George Washington Warned Us About Individuals Like Trump

Donald Trump is the embodiment of what the Founding Fathers feared: a populist demagogue who might win the nation's highest office and place self-interest and divisiveness ahead of the common good and the unity of the nation. The supposed safeguard against such an event was the Electoral College in which electors could refuse to certify the election of such an unworthy and dangerous individual to the office of president. This safeguard utterly failed in 2016 and the last four years have been a nightmare where deliberate attempts to divide the nation have been non-stop and morality has been thrown out the window not only by Trump but also far too many Republicans, especially at the congressional level.  In his farewell address as he left the presidency, George Washington warned the nation against such individuals and spoke of the need to maintain national unity:  

The unity of government which constitutes you one people is also now dear to you. It is justly so, for it is a main pillar in the edifice of your real independence, the support of your tranquility at home, your peace abroad; of your safety; of your prosperity; of that very liberty which you so highly prize. But as it is easy to foresee that, from different causes and from different quarters, much pains will be taken, many artifices employed to weaken in your minds the conviction of this truth; as this is the point in your political fortress against which the batteries of internal and external enemies will be most constantly and actively (though often covertly and insidiously) directed, it is of infinite moment that you should properly estimate the immense value of your national union to your collective and individual happiness; that you should cherish a cordial, habitual, and immovable attachment to it; accustoming yourselves to think and speak of it as of the palladium of your political safety and prosperity; watching for its preservation with jealous anxiety; discountenancing whatever may suggest even a suspicion that it can in any event be abandoned; and indignantly frowning upon the first dawning of every attempt to alienate any portion of our country from the rest, or to enfeeble the sacred ties which now link together the various parts.

All obstructions to the execution of the laws, all combinations and associations, under whatever plausible character, with the real design to direct, control, counteract, or awe the regular deliberation and action of the constituted authorities, are destructive of this fundamental principle, and of fatal tendency. They serve to organize faction, to give it an artificial and extraordinary force; to put, in the place of the delegated will of the nation the will of a party, often a small but artful and enterprising minority of the community; and, according to the alternate triumphs of different parties, to make the public administration the mirror of the ill-concerted and incongruous projects of faction, rather than the organ of consistent and wholesome plans digested by common counsels and modified by mutual interests.

However combinations or associations of the above description may now and then answer popular ends, they are likely, in the course of time and things, to become potent engines, by which cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men will be enabled to subvert the power of the people and to usurp for themselves the reins of government, destroying afterwards the very engines which have lifted them to unjust dominion. 

I doubt much of Trump's base has ever read Washington's farewell address and, of the few who have, they certainly have ignored Washington's warning.  Washington also warned against political parties and individuals who would subvert the best interests of the nation to power of the party or an individual as noted in a column in the Washington Post.  The contrasts between Washington and Trump could not be more stark:

Two-hundred twenty-four years ago, the first president retired with a passionate warning against political parties becoming “potent engines, by which cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men will be enabled to subvert the power of the people.”

Now, as a defeated president mobilizes his party in an open (if bumbling) attempt to overturn a free and fair election, and as Republican congressional leaders shamefully legitimize his behavior, George Washington’s Farewell Address takes on renewed importance.

“The alternate domination of one faction over another, sharpened by the spirit of revenge … is itself a frightful despotism,” Washington warned. And, “sooner or later the chief of some prevailing faction, more able or more fortunate than his competitors, turns this disposition to the purposes of his own elevation, on the ruins of public liberty.”

President Trump, who has no purpose other than his own elevation, will never pen such a speech. But in the weeks that have passed since the election, he has already given us his farewell address of sorts. Here it is, assembled entirely from his own words and tweets:

This election was a fraud. A total fraud. It was a fraudulent election. This was a massive fraud. This fraud has taken place. You have a fraudulent system. Fraudulent voting and fraudulent votes. There’s tremendous fraud here. There’s fraud all over the place. Massive fraud has been found.

We’re like a Third World country. We will find tens of thousands of fraudulent and illegal votes. You’re gonna find fraud of hundreds of thousands of votes per state. They used covid in order to defraud the people of this country

RIGGED ELECTION! This Election was RIGGED. This, it was a rigged election. Very sad to say it, this election was rigged. This was a 100% RIGGED ELECTION They know it was a rigged election. At the highest level it was a rigged election. This election was a rigged election.

This was an election that we won easily. We won it by a lot. I won Pennsylvania by a lot. In Georgia, I won by a lot. I won that by hundreds of thousands of votes. There’s no way Trump didn’t win Pennsylvania because the energy industry was all for him. No, we won by a lot. We were robbed.

Fake ballots. Fake votes. Fake recounts. Fake results. Fake pollsters. Fake polls. FAKE NEWS.

I concede NOTHING! It’s going to be a very hard thing to concede because we know there was massive fraud. Should President Trump concede to Biden? Poll Results: No: 190,593 (98.9%). This election has to be turned around. They have to turn over the results.

Have a great life General Flynn! Rudy, you were the greatest mayor. Thanksgiving is a special day for turkeys. Don’t talk to me that way. I’m the president of the United States. I concede NOTHING!!!!!

Sadly, Trump is a cancer whose damage to the nation will not be quickly erased.