A Lifetime Underminer of the National Order Is Now Charged with Maintaining It

As Bruce Schneier wrote four years ago, we have a trust-based society. "In today’s society, we need to trust not only people, but institutions and systems. ... All complex ecosystems require cooperation." As illustration of this principle, "When I used an ATM this morning ... I trusted the national banking system to debit the proper amount from my bank account back home." You can put a VISA card from a west coast credit union in a Berlin ATM and extract the expected number of Euros.

Schneier added that societies contain unscrupulous individuals—parasites—who predate on the cooperative structure of our worldwide civilization:

In any cooperative system, there also exists an alternative parasitical strategy. Examples include tapeworms in your digestive tract, thieves in a market, spammers on e-mail, and people who refuse to pay their taxes. These parasites can only survive if they’re not too successful. That is, if their number gets too large or too powerful, the underlying system collapses.

The essential role of the national government, and particularly its presiding official, is to oversee the ethical order delineated in the Constitution, and thus, to administer(1) a rule of law within which we can enjoy “the benign influence of good laws under a free government.”

Donald Trump's lifetime record is that of a con artist who successfully subverted the public order for his own profit. He stiffed employees, subcontractors, minorities, and regulators, and lied about it. His actions were contrary to the public good, and by implication detrimental to our government. He profited from the order by undermining it, and now he has acceded to the office meant to uphold it—a task for which he is calamitously unfit.

Last August, Kurt Eichenwald wrote:

... Trump was denigrating Native Americans before Congress, ... (In 2000, Trump won a contract to manage the casino for the Twenty-Nine Palms Band of Mission Indians, but after Trump Hotels and Casino Resorts declared bankruptcy in 2004, the tribe paid Trump $6 million to go away.) ... His purposeless, false and inflammatory statements before Congress, ... alienated politicians from around the country, ... Lost contracts, bankruptcies, defaults, deceptions and indifference to investors—Trump’s business career is a long, long list of such troubles, according to regulatory, corporate and court records, as well as sworn testimony and government investigative reports. ... Trump is willing to claim success even when it is not there, according to his own statements. “I’m just telling you, you wouldn’t say that you're failing,” he said in a 2007 deposition when asked to explain why he would give an upbeat assessment of his business even if it was in trouble. “If somebody said, ‘How you doing?’ you're going to say you're doing good.” Perhaps such dissembling is fine in polite cocktail party conversation, but in the business world it’s called lying. ... Trump’s many misrepresentations of his successes and his failures matter—a lot. As a man who has never held so much as a city council seat, there is little voters can examine to determine if he is competent to hold office. ... He sells himself as qualified to run the country because he is a businessman who knows how to get things done, ... And while Trump has had a few successes in business, most of his ventures have been disasters. (Emphasis added)

As for the way businessman Trump stiffed the public before he became our so-called president:

USA TODAY exclusive: Hundreds allege Donald Trump doesn’t pay his bills—Donald Trump often portrays himself as a savior of the working class who will "protect your job." But a USA TODAY NETWORK analysis found he has been involved in more than 3,500 lawsuits over the past three decades — and a large number of those involve ordinary Americans, like the Friels, who say Trump or his companies have refused to pay them.

At least 60 lawsuits, along with hundreds of liens, judgments, and other government filings reviewed by the USA TODAY NETWORK, document people who have accused Trump and his businesses of failing to pay them for their work. Among them: a dishwasher in Florida. A glass company in New Jersey. A carpet company. A plumber. Painters. Forty-eight waiters. Dozens of bartenders and other hourly workers at his resorts and clubs, coast to coast. Real estate brokers who sold his properties. And, ironically, several law firms that once represented him in these suits and others.

Trump’s companies have also been cited for 24 violations of the Fair Labor Standards Act since 2005 for failing to pay overtime or minimum wage, according to U.S. Department of Labor data. That includes 21 citations against the defunct Trump Plaza in Atlantic City and three against the also out-of-business Trump Mortgage LLC in New York. Both cases were resolved by the companies agreeing to pay back wages.

In addition to the lawsuits, the review found more than 200 mechanic’s liens — filed by contractors and employees against Trump, his companies or his properties claiming they were owed money for their work — since the 1980s. The liens range from a $75,000 claim by a Plainview, N.Y., air conditioning and heating company to a $1 million claim from the president of a New York City real estate banking firm. On just one project, Trump’s Taj Mahal casino in Atlantic City, records released by the New Jersey Casino Control Commission in 1990 show that at least 253 subcontractors weren’t paid in full or on time, including workers who installed walls, chandeliers and plumbing.

“Let’s say that they do a job that’s not good, or a job that they didn’t finish, or a job that was way late. I’ll deduct from their contract, absolutely. That’s what the country should be doing.”

The Framers of the Constitution instituted measures intended to prevent an unfit person from ascending to the presidency. First, one of the checks and balances was the provision that the Congress could impeach an unfit president. Article II of the United States Constitution states in Section 4 that "The President, Vice President, and all civil Officers of the United States shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other High Crimes and Misdemeanors." They failed to anticipate that both Houses of Congress should be under the domination of a faction which places party over country.

Second, the oath of office was meant to screen out anyone who had no intention of maintaining the order(2) of a constitutional democracy:

Before he enter on the Execution of his Office, he shall take the following Oath or Affirmation:—"I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States."

The inadequacy of this provision is that it assumes that the Electoral College would not make an unprincipled scoundrel president of the United States. As Bruce Schneier reported earlier in this post, the honorable Mr. Trump made "purposeless, false and inflammatory statements before Congress." Newsmax noted yesterday, "New York Times Headline Once Again Calls Trump a Liar." Add to this the disrespect for the law involved in denigrating any judge who places the Constitution above the diktat of a government official; and the disrespect for the First Amendment revealed by the practice of declaring the media the enemy of the American people, and it should be clear that the charlatan in the Oval Office swore perjuriously.

The problem isn't that these guardrails failed. The problem is us. If we had believed in the values of liberal democracy, we wouldn't have voted for a known unfit by the millions. If we believed in our values, we would not have treated the oath of office as a meaningless ritual.

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(1) Steve Bannon at CPAC: Trump Will Pursue “Deconstruction of the Administrative State”

(2) Lincoln believed that he could not allow the South to secede, thus depriving the U.S. citizens living there of the protection of the Constitution, and yet be faithful to the Oath of Office: "You have no oath in Heaven to destroy the government, while I shall have the most solemn one to preserve, protect, and defend it."