Distrust in the US: Collapsing Foundations of the Trump Administration

Trust in the United States has been sinking – collapsing. The foundations of this distrust are two interrelated aspects of the Trump administration: the decline in Presidential authority and the failure of checks and balances, broadly defined.

By checks and balances I mean more than the many failures of the courts and Congress to hold the chief executive accountable, fostering an ‘imperial presidency’ across domestic as well as foreign policies and actions. The Trump administration has also undermined expertise by firing experienced experts across policy sectors to install political loyalists, replaced experienced advisors with sycophants and toadies, and is attacking media, the once independent Fourth Estate. Fox News and the family’s Truth Social platform are already in Trump’s MAGA Republican camp, but he is working to ensure that the FCC and the administration bring other media to heal.

Trump has set up his administration as if it were a family business rather than a revered body to make wise decisions for a national government in a complicated and dangerous world. The very idea of his negotiations with Iran and other nations being led by Trump’s former real estate agent and Trump’s son-in-law has been shocking. Loyalty over competence has exacted major costs on the reputation of the US.

By presidential authority, I mean more than respect for the Presidency as an office of the state albeit that is diminishing rapidly. I would also include the chief executive being well educated and knowledgeable. Trump attended an elite university but did not apply himself. I am not referring to a lack of an elite education, he went to the University of Pennsylvania, but he failed to take advantage of his exposure to world class peers, teachers, and researchers.

Presidential authority is also undermined by his lack of character and faulty judgement. Trump can be funny, but his administration has gained a reputation for being tawdry, crude, nasty, vulgar, and awful, and disloyal (the list could go on). You can see a nastiness routinely in the conduct of ICE, his Secretary of War, and other cabinet members. Trump’s MAGA supporters dismiss these features as ‘Trump being Trump’. But what they find amusing, does not negate his vulgarity for people outside of the Trump cult and the US.

His disloyalty is most consistently displayed by his repeated betrayals of Ukraine, NATO, and his Western allies, such as in selling arms for Ukraine rather than providing military support. His support if not adulation of the Russian President Putin and other autocrats across the globe, such as Hungary’s Viktor Orban and most of his invited members to his problematic ‘Board of Peace’, undermine trust in his judgement.

These two huge problems with the foundations of the administration (diminishing presidential authority and the absence of adequate checks and balances) add up to poor decision making. He admits but suffers from being too dependent on his own intuition and whims rather than on careful study and consultation with experts and authorities in different areas of policy that can challenge his impulses. The best and latest example is the administration’s recent decision to attack Iran, which appears to have suffered from a lack of consultation not only with Congress and Middle East experts but also with allies in the Gulf and NATO.

Sadly, as I am an American, there might not be a more worrisome development than the consequent decline in trust in the US and its administration. The days of American ‘soft power’ are coming to an end, if they have not already been lost. Threats and hard power have replaced persuasion based on a leader’s authority and wisdom won through consultation, challenges, and compromise with key stakeholders worldwide, one benefit of checks and balances built into the US Constitution but overridden by the Trump administration.

As I write, Trump is threatening NATO allies if they do not respond forcefully to help him out of the mess he has created in the Strait of Hormuz by virtue of Trump’s arguably illegal war of choice on Iran. If they do help, then the US – as Trump has done with Ukraine – should pay for the costs to his former allies.