Trump’s presidency was a bully pulpit for immoral leadership

Despite a few stone faces in the crowd, the audience at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library erupted in applause recently when U.S. Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., told them, “We have to choose, because Republicans cannot be both loyal to Donald Trump and loyal to the Constitution.”

The Gipper would have approved. Cheney has been steadfast in warning Trump’s Republican supporters that their dishonor in supporting his lies will remain long after he’s gone. She has been a standout as vice chair of the House Select Committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, risking her own position in Congress. Her courage in defending American democracy, ironically from many in her own party, has been exemplary and commendable.

A staunch conservative, Cheney finds herself working closely with Democrats on the committee and championing the rarest of things in American politics these days: bipartisanship.

Americans of all political stripes would do well to remember what hangs in the balance when a president knows his supporters are armed and dangerous and still exhorts them to storm the Capitol and stop the certification of electoral votes.

As testimony before the Jan. 6 committee has shown, a con man in the Oval Office was ready to strong-arm the Justice Department, bully state officials, subvert the Constitution, stop the peaceful transfer of power and cheer on a violent mob to help him remain in office — despite the will of the voters, who fairly and overwhelmingly voted for Joe Biden.

This morally bankrupt plan marked the first time in U.S. history a president tried to overturn an election and stay in office. It was unlawful, un-American and unconscionable.

“The presidency is not merely an administrative office. That’s the least of it,” Franklin D. Roosevelt said during his 1932 presidential campaign. “It is preeminently a place of moral leadership. All our great presidents were leaders of thought at a time when certain historic ideas in the life of the nation had to be clarified.”

For Trump, the presidency was more a bully pulpit for immoral leadership.

Under questioning by Cheney, former White House staffer Cassidy Hutchinson told the committee that senior White House officials were aware days in advance of the dangers posed by the Jan. 6 insurrectionists and their plot to disrupt the certification in Congress of Joe Biden’s victory.

Worse, she testified that Trump knew the mob gathered for his speech at the Ellipse park that day was armed with knives, guns and spears, and yet, he still asked the Secret Service to remove the magnetometers to prevent authorities from taking the crowd’s weapons away before they marched on the Capitol.

Then an enraged Trump pitched a fit when his Secret Service detail told him he could not go to Capitol Hill to join the protest as he wished. That speaks volumes about his intentions that day.

His own White House counsel, Pat Cipollone, told Hutchinson, “We’re going to get charged with every crime imaginable if we make that movement happen.” Cipollone now faces a subpoena from the committee seeking to compel him to testify.

In her speech at the Reagan library in Simi Valley, California, Cheney called the attempt to overturn the 2020 presidential election “a domestic threat we have never faced before.”

She’s right, and the threat hasn’t passed. Polls show more than half of Republican voters would still support Trump as a candidate in a 2024 Republican primary. Despite the increasing body of damning evidence from the committee hearings about Trump’s corrupt attempt to subvert the 2020 election, roughly 70% of Republicans have bought the “Big Lie” and falsely believe Biden was not the legitimate winner.

But the Jan. 6 committee has reminded Americans, at least the millions paying close attention, that we stand for something, at home and abroad, and it’s up to all of us to reclaim it. That goes for Republicans worried about losing their support in primary races if they stray too far from Trump’s evidence-free narrative of a stolen election.

Illinois U.S. Rep. Adam Kinzinger, the other Republican on the committee and an Air Force veteran, put the choice for his fellow Republicans in starker terms. Kinzinger said he got into politics with the commitment “that if we’re going to ask Americans to be willing to die in service to our country, we, as leaders, must at least be willing to sacrifice our political careers.”

He’s absolutely right. The committee is presenting all Americans with a sober, serious and honest inquiry to bring out more and more facts. With each hearing, the evidence mounts, the story gets more fleshed out and it is more disgraceful. One effective part of the approach is having almost all the witnesses testifying be Republican and Trump administration officials.

The story, therefore, is wisely being presented and told by people who were in the rooms where it happened. Trump is emerging as a leader who was obsessed with his tale of a stolen election and bullied those around him to go along. Gradually, the mounting evidence may help the Department of Justice to make a case against the former president. The only way to deal with a bully is to strong-arm him out of the way. If there is no price to pay, if the president and his minions aren’t punished, if the United States doesn’t lock him up, then this will happen again.

The plotters and the ringleader should face charges for trying to steal our democracy. The proof is out there now, and the mountain of evidence grows by the day.

Storer H. Rowley, a former national editor and foreign correspondent for the Chicago Tribune, teaches journalism and communication at Northwestern University.

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