Patrick Semansky / AP
President Donald Trump listens during a coronavirus task force briefing at the White House, Sunday, March 22, 2020, in Washington.
Friday, April 10, 2020 | 2 a.m.
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Day by day, layer by layer, President Donald Trump tears away at the barriers preventing him from destroying our democracy and gaining dictatorial control over our nation.
Last Friday: The president fires Michael Atkinson, inspector general of the intelligence community, for alerting Congress last fall to a whistleblower complaint over Trump’s attempt to extort political favors from Ukraine.
Monday: Trump smears another watchdog, Health and Human Services deputy inspector general Christi Grimm, over an HHS report critical of the administration’s response to the coronavirus epidemic. Trump incorrectly characterizes Grimm as an Obama appointee — she’s actually served both Republican and Democratic presidents since becoming a federal official in 1999 — and suggests she can’t be trusted. It’s a tactic he’s used to hound several federal government employees out of their jobs, essentially serving them up for attacks from right-wing media and other extremists.
Tuesday: Trump removes the chairman of the panel established by Congress to oversee his administration’s management of the coronavirus stimulus package. Trump replaces the chairman, Glenn Fine, with a Trump nominee.
All three of these developments have one thing in common: Trump was undercutting offices that hold the executive branch accountable and play a critical role in ensuring that the separation of powers remains firmly in place.
In other words, Trump was attacking the front-line troops guarding against the president seizing absolute control of power.
This came on the heels of another dictatorial move by the administration — its attempt to corrupt the Defense Department through the unwarranted ouster of U.S. Navy Capt. Brett Crozier.
A military that holds to the highest standards its oath to support and defend the Constitution is now under fervent assault by Trump in another display of his totalitarian ambitions. He wishes to have “his generals” not be a rhetorical but a literal term, in the manner of North Korea’s Kim Jong Un or Russia’s Vladimir Putin.
And the Republican Party is silent as this happens. Removing independent oversight, trying to pervert the military, actively suppressing the right to vote, defying the separations of powers and undermining an independent judiciary — all of it happens with Republicans’ tacit approval.
This is the birthing process of a dictatorship, and the GOP has become actively anti-democracy.
Let’s be clear: Trump’s war on the fictitious “deep state” in Washington is a campaign to clear out public servants who have spent their careers protecting the interests of the American people and not any party ideology.
In firing individuals like the inspectors general, Trump is not only sweeping out an opposition but is clearing the way for operatives who’ll help him take over.
“It looks like the president right now is trying to exercise all of his authorities over inspectors general to show them that he is the boss — do things my way, or you’re fired,” said Liz Hempowicz, public policy director at Project on Government Oversight, to The Washington Post. “That’s simply not how inspectors general do the aggressive oversight work which will at some point require them to disagree with political leadership, either at the agency or at the White House. Especially right now, it’s crucial for inspectors general to remember that they work for American taxpayers, not the president.”
The American people deserve a government that is working for all of them, not for one man with a thirst for supreme power.
It’s time for voters to step in and stop Trump’s takeover. With his subversion of the GOP, the intelligence community, the military, the courts and other facets of our system of government, it’s up to the citizens to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution.
