The ‘Never Trump’ Movement’s Bittersweet Anniversary

(Bloomberg Opinion) -- Four years ago today, the Never Trump movement was born. In a 454-word declaration modestly titled “An Open Letter on Donald Trump From GOP National Security Leaders,” some 122 members of the Republican establishment announced their opposition to his campaign.

“As committed and loyal Republicans, we are unable to support a party ticket with Mr. Trump at its head,” reads the letter, signed by an eminent cast of former government officials (Michael Chertoff, Andrew Natsios) and marquee thinkers (Robert Kagan, Max Boot). “We commit ourselves to working energetically to prevent the election of someone so utterly unfitted to the office.”

Their case against Trump was compelling, prescient and — ineffective. Now, as they face Trump’s re-election campaign, so-called Never Trumpers face a stark choice: wandering four more years in the policy wilderness, or wading into murky swamp waters and hoping for the best.

The choice is in many ways clearer now than it was then, if only because there is now three-plus years of data. The rationale for aspiring to be an “adult in the room” at the level of a political appointee is looking pretty threadbare.  To see why, it’s worth walking through some of the concerns the Never Trumpers originally laid out in their letter, many of which have metastasized.

One of their worries was that Trump’s “vision of American influence and power in the world is wildly inconsistent and unmoored in principle.” If anything, it has become more so. The administration’s efforts at Big Think disintegrate under serious scrutiny: Witness the contradiction between Trump’s paeans to “sovereignty” in his UN General Assembly speeches and his interventions, both real and threatened, in the affairs of other nations. National Security Adviser Robert O’Brien — Trump’s fourth in as many years — now circulates Trump’s tweets as marching orders, never mind that they often contradict stated administration policy or previous 280-character diktats by the Tweeter-in-Chief.

The Never Trumpers also worried about Trump’s “admiration for foreign dictators such as Vladimir Putin.” Now that roster includes charmers such as North Korea’s Kim Jong Un (a “friend” who has a “great and beautiful vision for his country”); Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdogan (Trump’s a “big fan”); Hungary’s Victor Orban (doing a “tremendous job”), and Egypt’s Abdel Fattah el-Sisi (“my favorite dictator”). Meanwhile, Trump’s demands that allies such as South Korea and Japan pay more for hosting U.S. troops have roiled bilateral relations and are, as the Never Trumpers said, “the sentiment of a racketeer, not the leader of the alliances that have served us so well.”

Every day brings more of the “dishonesty” that alarmed the Never Trumpers, whether in the nearly 17,000 quotidian “false or misleading claims” Trump has made since taking office, or the web of deception Trump wove around the withholding of military aid to Ukraine that led to his impeachment by the House of Representatives. He asked his first Secretary of State, Rex Tillerson, to take actions that would violate the law, and he reportedly told officials from DHS to break the law because he would pardon them afterward.

Likewise, ugly reality has outstripped the fears that Never Trumpers expressed about Trump’s “expansive view of how presidential power should be wielded against his detractors” — whether they are in the media, the Democratic Party or ex-members of his own administration who have dared to go public with their complaints (ask former National Security Adviser John Bolton how his book clearance is going).

So what did the Never Trumpers miss? Well, their concern that Trump’s “advocacy for aggressively waging trade wars” would bring about “economic disaster” hasn’t quite been borne out, though tariffs have depressed global growth and are imposing higher costs on U.S. households.

On the other side of the ledger, the Never Trumpers failed to anticipate (at least in their letter) one of the administration’s signature characteristics: the general disempowerment of national security officials, whether through the chaos of the policy process, the failure to fill key positions, or Trump’s preferred reliance on acting officials who escaped congressional scrutiny. Even today, the upper reaches of the departments of Defense, Homeland Security and State are riddled with empty seats or stand-ins.

Post-acquittal by the Senate, Trump has also made clear through his defenestrations and planned purges of those deemed “disloyal” that he expects officials to swear oaths to defend him, not the Constitution. Any contradiction risks dismissal, a reality that chills dissent and throttles the flow of information.

These excesses happened despite a parade of “adults” who sought to moderate Trump’s worst instincts. Yes, I know the refrain: Things might have been worse without them. Who knows what other disasters their timely intervention prevented? NATO could have folded faster than the Trump Plaza Casino and Hotel in Atlantic City.

But consider this question: What would have happened if the adults in the Situation Room had taken a different course — either by refusing to serve, or by speaking up forcefully at the first sign of serious trouble and resigning immediately instead of sticking it out?

You can’t prove a negative, of course. But one plausible outcome could have been that Trump’s utter unfitness for the role of commander-in-chief would have been made manifest earlier. And then maybe the Republican-controlled Senate might have been moved to check Trump’s abuses and misdeeds.

What’s needed now is for Never Trumpers to stick by their resolve, and for any would-be Second-Term Trumpers to shed any delusions about the Hobson’s choice that awaits them. One group could help: Those who served could set aside any misguided vows of silence or their book contracts and speak out in full about what they witnessed. Call them the Never-Again Trumpers.

I wouldn’t argue against an entry-level job at the Foreign Service or the Central Intelligence Agency; nor would I advocate mass resignations of said working stiffs. When you join the Foreign Service (as I did), you theoretically sign up for a full career, under administrations of varying political stripes, through an institutional intake process designed to be relatively neutral.

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Michael Newman at mnewman43@bloomberg.net

This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of Bloomberg LP and its owners.

James Gibney writes editorials on international affairs for Bloomberg Opinion. Previously an editor at the Atlantic, the New York Times, Smithsonian, Foreign Policy and the New Republic, he was also in the U.S. Foreign Service from 1989 to 1997 in India, Japan and Washington.

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