FILE PHOTO: Former Special Counsel Robert Mueller returns to resume testimony before a House Intelligence Committee hearing in Washington, U.S., July 24, 2019. REUTERS/Leah Millis/File Photo
President Donald Trump’s reaction to the death last week of former special counsel Robert Mueller was more than just cruel; it foreshadows how republics fail.
That’s the take of Steve Schmidt, a former Republican strategist who advised President George W. Bush. In a Monday Substack post, Schmidt responded to Trump’s social media post celebrating Mueller’s passing.
“Robert Mueller just died,” Trump wrote. “Good, I'm glad he's dead. He can no longer hurt innocent people! President DONALD J. TRUMP”
Describing Mueller as “a man who embodied a life of service, discipline, and duty to country,” Schmidt denounced Trump for his cruelty and Trump supporters like Secretary of Treasury Scott Bessent for insisting on empathy for the president rather than Mueller’s loved ones.
“We are told that the appropriate response to a president celebrating his death is not condemnation, not shame, not even silence, but empathy for the family of the man doing the celebrating,” Schmidt wrote. “Let that sink in.” From the ex-top aide’s point of view, this coarsening of America’s character speaks ominously about the health of American democracy.
“This is how republics fail,” Schdmit argued. “It doesn’t happen in a single moment of catastrophe, but in a thousand small surrenders. In each instance where truth is bent. In each defense of the indefensible. In each shrug where there should be outrage.”
This is not the first time that Schmidt, who was a lifelong Republican until the party’s far right turn, has scathingly critiqued Trump and his administration. Earlier in March, he cited Trump’s refusal to accept his loss in the 2020 election and subsequent coup attempt as further examples of the “devolution” of American democracy.
“A mob, inflamed by a sitting president, attacked the seat of American democracy to overturn a free and fair election. And what did the party do? In large measure, it rationalized, minimized, or outright defended it,” Schmidt wrote. “That is the devolution.” Instead of standing for the expansion of freedom, Republicanism under Trump is defined by the “language of victimhood” and supporters’ “willingness to believe anything — so long as it serves the cause.”
Schmidt has also written with alarm about Trump’s warmongering, locating his attacks on Venezuela and Iran in the president’s personal character flaws rather than any coherent ideology.
“He wanted the Peace Prize, and when he couldn’t get it, Trump lost his mind,” Schmidt wrote. Quoting a letter Trump wrote to Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre which hinted that he was no longer interested in peace because he was denied the prize, Schmidt concluded that “no man of violence and venom can resist the siren song of modern warfare, which, after all, is just a game” to people like Trump who do not understand the grave seriousness of war.
