Obama's White House counsel says Trump is 'worst nightmare' of Founding Fathers
by John Gage
| December 02, 2019 12:04 PM
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.
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