Charlie Sykes: America’s Founding Fathers were 'vividly aware of the dangers' a 'man like Trump posed'

03 November 2023

During his decades in the U.S. Senate, now-President Joe Biden had a reputation for being a very centrist Democrat who had no problem making bipartisan deals with Sen. John McCain (R-Arizona), Sen. Bob Dole (R-Kansas) and other conservative Republicans. Liberal and progressive Democrats sometimes had issues with Biden during the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s; Biden typically responded that having a give-and-take relationship with McCain or Dole allowed him to get things done.

Former President Donald Trump, however, often characterizes Biden as a far-left radical. Trump recently remarked, "Our Founding Fathers are looking down at Biden with scorn right now. They're looking down at Biden and this administration with disbelief."

In a column published by The Bulwark on November 3, Never Trump conservative Charlie Sykes finds Trump's remark ironic — as Trump, Sykes emphasizes, is exactly the type of politician America's Founding Fathers worried about.

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Trump's anti-Biden rhetoric, Sykes writes, "raises an interesting question: What would the Founders make of the rise and return of Donald J. Trump?"

The Founding Fathers, according to Sykes, "were vividly aware of the dangers posed by a man like Trump" and "thought that they…. erected effective checks and balances against him."

"So, it is interesting to imagine what they might think as they looked down upon our current scene," Sykes writes. "Alexander Hamilton had hoped somewhat naively that the Electoral College would afford 'a moral certainty' that the office of the presidency would not 'fall to the lot of any man, who is not in an eminent degree endowed with the requisite qualifications.' He imagined that the electors would be a bulwark against men who had a talent 'for low intrigue and the little arts of popularity.'"

Trump issued presidential pardons to a long list of MAGA cronies before leaving the White House, and he is expected to pardon an abundance of January 6, 2021 insurrectionists if he wins the 2024 GOP presidential primary and defeats Biden in the general election.

"If the Founders are, in fact, watching all of this," Sykes argues, "I imagine that George Mason would like to have a word with James Madison. During the Constitutional Convention, Mason warned against giving the president — any president — sweeping pardon powers."

Read Charlie Sykes' full column for The Bulwark at this link.

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