The Best Way to Honor the American Presidency Is Kicking Donald Trump Out of Office

Every day, he dishonors the presidency and spits on the very idea of America.

Edwin Eisendrath hosts It’s the Democracy, Stupid on Lincoln Square and WCPT820 AM/Heartland Signal. He’s the former CEO of the Chicago Sun-Times, a long-time management consultant, a former Chicago Alderman, HUD Regional Administrator and teacher in Chicago’s public schools. Subscribe to his Substack.

Illustration by Riley Levine

On Presidents’ Day, we remember what the job is, and those Presidents who lifted up our nation.

Ronald Reagan said:

Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn’t pass it on to our children through the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same or one day we will spend our sunset years telling our children and our children’s children what it was once like in the United States where men were free.

Donald Trump disagrees. He instructs his justice department to go after those who exercise the checks and balances created by our founders. He calls our soldiers suckers and losers, then he gives speeches as Commander in Chief calling on the military to target our cities. Several times now, he has sent his over-armed and undertrained thugs onto American streets, resulting in deaths, injuries, economic loss, and leaving judges everywhere complaining about the Administration’s honesty in court. Recently Trump boasted that he ‘tool the freedom of speech away.”

William Henry Harrison knew that Presidents were not kings. He told us:

There is nothing more corrupting, nothing more destructive of the noblest and finest feelings of our nature, than the exercise of unlimited power.

Donald Trump disagrees. In his view, the nation is organized around the whims of a unitary executive. His administration is dedicated to the proposition that everything is his. Presidents are empowered to declare war, decide how to spend tax dollars, decide what laws to enforce and what to ignore. In Trump’s America, coercion is the favored tool to enforce that power. Those who don’t go along get doxed, or indicted, or beaten up, or gassed, or disappeared.

John F. Kennedy understood that we all contribute to our shared national aspirations. He said:

Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country.

The Trump family disagrees. Their vision of the presidency is all about what the country can do for them and their own massive personal enrichment. At no previous time in our history could a President so eagerly sell pardons, accept emoluments, broker American policy for personal profit.

Lyndon Johnson knew that America could always be better, and that Americans would work to get there. He said:

For this is what America is all about: It is the uncrossed desert and the unclimbed ridge. It is the star that is not reached and the harvest that is sleeping in the unplowed ground.

That is not what Donald Trump’s nation is about. Instead of looking forward he looks back. And the past he seeks is a mirage — America never was a white Christian nationalist idea. It always aspired to be a free and pluralistic society. Johnson’s vision is not just forward looking; it is optimistic. That’s not Trump. When he speaks of our cities and our people, he describes a place of brutality and fear. He says the only way to conquer that evil is by force.

James Monroe, at the dawn of our national journey, understood that we dreamt of freedom, and that we would make it a trait of the American character to guard the rights protected that freedom. He said:

We must support our rights or lose our character, and with it, perhaps, our liberties.

Donald Trump sees a different nation, rooted in a different sort of national character. In his nation, rights flow from the favor of the president rather than from natural law and the Constitution. The character traits he admires are self-censorship, praise of the ruler, and above all obedience.

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Here in Chicago, in Abraham Lincoln’s home state, we recall his words:

Those who deny freedom to others deserve it not for themselves, and, under a just God, cannot long retain it.

Donald Trump is paying foreign dictators to dungeon his prisoners. He is rapidly building a network of detention camps across America. He is sending his thugs onto our streets with quotas to fill those camps. Our courts are already bogged down with more than 20,000 habeas suits, and he’s just getting started.

Donald Trump’s vision is a sickness on the national soul. Its cruel pessimism misses the very point of America.

Bill Clinton knew that. He said:

There is nothing wrong with America that cannot be cured by what is right with America.

Each of us has that power.

Barack Obama saw it and predicted:

Change will not come if we wait for some other person, or if we wait for some other time. We are the ones we’ve been waiting for. We are the change that we seek.

When Donald Trump sent armed goons onto the streets of Chicago and Minneapolis, Americans heard the voice Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who told us:

You have nothing to fear but fear itself.

So, Renee Good told the ICE agent who would murder her, “I’m not mad at you, dude.” Alex Pretty knelt down to help a women ICE had knocked down before those same ICE agents killed him. And still, Americans are not afraid, we are determined.

We know the way to honor the presidency and to lift up a nation. The way begins with removing Donald Trump from power.

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