What a Real President Doesn't Do

Yes, values and principles still matter. Let's list them to help make sure that violence and hate don't win.

(Photo by SAUL LOEB/AFP via Getty Images)

There has been an overload of violent, hateful speech emanating from the White House and among right-wing social media activists and other extremists since the assassination of Charlie Kirk. I won’t drag you through all the attacks on “the radical left,” but it’s important to remember this dangerous abuse didn’t just begin in the last week. We cannot blithely tolerate it or it will soon become normalized.

I worry particularly about young white males—searching for their identity and purpose—who have been been fed by and empowered by this climate of aggression and violence. Part of Kirk’s success was to tap into this population, a fact that Donald Trump well understood.

Trump won 57 percent of the vote of young white men without college degrees, as compared to 40 percent for Harris. He also captured 43 percent of the vote from those under 30, better than any Republican since George Bush in 2004 who got 45 percent of that group’s votes. “Donald Trump is not president today without the support of young men,” John Della Volpe, director of polling at Harvard Kennedy School's Institute of Politics, told ABC News this week.

Between Kirk’s demonization of virtually all non-male non-whites and Trump’s all-out assault on our nation’s diversity, let’s not doubt that many troubled and impressionable young men have developed a dangerous view of who their “real” enemies are. Recall Trump’s words in October last year, just weeks before the election.

“I think the bigger problem are the people from within. We have some very bad people. We have some sick people. Radical left lunatics,” he said in a Fox interview, adding, “I think the bigger problem is the enemy from within, not even the people that have come in and destroying our country, by the way, totally destroying our country, the towns, the villages.”

That same month at one of his campaign rallies he went further in describing his ugly plan: “We pledge to you that we will root out the communists, Marxists, fascists and the radical left thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our country.” That plan before the election included his promise to use the National Guard and the military, “if necessary.”

So no one should be surprised that Trump is exploiting Kirk’s killing to escalate his attacks and make sure that his supporters are clear who to blame. The fallout from Kirk’s slaying is eerily reminiscent of 1933 when Adolf Hitler, just four weeks into his role as chancellor, exploited a fire that had broken out at the Reichstag, Germany’s parliament building, to blame and persecute alleged communists. Just as then, our newly elected leader is seizing this tragedy to demonize all his enemies, fuel his supporters’ rage and consolidate his power. This despite the fact that he has been shamelessly inciting violence for years.

In his angry, divisive recorded message from the Oval Office on Wednesday, he said, “My administration will find each and every one of those who contributed to this atrocity and to other political violence,” utterly ignoring his and his extremist supporters’ role in spawning our current culture of violence.

Two days later, on Fox & Friends, he kept up his attacks, dismissing the reality of far-right political violence, which the Anti-Defamation League found represents the majority of such murder cases in recent years. “The radicals on the right oftentimes are radical because they don’t want to see crime,” Trump lied. “The radicals on the left are the problem, and they’re vicious and they’re horrible, and they’re politically savvy.”

Never mind that former FBI director Christopher Wray said repeatedly—including two months after Jan. 6—that “racially or ethnically motivated violent extremists, particularly those advocating for the superiority of the white race” represent America’s top domestic terrorism threat. Never mind that over 1,500 people were criminally convicted for their role in the violent insurrection to help Trump stay in power illegally in 2021—and that Trump pardoned nearly all of them, emboldening the most extreme among them to feel free to act with impunity.

So here we are, held hostage by a White House occupant, a malignant actor dedicated to exploiting the support of over 77 million voters and the unprecedented power given to him by an extremist Supreme Court supermajority to deepen our nation’s divisions and conflicts.

Most of this community well knows that this is not normal, but I worry about those younger Americans who have come of age during the last decade as Trump gained power to spread his cancerous message.

But there are values and principles that must still matter if we are to overcome this nightmarish chapter in our nation’s history. Let’s list some of them here so that neither we nor our more susceptible fellow citizens forget.

I call this list “What a Real President Doesn’t Do”:

A real president:

• Doesn’t push an angry, hateful, divisive message in the aftermath of a domestic political assassination. He provides a message of unity and support to every American.

• Doesn’t pit American against American by calling the supporters of one political party “the enemy within” and threatening their lives. After taking office, he communicates that he will be the president for all Americans, including those who didn’t vote for him, because he’s the president of the United States of America.

• Doesn’t incite violence or pardon over 1,500 criminally convicted insurrectionists who participated in a violent attempt to overthrow a democratic election that he instigated. He talks about upholding the Constitution and the rule of law.

• Doesn’t pursue the military occupation of Democrat-led American cities or support masked men kidnapping people off the street and sending them to foreign gulags. He understands the purpose of the military is to defend America and he knows that everyone in America deserves due process.

• Doesn’t surround himself with unfit miscreants whose primary skill is their capacity to kowtow to him under any circumstance. He understands that a functioning government depends on knowledge, experience and independent thought. He demands loyalty only to the Constitution.

• Doesn’t prioritize silencing dissent and seeking retribution of political opponents. He recognizes that the First Amendment and free speech are sacred in a democracy.

• Doesn’t prefer dictatorship over democracy. He knows that he’s part of one of the greatest experiments in the history of the world and sees himself as its steward.

• Doesn’t ignore every rule, norm, law, value and principle that defines American governance, convinced that none of this applies to him and he is free to seize as much wealth and power as he chooses. He knows that America has succeeded by being a government of laws not men and that’s a foundational principle for a free and fair society. He also knows that in a just society, criminal acts should be held accountable.

That’s what an American president does and doesn’t do. I hope you’ll add to this list. We need to remind those who have grown accustomed to this corrupt and violent leader—and perhaps remind ourselves—that this is wrong and must be overcome if we are to survive as a nation.

May we one day soon have a real president again.

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