It's Live on the HomePage Now: Jane Mayer | The Secret History of Kimberly Guilfoyle's Departure From Fox |
In the 2020 campaign, Trump has spotlighted no woman more brightly than Guilfoyle. She was given an opening-night speaking slot at the Republican National Convention. And this fall Guilfoyle, who is Donald Trump, Jr.,’s girlfriend, has been crisscrossing the country as a Trump surrogate, on what is billed as the “Four More Tour.” At a recent “Women for Trump” rally in Pennsylvania, Guilfoyle claimed that the President was creating “eighteen hundred new female-owned businesses in the United States a day,” and praised Trump for promoting school choice, which, she said, was supported by “single mothers like myself.”
Guilfoyle has maintained that her decision to move from television news to a political campaign was entirely voluntary. In fact, Fox News forced her out in July, 2018—several years before her contract’s expiration date. At the time, she was a co-host of the political chat show “The Five.” Media reports suggested that she had been accused of workplace impropriety, including displaying lewd pictures of male genitalia to colleagues, but few additional details of misbehavior emerged. Guilfoyle publicly denied any wrongdoing, and last year a lawyer representing her told The New Yorker that “any suggestion” she had “engaged in misconduct at Fox is patently false.” But, as I reported at the time, shortly after Guilfoyle left her job, Fox secretly paid an undisclosed sum to the assistant, who no longer works at the company. Recently, two well-informed sources told me that Fox, in order to avoid going to trial, had agreed to pay the woman upward of four million dollars.
Until now, the specific accusations against Guilfoyle have remained largely hidden. The draft complaint, which was never filed in court, is covered by a nondisclosure agreement. The former assistant has not been publicly identified, and, out of respect for the rights of alleged victims of sexual harassment, The New Yorker is honoring her confidentiality. Reached for comment, she said, “I wish you well. But I have nothing to say.”
The woman was hired in 2015, just out of college, to work as an assistant for Guilfoyle and another former Fox host, Eric Bolling. According to a dozen well-informed sources familiar with her complaints, the assistant alleged that Guilfoyle, her direct supervisor, subjected her frequently to degrading, abusive, and sexually inappropriate behavior; among other things, she said that she was frequently required to work at Guilfoyle’s New York apartment while the Fox host displayed herself naked, and was shown photographs of the genitalia of men with whom Guilfoyle had had sexual relations. The draft complaint also alleged that Guilfoyle spoke incessantly and luridly about her sex life, and on one occasion demanded a massage of her bare thighs; other times, she said, Guilfoyle told her to submit to a Fox employee’s demands for sexual favors, encouraged her to sleep with wealthy and powerful men, asked her to critique her naked body, demanded that she share a room with her on business trips, required her to sleep over at her apartment, and exposed herself to her, making her feel deeply uncomfortable.
As serious as the draft complaint’s sexual-harassment allegations were, equally disturbing was what the assistant described as a coverup attempt by Guilfoyle, whose conduct was about to come under investigation by a team of outside lawyers. In July, 2016, the network had hired the New York-based law firm Paul, Weiss to investigate sexual misconduct at the company, which, under the leadership of Roger Ailes, had a long history of flagrant harassment and gender discrimination. According to those familiar with the assistant’s draft complaint, during a phone call on August 6, 2017, she alleged that Guilfoyle tried to buy her silence, offering to arrange a payment to her if she agreed to lie to the Paul, Weiss lawyers about her experiences. The alleged offering of hush money brings to mind Trump’s payments to the porn star Stormy Daniels, in order to cover up his sexual impropriety.
By 2017, the Paul, Weiss lawyers had begun investigating accusations of workplace sexual misconduct involving Eric Bolling, with whom Guilfoyle shared the assistant. Guilfoyle and Bolling were close, and it was all but inevitable that if the assistant accused Bolling of sexual harassment—as in fact she did—Guilfoyle’s conduct would come under scrutiny next. (Bolling, whose employment Fox ended in September, 2017, declined to comment; he has denied any wrongdoing, and is now a host at Sinclair Broadcast Group.) According to the assistant, as the investigation into Bolling gained momentum, Guilfoyle told her that she needed to know what the assistant would say if she were asked about sexual harassment, and warned her that she could cause great damage if she said the wrong thing. Guilfoyle, she said, told her that, in exchange for demonstrating what Guilfoyle called loyalty, she would work out a payment to take care of her—possibly, she said, with funds from Bolling. The assistant alleged that Guilfoyle mentioned sums as large as a million dollars, and also other inducements, including a private-plane ride to Rome, a percentage of Guilfoyle’s future speaking fees, and an on-air reporting opportunity. People close to Guilfoyle called the assistant’s allegation untrue, and said they were shocked that she would fabricate such a false claim. But a well-informed source independently confirmed to me that Guilfoyle had discussed the topic of raising hush money.
When the assistant declined the offer of money, Guilfoyle warned—in a manner that the assistant regarded as threatening—that, if she spoke candidly to the lawyers, some aspects of the assistant’s private life that Guilfoyle knew about might be exposed. In fact, as I reported on this story, associates of Guilfoyle’s contacted me, offering personal details about the assistant, evidently in hopes of damaging her credibility and leading me not to publish this report.
Guilfoyle declined to be interviewed for this story but issued a statement: “In my 30-year career working for the SF District Attorney’s Office, the LA District Attorney’s Office, in media and in politics, I have never engaged in any workplace misconduct of any kind. During my career, I have served as a mentor to countless women, with many of whom I remain exceptionally close to this day.” John Singer, her lawyer, said that he would not comment.
According to the former assistant’s account, she declined what she regarded as Guilfoyle’s attempts to buy her off, and refused to conceal evidence or lie. Instead, she told the legal team at Paul, Weiss that both Guilfoyle and Bolling had sexually harassed her. Multiple people in whom the assistant confided at the time say she expressed concern that Guilfoyle might retaliate against her; Guilfoyle had boasted of her high-level connections inside Fox’s legal office, and of her ability to ruin enemies’ reputations. The assistant’s concerns had mounted to the point that she sought legal help. Meanwhile, her allegations sparked months of investigation into Guilfoyle’s behavior by Fox’s human-resources department, and eventually resulted in Guilfoyle’s negotiated departure from the company.
Tim Murtaugh, a spokesman for the Trump campaign, declined to comment on the appropriateness of Guilfoyle overseeing the Trump campaign’s finances, given the allegations about hush money and harassment levied against her by her former assistant. Murtaugh referred inquiries to Guilfoyle’s lawyer.
The news that Guilfoyle did not leave Fox on good terms was first broken by HuffPost, in 2018. Yashar Ali reported that Fox had quietly forced Guilfoyle out after a months-long probe by its human-resources department had revealed disturbing allegations by co-workers, including by her assistant, who had been given a paid leave as the company investigated. Ali wrote that Guilfoyle had denied any misconduct and had fought to stay at the network. Her allies had even mounted an unsuccessful last-ditch attempt to save her job by appealing to Rupert Murdoch, the executive chairman of 21st Century Fox, then the news network’s parent company. But Murdoch, who had looked past decades of sexual harassment at Fox News, had been persuaded by his sons, Lachlan and James—then both senior executives in the company—that such misconduct could no longer be tolerated. Paul, Weiss was called in to clean house. A source familiar with the situation told me that the assistant’s confidential statements were foundational to Fox’s decision to part ways with Guilfoyle.
Michele Hirshman, the partner at Paul, Weiss who oversaw the investigation at Fox, didn’t respond to my requests for comment. The Washington attorney Gerson Zweifach, who served as 21st Century Fox’s general counsel and legal adviser on the sexual-harassment probe, also declined to comment, saying, “I can’t be of assistance here, for all the reasons you might expect.” A spokesperson at Fox declined to comment on Guilfoyle’s departure from the company. When asked about reports suggesting that Guilfoyle had received full payment for the remaining time on the contract, the spokesperson said that they were “not accurate.”
Several associates of Guilfoyle’s insist that the allegations against her lack credibility. Alexandra Preate, a public-relations executive who is a longtime friend of Guilfoyle’s, told me, “These manifestly false accusations are an affront to the honorable life that Kimberly, a single mom and trailblazing woman, has led.” Greta Van Susteren, a former colleague of Guilfoyle’s at Fox, said of her, “I’ve known her for twenty-some years, and I’ve never heard of a single complaint against her. This is completely inconsistent with what I’ve seen.” Sergio Gor, the chief of staff for the Trump Victory finance committee, who has known her for more than a decade, said, “She always puts others ahead of herself and is unfailingly generous and ethical.” Another defender of Guilfoyle’s, who declined to go on the record, noted that the assistant had sent numerous gushing notes to Guilfoyle thanking her for her mentorship, and referred to Guilfoyle as almost like family. The assistant had also tweeted praise of her bosses.
The New Yorker, however, was able to independently confirm several of the assistant’s accusations. The allegation that she was required to work at Guilfoyle’s apartment while Guilfoyle was barely clothed or naked was substantiated by several of the assistant’s confidants, including an eyewitness, who recalls being surprised by the sight. “It was provocative in a way that made you want to get away from this person,” the eyewitness told me.
One current and one former Fox employee confirmed the assistant’s allegation that Guilfoyle had often shared lewd images, noting that she had shown photographs of male genitalia to them, too—some of romantic partners, others of fans. Another former employee described Guilfoyle showing pornographic videos in the office. Guilfoyle’s graphic sexual talk so upset hair-and-makeup artists at Fox that they lodged an internal complaint, triggering an investigation by the company.
A former Fox colleague who had been friendly with Guilfoyle said, “It was worse than gross—it put other women at Fox in such a terrible position.” She explained that, as someone at a junior level, she felt afraid to criticize Guilfoyle, who was a powerful star with high-ranking friends at the network. At the same time, the former colleague didn’t want to be complicit in behavior that she regarded as crude, unprofessional, and legally troubling. “It created an environment that was detrimental to young women,” the former colleague said.
The current Fox employee, who has socialized with Guilfoyle, defended Guilfoyle’s right to take whatever pictures she wanted, and to share them outside of work with her friends, but argued, “You can’t expose an assistant to that.” A confidant of the former assistant—who also knows Guilfoyle well—agreed, saying of her, “They really put her through a wringer. It was a justifiable complaint. She’s a very nice kid. She’s not a nefarious person. It was a hostile workplace.” Another former Fox colleague who observed the dynamic between Guilfoyle and the assistant said, “It was an insane, abusive relationship,” adding, “Rather than being a mentor, she was an afflictor.” And yet another close observer who still works at Fox told me that the assistant was “one of the nicest, hard-working people—she was young and full of ambition, but by the time she left she was just broken.”
When the #MeToo movement erupted, Fox News turned to Guilfoyle as an on-air expert on legal issues, including sexual harassment. Before joining Fox News, in 2006, Guilfoyle had been a prosecutor in San Francisco, where she had been married to Gavin Newsom, a Democrat who was the city’s mayor and is now California’s governor. In on-air discussions of workplace harassment, Guilfoyle portrayed herself as an advocate for women’s rights, speaking forcefully about the cases of the movie mogul Harvey Weinstein and moderating a roundtable about the television host Charlie Rose. (In that discussion, Guilfoyle’s Fox colleague Greg Gutfeld said, “The whole thing with Charlie Rose is so strange that he would, like, force co-workers or young people to view him naked—like, he would walk around his apartment naked.” Rose apologized for his “inappropriate behavior,” though he denied some of the allegations made against him.) In 2017, after the Times and The New Yorker broke the Weinstein story, Guilfoyle declared that “the victims” were “the most important aspect,” and referred to her experience of working as a lawyer with victims of “sex-abuse crimes.” She expressed sympathy for victims who were afraid to come forward because “they don’t feel that they have economic power” and they want “to get a chance” in their chosen industry.
Yet the assistant has alleged, both in her draft complaint and to confidants, that Guilfoyle contributed to, and even defended, the sexually hostile work environment at Fox News. The assistant recounted that Guilfoyle had been dismissive about her complaints about being sexually harassed, had discouraged her from speaking to Fox’s human-resources department, and had pointed to her own career, claiming that she had had sexual encounters with powerful figures at Fox herself. One of the former Fox News colleagues who had socialized with Guilfoyle told me that her sexually inappropriate behavior was akin to that of many powerful male Fox employees before 2016, when the network was rocked by a lawsuit brought against Ailes by Gretchen Carlson, a former on-air host. Carlson’s suit exposed a deep-seated sexually predatory culture at the network. Nearly two dozen women at Fox eventually alleged that they had been sexually harassed or intimidated. The scandal triggered Ailes’s downfall, and also that of the star host Bill O’Reilly. “Kim was kind of like one of the guys, the way they used to operate,” the former colleague told me. Another former co-worker of Guilfoyle’s recalled, “It was always about sex and guys with her. She didn’t hide it—she’d almost flaunt it. She probably wasn’t aware of others’ feelings. It was a different time.”
Before Guilfoyle became an outspoken defender of Trump, she was an outspoken defender of Ailes. When Carlson sued him, Guilfoyle attempted to debunk her credibility. In an interview with Adweek, Guilfoyle claimed that she had spoken with more than thirty women at Fox, and said, “Nobody that I’ve spoken to said that this was their experience.” Two months before Fox settled with Carlson, for twenty million dollars, Guilfoyle gave an interview to Breitbart in which she vouched for Ailes’s “character, integrity, and credibility,” saying, “I’ve known the man very well the last 15 years. He’s someone who I admire greatly.” She called Ailes “a champion of women” who has “always been 100 percent professional.”
Guilfoyle reportedly led a public-relations campaign, coördinated with Ailes, in which she implied to women at Fox that their careers would suffer if they didn’t back him. According to a complaint filed by the former Fox News contributor Julie Roginsky, with whom the network settled yet another sexual-harassment claim against Ailes, Guilfoyle “sought to recruit Fox News employees and contributors to retaliate against Carlson by publicly disparaging her.” This “retaliatory onslaught,” Roginsky’s complaint said, was characterized as “supporting ‘Team Roger.’ ”
According to Brian Stelter’s “Hoax,” Guilfoyle told female colleagues that they had better support Ailes, warning, “I’m taking notes.” Stelter suggests that Guilfoyle was motivated by the belief that Ailes, who seemed all-powerful, would reward her by making her the host of her own show. One of the former Fox colleagues who spoke with me said that Guilfoyle tried to intimidate other women at the network: “It was ‘Pick your team now—and if you don’t back Roger you will be out of here fast. There will be retribution.’ ”
Once Ailes was gone, Guilfoyle’s position at Fox grew less secure. Even her allies agree that Ailes’s public disgrace left her in a bad spot. But Guilfoyle’s defenders claim that she left the network entirely of her own volition. At the time, a widely circulated story line suggested that she had left the network in order to avoid conflicts of interest posed by her deepening romance with Donald Trump, Jr. In fact, soon after Guilfoyle left Fox, in July, 2018, she joined Trump’s reëlection campaign, as vice-chair of America First Action, a pro-Trump super PAC.
Last December, reportedly at the President’s request, Guilfoyle was asked to become the head of fund-raising for Trump Victory, his main campaign organization. She began touring the country as a Trump surrogate, appearing, as she did last month in Pennsylvania, in a bright-pink dress that matched a banner bearing the slogan “Women for Trump.” She also began hosting pro-Trump “news” updates on a channel available only to users of the Trump campaign’s social-media app.
Since taking the fund-raising position, Guilfoyle has attracted some criticism. In March, an opulent fifty-first-birthday party was held for Guilfoyle at Trump’s private Mar-a-Lago Club, in Palm Beach, and, according to the Times, the festivities were paid for, in part, by campaign donors. The use of private jets by Guilfoyle and her staff has also drawn negative press. But Guilfoyle, who has a son from her second marriage, to the furniture heir and designer Eric Villency, has flaunted her image as an insider in the Trump world, often posting photos on social media of herself and the President’s son in glamorous settings, including the White House. According to the Washington Post, the couple last year bought a $4.4-million beach house together in the Hamptons.
Despite Guilfoyle’s record at Fox, she was given one of the Republican National Convention’s most prominent speaking spots—just before 10 P.M. on the first night. As an exercise in attention-getting, her speech didn’t disappoint. Describing herself as the daughter of immigrants—though her mother was born in Puerto Rico, whose residents have long been U.S. citizens—Guilfoyle warned that Democrats “want to destroy this country and everything that we have fought for and hold dear.” She concluded by shouting, “Ladies and gentlemen, leaders and fighters for liberty and the American Dream: the best is yet to come!” Her delivery was so jarringly loud that Chuck Ross, a reporter at the conservative Daily Caller, tweeted, “I heard Guilfoyle’s speech and my TV’s not even on.” But Guilfoyle evidently pleased the audience that mattered most: Trump reportedly told her that it was one of the “greatest” speeches he’d ever seen, because it was delivered with “so much energy.”
Guilfoyle’s relationship with Donald Trump, Jr., who has himself been touted as a future candidate for high office, puts her in as close proximity with the Trump family as almost any outsider. Her name has already been floated for a major post after the election: according to a report by Tom LoBianco, in Business Insider, Guilfoyle is under consideration to replace Ronna Romney McDaniel as the chair of the Republican National Committee.
Ordinarily, allegations like those that have trailed Guilfoyle would likely prove disqualifying for someone seeking a prominent role in the political arena, particularly in a party trying to close a gender gap. But high-profile female Trump supporters like Guilfoyle provide valuable cover for the President. As Susan Faludi, the feminist author of “Backlash: The Undeclared War Against American Women,” points out, “From Amy Coney Barrett to Betsy DeVos to Kimberly Guilfoyle, every woman Trump picks is an emblem of everything women are up against.”
President Donald Trump, center, stands with Judge Amy Coney Barrett as they arrive for a news conference to announce Barrett as his nominee to the Supreme Court, in the Rose Garden at the White House, Sept. 26, 2020, in Washington. (photo: Alex Brandon/AP
Entire Top of the Republican Party Has Been Exposed to COVID
Sam Brody, The Daily Beast
Brody writes: "The web of those exposed by President Donald Trump's coronavirus diagnosis reads like a who's who of his peripatetic campaign."
he web of those exposed by President Donald Trump’s coronavirus diagnosis reads like a who’s who of his peripatetic campaign: his campaign manager, who has now tested positive, the chair of the Republican National Committee, the leader of the House GOP’s campaign arm, and several high-profile members of Congress.
Now, those officials—not to mention countless supporters of the president—have either contracted COVID-19 or are at high risk for it after a week in which an infected Trump has criss-crossed the country. It also means a wide swath of the GOP’s formal campaign apparatus could be sidelined a month before a pivotal election in which the party is losing ground in its efforts to hold onto the White House, keep the Senate, and recapture the House.
Last Friday, the president had a packed day on the campaign trail, with events in Miami, Atlanta, and Virginia, with a stop in between at his hotel in Washington for a “roundtable with supporters.” Somewhere along the way, Ronna McDaniel, the RNC chair, was with Trump. It was reported on Friday morning that she had contracted the coronavirus. An RNC spokesperson said that McDaniel had tested for COVID-19 after a member of her family had contracted the virus, and said she’d been at home in Michigan since Saturday.
Over the weekend, Trump traveled to Pennsylvania for a rally, and held a White House event with many notable GOP officials to honor Judge Amy Coney Barrett, his nominee to the U.S. Supreme Court. Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) was in attendance; video taken of the event by a CNN reporter shows him hugging and greeting other attendees without wearing a mask. He announced Friday that he’d tested positive for COVID-19.
Then, on Tuesday, much of the Trump campaign team, along with a top ally, Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH), traveled on Air Force One to Cleveland, where they shared a debate hall with Democratic nominee former Vice President Joe Biden and his staff, supporters, and family.
The day after, Trump traveled to Minnesota for a campaign rally, bringing along his top campaign aides as well as Rep. Tom Emmer (R-MN), chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee, on Air Force One. The president held a private fundraiser beforehand that attracted GOP Reps. Jim Hagedorn and Pete Stauber of Minnesota, as well as Jason Lewis, the GOP nominee in the U.S. Senate race, and a number of key donors and GOP officials in the state. Later, an evening rally outside the Twin Cities featured a speech from Trump that was half his normal length; aides reportedly sensed he was tired.
On Wednesday, Lara Trump, the president’s daughter-in-law, posted photos to social media showing herself mingling with various Trumpworld figures at a campaign event at Trump’s hotel in Washington; she and others were not wearing masks. The day before, she had traveled to the debate in Cleveland on Air Force One with her family.
Many of those who work for Trump or accompanied him during his aggressive week of campaign travel announced on Friday their plans to get tested or that they’d already received a negative result.
But the unprecedented situation has complicated life for a much broader group of people—including Barrett, who Senate Republicans are aiming to confirm to the court within a historically tight timeframe. After she and her family attended the Rose Garden event on Saturday, Barrett met with dozens of U.S. senators on Capitol Hill for closed-door meetings—including with Lee. Photos of their meeting show Lee and Barrett posing with and without face masks.
On Friday, White House spokesperson Judd Deere said that Barrett had tested negative for COVID-19, but said she was following Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidelines for social distancing and mask-wearing for those exposed. He did not mention if Barrett would be quarantining for 14 days from exposure to someone with the virus—a practice that is, in fact, CDC guidance. Barrett had been scheduled to meet with more lawmakers in the coming days; it’s unclear if those plans will continue, though Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) said on Friday morning that he did not see the brewing COVID outbreak as an obstacle to the speedy confirmation process they’ve outlined for Barrett.
Beyond Barrett and the Senate, the House of Representatives has things to worry about, too. After traveling with Trump this week, several Republican lawmakers returned to Washington for multiple votes on the floor of the House. Emmer said on Friday morning that he was not exhibiting COVID-19 symptoms but had gotten a test that morning. Jordan, meanwhile, announced that he’d gotten a test but planned to work in isolation in his Capitol Hill office until he received a result. And Hagedorn’s office said he planned to continue his official duties—“such as voting on the House floor”—until he gets a negative COVID-19 result back.
“I think people are a bit rattled,” a House GOP aide told The Daily Beast on Friday morning, as lawmakers headed again to the floor for votes. “Things have been a little bit more back to normal the last two weeks, so I think this snaps everyone out of that complacency.”
U.S. aircraft carrier. (photo: U.S. Air Force)
William J. Astore | A Thousand Times Worse - or How to Nuke History
William J. Astore, TomDispatch
Astore writes: "What pops into your head when you hear the number 1,000 in a political-military context?"
History? This is history?
I mean, in this country it is historic when this president, in one of his classically chaotic “news” conferences, refuses in advance to accept the results of the coming election unless they please him E-normously. (“We’re going to have to see what happens, you know that. I’ve been complaining very strongly about the ballots, and the ballots are a disaster.”) It is historic when Lindsey Graham, the head of the Senate Judiciary Committee, says of his own pledge in 2016 to never confirm a Supreme Court justice in an election year, even with a Republican president in office, that everything he mouthed then is null and void now. (“I want you to use my words against me,” he commented at the time. “If there's a Republican president in 2016 and a vacancy occurs in the last year of the first term, you can say Lindsey Graham said let's let the next president, whoever it might be, make that nomination.”) Essentially, it didn’t even happen. Who cares if it was caught on video? None of it matters. Not a whit. Not today. Not with Donald Trump in the Oval Office. (As Graham put it, “I am certain if the shoe were on the other foot, you would do the same.”) It’s no less historic when Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell turns his own 2016 refusal to consider President Barack Obama’s nominee for the court many months before an election into an insistence that doing so weeks before an election is the only possible way to go. (“The historical precedent is overwhelming and it runs in one direction. If our Democratic colleagues want to claim they are outraged, they can only be outraged at the plain facts of American history.”) American history indeed!
But you’re a historian of this moment, too. Who isn’t? Who can’t help being one? So you’ve been watching history-in-the-making, moment by egregious moment, in this godforsaken country of ours and you know that we certainly are making history now -- making it, you might say, a thousand times over. Or so retired Air Force lieutenant colonel and history professor, as well as TomDispatch regular, William Astore suggests today.
Of course, the ultimate question in this ever stranger, ever more embattled moment of ours is: Are we -- the America we’ve known with all its problems, disasters, and glories -- history? Tom
-Tom Engelhardt, TomDispatch
A Thousand Times Worse
Or How to Nuke History
hat pops into your head when you hear the number 1,000 in a political-military context? Having studied German military history, I immediately think of Adolf Hitler’s confident boast that his Third Reich would last a thousand years. In reality, of course, a devastating world war brought that Reich down in a mere 12 years. Only recently, however, such boasts popped up again in the dark dreams of Donald Trump. If Iran dared to attack the United States, Trump tweeted and then repeated on Fox & Friends, the U.S. would strike back with “1,000 times greater force.”
Think about that for a moment. If such typical Trumpian red-meat rhetoric were to become reality, you would be talking about a monumental war crime in its disproportionality. If, say, the Iranian Revolutionary Guard shot a missile at an American base in the region and killed 10 U.S. military personnel, Trump is saying that, in response, he’d then seek to kill 10,000 Iranians -- an act that would recall Nazi reprisals in World War II when entire villages like Lidice were destroyed because one prominent Nazi official had been killed. Back then, Americans knew that such murderous behavior was evil. So why do so many of us no longer flinch at such madness?
If references to “evil” seem inappropriate to you, keep in mind that I was raised Catholic and one idea the priests and nuns firmly implanted in me then was the presence of evil in our world -- and in me as a microcosm of that world. It’s a moral imperative -- so they taught me -- to fight evil by denying it, as much as humanly possible, a place in our lives, even turning the other cheek to avoid giving offense to our brothers and sisters. Christ, after all, didn’t teach us to whip someone 1,000 times if they struck you once.
Speaking of large numbers, I still recall Christ’s teaching on forgiveness. How many times, he asked, should we forgive those who offend us? Seven times, perhaps? No, seventy times seven. He didn’t, of course, mean 490 acts of forgiveness. Through that hyperbolic number, Christ was saying that forgiveness must be large and generous, as boundless as we imperfect humans can make it.
Trump loves hyperbolic numbers, but his are plainly in the service of boundless revenge, not forgiveness. His catechism is one of intimidation and, if that fails, retribution. It doesn't matter if it takes the form of mass destruction and death (including, in the case of Americans, death by coronavirus). By announcing such goals so openly, of course, he turns the rest of us into his accomplices. Passively or actively, if we do nothing, we accept the possibility of mass murder in the service of Trump’s dark dreams of smiting those who would dare strike at his version of America.
It’s easy to dismiss his threats as nothing more than red meat to his base, but they are also distinctly anti-Christian. The saddest thing, however, is that they are, unfortunately, not at all un-American, as any quick survey of this country’s record of wanton destructiveness in war would show.
So while I do reject all Trump’s murderous words and empty promises, I find them strangely unexceptional and unnervingly all-American. Indeed, my own guess is that he’s won such a boisterous following in this country precisely because he does so visibly, so thunderously, so bigly embody its darkest dreams of destruction, which have all too often become reality when visited upon recalcitrant peoples who refused to bend to our will.
Destruction as Salvation
Americans today are sold an image of war as almost antiseptic -- hardly surprising given our distance and detachment from this country’s “forever wars.” But as history reminds us, real war isn’t like that. It never was, not when colonists were killing Native Americans in vast numbers; nor when we were busy killing our fellow Americans in our Civil War; nor when U.S. troops were ruthlessly putting down the Filipino insurrection in the early twentieth century; nor when our air force firebombed Dresden, Tokyo, and so many other cities in World War II and later nuked Hiroshima and Nagasaki; nor when North Korea was flattened by bombing in the early 1950s; nor when Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos were bludgeoned by bombs, napalm, and Agent Orange in the 1960s and early 1970s; nor when Iraqis were killed by the tens of thousands during the first Gulf war of 1990-1991.
And that, of course, is only a partial and selective accounting of the wanton carnage overseen by past presidents. In reality, Americans have never been shy about killing on a mass scale in the alleged cause of righteousness and democracy.
In that sense, Trump’s rhetoric of mass destruction is truly nothing new under the sun (except perhaps in its pure blustering bravado); Trump, that is, just salivates more openly at the prospect of inflicting pain on a mass scale on peoples he doesn’t like. And even that isn’t as new as you might imagine.
In this century, Republicans have been especially keen to share their dreams of massively bombing others. On the campaign trail in 2007, to the tune of the Beach Boys’ cover "Barbara Ann," Senator (and former bomber pilot and Vietnam POW) John McCain smirkingly sang of bombing Iran. ("Bomb bomb bomb, bomb bomb Iran!") Similarly, during the Republican presidential debates of 2016, Senator Ted Cruz boasted of wanting to “utterly destroy” the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq by carpet-bombing its territory and, in doing so, making the desert sand “glow in the dark.” The implication was, of course, that as president he’d happily use nuclear weapons in the Middle East. (Talk about all options being on the table!)
Alarming? Yes! Very American? USA #1!
Consider two examples from the nuclear era, then and now. In the depth of the Cold War years, in response to a possible Soviet nuclear attack, this country’s war plans envisioned a simultaneous assault on the Soviet Union and China that military planners estimated would, in the end, kill 600 million people. That would have been the equivalent of 100 Holocausts, notes Pentagon whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg, who was privy to those plans.
Whether China had joined or even known about the Soviet attack didn't matter. As communists, they were guilty by association and so to be obliterated anyway. Ellsberg notes that only one man present at the briefing where this “plan” was presented objected to such a mindless act of mass murder, David Shoup, a Marine general and Medal of Honor winner who would later similarly object to the Vietnam War.
Fast forward to today and our even more potentially planet-ending nuclear forces are still being “modernized” to the tune of $1.7 trillion over the coming decades. Any Ohio-class SSBN nuclear submarine in the Navy’s inventory, for example, could potentially kill millions of people with its 24 Trident II ballistic missiles (each carrying as many as eight nuclear warheads, each warhead with roughly six times the destructive power of the Hiroshima bomb). While such vessels are officially meant to “deter” nuclear war, they are, of course, ultimately built to fight one. Each is a submerged holocaust waiting to be unleashed.
Rarely, if ever, do we think about what those subs truly represent, historically speaking. Meanwhile, the Pentagon continues to “invest” (as the military likes to say) in ever-newer generations of nuclear-capable bombers and land-based missiles, promising a holocaust of planetary proportions if ever used. To grasp what an actual nuclear war would mean, you would have to update an old saying: one death is a tragedy; several billion is a statistic.
Aggravating such essential collective madness in this moment (and the president’s fiery and furious fascination with such weaponry) is Trump’s recent cynical call for what might be thought of as the nuking of our history: the installation of a truly “patriotic” education in our schools (in other words, a history that would obliterate everything but his version of American greatness). That would, of course, include not just the legacy of slavery and other dark chapters in our past, but our continued willingness to build weaponry that has the instant capacity to end it all in a matter of hours.
As a history professor, I can tell you that such a version of our past would be totally antithetical to sound learning in this or any world. History must, by definition, be critical of the world we've created. It must be tough-minded and grapple with our actions (and inactions), crimes and all, if we are ever to grow morally stronger as a country or a people.
History that only focuses on the supposedly good bits, however defined, is like your annoying friend’s Facebook page -- the one that shows photo after photo of smiling faces, gourmet meals, exclusive parties, puppies, ice cream, and rainbows, that features a flurry of status updates reducible to “I’m having the time of my life.” We know perfectly well, of course, that no one’s life is really like that -- and neither is any country’s history.
History should, of course, be about understanding ourselves as we really are, our strengths and weaknesses, triumphs, tragedies, and transgressions. It would even have to include an honest accounting of how this country got one Donald J. Trump, a failed casino owner and celebrity pitchman, as president at a moment when most of its leaders were still claiming that it was the most exceptional country in the history of the universe. I’ll give you a hint: we got him because he represented a side of America that was indeed exceptional, just not in any way that was ever morally just or democratically sound.
Jingoistic history says, “My country, right or wrong, but my country.” Trump wants to push this a goosestep further to “My country and my leader, always right.” That’s fascism, not “patriotic” history, and we need to recognize that and reject it.
Learning without Flinching from History
The United States has been the imperial power of record on this planet since World War II. Lately, the economic and moral aspects of that power have waned, even as our military power remains supreme (though without being able to win anything whatsoever). That should tell you something about America. We’re still a “SmackDown” country, to borrow a term from professional wrestling, in a world that’s increasingly being smacked down anyway.
Harold Pinter, the British playwright, caught this country’s imperial spirit well in his Nobel Prize lecture in 2005. America, he said then, has committed crimes that “have been systematic, constant, vicious, remorseless, but very few people have actually talked about them. You have to hand it to America. It has exercised a quite clinical manipulation of power worldwide while masquerading as a force for universal good. It’s a brilliant, even witty, highly successful act of hypnosis.”
Anyone with a knowledge of our history knows that there was truth indeed in what Pinter said 15 years ago. He noticed how this country’s leaders wielded language “to keep thought at bay.” Like George Orwell before him, Pinter was at pains to use plain language about war, noting how the Americans and British had “brought torture, cluster bombs, depleted uranium, innumerable acts of random murder, misery, degradation and death to the Iraqi people and call[ed] it bringing freedom and democracy to the Middle East.”
The point here was not simply to bash America. It was to get us to think about our actions in genuine historical terms. A decade and a half ago, Pinter threw down a challenge, and even if you disagreed with him, or maybe especially if you did so, you need the intellectual tools and command of the facts to grapple with that critique. It should never be enough simply to shout “USA! USA!” in an ever-louder fashion and hope it will drown out not only critics and dissenters but reality itself -- and perhaps even your own secret doubts.
And we should have such doubts. We should be ready to dissent. We should recognize, as America’s current attorney general most distinctly does not, that dissenters are often the truest patriots of all, even if they are also often the loneliest ones. We should especially have doubts about a leader who threatens to bring violence against another country 1,000 times greater than anything that country could visit upon us.
I don’t need the Catholic Church, or even Christ in the New Testament, to tell me that such thinking is wrong in a Washington that now seems to be offering a carnivorous taste of what a future American autocracy could be like. I just need to recall the wise words of my Polish mother-in-law: “Have a heart, if you’ve got a heart.”
Have a heart, America. Reject American carnage in all its forms.
William Astore, a retired Air Force lieutenant colonel, taught history for 15 years. A TomDispatch regular, he also has a personal blog, Bracing Views.
Follow TomDispatch on Twitter and join us on Facebook. Check out the newest Dispatch Books, John Feffer’s new dystopian novel (the second in the Splinterlands series) Frostlands, Beverly Gologorsky's novel Every Body Has a Story, and Tom Engelhardt's A Nation Unmade by War, as well as Alfred McCoy's In the Shadows of the American Century: The Rise and Decline of U.S. Global Power and John Dower's The Violent American Century: War and Terror Since World War II.
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