Latest / Commentary - TJ Meadows / ‘Trust in Trump?’

Transcript

‘Trust in Trump?’ · Commentary - TJ Meadows

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  Speaker 1: Monday night, the White House posted a graphic on Facebook
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  Speaker 1: President Trump seated behind the Resolute desk in the Oval Office.
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  Speaker 1: The graphic carried a simple message quote it will all
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  Speaker 1: work out well in the end. Accompanying text read trust
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  Speaker 1: in Trump that along with a quote attributed to the
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  Speaker 1: president just sit back and relax. It will all work
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  Speaker 1: out well in the end. It always does. One assumes
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  Speaker 1: the message was aimed at the situation with Iran. Maybe
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  Speaker 1: everything will work out. Who would hope it doesn't all
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  Speaker 1: work out. Only bad people guilty of bad citizenship. But
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  Speaker 1: the notion that Americans should trust the president, this president,
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  Speaker 1: any president of any party, is not merely misguided. Its
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  Speaker 1: contrary to the very principles upon which the country was founded.
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  Speaker 1: James Madison, writing and Federalist fifty one, famously observed if
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  Speaker 1: men were angels, no government would be necessary. Madison and
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  Speaker 1: the other founders understood human nature. They wreckgnized that government
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  Speaker 1: is necessary because people are imperfect, fallible, and susceptible to vices.
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  Speaker 1: But they also understood the government itself cannot simply be trusted.
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  Speaker 1: Madison continued, if angels were to govern men, neither external
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  Speaker 1: nor internal controls on government would be necessary. Few sentences
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  Speaker 1: better capture the American experiment. Writing as Publius Madison explained
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  Speaker 1: in framing a government which is to be administered by
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  Speaker 1: men over men, the great difficulty lies in this. You
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  Speaker 1: must first enable the government to control the governed, and
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  Speaker 1: in the next place oblige it to control itself. That's
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  Speaker 1: the genius of the constitution, not trust. Verification, checks balances, ambition,
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  Speaker 1: counteracting ambition. The Founders didn't design a system built on
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  Speaker 1: faith in leaders. They designed one built on skepticism of them.
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  Speaker 1: So what does it say about our pols when any leader,
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  Speaker 1: especially a president, encourages Americans to simply trust him? Nothing good?
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  Speaker 1: Have we forgotten our responsibility of citizens to question, to verify,
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  Speaker 1: to remain vigilant, regardless of who occupies the office. Pray no,
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  Speaker 1: does this president or any other elected official believe Americans
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  Speaker 1: are that far gone, so separated from the vision. Our
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  Speaker 1: founders cherished that we would acquiesce our role in that vision.
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  Speaker 1: Our duty may seem small, but it's essential. Surely we
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  Speaker 1: all know that. Of course, none of this means Americans
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  Speaker 1: can't support a president root for him. Madison and the
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  Speaker 1: Founders expected citizens to have loyalties and preferences good things,
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  Speaker 1: and we should all want good things for our nation.
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  Speaker 1: But support and trust are not the same thing at all.
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  Speaker 1: In this context, support can be earned. Trust in the
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  Speaker 1: sense of suspending scrutiny is something Americans should never grant
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  Speaker 1: to any elected official, not the President, not the next president,
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  Speaker 1: not ever. Because the day Americans stopped questioning those who
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  Speaker 1: govern them is the day the constitutional safeguards envisioned by
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  Speaker 1: Madison begin to fail. And anyone who tells you that
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  Speaker 1: skepticism of government is somehow unpatriotic, complete rubbish, has fundamentally
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  Speaker 1: misunderstood the American system, or is just trying to deceive you.
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  Speaker 1: The Founders did not build a nation that required citizens
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  Speaker 1: to trust their leaders. They built one that required citizens
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  Speaker 1: to watch them