Foto: Illustration: Miriam Migliazzi / Mart Klein / DER
SPIEGEL
A Legacy of Hatred, Culture Wars and Discord
The Mess Created By Trump Will Be with Us for Years
The U.S. president has damaged the political system so
badly that it will be difficult to repair, even if Donald Trump gets voted out
of office on Tuesday. The hatred and political discord he has stirred up will
paralyze the country for years.
By Valerie
Höhne, Ralf Neukirch, René Pfister, Alexandra Rojkov und Alexander Sarovic
30.10.2020,
18.54 Uhr
Donald
Trump Jr. doesn't want anything to ruin his good mood. Not the dark clouds
gathering overhead on this afternoon and certainly not the terrible survey results
that are sticking to his father, the president, like a piece of old chewing gum
from the sidewalk.
Junior is
standing on a podium on the outskirts of State College, Pennsylvania, and
talking about the excitement that he is allegedly encountering wherever he
goes. "This is 2016 on steroids," he says, as he looks out across a
half-empty parking lot and the cleared cornfields of Pennsylvania. He says
there are hundreds of people waiting outside and that he hopes they can get
them in. Yet all he has to do is look a bit to the left to see that there are
only a couple of stragglers waiting at the security checkpoint.
It's hard
to imagine that even the president's 42-year-old son himself believes what
he'll say in the next half hour. That his father will win a landslide victory
on Nov. 3 and that his Democratic challenger Joe Biden shouldn't even be
allowed to be president because he is on the payroll of Chinese businessmen. If
there was anything to such stories, the FBI would long since have opened an investigation.
He claims
that Joe Biden's son Hunter received $3.5 million from a Russian oligarch,
money that allegedly comes from human trafficking and prostitution. "If I
did what Hunter did, I'd be in Rikers Island doing my best not to drop the
soap," he would later say at a rally in Florida, referring to the famous
New York prison.
Nothing
that he says is true, of course. There isn't even the slightest bit of evidence
that Joe Biden has accepted any money from China. There is also no indication
that his son was bribed by a Russian billionaire. And when it comes to the
polls, they are currently showing that Biden will emerge victorious in next
Tuesday's election. In an average of national public opinion polls, the
Democrat has an almost two-digit lead over Trump, and his advantage in
important swing states is also looking relatively stable, even if he loses a
bit of ground in Pennsylvania in the final days before Election Day.
But Don Jr.
isn't particularly concerned about all of that. His eyes are on the future, on
a time when his father is perhaps no longer president but Trumpism remains
alive and well. Significantly more than 30 percent of American voters will
again cast their ballots for Donald Trump in this election, that much can be
said with a fair degree of certainty. They will do so despite that the
president's catastrophic pandemic mismanagement which is partially responsible
for the over 220,000 coronavirus deaths in the country; despite his calls, like
a wannabe dictator, for his attorney general to open an investigation into Joe
Biden; and despite the fact that U.S. citizens now know that Trump, who has
always bragged about his wealth, only paid $750 in taxes in the first year of
his presidency.
Trump has
managed to create a kind of parallel universe in which his words are all that
matter. In the vast majority of cases, those words have very little to do with
reality, but his most loyal followers don't seem to care. If Trump has ever
uttered a true sentence, then it was his claim that his followers would
continue to love him even if he was to shoot somebody dead on Fifth Avenue.
But what
will Trump's fanatic base do if they see their hero fall in the election?
Joe Biden's
most significant promise is his pledge to reunite America if he is elected
president. In his portrayal, Trump is an "historical aberration" that
can be corrected with a bit of effort and goodwill. But if you travel through
the United States, if you flip through TV channels in the evening, if you speak
with Trump supporters, a vastly different picture begins to emerge. It becomes
clear that Trump alone isn't responsible for the deep divisions in American
society, but is just a symptom of a much deeper crisis. And it is a crisis that
won't disappear if he is voted out of office.
Trumpism is
here to stay, even if the president goes, writes Republican political adviser
Peter Rough, who has intimate knowledge of the conservative scene in
Washington, in a position paper about the future of his party.
Trump, if
you will, has essentially magnified a development that began over 30 years ago.
He is the product of a party that once professed the holy trinity of family
values, military and "small government," only to then completely
subordinate itself to the resentments and desires of wealthy donors. This lack
of principles allowed Trump to rise to power against the resistance of the old
party establishment. Now, the Republicans are led by a man who allegedly cheated
on his wife with a porn star, who is said to have called fallen U.S. soldiers
"losers" and "suckers," and who has presided over a $4.4
trillion rise in the national deficit during his term.
Never
before in U.S. history has a president done such lasting damage to the fabric
of American democracy in such a short amount of time.
The wheels
of Trump's rise were greased by media outlets whose business model depends on
sowing the seeds of anger and discord. Without the hate machine of Facebook,
the Kremlin would not have been so effective in manipulating the 2016 election
in Trump's favor, while Rupert Murdoch's Fox News has outstripped all others in
the history of television in transforming lies and propaganda into billions of
dollars in profit and massive political influence.
None of
that will disappear if Donald Trump is voted out of office on Nov. 3. On the
contrary, in the last four years the president has systematically deepened the
trenches dividing Americans. After him, there will still be plenty others
seeking to take advantage of those differences. Over the course of several
decades, for example, the Supreme Court was an impartial authority respected by
Republicans and Democrats alike. Twenty years ago, two-thirds of Americans
still had faith in the work of the country's highest court. Today, it is
just half.
Trump has
pulled the Supreme Court into the partisan trench warfare in which he thrives
and appointed justices that will continue pushing through conservative
positions even if Democrats manage to win control of the White House and both
houses of Congress. On Monday, the Senate confirmed Amy Coney Barrett, a jurist
who has never been shy about her desire to reverse the right to abortion, even
though almost two-thirds of all Americans are opposed to such a reversal.
It will
take years to repair the damage that Trump has done to American governmental
institutions. The president has fired five independent auditors responsible for
investigating corruption and cronyism in government ministries and agencies. He
has inflicted significant harm on the State Department, once the pride of the
U.S. government. Important posts have been left unoccupied for years and those
concerned about their reputations preferred to avoid working for Secretary of
State Mike Pompeo, a loyal Trump vassal. Most recently, Trump fired the chief
scientist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and replaced
him with a researcher who has primarily attracted attention for his efforts to
play down climate change.
Never
before in U.S. history has a president done such lasting damage to the fabric
of American democracy in such a short amount of time. Trump has repeatedly
insisted to his followers that a majority of American media outlets, from CBS
to the Boston Globe, are nothing but fake news factories working on behalf of
the Democrats. And it seems to have worked: Whereas 69 percent of Democrats say
they continue to trust mass media outlets, only 15 percent of Republicans say
the same. From Trump's perspective, that is perhaps his greatest accomplishment
while in office.
When he was
sworn in as the 45th president of the United States on Jan. 20, 2017, the White
House claimed that never before had so many people gathered to pay their
respects to a new president. Just a quick look at the aerial views from his
predecessor Barack Obama's inauguration was enough to reveal the lie. Trump's
then adviser Kellyanne Conway said in response to the criticism that the
president's press spokesman had merely been presenting "alternative
facts."
It was an
early shot fired in Trump's war against the customs and conventions that
American democracy had held dear to that point. And it was one that many
observers felt was a response to the fact that he actually received 3 million
votes fewer than his opponent Hillary Clinton and only won because of the
antiquated Electoral College system.
Now, Trump
is far behind in the polls, but he nevertheless continues to act as though the
Democrats are trying to steal the election from him. "The only way we're
going to lose this election is if the election is rigged," he said
recently. It is a claim that could have a toxic effect. After all, if the
Democrats were in the process of planning a coup, wouldn't all efforts to stop
it be legitimate? Even violent resistance?
It is
difficult to picture Nathan Houck with a weapon in his hands. The 34-year-old
has the look of a teenager and as he speaks, his four-year-old daughter squirms
on his lap. Houck is a family man and a reliable employee, not the kind of guy
you could imagine manning a barricade. Still, he believes it is possible that
he might have to take part in an armed conflict. "If the Democrats win the
House, the Senate and the presidential election, I am almost positive that
there will be no fair elections anymore," Houck says.
His
family's home is in a cul-de-sac at the end of a road that snakes through rural
Pennsylvania. Signs on the side of the road leave no doubt as to who people in
the area are going to vote for: "Keep America Great" signs can be
seen in front of almost every home, with TRUMP in capital letters above them.
Stepping
into Houck's home is like going back to the 1950s, with ceramic plates on the
wall and a Bible on the shelf along with books full of stories of salvation.
Houck's wife is raising their two girls and they are not planning to send their
older daughter to a public school. Houck says he is concerned she would be
"indoctrinated."
He wasn't
always an enthusiastic follower of Trump. He says he was initially repelled by
his boorish mannerisms and vulgar jargon. "He uses words that I wouldn't
allow in our family," he says, looking at his daughter. But today, four
years later, his view of Trump has changed. "He is fighting for our
values," values that Houck believes would be under threat should Biden
win. He says that Biden would transform the U.S. into a socialist police state.
"I think in 40, 50 years, there will be persecution for being
Christian."
He says he
will spend the days after the election praying for America's future and will be
keeping a close eye on how things develop. Will abortion continue to be legal?
Will there be a ban on preaching against homosexuality? If that happens, he
says, he'll have no other choice than to defend himself. "If it boiled
down to me being able to worship my God versus me overthrowing the government,
then I would be on God's side."
Frightened
Republicans like Houck have been arming themselves in recent months. "We
can't stock as many weapons as we can sell," says Paul, the owner of a
hunting and gun shop called The Outdoorsman in Winthrop Harbor, a town in
northern Illinois. On this recent Saturday, the store is busy as well. A married
couple are examining a revolver while a young man wearing camouflage is
checking out the sight on a rifle.
People want
to protect themselves, says Paul, who is nervous about providing his full name
in these uneasy times. But against what? "Everyone here knows what has
happened," Paul says. "Nobody wants to stand by and watch as people
attack their house and burn it down."
The events
he is referring to took place two months previously in Kenosha, a town just a
few miles away. A policeman there shot the young black man Jacob Blake in the
back seven times. Violent protests erupted in response and houses and shops
were set on fire.
With just
days to go before the election, the mood is tense in several big cities across
the country. Many in the U.S. are concerned about a flare up of political
violence, or worse. According to surveys, fully a third of Americans believe
that a civil war is possible within the next five years.
The idea
isn't totally absurd. Armed groups across the country are arming themselves in
preparation. If Biden wins, "we'll take the fight to him," says Chris
Hill, the leader of an armed militia in Georgia. "I will attack a tyrant
no matter where he is."
Many
radicals share his view. "We have observed that militias and other
right-wing extremist groups are actively talking about interfering with the
election process, either on Election Day or after votes have been
submitted," says Devin Burghart of the Institute for Research and
Education on Human Rights. In early October, the FBI arrested 13 men who were
planning on kidnapping Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer. The plan called for
to be subjected to a kind of trial in a secret location because she had imposed
a curfew in an effort to slow the spread of the coronavirus.
America is
no stranger to political violence. Never before, though, has the country had a
president who seeks to foment such unrest. Trump has said on several occasions
that the country is facing massive voter fraud on behalf of the Democrats.
During the first TV debate against Biden, the president declined to distance
himself from militant groups, and in reference to the right-wing militia Proud
Boys, he said: "Stand back and stand by." It was a bit like Trump was
playing with matches at a gas station.
What makes
his presidency so unique is that he lacks any understanding for the gravity of
the job he holds.
Police
across the country have spent weeks preparing for the violence that Trump appears
to be provoking. "I don't think we have seen anything similar in modern
times," says Andrew Walsh, deputy police chief of Las Vegas. He says the
time between the polls closing and the announcement of the final results will
be particularly dangerous. Because of the numerous votes being cast through the
mail, it could take days for all the ballots to be counted. What might happen
if Trump declares himself the victor in the interim? And if Biden doesn't
accept that declaration? Chaos would most likely be the result.
On 60th
Street in Kenosha, many shops remain boarded up even though the riots ended
quite some time ago. "The boards are going to stay there for the time
being," says Kyle, a mechanic at Ed's Used Tires. "Violence can erupt
again at any time."
Trump has
transformed the United States into a dangerous place. The president, whose job
it is to unite the country, has incited Americans against each other. What
makes his presidency so unique is that he lacks any understanding for the
gravity of the job he holds. He doesn't understand something that all of his
predecessors did: That the job itself is greater than the person who holds it.
Almost worse than Trump's political aberrations - his contempt for America's
European partners, his weakness for dictators, his denial of climate change –
is the fact that he has desecrated the highest office in the country. The
presidency was created to bring together a country whose only link is the
belief in freedom and in personal responsibility.
Trump has
introduced a degree of nepotism the country has never seen before, appointing
his daughter and son-in-law as special advisers. He sent his personal lawyer,
Rudy Giuliani, around the world to ingratiate himself with foreign politicians
and diplomats. He acted as though he was standing up to China, yet he secretly
asked Chinese President Xi Jinping for campaign support. He has transformed the
state into a wing of the Trump empire.
Can he
claim any accomplishments? Trump doubtlessly played a role in the strong
economic growth the country experienced in the three years before the outbreak
of the coronavirus pandemic. Wages in the U.S. climbed during that time,
including for those men and women without higher education who had been
excluded from economic growth for decades. He also oversaw the convergence of
Israel with some Arab countries despite decades of animosity. It is an
achievement that could ultimately find a mention in the history books.
But what
value do such achievements have when the president is simultaneously taking an
ax to the roots of democracy at home? One certainly cannot accuse Trump of not
having tried to establish a close link with the electorate. Whatever goes
through his head can be found a minute later on Twitter. Barack Obama may have
dabbled in using social media as a political tool, but Trump has taken the
strategy to insidious lengths.
Trump
passes along slogans from conspiracy theorists and racists, insulted Democrats
and Republicans alike and, ever since his poll numbers have begun falling, he
has used Twitter to foment doubts about the legitimacy of the election. Trump
has gone so far that internet companies are now considering muzzling Trump on election
night to prevent him from triggering violence via tweet.
But Trump
hasn't been alone in worsening the political climate in the country. No other
television station in the country's history has sown so much hate and division
as Fox News, the profit machine in Rupert Murdoch's media empire. How it works
was on full display on Thursday of last week, when Trump and Biden met for
their second debate.
When the
two men separated after an hour and a half of sparring, most commentators were
united in the view that nobody had really emerged as the winner. The president
had pulled himself together and had been able to land a few punches, while
Biden valiantly defended himself, even as he tripped over his tongue on several
occasions as expected.
But then,
Sean Hannity went on the air, the star of Fox News. Biden, he said during his
introduction, had finally dared to emerge from his basement after several weeks
in hiding. "He may come to regret it," Hannity intoned. The
Americans, the Fox News anchor said, should not allow themselves to be misled
into believing that Biden did well in the debate. He was "caught in lie
after lie after lie. The mob of the media won't tell you."
Day after
day, Hannity pounds home to his viewers that Trump is a brave outsider who is
only attacked so viciously because he dares to drain the corrupt Washington
swamp. In his version of events, every official in Washington is a
representative of the "deep state,” and media outlets like the New York
Times or CNN are pure leftist propaganda machines.
If you
watch Fox News through European eyes, the hysteria of the nightly news has
something unintentionally funny about it. Hannity consistently calls Trump's
challenger "sleepy, creepy, crazy Uncle Joe.” According to Hannity, Biden
is a senile puppet in the hands of radical socialists. The warmongering title
of Hannity’s book on the election is "Live Free or Die." But Hannity
isn’t some whacked-out conspiracy theorist broadcasting from a garage in West
Virginia. He attracts an average of 5 million viewers each night, an audience
few other political talk show stars in the U.S. could dream of.
Reed Hundt
can still remember exactly how everything began. During Bill Clinton's
presidency, the lawyer was head of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC),
which grants licenses for television stations. In 1994, he visited Rupert Murdoch,
who had invited him to dinner at his home in Los Angeles. Murdoch was still
making a lot of money on the British newspaper market at that time. But he had
a plan to revolutionize the American television business.
He recalls
how Murdoch told him that when he would go to newsstands in London, he would
find the Times for the educated middle classes, the Guardian for the left and
tabloids like the Sun and the Mirror for the rest. And how he told him that TV
stations in America are jostling for the moderate audience in the middle.
Murdoch’s ingenious plan was to create a television station that occupied a
niche that no one had seen before: white men without higher education. Murdoch
didn't say so at the time, Hundt says, but he knew that his viewers would mainly
skew to the right.
In a way,
says Hundt, the Trump presidency is linked to the success of Fox News. The
cable channel has created its own audience, and at some point, a politician was
needed to entertain those viewers. If Trump didn’t exist, it would have been
someone else, he says. That’s why he doesn’t believe a Trump defeat will bring
the people at Fox to their senses. The station will simply look for a new
populist who can help deliver good ratings and political influence for the
station. Fox News will create a new beast, says Hundt. This is the inevitable
consequence of all the money that goes into politics like dirty water into a
sink, he says.
American
television wasn't always as mercilessly biased as it is today. Until well into
the 1980s, a fairness doctrine reigned supreme, one that required the major
broadcasters to present controversial political issues from both sides. The
regulation was highly controversial, with many conservatives viewing it as an
attack on freedom of expression. But the Supreme Court quashed all attempts to
overturn it.
It was only
under pressure from President Ronald Reagan that the regulation was eliminated.
When asked whether the end of the fairness clause was the cardinal sin of
American politics, Hundt just shrugs his shoulders. He says that as a
cable-only channel, the fairness doctrine anyway didn’t apply to Fox News.
Besides, Hundt says, when he looks at the Supreme Court today, he doesn’t
believe they would allow a thing like that to happen anyway.
There’s
much to suggest that Hundt is right. On Monday, the Senate confirmed Amy Coney
Barrett as the third Trump-nominated justice on the Supreme Court. With that
move, conservatives now dominate the court. No other U.S. president has
transformed the judiciary as profoundly as Trump has in such a short period of
time, and his appointees will continue to shape the country for decades to
come. Presidents come and go, but federal judges are appointed for life, which
gives them power and independence. It was the Supreme Court that heralded the
end of racial segregation in schools, the right to abortion and the right to
marriage for gays and lesbians -- not Congress or the White House.
That’s why
Trump has put so much effort into appointing new judges and justices. Since the
start of his term, he has appointed a total of 220 federal judges, 53 of whom
sit on the country’s influential appellate courts, which are only one level
below the Supreme Court.
One of
those judges is Barbara Lagoa. The 52-year-old, pious Catholic, is the daughter
of Cubans who fled from Fidel Castro’s socialist regime. Lagoa is a follower of
the legal philosophy of constitutional "originalism,” which holds that
judges must interpret the constitution in the strictest sense of the word and
may, if necessary, orient their interpretations based on the intentions of the
Founding Fathers of the U.S.
Lagoa has
been part of the Atlanta-based Federal Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit
for a year now, where she is adjudicating fully in the Trump spirit. If the
president were to get re-elected despite all the adversity he currently faces,
it could in part be due to a ruling she played a role in.
Two years
ago, the citizens of Florida voted in a referendum to restore the right to vote
for convicted criminals after they have served their sentences. It was a far-reaching
decision, in part because there are 1.4 million former prisoners in the state,
including many blacks who tend to favor the Democrats. Another reason is that
presidential elections in Florida have always been extremely close and the
state could again be the deciding factor between victory and defeat on Election
Day on Nov. 3.
The Trump
presidency is the product of the complete disintegration of the substance of
the Republican Party, a process that began decades ago.
Democrats
were outraged when the Republicans in the Florida state legislature responded
by passing a law that only allows former inmates to vote again after they have
paid all their fees and fines. According to civil rights groups, the law serves
the sole purpose of keeping those 774,000 convicted criminals who lack the
money to pay their debts to the authorities off the voting rolls. The law
eventually landed at the Court of Appeals in Atlanta, where it was upheld by
Lagoa and her colleagues - not a huge surprise, given that five of the six
judges who moved to affirm the law owed their posts to Trump.
The
Democrats and many experts view Trump’s zealousness in appointing judges as an
attempt to undermine the will of the majority. "The Supreme Court is too powerful,"
says Samuel Moyn, a professor at Yale University. He says the U.S. faces a
potential culture war if the court overturns the right to abortion. He argues
that political decisions need to be made again where they belong: in Congress.
Moyn has proposed that steps be taken to curb the court’s influence, for
instance by changing the law so that the court could only overturn laws with a
qualified majority of six or seven of the nine justices’ votes, which would
essentially give the liberal judges veto power over rulings.
It would,
of course, be healthier for American democracy if, with the possible end of
Trump’s presidency, Republicans and Democrats in the House and Senate could
relearn how to work together and compromise as they did for decades.
There are
even a few Republicans who view the Trump era as one they would like to put
behind them. Ben Sasse, a Republican Senator representing Nebraska, openly
vented his anger over the president a few days ago in a conference call with
supporters and staff, saying that Trump "spends like a drunk sailor.” The
Senator railed that it is unforgivable that Trump "kisses dictators’
butts” around the world.
But it’s
more likely that Sasse will remain a lone voice in a party whose moral
foundation has almost completely crumbled. In the past four years, few Senators
have shown the courage to stand up to Trump, with the vast majority simply
looking the other way when it became apparent that Trump had blackmailed the
Ukrainian government in an effort to force them to deliver dirt on his
challenger, Joe Biden. They remained silent when the president publicly stated
that he had more faith in Russian President Vladimir Putin than in the U.S.
intelligence services. Nor was there any outrage when Trump disparaged his
government’s pandemic experts as "idiots” a few days ago.
The Trump
presidency is the product of the complete disintegration of the substance of
the Republican Party, a process that began decades ago. The party suffers from
the lack of a unifying ideological bond. The 80 million or so Evangelical
Christians who form the core of the voter base have little in common with Wall
Street bankers, who by no means consider sex before marriage to be a sin, but
want to pay as few taxes as possible on their annual bonuses.
It was Newt
Gingrich who turned what was then a rather well-behaved party into a populist
movement at the end of the 1990s. The movement stirred up sentiment against a
purportedly corrupt system in Washington and exploited the party’s ideological
void. It led the Republicans in 1994 to win their first majority in Congress in
over 40 years. With Trump’s election, Gingrich’s revolution came full circle.
Under
Trump’s leadership, there are Republicans running for Congress who openly
support the QAnon movement, which promotes an abstruse conspiracy theory that
the Democrats are part of a satanic criminal ring that kidnaps children in
order to extract a rejuvenating drug from their blood.
Trump is
the logical consequence of the racism and hatred that has become the essence of
the Republicans over the past three decades, former strategist and campaign
consultant Stuart Stevens writes in his recent book, "It Was All A Lie,” a
bitter and angry reckoning with his own party. "Trump isn’t an aberration
of the Republican Party,” argues Stevens, who led Mitt Romney’s presidential
campaign. "He is the Republican Party in a purified form.”
And whoever
succeeds Trump in the party won’t be able to afford to alienate the voters
Trump has lured with his brash language. "The Republican Party will be
taken over by whoever knows how to take up the Trump rebellion and can turn it
in a productive direction," says Peter Rough of the conservative Hudson
Institute.
There’s
just one problem: Who could that person be? Donald Trump Jr. undoubtedly has
the trust of the most loyal Trump fans. After the cheering of his fans died
down at the campaign rally in Pennsylvania on Tuesday, Trump Jr. shouted:
"Make liberals cry again,” an allusion to his father's campaign slogan
"Make America Great Again.”
But if
Donald Trump loses his re-election bid, the Trump family myth will be shattered.
"The president will be seen as someone who failed to deliver on his core
promise: To always be on the side of victory,” says Rob Stutzman, a Republican
strategist who once served as an adviser to California Governor Arnold
Schwarzenegger. "Even Trump fans will say: 'OK, that was it,’ and they’ll
start looking for someone else.”
Someone
like Nikki Haley, who began her career as the governor of South Carolina and
then served as Trump’s ambassador to the United Nations. She quit in late 2018,
but unlike former National Security Adviser John Bolton or ex-Secretary of
State Rex Tillerson, she avoided a public break with the president. On the
contrary, at the Republican National Convention in August, she spoke as one of
the few representatives of the old party establishment and called for the
president’s re-election.
It is, of
course, possible to have doubts about the sincerity of her words given that
she, too, has been critical of Trump’s character. But with her speech, she
secured the sympathy of those Trump supporters who will be looking for a new
political home if the president is defeated. There are no doubts within the
party that Haley has her sights set on becoming the first woman in the White
House. And she has already proven that she has the agility necessary for the
job.
But does
she have the power to lead the Republicans back to the path of reason? It’s not
only fans of the potential ex-president that any successor would have to keep
happy. A successor would also need the support of Fox News. And the station,
which often acts as Trump’s personal propaganda channel, has no interest in
politicians who allow themselves to get muddled in the boring and tedious
business of political compromise. Fox News’ aim is to sow hatred between
Americans, says Blair Levin, who was in charge of media policy during Bill
Clinton’s tenure and now works for the Brookings Institution in Washington.
"And American society offers fertile ground for that hatred.”
It appears
some kind of evil curse has gripped America. There’s little that could be less
helpful for the country right now than for the partisan blockading to continue.
Over 12 million people are officially unemployed in the U.S., thousands of
families don’t earn enough to put food on the table for their children in the
evening. And Congress? It’s not even capable of deciding on an extension of a
COVID-19 relief package that cushioned the worst effects of the pandemic until
the autumn.
That
failure by politicians is making life difficult for people like Jasmine
Rognrud. The 26-year-old lives together with her female partner and their cat
in a small apartment in Minneapolis. At the moment, she’s experiencing just how
ruthless American capitalism can be. Until recently, she worked for a startup.
The company didn’t pay a lavish salary, but it did promise a relaxed team
atmosphere and the opportunity to be given new responsibilities quickly.
Then the
pandemic struck. As sales plummeted, Rognrud’s company began laying people off.
She was able to keep her job, but only by accepting a 30-percent salary cut.
Still, Rognrud’s boss argued, at least she would be able to keep her health
insurance. She agreed, but also soon realized that the salary was no longer
enough to cover her bills.
Since then,
Rognrud has found a new job, but one in which she has to cover her health
insurance out of pocket for $300 a month. She’ll soon celebrate her 27th
birthday, and then the cost will go up to $400. With money running low, she’s
been forced to stop her treatment for an eating disorder. It’s too expensive.
Rognrud says she doesn’t want to complain and that she has co-workers who are
worried about losing their apartments.
Joe Biden
has pledged help for people like Rognrud. He intends to establish a minimum
wage of $15 per hour and has announced the introduction of a public health
insurance option that would provide inexpensive coverage for people with low
incomes. But the Democrat will only be able to push all that through if his
party also manages to win the Senate on Tuesday. And if Biden’s fellow
Democrats don’t allow themselves to be intimidated by the toxic political
atmosphere the president leaves behind.
Will Trump
just walk off the stage if he loses? Before he won the election in November
2016, Trump and friends had been considering launching their own television
station. Many Democrats now fear he could revive that idea. In recent months,
Trump has often complained bitterly that even Fox News has treated him
unfairly. Of course, he wouldn’t have that kind of grief if he had his own
station.
"Trump
loses money with his hotels, and his golf courses aren’t profitable
either," says former Clinton consultant Blair Levin. "But he does
know how to make money in the entertainment business. So, the next logical step
would be launching a station.”
That’s also
what Hundt, the former head of the Federal Communications Commission, the U.S.
media regulatory authority, believes. He says Trump has always been envious of
Italian media tycoon Silvio Berlusconi, who got rich with television stations
that subsequently helped catapult him to the position of prime minister. He
says it drove Trump crazy that he didn't come up with the idea himself.
That’s why
Hundt believes that after his term, Trump will go knocking on the doors of
everyone he’s done favors for. In a first round, he could surely raise a
billion dollars for a new station. The list of those he has helped is very,
very long, Hundt says.
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