Gabriel Schoenfeld

It is not too soon to tally the damage wreaked so far by our 45th president.

Donald Trump's rampage through key institutions is an obvious place to begin. The executive branch of our federal government has never run like clockwork, but in peace or wartime it has rarely been this chaotic. In effect if not by title, the White House now has three competing chiefs of staff, each with walk-in privileges to the Oval Office and each playing our ignorant and impressionable president as if he were a piano. The disarray has radiated outward to the agencies to the nation and even to the world. The botched formulation and execution of Trump’s travel ban, and the ouster of national security adviser Michael Flynn via surprise trapdoor, are of course Exhibits A and B.



The judicial branch has suffered a blow of a different sort, with the president blasting Judge James Robart, appointed to the federal bench by President George W. Bush and confirmed by the Senate unopposed, as a “so-called judge.” Dismissal by the president of the judiciary’s role as a check and balance on his own power could derail our democracy. In a tweet, he has already, and pre-emptively, assigned blame for the next terror attack to Robart and our entire court system. We have been duly warned: Should such an attack come, it will be a moment of maximum danger not only for our safety but also foor our freedom.

Then we have the Republican Party, which, following Trump’s siren song, is committing moral-intellectual suicide. Defenders of religious liberty have turned into proponents of a backdoor Muslim ban. The banner of free trade has been dropped for protectionism. Budgetary thrift has given way to profligacy. So many things the GOP stood for a mere two years ago — good character and ethical conduct, a clear-eyed view of Russia — have been replaced by their opposite. To the party’s leaders, House Speaker Paul Ryan and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, political principles are nothing. Political power is all. In their apologetics for the billionaire blockhead at America’s helm, never has hypocrisy been more perfectly distilled.

What if Trump loses his mind?: Gabriel Schoenfeld

Trump vs. 'lying, disgusting' media: Gabriel Schoenfeld

Our free press remains intact; indeed, it has been rising to the occasion as it has come under assault from a president who, even as he relentlessly castigates it, stays glued to its coverage, obsessing over every criticism and slight. But though the news media are performing their critical function, they are losing — along with our entire society — a more fundamental battle.

Here we come to damage of a different sort: The destruction of honesty, one of democracy’s most fundamental norms.

Trump and his team lie as naturally as leaves grow on trees. America is being polarized along a new axis of division. On one side are dupes, possibly numbering in the millions, who accept the president’s preposterous fabrications as gospel. On the other side are those appalled by the dawn of post-modern America in which truth is supplanted by “alternative facts,” the euphemism employed by Kellyanne Conway, the president’s most brazen flack, for the projectile falsehoods that spurt from her mouth. As every aspiring authoritarian leader grasps — and Trump is no exception — a world without truth is a world without rules, without justice and without the possibility of democratic deliberation.

Reputational damage is another yawning tear in our national fabric. The gibberish Trump regularly spouts when deprived of a teleprompter is exactly what world leaders have been doused with in one introductory telephone conversation after the next. There’s no blinking from the fact that the leader of the free world is already widely regarded by his international interlocutors as a buffoon with malign notions floating around in his head and the world’s most powerful military at his disposal. The harm to our image is compounded by the buffoon’s startling propensity to bad-mouth the very country he seeks to lead, explaining to the world that, just like President Vladimir Putin’s Russia, there are in America “a lot of killers.”

The right can't defend Trump's behavior: Jonah Goldberg

POLICING THE USA: A look at race, justice, media

With Trump projecting his bizarre visage to the world, and with his raft of ill-thought-out actions, we are compelled to ask: Is our country safer than it was a mere four weeks ago? Allies such as Australia and neighbors such as Mexico have been subjected to Trump’s temper tantrums. Adversaries such as Russia are enjoying his tender solicitude. At the same time, the message being heard by Muslims around the world, despite the administration’s unconvincing denials and confirmed to them by chief strategist Steve Bannon’s collected ravings, is that America has declared a civilizational war against Islam. We were in danger under the feckless President Obama. Now the peril is far greater.



Our brief taste of Trumpian pandemonium should lead us to solemn reflection about the downward course on which our country is set. But we have been deprived of even that. Speaking from the pulpit of the National Prayer Breakfast this month, America’s president reached into the television trash heap from whence he came, spoke of the “total disaster” that in his absence has befallen his show, The Apprentice, and called for prayers for Arnold Schwarzenegger’s ratings.



It would be a comfort if the greatest harm inflicted by Trump would be to enshrine unimaginable vulgarity in the White House. Unfortunately, his garishly unbecoming sermon was just one more indicator of how far our president is in over his head. “Our long national nightmare is over,” said President Ford when Richard Nixon finally departed the White House. A month into the Trump administration, our long national nightmare has just begun.

Gabriel Schoenfeld, a member of USA TODAY's Board of Contributors, is the author of A Bad Day on the Romney Campaign: An insider’s Account, andNecessary Secrets: National Security, the Media, and the Rule of Law. Follow him on Twitter @gabeschoenfeld.

You can read diverse opinions from our Board of Contributors and other writers on the Opinion front page, on Twitter @USATOpinion and in our daily Opinion newsletter. To respond to a column, submit a comment to letters@usatoday.com.