Unfit to Be the Ruler of a Free People: The Anti-American Presidency of Donald Trump

Is it profoundly un-American? Absolutely. It flies in the face, and spits in the eyes, of the untold millions who, cumulatively, have created the American story over the centuries. It takes the clay of possibility and with an iron fist molds it into something truly brutalist and exclusionary.

In the above quote, Sasha Abramsky advances an argument common among the opposition in the Trump era: that the man and the factions around him represent a rejection of all that is good and praiseworthy in American history, an abandonment of our accomplishments in pursuit of a regression towards values we rightly rejected. This argument rests on the pluralist, egalitarian, democratic, and dynamic society that many Americans have sought, with halting progress and frequent setbacks, to create for centuries. In particular, this understanding is possible for all of us who grew up in an America that has had more than a hundred years for the consequences of the great migration wave of the late 19th and early 20th century to play out—an America where multiculturalism and the melting pot are mainstays of our national self-understanding.

But Trump’s anti-American disposition goes back yet further as well. Back in February, Trump declared, “LONG LIVE THE KING!” He followed up by sharing images of himself dressed like one.

We are a country that sprang forth by rejecting kings—in particular, a king against whom we levied a list of grievances that helped form the basis for the rights we hold dear as Americans. Not all of the charges we made against that king are relevant today (“He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public Records” is not particularly applicable) but let us look at a sampling (with some charges clipped to the relevant portions):

●     He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.

●     He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners.

●     He has obstructed the Administration of Justice

●     He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harrass our people

●     He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power.

●     For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world.

●     For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent.

●     For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury.

●     For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences.

●     For (. . .)altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments.

●     He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us.

We should never pretend that there was complete consensus among the founding generation, who were as factional, pugilistic, and ideological a people as ever there have been. But the signatories of the Declaration and the framers of the Constitution all envisioned a free, democratic, and commercial society^[1] whose authorities were subject to the rule of law and who engaged in a high volume of international trade.

Donald Trump is a lawless president seeking to end the naturalization of citizens by birth or by any other process. He has redirected resources away from the administration of justice and towards the purging of his personal enemies, and has “erected” the phone office DOGE in order to harass the lawful administrators of American government. Need I go on?

We can look at the anti-American nature of what Trump is doing through the lens of three specific and quite different men: Madison, Jefferson, and yes, even Hamilton.

For Madison, the author of Federalist 51, this is quite straightforward. That paper is titled “The Structure of the Government Must Furnish the Proper Checks and Balances Between the Different Departments.” Here’s a passage:

The great security against a gradual concentration of the several powers in the same department, consists in giving to those who administer each department the necessary constitutional means and personal motives to resist encroachments of the others. (. . .)A dependence on the people is, no doubt, the primary control on the government; but experience has taught mankind the necessity of auxiliary precautions.

In other words, he was Mr. Checks and Balances, whereas the Trump administration seeks to consolidate the entire executive branch under his personal control. This is completely anathema to Madison’s philosophy of government. Less well known is that Madison’s original proposal, the Virginia Plan, included the provision that the national executive was “to be chosen by the National Legislature.” Obviously he came around to the idea of an independently selected executive, but the idea of an executive who could completely ignore Congress on matters of law and finance is completely anathema to the form of government he helped to create.

Jefferson is, if anything, an easier point of contrast than Madison. After all, he was the author of the very Declaration quoted above. The loose parties of his day, like those in England of the same time, were based entirely on factions of elected officials without any close connection to the voting public. When Jefferson left office, he left in his in place a congressional nominating caucus approach to selecting presidents for his party, which was the de facto method for choosing presidents during the brief Era of Good Feelings in which his party ruled uncontested. Jefferson very much believed in the necessity of a close connection between Congress and the president, as Madison did.

Hamilton may seem an unlikely figure to invoke against Trump, given his preference for king-like presidents and tariffs. But few cared more about the “full faith and credit” of the United States than Hamilton, the architect of the young republic’s national finances, which included assuming all the debts of the state governments from the Revolutionary War. And no one has done more to tarnish that full faith and credit than Trump, who is not merely raising tariffs but doing so in an unpredictable and incoherent manner that plainly violates several standing treaties. He is not merely destroying our federal state capacity, but illegally cancelling contracts and payments in a way that makes it unlikely the federal government’s promises will be believed for quite some time. He is not merely changing America’s foreign policy on, say, Ukraine, he is bullying our allies with threats of annexation and extortion, and generally making us an unreliable partner on the international stage.

Moreover, Hamilton’s tariff policies were aimed at making American competitive on an international stage, in which there was, in fact, a high volume of trade in both directions. Indeed, the tariffs themselves were meant to give American industry an edge, not to reduce imports. After all, to get tariff revenue in the first place, producers in other countries must be willing to export their products to us and consumers must be willing to pay those tariffs! Trump, meanwhile, has simply threatened to bring a vast amount of trade with our largest trading partners to a grinding halt, without anything to replace it.

Trump is a disgrace to our great country. He is unAmerican in his values and anti-American in his policies.

What is to be done? Well, perhaps we should once again consult the Declaration:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.

[1] “A free, democratic, commercial society was thought of as more than simply a state that respected rights of various kinds. It was a society of a particular kind, one characterized by mobility, the rise and fall of elites based on achievement, and a certain fluidity. Certainly Jefferson was motivated by a taste for equality and an antipathy towards the landed aristocracy, but that was not his only motivation[.]” Jacob T. Levy, The Multiculturalism of Fear (Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 2004), 209.

Featured image is Washington Crossing the Delaware, by Emanuel Leutze