Shaking Things Up

Scholars have long recognized the presidential power differential between foreign and domestic policy making. There are, in effect “two presidencies,” one, a powerful foreign policy president, and the other a very limited, even weak domestic policy presidency. Whereas the President is granted wide-ranging authority over foreign policy, Congress, the public, the business community, and various interest groups, severely limit what a president can accomplish in the sphere of domestic policy. And yet, even here, presidents matter, their views can be placed on the public and congressional agenda, their executive authority can bypass Congress and “make law” via administrative rule-making. Presidents may be weak in domestic policy, but they are not helpless.

Donald Trump had a radical domestic agenda. He saw himself as a change agent, an outsider who came to Washington to disrupt business-as-usual. How successful was he in imposing his will on a reluctant Congress and a largely skeptical public? Michael Haas, focusing on Trump’s domestic policy agenda, tells a comprehensive tale of the trials and tribulations of a disruptor in office. Trump’s radical agenda often hit the brick wall of the status quo forces bent on preventing him from achieving his goals. At times it was the Congress, at times the public, sometimes the press, and most often, it was the judiciary that pulled the plug on Trump’s domestic policies.

This is a study of both how Donald Trump attempted to impose his will on domestic policy and also a broader story of how and why presidents are so often frustrated in achieving their domestic goals. It is a joy to read a master scholar at the top of his game, and with this book, Michael Haas provides us with a valuable, readable and important lens into both Donald Trump and the American political process. This book may not be the last book on Donald Trump’s domestic policy, but it is likely to be the most important, and the most lasting.

Michael A. Genovese

The present effort, my fifth book on Trump, updates parts of the Hidden Agenda volume that focus on his social agenda. Accordingly, his anti-democratic moves and efforts to deal with the coronavirus are mentioned only in passing. The purpose is to focus on how his Social Darwinistic perspective on politics caused so much harm to so many.

The term “carnage” most commonly refers to wartime destruction, although the historical definition refers to the flesh of slain animals and humans. Trump (2017) used the term “carnage” in his inaugural address to refer to the following:

Indeed, in 4 years Trump produced considerable social carnage. He pursued an agenda that increased poverty, did little to restore the industrial economy, made good education less accessible, actually provoked criminal activity, did nothing to stop criminal gangs, and pardoned drug dealers. He did so by increasing racism, sexism, homophobia, chauvinism, environmental exploitation, exacerbated health problems, tried to cut back on aid to seniors and those in poverty, favored the rich over the poor, and cultivated vigilante lawbreakers.

Trump did indeed shake things up. The fallout was an increase in White Supremacism to almost the point of civil war, with an eagerness to end democracy among his most ardent supporters.

Readers will quickly infer that I have little sympathy for Donald Trump. At the same time, I feel obligated to provide an objective account of the Trump presidency, so many sources are cited. In a country where perceptions of fact and fiction divide individuals politically, the result may be unsatisfactory to Trump supporters. Opponents of Trump almost universally believe that he did nothing worthy of praise, yet they will learn that he achieved some accomplishments that will be praised in future history books. Although my aim is to seek some balance, I admit that minuses greatly outnumber pluses.

Although I could cite exact pages in boring government documents, I prefer nuanced journalistic references because they provide evaluations. After all, this book is a factual evaluation of the presidency of Donald J. Trump. Each chapter is devoted to one of the many isms of Social Darwinism—from racism to superheroism. Each chapter is composed of sections devoted to topics, with the narratives as chronological as possible.

Accordingly, I wish to compliment David Kay Johnston, whose It’s Even Worse Than You Think was the first detailed accounting of the damage the new president was beginning to inflict on the country. In addition, I have much praise for Adam Serwer’s book The Cruelty Is the Point, which came out after I had already drafted all but the concluding chapter herein. Serwer presented damning information in his book. But he never used the word Schadenfreude, a German word to describe not just cruelty but the joy of being cruel. Serwer believes that the firmest bond between Trump and his most radical supporters was their joy on hearing him verbally assault opponents with so much venom that they erupted in laughter during his brainwashing rallies around the country.

In the following pages, I attempt to track down as many instances of Trump’s Schadenfreude policies as I can find. Doubtless I have only scratched the surface, as the Biden Administration has been discovering. I accept responsibility for any errors and gaps in my coverage of the carnage inflicted by Donald Trump upon the people and reputation of the United States, as well as his nearly fatal assassination of American democracy.

My final congratulations are to Michael A. Genovese, who holds the Loyola Chair of Leadership at Loyola Marymount University and is President of the Global Policy Institute. He has written an extraordinarily superb Foreword to the book. Michael is the author of over fifty books, including The Modern Presidency: Six Debates That Define the Institution (Columbia University Press, 2022), and How Trump Governs (Cambria Press, 2017). I am honored by his praise.

Michael Haas

References

Haas, Michael (2019). Donald Trump’s Hidden Agenda for America: Institutionalizing Bigotry, Dismantling Democracy. Los Angeles: Publishinghouse for Scholars.

Haas, Michael (2021a). The Politics of Lockdowns, Masks, and Vaccines: The Trump Administration and the Coronavirus. New York: Peter Lang.

Haas, Michael (2021b). The Ten Pillars of American Democracy: Has the United States Become a Pseudo-Democracy? New York: Peter Lang.

Johnston, David Kay (2018). It’s Even Worse Than You Think: What the Trump Administration Is Doing to America. New York: Simon & Schuster.

Serwer, Adam (2021). The Cruelty Is the Point: The Past, Present, and Future of Trump’s America. New York: One World.

Trump, Donald J. (2017). “The Inaugural Address,” trumpwhitehousearchives.gov/briefings-statements/the-inaugural-address, January 20.

Wilkerson, B.B. (2019). The Trump Joke Book. Los Angeles: Publishinghouse for Scholars.

Darwin, however, was not a Social Darwinist. He argued that humans had emotions, something animals lacked (Darwin 1871). Thus, humans could change the environment, making improvements in which they live to prolong the human race. Darwin believed that science could be used to create a better life for humans.

Social Darwinist Spencer influenced later Yale sociologist William Graham Sumner (1911), who supported the Libertarian view that government should have limited scope, allowing the economy to operate without government regulations. He believed that people should be allowed to lead their own lives without having government tell them what to do or not do. The Republican Party, which was created by many opponents of slavery, became enamored of Libertarianism during the late nineteenth century, when the Industrial Revolution brought increased prosperity to the United States (Hofstadter 1944).

But when the American economy collapsed in 1929, beginning the Great Depression, Libertarianism was rejected. The New Deal of President Franklin Roosevelt established regulations of business and such social programs as Social Security. Thus, most Republicans opposed New Deal reforms but lost elections until 1952, when Liberal Republican Dwight Eisenhower accepted New Deal reforms. The division between Liberal and Libertarian Republicans continued until the election of Libertarian Ronald Reagan in 1980. The Republican Party by then fell under the influence of Nobel Prize recipient, economist James Buchanan (1975), a Libertarian who had a plan: Snail-paced dismantling of economic regulations and New Deal reforms to minimize opposition among those who benefit from government social programs (MacLean 2017).

Donald Trump is also a Social Darwinist. But he is not a Libertarian. His version of Social Darwinism should be called Triumphalism, as he has wanted to use government to advance the interests of those who are “strong” while providing less government assistance to the “weak.” Although political scientist John Burgess (1903) may have been the first Triumphalist, the political thinker that Trump consulted most was Adolf Hitler. The latter’s Triumphalist writings were his bedside reading, according to his first wife (O’Brien 2015:200). Instead of Buchanan’s “stealth approach” to deregulation, Trump preferred to act with fanfare, celebrating victory for all to hear and know. Trump evidently agrees with Burgess’s view that Whites are strong, while other races are weak.

Accordingly, the analysis in the following chapters is organized by the ten components of Trump’s version of Social Darwinism. The first chapter categorizes Donald Trump’s views into promises for each of the ten components. The next ten chapters place the components in the titles. The final chapter summarizes the carnage resulting from his advance of Triumphalism, including the advance toward wider acceptance of authoritarianism and rejection of democracy.

References

Buchanan, James M. (1975). The Limits of Liberty: Between Anarchy and Leviathan. Indianapolis, IN: Liberty Fund.

Burgess, John W. (1903). Reconstruction and the Constitution, 1866–1876. New York: Scribner’s.

Darwin, Charles (1859). The Descent of Man. London: Murray.

Darwin, Charles (1871). Expression of the Emotions in Men and Animals. London: Murray.

Hofstadter, Richard (1944). Social Darwinism in American Thought. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1992.

MacLean, Nancy (2017). Democracy in Chains: The Deep History of the Radical Right’s Stealth Plan for America. New York: Penguin.

O’Brien, Timothy L. (2015). TrumpNation: The Art of Being the Donald. New York: Warner Business Books.

Spencer, Herbert (1882). Principles of Sociology. New York: Appleton.

Sumner, William Graham (1911). War and Other Essays. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.

Donald Trump Goes Political

Donald Trump gained increasing national attention as a celebrity on the television reality show program The Apprentice (2004–2007), when his favorite phrase was “You’re fired!” After his final show on February 22, 2007, he evidently was appalled that Barack Obama, an African American, was elected in 2008. From 2017, he began to pedal the lie that Obama was a Muslim born in Africa and smuggled into the United States, a conspiracy theory that earlier had gained traction within some quarters of the American public, but now his conspiracy theory entered the mainstream (Rutenberg 2008; Marr 2011). New Yorkers had long been accustomed to his occasional outbursts, but now the country was becoming aware of an indefatigable loose cannon, ready to explode.

Announcement of Candidacy

The first loud blast came on June 16, 2015, when he and his wife Melania descended down an escalator to announce his candidacy for president. His speech was in two parts. One part was a critique of the state of the union, much of which could have been written by Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders. The other part consisted of policy recommendations.

Some of his remarks on that occasion remain memorable today (Santucci and Stracqualursi 2015):

And much more, with the last quote striking the same chord as Bernie Sanders, who was then campaigning as a Democrat against Hillary Clinton to become the presidential candidate in 2016. The speech was long, and the audience cheered.

Finally, Trump’s words were being heard nationwide. A strong candidate had entered the race, but in actuality he did not believe that he would win a race that pundits were predicting would be a landslide for Hillary Clinton (Tumulty 2019). His main objective was to increase the visibility of the Trump brand of hotels and resorts through free publicity whenever he spoke. On at least one occasion during his campaign, he even displayed the Trump brand of meat, water, and wine, though reporters later learned that he did not own most of the products (Neely 2016).

His announcement was met with skepticism. After all, he never had run for office before and he lacked the customary rough-and-tumble political experience. He claimed to be rich but had recurrent bankruptcies. Two wives disliked and divorced him. Although he ran a business, he had no government experience.

But when he spoke at rallies in towns, small and large, audiences were larger and more enthusiastic than all other candidates. He entertained and scored the point that his mission was to expose the stupidity of current politicians. His claim that the American Dream was dead resonated with many across the country (Rich 2018). He promised that he would get things done because he knew how to make deals. Using simple language with a lot of amusement, he repeated messages to the point of brainwashing those in attendance to believe him and reject other information sources.

Republican Primary Campaign

The 2016 Republican primary provided an open field of candidates. Jeb Bush, with a large campaign war chest, seemed most likely to win. About a dozen candidates ran, too many to be seated on a political debate stage, so there were two debates—the big one with Bush, Trump, and others doing modestly in the polls, while a little debate afterward of four officeseekers who had much less popular visibility.

Trump was an energetic even clownish performer onstage, whether in debates or at well-attended rallies, so the media gave more attention to Trump than other candidates (Lawrence and Boydstun 2017). He promised more than his opponents and defied norms of political correctness and respectful behavior. Few opponents called him out for his brashness. When he namecalled opponents, the labels appeared to stick in the minds of the public.

For many observers, Trump’s candidacy seemed laughable. When asked about Boston locals who beat up a Hispanic homeless guy, he expressed some regret but also excused their behavior as something “passionate” and “patriotic” (Tribbi 2017). After that remark, the laughing stopped. Thereafter, Trump was viewed as a serious, even formidable candidate.

According to Steve Bannon, his campaign adviser in the final months, the extreme left and extreme right agreed that globalization has ruined the economy for ordinary Americans (Wolff 2018:ch4). In other words, he felt, the center was supposedly declining. Yet the center represents American businesses, upholders of civil society, and those wanting to preserve democracy. Bannon expected the center to disappear. His logic was that globalization is unpopular, so Trump’s populism should prevail. He conveyed his message to Trump, who bought the pitch and found resonance with voters across the country. Populism is a people’s quest to dismantle the power of elites who hold them back (Kazin 1995). Accordingly, populist leaders define who the elites are and engage in a politics of hate, while promising liberation to the masses.

Consistent with the concept of populism, he promised to govern in the interests of the people, with whom he established direct contact at campaign rallies and through tweets, without the need for what he considered the flawed intermediate institutions of civil society (lobbyists, newspapers, and political parties). He promised to break the gridlock in Washington, where he claimed correctly that almost nothing was being done for the benefit of the people. Other candidates lacked a clear message.

When primary votes were cast, Trump tended to get the most votes with no clear number two. Republican elites failed to coalesce behind a challenger who could defeat him. Republican Party leaders learned from primary election results that they had not been representing the voices of many constituents while Trump surged ahead in polling and primaries to gather enough votes to be nominated for president, all to the dismay of party leaders. Although he ran against the establishment, and got support because of distrust of the Republican establishment (Dyck, Pearson-Merkowitz, Coates 2018), especially the Bushes and Wall Street, he in fact adopted their agenda in the Republican Party platform.

He was nominated for president by the Republican National Convention at Cleveland during July 2016. Trump’s winning ways could then be duplicated in the contest with Hillary Clinton, the overwhelming choice at the Democratic National Convention. He then continued campaigning as before, not softening his message to attract centrists until he began to flipflop in the last days before the November election (Haas 2019:200–2).

Formal Contract with the American Voter

Although much of his campaigning involved namecalling and negative remarks about elites and opponents, his positive message was extensive. By the end of January 2016, one reporter counted 76 promises (Johnston 2016). Two weeks before the election, many were codified into a 28-point “Contract with the American Voter,” which was issued on October 22, 2016, during an address at Gettysburg. The Contract summarized promises in public statements and at rallies. As president, he gave them priority when in office, eager to fulfill every one of the promises so that he could declare success in 2020.

The Contract had 18 measures that he would personally accomplish during the first 100 days of his presidency by executive order. The remaining 10 actions were to be passed by Congress, also within his first 100 days (Table 1.1).