The United States fell on a 100-point scale to a record low score of 86 at the end of Trump's first year in office and remained stuck there at the end of 2018, according to Freedom House's annual report Freedom in the World. In all, 59 countries score higher on the Freedom House scale than the United States, including most of Western Europe, several formerly Communist-ruled countries in Eastern Europe, and such now democratic countries as Chile and Portugal that emerged from right-wing dictatorships late in the 20th century.
The decline in U.S. democracy predates Trump's presidency, but Trump's influence is seen as especially damaging to "our core values" and to the "stability of our constitutional system," according to an overview by Freedom House's president Michael Abramowitz. "No president in living memory has shown less respect for its tenets, norms, and principles," Abramowitz writes, citing as examples Trump's attacks on separation of powers, the judiciary, and the press.
Abramowitz, a former Washington Post reporter, traces the decline in U.S. democracy from the beginnings of the post-9/11 surveillance state under President George W. Bush and also tars the Obama administration for what he calls its "overzealous crackdown on press leaks." Trump's assaults on U.S. democracy are more numerous and more pervasive in Abramowitz's telling and date back to his presidential campaign.
Trump has been guilty of "assailing the rule of law," in Abramowitz's account, ever since he attacked the judge overseeing the civil lawsuit against Trump University on the basis of the American-born judge's Mexican ancestry. Trump doubled down on the tactic early in his presidency by denigrating the "so-called judge" who ruled against his Muslim travel ban and more recently by criticizing the "Obama judge" who blocked the administration's illegal plan to consider asylum applicants only at official ports of entry.
Trump's renewed attack on the impartiality of federal judges drew a rebuke last fall from the normally circumspect Republican-appointed chief justice, John Roberts. An independent judiciary, Roberts declared in a Thanksgiving week statement, "is something we all should be thankful for."
The president's attacks on the rule of law, as enumerated by Abramowitz, go far beyond these occasional tweets against individual judicial decisions. Trump has politicized the federal government's law enforcement responsibilities by urging the Justice Department to prosecute his political opponents and critics and by expressing contempt for witnesses who cooperate in investigations in cases that threaten his interests. He has also used his pardon power to reward political and ideological allies and to encourage targets of investigations to refuse cooperation with the government.
Trump's practice of "demonizing the press" also dates from his campaign and is now a hallmark of his presidential playbook. "Previous presidents have criticized the press, sometimes bitterly," Abramowitz acknowledges, "but none with such relentless hostility for the institution itself." Indeed, Trump's "slurs" against journalists as "enemies of the people' are now a calculated political tactic that undermines democracy by "accelerating the breakdown of public confidence in journalism as a legitimate, fact-based check on government power."
The bill of particulars against Trump continues with his "self-dealing and conflicts of interest," in defiance of what had been strong antigraft protections. Trump "has broken with his modern predecessors," Abramowitz writes, "in flouting the ethical standards of public service." Abramowitz notes Trump's nepotism-defying hiring of daughter Ivanka and son-in-law Jared Kushner as White House aides despite their own financial conflicts of interest, but without specifically treating it not only as a political issue but as the kind of practice associated with antidemocratic authoritarian leaders through the years.
The global decline in democracy detailed in Freedom House reports for more than a decade also dates from before Trump's presidency, but Trump has turned policies away from what had been a commitment by Republican and Democratic presidents alike to seek to promote democracy abroad. "Trump has refused to advocate for America’s democratic values, and he seems to encourage the forces that oppose them," Abramowitz writes, citing what he calls Trump's "frequent, fulsome praise for some of the world's worst dictators," Russia's Vladimir Putin among them.
Trump cannot be blamed for the economic and political malaise that has led to declines in democracy for a thirteenth consecutive year in what the Freedom House report calls a "consistent and ominous" trend. But Trump has surely given aid and comfort to what the report calls "the antiliberal populist movements of the far right" in such backsliding countries as Hungary and most recently Brazil. "These movements damage democracies internally through their dismissive attitude toward core civil and political rights, " the report states, "and they weaken the cause of democracy around the world with their unilateralist reflexes."
The unilateralist theme of "Make America Great Again," imitated worldwide, contributes to what the Freedom House report calls "real alarm" for democracy worldwide. "Democracy needs defending," the report concludes, but with Trump in office the report ends with a plea for Americans to recognize that "no one else will do it for us."
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