Politics
The Sad, Sordid Post-Presidency of Donald Trump
As the Trump administration’s dire failures are exposed, constant ugly spectacle surrounds the former president
Donald Trump’s post-presidency was always destined to be a “shit show in a dumpster fire,” as George Conway, husband of Kellyanne Conway and Lincoln Project cofounder aptly described the Trump administration. The vicious backbiting, spiteful jockeying, and petty intrigue that follows Donald Trump wherever he goes was unlikely to ever abate, especially after what remained of his already-tattered legacy added the bloody insurrection on January 6th to its roster of unimaginably terrible things that would not have happened in America without Trump’s personal touch.
The disgraced president seemingly can’t stop the onslaught of damaging stories from pummeling him and his recent administration, as CNN marches Dr. Birx, Dr. Fauci, and the other doctors Trump ignored, sidelined, and bullied onto primetime television to rehabilitate their reputations while telling the world how badly the administration botched the pandemic response.
That Donald Trump ignored science in favor of bozo stupidity, smarmy politics, and morbid denial, mishandling the pandemic at every step, is pretty well established. After all, no one can forget Trump himself ending up hospitalized in Walter Reed with COVID-19, gasping for breath after ignoring social distancing guidelines and eschewing masks at his SCOTUS soiree, causing a massive outbreak at the literal highest level of U.S. government.
Even so, Dr. Birx clearly feels the need to remind America that “hundreds of thousands of COVID deaths were preventable.” That is undoubtedly true, though Dr. Birx will likely be remembered as the infectious diseases specialist who sat silently and watched as the president suggested injecting bleach and sunlight as possible cures for COVID on national television.
Still, Donald Trump isn’t doing himself any publicity favors, as he recedes into his increasingly squalid post-presidency, popping up at a Mar-a-Lago C-list wedding like an aging political wedding singer to opine on “the border, Chy-na, Iran…” to awkward and irrepressible laughter from the puzzled guests. The actual wedding singers stand behind him clutching their guitars in the TMZ video, everyone waiting for the painful cameo to finally end.
A recent Politico article detailed the maneuverings for cash and donor lists surrounding Trump, as various MAGA bit-players attempt to cash in on Trump endorsements for would-be candidates within the GOP. Remarkably, Donald Trump’s endorsement is still a much sought-after treasure within the Republican Party, and a small army of former White House staffers are knife fighting one another for the chance to make a quick buck.
As Republicans jockey in Florida, Cyrus Vance’s investigation into Donald Trump is heating up in New York. State prosecutors have subpoenaed Allen Weisselberg, Trump Organization CFO and lifelong Trump family accountant, in what appears to be a deadly serious effort to leverage legal pressure to get a Trump insider to flip and turn state’s evidence. Prosecutors are poring over Trump’s books, examining internal documents and bank records to assess tax fraud and financial crimes, even as they continue looking at the Stormy Daniel’s hush money payments that initially set off that probe.
As the Trump administration’s sordid history continues to be dissected, and as more insiders attempt to resurrect their stained reputations in primetime exposés and multimillion dollar book deals, more dirty laundry will be aired, further bruising an already mangled presidency. It’s unclear if any of these stories of malfeasance and incompetence will tarnish Trump within the GOP, even as the rest of the world accepts that his presidency was a cataclysmic debacle of historic proportions. His stature among Republicans remains a thing of wonder, divorced from the reality of his policy failures and fixated to him personally in what is a quasi-religious devotion by many of his most fervent voters.
Mitch McConnell lost the battle to purge the GOP of Donald Trump after his second impeachment acquittal, and he will continue to be the scourge of conservative politics, even as he sinks lower into a seedy post-presidency surrounded by two-bit hustlers and political scam artists. His continued influence within the GOP is a testament to the strange cultishness of the right-wing, undiminished as it is by the string of scandals, failures, and tragedies that defined the Trump administration.
As he quietly blabbers on, muted as he is from the big megaphones of the presidential bully pulpit and his twitter account, he has been reduced to incoherently whining about Biden’s policies to wedding crowds like a confused patient that’s briefly escaped from his ward. His press statements barely make the news, and when they do they are filled with the usual lies, grievance, and pitiful blathering we know to expect from Donald Trump.
The world is no longer Trump’s oyster, and as he ages into his role atop the crumbling Republican firmament, his legacy in ruins, America is slowly patching herself up and repairing the damage of his presidency. In what might prove to be a strange quirk of history, Donald Trump’s profoundly failed presidency may have actually paved the way for the kind of sweeping, transformational presidency liberals crave and which Joe Biden is now pursuing.
While it’s far too early to speculate on whether or not the Biden administration’s hefty goals can be accomplished, it’s abundantly clear now that Donald Trump’s presidency will continue to be a scar on the American body politic. Trump and his ugly political trademark use of nativism, racism, deceit, xenophobia, and rage persists as a kind of lingering disease, even as more evidence piles up of his administration’s dire failures.