THE BIG LIES: "I AM THE BEST PRESIDENT THIS COUNTRY HAS EVER HAD...THEY STOLE THE ELECTION FROM US"

By Tom Nichols
The Atlantic

In a 2020 book about the first president, the historian Peter Henriques wrote that Washington "proved that truest allegiance to the republic by voluntarily surrendering power. It was the first of any peaceful transfers of power in the unprecedented American experiment."

Less than a year after after the book's publication, however, Donald Trump would subvert this centuries-long tradition by summoning  a mob against the elected representatives of the United States, after refusing to accept the results of the vote.

Trump stood by as insurrectionists swarmed the House offices and even the Senate chamber itself on January 6, in an attempt to stop the certification of the election by Congress. Hours after one of the worst single-days of casualties for law-enforcement casualties officers since 9/11, Trump finally asked his supporters top go home.

"I know your pain," he said, his words only emphasizing the delusional belief of the rioters. "I know you're hurt. We had an election that was stolen from us." He has since referred to the people convicted in American courts for their actions on January 6 as "patriots" and to those held in prison as "hostages." He has promised to pardon them.

(In South Texas, we also have Stolen Election believers among the MAGA Republicans like Mayra Flores, Adam Hinojosa, Janie Lopez, who have sought Trump's endorsement against their Democratic opponents ignoring his treasonous actions, and old standby politicians like former Brownsville mayor Pat Ahumada.)

Washington's character and record ensured that almost any of his successors would seem smaller by comparison. But the difference between Washington and Trump is so immense as to be unmeasurable. No president in history, not even the most moral weaklings among them, is further from Washington than Trump.

Washington prized patience and had, as Adams put it, "the gift of silence"; Trump is ruled by his impulses and afflicted with verbal incontinence. Washington was uncomplaining: Trump whines incessantly. Washington was financially and morally incorruptible; Trump is a grifter and crude libertine who still owes money to a woman he was found liable for sexually assaulting. Washington was a general of preternatural bravery who grieved the sacrifices of his men; Trump thinks fallen soldiers are "losers" and "suckers."

Washington personally took up arms to stop a rebellion against the United States; Trump encouraged one.

Some Americans seem unable to accept how much peril they face should Trump return, perhaps because many of them have never lived in an autocracy. They may yet get their chance: The former president is campaigning on an authoritarian platform. He has claimed that "massive" electoral fraud – defined as any election he loses – "allows for the termination of all rules, regulations, and articles even those found in the Constitution."

He refers to other American citizens as "vermin" and "human scum," and to journalists as "the enemies
of the people." He has described freedom of the press and "frankly disgusting." He routinely attacks the American legal system, especially when it tries to hold him accountable for his actions. He said that he will govern as a dictator – but only for one day. 

Trump is the man the Founders feared might arise from a mire of populism and ignorance, a selfish demagogue who would stop at nothing to gain and keep power. Washington foresaw the threat to American democracy from someone like Trump: In his farewell address, he worried that "sooner or later the chief of some prevailing faction" would manipulate the public's emotions and their partisan loyalties "to the purposes of his own elevation, on the ruins of public liberty."

Many Americans in 2016 ignored that warning, and Trump engaged in the greatest betrayal of Washington's legacy in American history. If given the opportunity, he would betray that legacy again – and the damage to the republic may this time be irreparable.