Editor's Note: Steve Schmidt is one of the founding members of the Lincoln Project. He is a communications and public affairs strategist who has worked on several Republican campaigns, including John McCain's 2008 bid for the White House, and is now a regular political contributor to MSNBC.
On Saturday, Schmidt wrote a stinging rebuke of the president on his Twitter feed over 11 posts. MaxNewsToday has put together the tweets and reprinted them as one op-ed for our new segment, Schmidt Storm.
I find it necessary to reach for the language and colorful colloquialisms of my native land, New Jersey, in order to express my feelings about today’s event in Bedmimster.
It was a fucking travesty. Truly. An utter fucking disgrace. The President of the United States of America stood behind the seal of his office, framed by American flags and his private club’s membership, slurring and raving about his victimization. His titanic self-pity was only exceeded by his dishonesty and uncontrolled lying.
His lying was only subordinate to his staggering idiocy, ignorance, ineptitude and incompetence. The incompetence, even after all this time, shocks the conscience. 162,000 Americans are dead, and the economy is shattered. So many more will die.
The evictions, foreclosures and small business closings are just beginning. We are in the early hours of one of the greatest tragedies in our country's history. None of it had to be, but it has happened because Donald Trump is President. His malice, stupidity, ego and insecurity are a lethal combination.
He has wrecked this country in less than four years. He has induced a national nosedive, a decline that is precipitous, dangerous and humiliating. The world is more dangerous. American soldiers are hunted like animals by Taliban killers who are paid bounties by Russian killers, and Trump does nothing but kowtow to Putin and advance his agenda.
Trump has divided the country and pitted Americans against each other. He has loosed violence against peacefully assembled U.S. citizens and deployed militarized paramilitary forces to escalate tensions in American cities in the name of law and order, when the real purpose and mission is to stoke the embers of chaos and create fear.
Fear, built on a mountain of lies, is the autocrats sword and shield. Trump stokes fear to abuse his power and press forward with his assaults on the rule of law, our essential institutions and our national comity, all in the name of his corruption, aggrandizement and cult of personality.
It is a despicable hour in the life of this country. This will be ended because it must end. We will lose the country if Trump isn’t repudiated. Make no mistake about the intentions of a president who is openly undermining the 231-year-old tradition of American elections. He is undermining the legitimacy of the coming election with no regard for the consequences to liberal democracy here and around the world.
Fascism didn’t rise in the thirties because it was strong. It rose because democracy was weak. American democracy is weak, decayed and led by an illiberal man who, if he could, would cancel the election, lock up his political opponents, enrich his friends and remain in power for life.
Trump is the greatest failure in American history. No American has failed history’s test in a more spectacular fashion. His stoking of racial tensions and a cold civil war in our land will live in infamy.
His disgrace will be eternal.
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