Analysis: Understanding Trump's Betrayal

Understanding Trump’s Betrayal– Getting the story right about the historic nature of Trump’s betrayal of the nation remains one of the most important tasks of the new Democratic majority, and one which will be very hard given how complicit so many Republicans and center-right institutions have been in a many years long betrayal of the United States.  

For us, there was a single, ongoing betrayal.  It began with the decision to enlist Russia’s support in the 2016 campaign.  It continued with years of aligning US foreign policy around Russian aims, in Helsinki, with Europe/NATO, Ukraine, the G7, Syria, Venezuela, the renouncing of the Paris climate accords.  It took an even darker turn with Trump’s sustained Putinesque attack on core pillars of our democracy in 2020 – the post office, the census, the election – all of which were established in the Constitution itself. And it reached an apotheosis in Trump’s organizing and unprecedented attack on the Congress and the certification of the Biden Presidency on January 6th. 

What makes this all one betrayal, one profound historic betrayal, is that the American experiment was always really about one thing – creating a sustainable governing alternative to authoritarianism.  Trump’s alliance with Russia to cheat/influence/win the election in 2016, his joining of Putin’s illiberal internationale, his 2020-2021 blitzkrieg against our democracy together placed Trump on the side of autocracy against American democratic traditions.  The years of covering it all up by Barr, Nunes, McConnell, McCarthy and the unrepentant support of the Jan 6th insurrection makes the Republican Party complicit in this betrayal.  It may have begun as Trump’s betrayal, but without a process to formally renounce this rancid politics, it has now been become a betrayal of the party of Lincoln and Reagan’s too.