Hillary Clinton, like Donald Trump, spread the plague of mistrust
Hugo Gurdon
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As President Donald Trump was being indicted for a fourth time — on this occasion, in Georgia — Rachel Maddow had Hillary Clinton on her nightly TV show. She prompted the failed 2016 Democratic presidential nominee by saying, “If bad actors tell us falsely that every election is stolen and that the only way an election is trustworthy is if they come out on top of it, it tells you something not just about that person or that moment, it maybe wounds us as a democracy in a way that is hard to repair.”
If only this had been an exciting preamble to Maddow skewering her guest for the sustained, democracy-deforming lies she sluiced into the political system seven years ago with the Russia collusion hoax concocted by her campaign. But this was MSNBC, so there was no chance that a leading left-wing contributor to the deformation of 21st century American democracy would face incisive interrogation. Instead, Clinton was invited to indulge in a few minutes of moral preening — and she accepted the invitation.
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With jaw-dropping effrontery, Clinton answered, “Well, I think the truth matters … the lack of trust, the divisiveness, the undermining of faith in ourselves, in each other, respect for our institutions, the rule of law, all of that has been deliberately inculcated within our body politic. … The deliberate effort to divide Americans, to lie to Americans … those are all the hallmarks of authoritarian dictatorial kinds of leaders.”
It’s true that Trump has perpetrated those evils. Because of him, and despite his efforts coming nowhere close to succeeding, we no longer trust entirely that power will change hands every four years as prescribed by the Constitution. We cannot trust that the incumbent of the Oval Office and his supporters will respect the choice voters make. And we cannot trust that he will intervene swiftly to stop rioters storming Capitol Hill, rather than sitting back and enjoying the spectacle for hours on TV.
But however much that is so, it is savagely ironic that the Hillary Clinton denouncing Trump for these failings is the same Hillary Clinton who claimed the 2016 election was stolen from her and who stigmatized the man who beat her as an “illegitimate” president. Like street protesters screeching “not my president” about the elected leader who was, in fact, their president, Clinton undermined trust, fostered division, eroded national unity, and corroded faith in our public institutions and in the rule of law. She deliberately inculcated — her words are apt — those poisons into the body politic.
For sheer cynicism, her comments are on a par with those of Democratic activists, journalists, and Never Trumpers who, in early 2017, started discussing how to topple the president from power — the 25th Amendment was mentioned as one possibility — while simultaneously lamenting Russian President Vladimir Putin’s successful efforts to undermine faith in our democratic system. The words “physician, heal thyself,” came to mind, as did “useful” and “idiots.”
But the crisis of trust that Clinton proclaims is real enough. We do not and cannot trust that the law will be applied equally, or that the nation’s security forces will not take sides with one political party against the other. We cannot trust that the same people will not lie repeatedly to shield the president from political damage that would be caused by exposure of his family’s corrupt influence peddling. We cannot trust a biased and partisan news media to take an interest in such matters and bring them to light.
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We cannot trust that public servants will not fraudulently persuade judges to let them spy on U.S. citizens. We cannot trust that, faced with a crisis such as the COVID-19 pandemic, executive agencies will tell the truth or avoid imposing measures they know to be unnecessary and damaging. We do not and cannot trust that videos or photographs delivered to us by social media are not falsified to stoke fear, anxiety, and more mistrust.
Former President Donald Trump has certainly added greatly to the mistrust that plagues and divides America. But it is not diversionary whataboutism to point out that his militant critics have inflicted at least as much damage as he has to public confidence that our democracy works. They cluster together and support each other up on what they imply is the moral high ground, but for all their pretense and self-regard, they are with him down in the gutter.