Marco Rubio, Donald Trump and Pete Hegseth
Peggy Noonan, who served as primary speechwriter to a widely-admired Republican president, is now warning President Donald Trump that his own administration is taking the “republic” out of “Republicanism.”
“It was strange that Mr. Trump didn’t prepare the country for any possible repercussions,” Noonan wrote for The Wall Street Journal in a Thursday op-ed. “A somber admission that U.S. actions in Iran might be followed by serious counteraggression was needed, and is part of the president’s responsibility.”
The adviser-turned-commentator argued that, even though republics require popular consent for all major policy decisions, American policy under Trump is instead dictated by the president’s moods.
“A lot seems to depend on matters of personal choice, will and mood,” Noonan observed. “In Iran for instance, maybe he’ll bomb the rubble until it jumps, maybe he’ll declare victory and withdraw by May, maybe he’ll send in troops. But it will be his choice, no consultation needed with that pesky branch, the legislative.”
She added, “There is something not at all right when the weightiest decisions of a democratic republic depend so much on the mood of one man. With the great majority of past presidents personal mood didn’t have such precedence. There were forms and traditions and processes, there were strictures, rules, the law, expectations, all of which would hem in the head of the executive branch, at least eventually. The president’s mood didn’t reign and determine everything. But now mood mows down all. People have become habituated to this, tolerate it, factor it in. But of course when you factor it in you are enabling and continuing it.”
Noonan ticked off other examples of Trump’s mood dictating policy in ways that should not happen in a republic, from affixing his signature to US currency and destroying the East Wing to unilaterally determining foreign policy without consulting Congress.
“This whole big shambolic miracle machine only keeps rolling because we are an amazing thing—a democratic republic,” Noonan said. “Both are important words, both essential. But ‘democratic’ is an adjective modifying a noun.”
She concluded that “in a republic, the noun, supreme power is held by the people and their elected representatives, constrained by law. In a democratic republic the people choose those representatives through elections with broad suffrage. The republic brings with it constitutional limits, separations of power. Democracy brings with it popular will, and implies popular passion, and the possibility of excess. We are both, and must be.”
Noonan is not alone among conservatives who are turning on Trump’s unprecedented expansion of personal power. Former Rep. Joe Walsh (R-Ill.), who supported Trump during his 2016 presidential campaign, argued in February that Trump supporters who stand by him despite his broken promise to keep world peace are hypocritical.
“I thought you wanted him to end wars all over the world,” Walsh said. “You said you wanted him to end American entanglement in conflicts and wars around the world. America shouldn’t be involved in these wars, you said. That’s why you’re voting for Trump, you said.” Walsh expressed disgust for Trump supporters who then forgave his belligerent posture toward Denmark and actual unprovoked wars against Iran and Venezuela.
“And you don’t like when people call you a cult, Trump voters?” Walsh argued. “What else are people to think when you voted for Trump to get us the hell out of wars around the world, and instead he gets us involved in wars around the world and starts new wars, and you still sing his praises and support him? What are we to think, MAGA, but that you are a cult?”
Steve Schmidt, who like Noonan advised a Republican president (in his case, George W. Bush), attacked Trump in March for eroding the separation between church and state.
“The separation of church and state is foundational to American civilization,” Schmidt argued on his Substack. “In fact, on the list of the greatest American inventions, the two at the top — competing for gold and silver — are the peaceful transition of power and the separation of church and state. These are brilliant ideas, the greatest in all of history.”
Washington Post columnist George F. Will, who like Noonan wrote speeches for Reagan, blasted Trump in February for continuing to dishonestly claim the 2020 presidential election was stolen from him. In fact President Joe Biden won the popular vote by 81.3 million to 74.2 million and the same Electoral College margin by 306 to 232.
“Someone should read to [Trump] ‘Lost, Not Stolen,’ a 2022 report by eight conservatives (two former Republican senators, three former federal appellate judges, a former Republican solicitor general, and two Republican election law specialists),” Will wrote. “They examined all 187 counts in the 64 court challenges filed in multiple states by Trump and his supporters. Twenty cases were dismissed before hearings on their merits, 14 were voluntarily dismissed by Trump and his supporters before hearings. Of the 30 that reached hearings on the merits, Trump’s side prevailed in only one, Pennsylvania, involving far too few votes to change the state’s result.”
Will added, “Trump’s batting average? .016. In Arizona, the most exhaustively scrutinized state, a private firm selected by Trump’s advocates confirmed Trump’s loss, finding 99 additional Biden votes and 261 fewer Trump votes.” Therefore he wrote of Trump, “The man who never alters his opinion is like standing water, and breeds reptiles of the mind.”