by Joe Walsh
Cult of personality is wrong. The worshipping of any politician—Obama or Trump—is dangerous. But the difference from then to now is that Trump has an army of high-profile, fibbing, shameless toadies around him—people who are not just spinning for him but outright spreading disinformation and falsehoods on his behalf and going to the mat for him in the most contorted of ways.
I mean, good lord, just look at the tale of the tape, starting at the top: Trump’s first meeting with his full cabinet, in June 2017, included his calling individually on his subordinates, several of whom, in turn, lathered him with praise.
You had Vice President Mike Pence, an absolute lapdog, looking Trump in the eye across a table and saying “just the greatest privilege of my life is to serve as vice president to a president who’s keeping his word to the American people.”10
You had Reince Priebus, then Trump’s chief of staff, saying “On behalf of the entire senior staff around you, Mr. President, we thank you for the opportunity and the blessing that you’ve given us to serve your agenda and the American people.”11
You had Tom Price, his short-lived secretary of health and human services, saying “What an incredible honor it is to lead the Department of Health and Human Services at this pivotal time under your leadership. I can’t thank you enough for the privilege that you’ve given me.”12
This kind of slobbering is some real bend-down-and-kiss-the-ring bullshit. And the types of leaders who do it are more kinglike than they are garden-variety elected representatives. Dartmouth College government professor Brendan Nyhan told NPR at the time of the cabinet lovefest that the display was “a more common occurrence in nondemocratic regimes which are trying to portray themselves as being popular.” Without the benefit of foresight, he said also that he didn’t “want to make too much of one Cabinet meeting.”13 That’s understandable. But the sycophancy hasn’t stopped since that “one cabinet meeting”—instead it’s been repeated many times over and become all the more ridiculous with age.
Just compare Pence’s soft-spoken adulation in that June 2017 gathering, which was bad enough, to his over-the-top flattery of the president six months later in another get-together of the president’s deputies. Washington Post reporter Aaron Blake crunched the numbers: “By the end, Pence offered 14 separate commendations for Trump in less than three minutes—math that works out to one every 12.5 seconds. And each bit of praise was addressed directly to Trump, who was seated directly across the table.”14 I’d repeat all fourteen here, but I’d puke. Let’s take just three of them: “I’m deeply humbled, as your vice president, to be able to be here.” “You’ve spurred an optimism in this country that’s setting records.” “Mostly, Mr. President, I’ll end where I began and just tell you, I want to thank you, Mr. President. I want to thank you for speaking on behalf of and fighting every day for the forgotten men and women of America.”
Just read that again: “I’ll end where I began,” which really means “Restating, for the record, that I couldn’t be more grateful to slurp your boots.”
That kind of slavish behavior from Trump’s inner circle—giving thanks as if Trump is the source of divine rights—is only one way the cult communicates. Another is how it showers the president with superlatives—not just compliments but words that make it seem as though Trump has the very best of some human ability or quality. Here again: that’s Stalinist.
“In the Soviet press you may find [Stalin] fulsomely called ‘Great,’ ‘Beloved,’ ‘Bold,’ ‘Wise,’ ‘Inspirer,’ ‘Genius.’ . . . In speeches he has been addressed by ordinarily uneffusive folk as, ‘Our Best Collective Farmer Worker,’ ‘Our Shockworker, Our Best of Best,’ and ‘Our Darling, Our Guiding Star.’ Celebrations have concluded with the words, ‘Long Live Our Dear Leader, Our Warmly Beloved Stalin, Our Comrade, Our Friend,’ ” wrote the historian John Gunther in Inside Europe.15
Stephen Miller, a senior adviser to Trump, went with “political genius” and so much more during an infamous interview with CNN journalist Jake Tapper in January 2018. “You know, on the campaign, I had the chance to travel all across the country with the president on Trump Force One. It would be the president, me, Dan Scavino, Hope Hicks, a few other people going from rally to rally to rally to rally. And I saw a man who was a political genius, somebody who we would be going down, landing in descent, there would be a breaking news development. And in 20 minutes, he would dictate 10 paragraphs of new material to address that event, and then deliver flawlessly in front of an audience of 10,000 people.”
He continued, “The reality is, is the president is a political genius who won against a field of 17 incredibly talented people, who took down the Bush dynasty, who took down the Clinton dynasty, who took down the entire media complex with its 90 percent negative coverage, took down billions of dollars in special interests donations. And he did it all through the people and through his strategy and his vision and his insight and his experience.”16
For Stephen Miller, there clearly aren’t enough positive adjectives to describe an authoritarian at the center of a cult of personality. And yes, that’s how I would describe the undemocratic, unpatriotic mess that Donald Trump has gotten us into, with his unquenchable demand for love and loyalty, no matter the circumstances. And I really mean “no matter the circumstances.” The episode I referred to a few paragraphs back involving Scavino, the Trump social media guru, and the Dayton shooting in August 2019 that took the lives of ten people and injured twenty-seven others provides the most extreme kind of evidence. Trump visited first responders and some of the victims at Miami Valley Regional Hospital a few days after the tragedy, alongside Ohio senator Sherrod Brown and Dayton mayor Nan Whaley, both Democrats, among other Ohio officials. Reporters were barred from accompanying the president.17
Though both Brown and Whaley said they had urged Trump to lead on gun control efforts in Washington and criticized his rhetorical habits, they complimented his behavior during the visit. “He was received well by the patients, as you would expect. They’re hurting,” Brown said. “He was comforting, he did the right things, and Melania did the right things. It’s his job, in part, to comfort people. I’m glad he did it in those hospital rooms.”18 Whaley added that Trump “was very nice” and was “treated well by the victims”19 and that it was a “good decision” for him not to stop by the city district where the shooting occurred. “I think a lot of people that own businesses in that district aren’t interested in the president being there. And a lot of the time his talk can be very divisive, and that’s the last thing we need in Dayton.”
On the whole, Brown and Whaley described Trump’s visit to the hospital as positive and well received.
Keep that in mind, because this is how Scavino responded on Twitter:
Very SAD to see Ohio Senator Brown, & Dayton Mayor Nan Whaley - LYING & completely mischaracterizing what took place w/ the President’s visit to Miami Valley Hospital today. They are disgraceful politicians, doing nothing but politicizing a mass shooting, at every turn they can. . . . The President was treated like a Rock Star inside the hospital, which was all caught on video. They all loved seeing their great President!20
White House Press Secretary Stephanie Grisham then piggybacked on Scavino’s comment, quoting him on Twitter and tweeting this:
President @realDonaldTrump graciously asked Sen Brown & Mayor Whaley to join as he and the First Lady visited victims, medical staff & first responders. It is genuinely sad to see them immediately hold such a dishonest press conference in the name of partisan politics.21
Again: Brown and Whaley were “dishonest” about what? What did they mischaracterize? In what way did they say Trump was greeted with anything but—
Wait, then Trump tweeted about it?
Just left Dayton, Ohio, where I met with the Victims & families, Law Enforcement, Medical Staff & First Responders. It was a warm & wonderful visit. Tremendous enthusiasm & even Love. Then I saw failed Presidential Candidate (0%) Sherrod Brown & Mayor Whaley totally .
. . misrepresenting what took place inside of the hospital. Their news conference after I left for El Paso was a fraud. It bore no resemblance to what took place with those incredible people that I was so lucky to meet and spend time with. They were all amazing!22
The news conference was a “fraud”? It “bore no resemblance” to reality? How?
If you can bear with this for just a paragraph longer . . . Trump elaborated on his tweets a while later after he landed in El Paso to visit first responders who had attended to the victims of the mass shooting there, which preceded the one in Dayton by a day.
[Brown and Whaley] shouldn’t be politicking today. They couldn’t believe what they saw, and they said it to people. They’ve never seen anything like it. The entire hospital, no different than what we had in El Paso, the entire hospital, I mean, everybody was so proud of the job they did. . . . We made the tour, they couldn’t believe it—she said it to people, he said it to people. I get on Air Force One—where they do have a lot of televisions—I turn on the television, and there they are, saying, “Well, I don’t know if it was appropriate for the president to be here, you know,” etc., etc., the same old line.23
Brown and Whaley did not say that.
“And they’re very dishonest people,” Trump continued, “and that’s probably why [Brown] got, I think, about 0 percent, then he failed as a presidential candidate.”
Think about where this started, where it went, and where it ended: It started with Brown and Whaley saying Trump had been “received well” and “treated well” by the shooting victims; it continued with Scavino saying that Brown and Whaley were “lying and completely mischaracterizing” Trump’s visit; it then went to Grisham saying they had held a “dishonest press conference”; it progressed further to Trump saying he had seen with his own two eyes Brown and Whaley “totally misrepresenting what took place inside of the hospital”; and it concluded with Trump reaffirming that he had seen something that hadn’t happened in reality, and by the way, did you know Brown is a political failure, big league?
Think back to Trump’s falsified Hurricane Dorian charts one more time: Trump either willfully misrepresents or doesn’t realize he misrepresents what’s happening in the real world. In each case, he propped up his own ego. Also in each case, he had deputies prop it up for good measure—the national security aide on Dorian, Scavino and Grisham here. Let’s put this together, people: Trump leads an apparatus that helps him lie to boost his image. If that isn’t a cult . . .
Again, we come across the questions: Why does any of this matter? Why are his personality defects, even those as glaring and disturbing as this one, more significant than putting conservative judges on the court or fulfilling some other right-of-center political goal?
First, I don’t understand why anyone would think it’s okay that the president of the United States is a committed liar, completely delusional, or maybe both. We’ve given away the game if we think it’s all right to trade Republican policy victories for a cult of personality that resembles the totalitarian regimes the United States has almost always opposed. That’s a matter of principle, sure. But it’s also a warning. Take it from Brian Klaas, a widely cited democracy expert who teaches at the London School of Economics:
First, in order to roll back democratic checks, despots must blur the lines between truth and falsehood. This makes it difficult to ascertain who to trust in times of crisis. Throughout history, this graying of truth often starts on trivial matters, particularly on issues that surround the cult of personality associated with the leader. . . . Like many despots, Trump is unable to accept popular narratives that challenges [sic] his standing as the man of the people.
This blurring of the truth becomes dangerous when real crises break out. If China makes a claim about the South China Sea and Trump makes the opposite claim, how can Americans—or American allies—trust the White House? After all, if Trump’s team lies about an easily disproved claim where citizens can simply look at side-by-side photos, what about statements that aren’t easily verifiable with photographs?
And yet, in spite of these risks, despots thrive on this uncertainty. Blurring that line between fact and falsehood dilutes critiques and ensures that citizens question the nature of truth itself. (My emphasis.)24
Most Americans have a dim view of Trump’s temperament and trustworthiness. Seventy percent of American adults surveyed in September 2018 said they would not describe him as “even-tempered,” reported the Pew Research Center.25 Sixty-five percent of American adults surveyed in June 2019 said they would not describe him as honest or trustworthy, reported Gallup.26 What happens when Trump goes off the rails about a national security crisis? A real threat of war? Do we trust an ill-tempered liar to make the right decision—and do we trust him to tell the truth about the effectiveness of that decision or admit if the decision is wrong, when he leads a cult that insists to the public he is only ever right?
Cults also get people to surrender their values and core principles, which should matter quite a bit to conservatives. Ruth Ben-Ghiat, a professor at New York University who is a world-leading expert on authoritarianism, has this to say: “[L]ike Putin and [Italy’s Silvio] Berlusconi, Trump’s appeal is less intellectual than emotional. No matter if few of his political ideas are original. It’s the way he presents those ideas—as an extension of his own personality and passion, rather than any party platform—that wins people over.”27
What a surprise, then, that when Trump told four brown-skinned US congresswomen to “go back to where they came from,” Republicans said nothing—and when he announced a budget deal in July 2019 that added trillions of dollars to the national debt and busted all spending caps, Republicans said nothing, either. What a surprise that the number of Republican adults who say the country’s problems could be solved more effectively if presidents didn’t have to worry so much about Congress or the courts increased from 14 percent in 2016 to 43 percent in 2019, according to Pew.28 What a surprise that cult grifters such as Charlie Kirk of Turning Point USA tweeted in 2016, “Free markets, free people,” and then tweeted in 2019 support for Trump signing “an executive order banning tech companies from getting federal contracts due to viewpoint discrimination.”29 What a surprise that Rush Limbaugh went pro-tariff—even though tariffs are tax increases, hurt the American people, and generally are shitty policy.30
And what a surprise that Thom Tillis, a Republican senator from North Carolina, published an op-ed on February 25, 2019, that opposed Trump’s emergency declaration on the southern border31—the conservative, checks-and-balances thing to do—and then three weeks later changed his mind, obviously a result of the Trump cult threatening to come for his seat. “We’re not happy with the way Senator Tillis seems not to support the president,” said one North Carolina GOP county chairwoman. Notice how she said support “the president,” not “conservative principles.”32
It’s. A. Cult.
When you buy into the cult, you’ll say just about anything to back it. You’ll believe just about anything to support it. But heaven help us when people start doing just about anything to keep it going. I want to close this chapter with a reminder about the whistle-blower who told the chairmen of the House and Senate Intelligence Committees that he had an “urgent concern” about “information from multiple U.S. Government officials that the President of the United States is using the power of his office to solicit interference from a foreign country in the 2020 U.S. election.” Included in the whistle-blower’s complaint was his belief that Trump “sought to pressure the Ukrainian leader [Volodymyr Zelensky] to take actions to help the President’s 2020 reelection bid”33 during a phone call in July 2019—which was borne out by a transcript of the call that the White House released itself. The background is complicated, so I’ll let ABC News, which interviewed the relevant people on the record—meaning this comes from publicly available knowledge—take over for a minute:
During the call, a rough summary of which was released by the White
House Wednesday, Trump repeatedly encouraged Zelenskiy to work with Attorney General William Barr and his personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani, to probe [former Vice President Joe] Biden’s role in the dismissal of the country’s prosecutor general, Viktor Shokin, in 2016.
In an interview with ABC News in April 2019, Shokin said he believed Biden pressured the government to fire him because he was leading an investigation into Burisma, a Ukrainian oil and gas company where Biden’s son, Hunter, had a seat on the board of directors.
But the assertion that Biden acted to help his son has been undercut by widespread criticism of Shokin from several high-profile international leaders, including members of the European Union and International Monetary Fund, who said Biden’s recommendation was well justified and that Shokin had been removed because of widely shared concerns he was obstructing efforts to root out entrenched corruption in his office and Ukraine’s judicial system.34
Not until 2019 was there ever an issue about Shokin’s firing. And the fact that it became one did not arise from any new information. It was just Trump asking the Ukrainian president to have his government investigate the family of Trump’s political rival on the cusp of the Democratic primary season. “There’s a lot of talk about Biden’s son, that Biden stopped the prosecution and a lot of people want to find out about that so whatever you can do with the Attorney General [William Barr] would be great,” Trump told Zelensky during the call. “Biden went around bragging that he stopped the prosecution so if you can look into it. . . . It sounds horrible to me.”35