Robert Bauer, the former White House counsel for Barack Obama, called President Trump “the demagogue” that the Founding Fathers “feared” and warned about.
“The founders feared the demagogue, who figures prominently in the Federalist Papers as the politician who, possessing ‘perverted ambition,’ pursues relentless self-aggrandizement ‘by the confusions of their country,”‘ Bauer wrote in a Monday column for the New York Times titled “Trump Is the Founders’ Worst Nightmare.” “The last of the papers, Federalist No. 85, linked demagogy to its threat to the constitutional order — to the ‘despotism’ that may be expected from the ‘victorious demagogue.’ This ‘despotism’ is achieved through systematic lying to the public, vilification of the opposition and, as James Fenimore Cooper wrote in an essay on demagogues, a claimed right to disregard ‘the Constitution and the laws’ in pursuing what the demagogue judges to be the ‘interests of the people.'”
The former White House counsel issued his warning about Trump as House Democrats are preparing to start another round of public impeachment hearings. The 67-year-old lawyer pointed to Republican defenses of the president during the impeachment hearings as an example of Trumpian demagoguery.
“It’s all been very confusing. But the larger story — the crucial constitutional story — is not the incoherence of the president’s defense. It is more that he and his party are exposing limits of impeachment as a response to the presidency of a demagogue,” he said.
Bauer compared Trump’s behavior to Clinton when he was being impeached and Nixon when he was investigated over Watergate, saying both showed themselves willing to defend themselves and the constitutional order.
The White House announced Sunday that they were rejecting Chairman Jerry Nadler’s invitation for them to be a part of the impeachment hearings on Wednesday in front of the House Judiciary Committee. The White House counsel called the investigation “baseless and highly partisan.”
Pat Cipollone argued in his letter that Nadler “purposely” scheduled the hearings at the same time Trump was gone overseas. He added they would not participate in hearing it what “remains unclear” whether Trump will get “fair process.”
