Trump's Legacy of Loss

Mr. Manners: Trump with his wife and son in January

When history looks back on the waking nightmare that is the so-called presidency of Donald Trump, it's quite possible that his term in office will be viewed in terms of loss.

In terms of the Oval Office, loss of civility, loss of ethical boundaries and an unprecedented loss of international prestige have all been markers of this chaotic White House ever since the inauguration on that fateful day back on January 20, 2017.

Loss of class? Check.

To say nothing of a profound loss of moral authority along with a gaping loss of direction for the country he's clearly incapable of leading.

Want to get a sense of the scope of the loss of respect for the law under this presidency?

Take a few minutes to listen to former Watergate prosecutor and legal analyst Jill Wine-Banks on the Brian Lehrer Show earlier this morning sharing her insight on how Paul Manafort, Rick Gates, Jared Kushner and Trump may all be seriously compromised as a result of their corrupt business dealings with Russia.

In terms of the people the office of the president is meant to serve and protect, from a historical standpoint this presidency might arguably be viewed in terms of the loss of American lives.

Not just the more than 220,000 people who've been unfairly, and in some cases (like that of Mishawaka, Indiana restaurant owner Roberto Beristain), cruelly deported from the country they call home since Trump took office and turned his xenophobia and bigotry into federal policy.

Heather Heyer and the street renamed in her memory

But innocent Americans whose lives have been lost as a direct result of the kind of virulent ethnic, racial and religious hatred that Trump has actively cultivated and encouraged since announcing his candidacy.

People like 32-year-old Heather D. Heyer, a legal assistant who was killed back in August, 2017 during the Unite the Right rally of white supremacists in Charlottesville, Virginia.

Heyer lost her life when 20-year-old neo-Nazi James Fields intentionally plowed his car into a group of counter-protesters; killing Heyer and injuring scores of others before being arrested.

Would a large, organized march by members of the KKK, neo-Nazi groups and members of the alt-right have taken place in an American city in 2017 under any other president?

In Charlottesville TV and cell phone cameras rolled as Tiki-torch carrying marchers in white sport shorts chanted "Jews will not replace us!" while some carried flags emblazoned with swastikas - 52-year-old KKK member Richard Wilson Preston fired a handgun into a crowd of counter-protesters after yelling "Hey, nigger!".

Even though his own national security advisor H.R. McMaster called Heyer's death an act of domestic terrorism, in a subsequent press conference that embodied the loss of leadership from the executive branch of the federal government, Trump refused to condemn the march and deadly vehicle attack - and instead suggested that there were "some very fine people on both sides."

Loss of sanity and reason comes to mind.

Blaze Bernstein (center) with his parents Jeanne
and Gideon Bernstein at his HS graduation.

What is encouraging though is seeing how people from across the country are coming together in opposition of the kind of divisiveness and hatred that Trump has made the defining characteristic of his presidency.

Last Sunday at the Segerstrom Center for the Arts in Costa Mesa, California, over 2,000 people gathered to pay tribute to 19-year-old Blaze Bernstein in the same venue where his high school graduation ceremony took place less than two years ago.

Bernstein, a sophomore at the University of Pennsylvania majoring in pre-med, was home in Lake Forest, California for winter break when his body was found in a shallow grave in a park in Orange County on January 9th - seven days after he'd disappeared.

He'd been brutally stabbed more than 20 times and a 20-year-old suspect named Samuel Lincoln Woodward was taken into custody.

Based on Bernstein's social media posts and text messages, police investigators at first suggested some kind of spurned lover's tryst between the two may have been at the root of the violent attack.

But last Friday ProPublica published a story by A.C. Thompson, Ali Winston and Jake Hanrahan detailing Woodward's involvement with a violent neo-Nazi group known as Atomwaffen.

It's pretty disturbing but it's worth a read.

ProPublica released disturbing excerpts from encrypted chat logs members of the group used to communicate online, including members celebrating Woodward having violently murdered Bernstein and expressing their admiration for people like Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh and Dylann Roof - the white supremacist who shot and killed nine African-Americans at a bible study at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in 2015.

Benjamin Thomas Samuel McDowell

The murder of Blaze Bernstein is just one of the many violent killings of racial and ethnic minorities committed by American white supremacists since Trump was elected.

Did you hear about 30-year-old Benjamin Thomas Samuel McDowell of South Carolina?

As the Charleston Post and Courier reported, he plead guilty to federal weapons charges on Monday after he was arrested in 2017 by the FBI for telling an undercover agent that he wanted to use a gun to commit a killing of non-whites "in the spirit of Dylann Roof." 

In my opinion I don't think it's a reach to hold Trump partially accountable for these kinds of domestic terrorist incidents.

After all, he never condemns them as he does violent attacks by Islamic extremists in other countries.

In doing so, Trump basically offers his tacit approval of such attacks - and only encourages people to commit acts of extreme violence to act out the kind of hate and bigotry he continually stirs up.

It's almost as if Trump is intentionally silent about them, as if he views such attacks as a part of his grand vision for Making America Great Again.

Lest we forget, Nikolas Cruz, the gunman who shot and killed 17 students and adults at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Florida recently was a member of the Republic of Florida Militia, which the Southern Poverty Law Center describes as a white nationalist group.

Cruz was seen in a video wearing one of Trump's signature red "Make America Great Again" hats as he fired shots with a gun.

That's not "fake news" or a liberal plot, it's a violent killer feeling empowered by a president who has made it painfully clear what he thinks about immigrants and non-whites.

In doing so he further erodes the office of the presidency, endangers the lives of innocent people - and further cements his own legacy of loss.