense of possibilities for the Middle East.
I actually
surprised Trump once. I have never been reluctant to agree with him when he did
something that I thought was right. So, after he and Jared Kushner forged a
deal normalizing relations between Israel and the United Arab Emirates, I wrote
a column praising the accord. A few days later my cellphone rang. It was
President Trump. His first words were: “I couldn’t believe The New York Times
let you write something so nice.”
Of course,
this newspaper doesn’t tell me what to write, so he was shocked that I would do
it out of my own free will. It made him rethink, if only for a moment, who I
was and what my newspaper was. Surprise does that. Had Trump once stepped out
of character on something big and hard that challenged his base and surprised
us on the upside, like on climate or immigration, I’d have praised that, too.
He just wouldn’t.
Too bad,
because as journalists and as citizens, we live for surprises on the upside
from our leaders.
I have been
watching Mitt Romney repeatedly put his oath to defend the Constitution ahead
of his party and personal political interests. Along the way, we’ve gotten to
know each other. We don’t agree on everything, but there’s mutual respect.
Romney recently introduced me for a speech I gave virtually to a bipartisan
climate action coalition in Utah. That surprised some people, and maybe made
them look at the whole issue differently. It’s surprising what can happen when
we surprise for the better.
Liz Cheney
just totally surprised me on the upside last week by putting country and Constitution
before party and personal ambition and voting to impeach Trump. I knew her when
she worked on Middle East democracy issues. Makes me want to reconnect.
Last May,
after the death of George Floyd at the hands of the police, the rapper Killer
Mike was enlisted by Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms to help quell the
violence in Black neighbourhoods. He surprised me when he scolded violent
Atlanta protesters:
“It is your
duty not to burn your own house down for anger with an enemy. It is your duty to
fortify your own house so that you may be a house of refuge in times of
organization. And now is the time to plot, plan, strategize, organize and
mobilize. It is time to beat up prosecutors you don’t like at the voting booth.
It is time to hold mayoral offices accountable, chiefs and deputy chiefs. …
“I’d like
to appreciate our mayor for talking to us like a Black mama and telling us to
take our ass home, and I’d like to thank my friends for convincing me to come
here.”
So, I have
two asks of every American: Give Joe Biden a chance to surprise you on the
upside and challenge yourself to surprise him.
American
businesses need to surprise us by telling Rupert and Lachlan Murdoch that their
network fuelled the Big Lie that led to the ransacking of the Capitol and that
they are no longer going to advertise on any show that spreads conspiracy
theories. The best news I heard this week is that My Pillow chief executive
Mike Lindell — an avid Trump backer and advertiser on Fox, who has pressed
debunked claims that the 2020 election was rigged — said Kohl’s, Bed Bath &
Beyond, Wayfair and other retailers were dropping his products. Good for them.
Mark
Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg have to surprise us by once and for all stopping
the elevation — for profit — of news that divides and enrages over more
authoritative, even-handed news sources.
There is no
equivalent on the left to the right-wing white supremacists and other
extremists who just ransacked the Capitol. Not even remotely. But liberals
would surprise a lot of people on the right, and maybe even get a few to
support Biden, if they forcefully rejected political correctness when it
stifles dissent and called out not only violence by the police — a huge
priority — but also the sources of violence in minority neighbourhoods that are
terrorizing Black, brown and white residents alike. I see it in my hometown,
Minneapolis, every day.
And now
that the threat of Trump is gone, all of us in the news business need to get
back to separating news from opinions. We need more places where Americans of
all political stripes can feel that they’re getting their news straight —
without being enraged, divided or woke; leave that for the opinion sections.
Finally, as
I said, before we tear Biden apart, how about everybody give him a few months
to surprise us on the upside? Give him a chance to put country before party and
fulfill his oath of office.
In fact,
when he is up there on the Capitol steps at noon Wednesday, taking the
presidential oath to do just that, why don’t we all — you, me, your kids, your
parents — take the oath with him at home:
“I do solemnly
swear that I will … to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the
Constitution of the United States.”
Maybe if we
all do that, maybe if we all give Joe a chance to surprise each of us on the
upside, we can break the terrible political fever that has gripped our land
alongside Covid-19.
Now
wouldn’t that be a pleasant surprise?
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Thomas L. Friedman is the foreign affairs Op-Ed
columnist. He joined the paper in 1981, and has won three Pulitzer Prizes. He
is the author of seven books, including “From Beirut to Jerusalem,” which won
the National Book Award
Original Headline: President Donald J. Trump:
The End
Source: The New York Times