David Frum — an ex-speechwriter for George W. Bush — used an op-ed in The Atlantic to share a frightening forecast of a post-Donald Trump America, underscoring the “terrifyingly clear message” he’s sending in his second term.
Frum looked back to the Teapot Dome corruption scandal under Warren G. Harding and the Watergate scandal under Richard Nixon, noting that the implicated president’s supporters “accepted that he had done wrong, that the guilty should be punished, and that these misdeeds should never be repeated.”
“Any aftermath of the Trump presidency seems more likely to resemble the aftermath of the Civil War: The reactionary losers who tried to overthrow the U.S. Constitution may acknowledge themselves beaten, but they won’t acknowledge themselves wrong,” he wrote.
“If they won’t acknowledge that, what confidence can anyone feel that they won’t try again if they get the chance?”
Frum — a frequent critic of the president since the 2016 election — pointed to Trump’s revenge tour in his current administration, his recruitment of loyalists to the federal government and the recent FBI raid on the home of former National Security Adviser John Bolton.
