‘Trump-Washing’ U.S. History Endangers Our Freedom

Kamala Harris seeks to capture the White House with a message built on vaporous “positive vibes” and “joy.” The Harris campaign is bolstering that message by portraying Donald Trump as a deadly peril to democracy unprecedented in American history. The former Senator Jeff Flake (R-AZ), who hit that theme as hard as anybody during Trump’s administration, is back in the news after he endorsed Harris for the presidency. 

Some media coverage is treating Flake’s declaration as another bellwether bailout for Republicans abandoning Trump. But Flake openly endorsed Joe Biden for President in 2020 and spent the last three years as Biden’s U.S. ambassador to Turkey. 

In fact, Flake effectively joined the Democratic Party six years ago when he delivered what was touted as a “landmark” speech on the Senate floor on how Trump’s lies endanger democracy. The exaltation that greeted Flake’s performance settled any doubts about the venality or historical illiteracy of the U.S. media. Flake became the preeminent exponent of “Trump-washing” American history. Because the same myopic approach is permeating media coverage of the 2024 presidential race, Flake’s weaselry deserves reconsideration. 

Prior to that January 17, 2018 speech, Flake received massive publicity after it was leaked that he would compare Trump to Soviet dictator Josef Stalin. Flake assailed Trump for calling the media “the enemy of the people,” since Stalin had used the same phrase 80 years earlier against his enemies. Actually, “enemy of the people” is an ancient phrase—and the title of a famous 1882 play by Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen. Flake’s jibe is on par with touting a Hitler quote on motherhood and then accusing any American politician who praised mothers of being a Nazi sympathizer.

Flake began his oration by warning that “without truth… our democracy will not last.” He then proclaimed that, thanks to Trump, “2017 was a year which saw the truth more battered and abused than any other in the history of our country.”

Had Flake “just fallen off the turnip truck,” as the late Senate Majority Leader Robert Byrd liked to say? Flake was correct that Trump flogged facts early and often. But nothing Trump had done compared to the vast deceptions and idealistic swindles that Woodrow Wilson concocted to drag the U.S. into the First World War. Similarly, Trump’s babble about inauguration crowd sizes was chump change compared to Lyndon Johnson’s brazen deceits from 1965 to 1968 to justify rendering half a million American troops to Vietnam. 

Flake idealized the pre-Trump era. Flake declared that America’s Founders understood “that good faith and shared facts between the governed and the government would be the very basis of this ongoing idea of America” and that without “shared facts, our democracy will not last.” 

Sure, but what happens if the rulers do not “share” the facts? The federal government is classifying—i.e., labeling secret—trillions of pages of documents each year. Since 9/11, the Freedom of Information Act has become practically a nullity, stonewalling citizens and journalists seeking facts about federal policies. The Bush and Obama administrations vastly increased the use of the “state secrets” doctrine to cover up torture, targeted killing, and illegal surveillance. The Obama administration was also more aggressive than any other presidency in using Espionage Act prosecutions against journalists for disclosing federal crimes or follies. 

Flake asserted that “2018 must be the year in which the truth takes a stand against power” and summoned fellow senators to help “restore reverence for our institutions.” But reverence is tricky to reconcile with honesty. 

In reality, deceit has long been the DC default. Why else would the Pentagon get away with referring to “smart bombs” regardless of their perennial killing of women and children not bright enough to preemptively exit the blast area? The No Child Left Behind program was exalted regardless of how it swayed many, if not most, states to lower their academic standards to create an illusion of progress to satisfy federal mandates. And what about the Obama administration’s arm-twisting to relabel felons and ex-convicts as merely “justice-involved individuals”? 

Counting on a shameless media for applause, Flake declared: “Here in America, we do not pay obeisance to the powerful.” Did Flake ever attend a White House Correspondents dinner, where media attendees grovel shamelessly to anyone who has twice appeared on MSNBC’s Morning Joe? Groveling is the preferred form of worship in the District of Columbia. Many senators relish the endless kowtowing they receive each day from parades of lobbyists and donors begging legislative favors. 

If presidential lying was as toxic as Flake claimed, democracy would have perished long ago. History professor Leo Ribuffo observed in 1998, “Presidents have lied so much to us about foreign policy that they’ve established almost a common-law right to do so.” From Kennedy lying about the Bay of Pigs debacle in Cuba, to Nixon lying about the secret bombing of Cambodia, to Reagan lying about Iran–Contra, entire generations have come of age since the ancient time when candor constrained presidents. 

Flake, going “full lofty,” asserted that “from our very beginnings, our freedom has been predicated on truth.” But the Founding Fathers recognized that politicians are conniving rascals—so the Constitution included a Bill of Rights that severely restricted the government’s prerogative to trample Americans’ freedom and privacy. As Associate Justice Hugo Black declared in the 1971 Pentagon Papers case, “The Government’s power to censor the press was abolished so that the press would remain forever free to censure the Government.”

Flake warned that Trump’s lies “have the effect of eroding trust in our vital institutions and conditioning the public to no longer trust them.” But what if those institutions long since forfeited trust? 

On the day before his speech on lying, Flake took a dive on freedom. Five years earlier, the former NSA analyst Edward Snowden revealed how the National Security Agency had carried out “the most significant change in the history of American espionage from the targeted surveillance of individuals to the mass surveillance of entire populations.” Snowden offered a deluge of internal documents substantiating how NSA was ravaging Americans’ rights. But Flake voted to give new powers to the National Security Agency to conduct warrantless surveillance on Americans. Perhaps Flake believed that denouncing Trump absolved him from his congressional oath of office to defend the Constitution. 

For Flake, like most Washington politicians, “truth” is a flag of convenience. When he first ran for the House of Representatives, Flake pledged to serve only three terms in Congress. In 2005, after winning his third election to the House, he announced that “it was a mistake to limit my own terms”—and he continued on the congressional gravy train until 2019. Maybe the American people just got lucky to have Flake in Washington so long? His devotion to truth did not impede him from signing up with CBS News after he left Congress. 

Perhaps the starkest gauge of Flake’s character comes from his zealous support for war with Iraq. In October 2002, when the Bush administration was browbeating Congress for a resolution to give the president a blank check, Flake declared that supporting the resolution for going to war with Iraq “is our only reasonable option. War will no doubt come at great cost. When we visit the war memorials, we see that cost, but the cost of appeasement is far greater.” Supporting the war helped Flake get re-elected in 2002.

Flake was not merely pro-war: He also exalted George W. Bush. He declared on the House floor, “I especially commend our President who so forcefully pushed for this resolution and who has so deliberately pushed for this resolution.” Did Flake repudiate Bush after his administration’s brazen lies to pave the way to war were exposed? No. Instead, Bush was a headliner for at least one major fundraiser for Flake’s 2018 re-election campaign—an effort he abandoned after he was forced to recognize how Arizona voters loathed him. 

Flake was correct that presidential lying is an evil that deserves to be vigorously exposed and heartily condemned. Lies subvert democracy by crippling citizens’ ability to rein in government. Citizens are left clueless about perils until it is too late to avert disaster. Unfortunately, the more power the White House possesses, the more that it attracts ruthless individuals who do and say anything to win elections. 

Regardless of who wins in November, Americans will not have an honest president. Is it too much to ask Trump’s opponents to stop peddling a fairy tale version of American history? If people believe that Trump is the only peril on the horizon, it will become far easier for Harris or other politicians to further ravish our rights and liberties. Americans must become far more vigilant about putting presidents and the federal government back on a leash.