Apparently, We Can't Keep It

Fellow Substackers who are not at The New York Times or The Washington Post or the Los Angeles Times, CNN or any other big time mainstream news outlets have been kvetching (including The Hustings’ own Stephen Macaulay) about how those selfsame outlets are allowing Donald J. Trump to get away with a coup. With authoritarianism. With the end of democracy.

In the weekend edition of his Substack The Experiment, Jason Stanford outlines the dilemma of national political journalists who must use terms like “false statement” or “factual inaccuracy” to prove their objectivity to readers, because “to write that Trump lied carries the added burden of proof that Trump intended to deceive.”

Even when the proof is unassailable, members of The Cult of The Donald have false equivalency on their side: All politicians lie. Former President Biden had 50 years in national political life to do so.

This is true.

Spy magazine, which I often cite as the publication that formed an indelible impression of Trump circa 1990 as “the short-fingered vulgarian” (long before he was officially associated with either party) didn’t need to mince words because it could dish it out on Democrats as easily as on Republicans. Its first cover story on President Clinton in 1993 was titled “First 100 Lies.” Just two months later its second cover story on Bill Clinton was titled “Would You Buy Spam from This Man?”

A bit later, Spy published a detailed and insightful, if unfunny exposé of then-Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Joe Biden’s back room deal with Republicans to refuse to allow four women to testify to Anita Hill’s credibility during the Clarence Thomas hearings for US Supreme Court.

Perhaps you can’t call that a lie, but it certainly was a cave to the GOP that he might regret to this day.

Problem is, Trump’s lies, like his executive orders, come at such a rapid pace that it’s hard to single any out. Meanwhile, his pledges to lower inflation and end the war in Ukraine on Day One, his “only” day as dictator fall into the category of “political promises.”

Trump’s pledge to prove Barack Obama was not born in the United States, and therefore was not legitimately our president, was a pre-political promise, and one that propelled him from host of The Apprentice into political life. Trump told Fox News he had hired a private investigator to dig into Obama’s citizenship records in Hawaii until Trump stopped talking about it. Fox News let it quietly drop.

There is of course, Trump’s constant lie that he won the 2020 presidential election. No news outlet to the left of Fox News settled for calling his lies about the election “false statements” or “factual inaccuracies.”

What to call Trump’s claims during last year’s campaign that he knew little, if anything about The Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025? It’s an easy bet he didn’t read the executive summary, let alone all 927 pages. But Democrats knew Trump would quickly pivot to Project ‘25 ASAP. MAGA Republicans hoped he would. Swing voters didn’t care.

Who cares that Trump has been ignoring constitutional separation of powers to freeze funding of programs he deems unworthy of federal spending? His Office of Management and Budget director confirmed last Thursday, Project ’25 co-author and self-described Christian nationalist Russell T. Vought, says he and Trump consider the Budget and Impoundment Act passed in 1974 after President Nixon refused to spend on projects he didn’t like “unconstitutional,” according to The New York Times.

So Trump will continue to unilaterally defund federal projects and programs he does not like. His best billionaire buddy and special government employee Elon Musk will pull the plug – or have them pulled – on more government agencies he declares “corrupt.”

Musk and his DOGE lackeys will shred through US Treasury records. Early Saturday, a federal judge blocked DOGE’s access to Treasury records for a week. But it’s hard to believe a mere court order would keep someone like Musk from getting back into the Treasury building.

The court’s binders on DOGE’s infiltration of Treasury was the short-term result of just one of myriad suits brought against Trump’s executive actions of the past two weeks, federal court lawsuits that are considered the last bulwarks to hold off a president who believes his 49.9% popular vote victory is enough of a mandate to allow him absolute authority over the legislative and judicial branches. At least some of these legal challenges to Trump’s authority could end up in a Supreme Court that just last July by 6-3 decision gave the president absolute immunity for any official acts.

Objectively, there’s plenty of evidence to call this a coup. Three branches, minus congressional control and then minus any federal court guardrails equals one leader doing whatever he wants. Call it a hostile takeover. Call it authoritarianism over democracy.

Lassa is founding editor of The Hustings.