I have got to admit at the start that like most other academics I've met, historian Brion McClanahan has left himself a lot of wiggle room on the topic of Trump. He has criticized Trump enough times in passing that most MAGA cultists would not confuse him as a follower. He has basically called Trump a New Deal/FDR Democrat, and he does think Trump has overstepped his Constitutional role with his executive orders and such--but the difference I have is how McClanahan does it,, by arguing Trump is no different than the last several Presidents who also abused their auhority, no worse.
As any regular reader of my daily blog posts knows, I have regulasrly posted and promoted Brion's content over the past few years. And a lot of this discussion is based on fragmentary ad hoc comments he has made over several episodes. I don't have transcripts and I'm not a prosecutor. But let me explain via certain talking points.
First, McClanahan is utterly dismissive of Trump's impeachments and unduly imptessed by Senate dismissals. I have written several posts on the Trump impeachments and know that they were substantive in nature, although I believe the second impeachment should have charged Trump with dereliction of duty. The second impeachment got a majority of trial votes but not the super-majority needed for conviction. And several Republicans who voted to acquit argued Trump was no longer POTUS.and/or Trump could/should be criminally prosecuted--including then Majority Leader McConnell.
The first impeachment was based on Trump's abuse of foreign relations authority to extort Zelensky using Ukraine aid, which Trump unconstitutionally froze in the hopes Zelensky would open a criminal case against Biden, sabotaging a prospective 2020 challenge to Trump. This is unambiguously corrupt, abusing authority for personal political gain. The fact is Trump's pretext involved a notoriously corrupt Ukrainian chief prosecutor falsely alleging Biden was targeting him in the hopes of staving off a Burisma investigation putting Hunter's lucrative compensation at risk. In fact, the US was upset at Shokin's sabotaging a money-laundering case against the Burisma oligarch and other corrupt acts, and the move against Shokin went beyond Biden, including the IMF, the EU, and local Ukraine anti-corruption groups.
Now is it possible that Trump's predecessors were just as bad if not worse than Trump? It's possible; I certainly freely admit that McClanahan has more academic training than I've had as a historian and he has more detailed knowledge about the Presidents and American history than I do. I can't respomd to unspecified allegations. But of all incumbents who lost, reelection, Trump is unprecedented in refusing to concede; he is also the first President on whose watch rioters occupied the Capitol since at least the War of 1812.
Let's be clear: not only did Trump enter his reelection campaign with record low job approval but 2020 saw a pandemic economic collapse and economic uncertainty that had analogously doomed the reelections of GHW Bush and Hoover. Keep in mind Trump had won by razor thin margins multiple usually Dem states in the rust belt without a public sector record to weigh him down. And in 2016 Trump faced one of the most polarizing Dem nominees in recent history in Hillary Clinton, not to mention a close nomination battle where arguably the more popular candidate, Bernie Sanders, lost. No doubt Trump in 2016 benefited from a change election year, a divided political opposition, and celebrity status. Biden, on the other hand, was the well-known likable VP to a highly popular Obama with his party base.
Keep in mind that Trump won only about 46% of the popular in 2016. There were polls going into 2020 showing Trump's record low job approvals eroding his standing among independents, a critical part of his winning coalition.. The polls showed Biden, backed by a unified Dem base, leading Trump not only in the popular vote but in several battleground states, including earlier Trump-won narrowly blue states like MI, PA, and WI and even trending purplish southern states like AZ and GA. Now, granted, Trump held the incumbent's advantage and polls persistently have understated Trump's numbers (whether that is a sampling bias, social desirablility response bias among some Trump supporters, etc.)
Granted, some 2020 polling was flat out wrong: some showed Biden with a double-digit lead nationally and some late polls showed Biden taking Florida and North Carolina.. McClanahan concedes Biden won the largely symbolic national vote (by over 7 million votes) but dismissed that as California surplus. Not quite; it is true that the 5-million California difference was a large part of that advantage, but the Dems improved on their share of their vote over 2016 in about 3/4 of states.
Trump's appalling failure to concede the 2020 election had been signaled months in advance when he refused to commit to accepting election results before a single vote was cast:
.As he did in 2016, Trump leaned into fraud allegations before his reelection bid, warning that August 2020 that "the only way we're going to lose this election is if the election is rigged."
The last part of my rant on how McClanahan dismissed charges against Trump's unconstitutional pressure on GOP GA Gov. Kemp and Secretary of State Raffensperger to flip election results as little more than Trump's "free speech" rights.:
During the call, Trump falsely suggested that Raffensperger could have committed a criminal offense by refusing to overturn the state's election results.Legal experts have suggested that Trump's behavior and demands could have violated state and federal laws.
Note that Trump tried and failed to primary the 2 statewide officials. But by impliciely threatening to sic the Justice Dept on the SoS, Trump undeniably abused his power, an inpeachable offense. Let's point out all but 1 of Trump's 60-odd election challenges were denied in court all the way to SCOTUS; I think the one case where Trump prevailed was not counting late-arriving mailed ballots in PA.I'm particularly angry because McClanahan, normally a federalist/states' rights guy, had no issue with Trump's purely corrupt, self-serving moves to flip election results by jawboning GOP state officials and legislatures, not to mention ordering his own VP to reject Biden clinching state elector slates, hoping to force the election into the House, where red states outnumbered blue states. The Constitution and federal law codifying the twelfth amendment gave Pence no such authority.
