Mark Green - Wrecking America: How Trumps Lawbreaking and Lies Betray All

Copyright 2019, 2020 by Ralph Nader and Mark Green Portions of this book were previously published as Fake President .

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available on file.

Cover design by Brian Peterson

Cover photo credit: Getty Images

ISBN: 978-1-5107-6371-5

Ebook ISBN 978-1-5107-6442-2

Printed in the United States of America

This book is dedicated to Moses Gery Greenborn February 7, 2019and to all children who deserve lives of decency and justice.

Its also dedicated to Trump-leaning voters who should do some political homework to discover how hes harming American families hoping for a better future.

CONTENTS

Essay by Ralph Nader:
Donald Trump vs. Our Democracy

Your Own Bullshit Detector:
21 Favorite Trump Tricks to Distract, Deflect, Deceive

Photo by Chris McGrath/Getty Images

AUTHORS NOTE & ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

W e two have worked together for nearly 50 years on some 10 books and scores of causes.

Disgusted by Donald Trumps open war on truth and law in late 2018, we decided to collaborate on a Trump Bullshit Detector for the coming 2020 election. Our core premises: he is completely unfit to be President of the United States, and the 2020 election, as Jefferson said of the 1800 election, would fix our national character and determine whether Republicanism or aristocracy would prevail.

A year later, Fake President went into production the month when House Democrats had announced a formal Inquiry into possible Articles of Impeachment, triggered by his blatant effort to bribe Ukraine to find dirt on Joe Biden. Wrecking America (including material from its prequel) went to print after Trump sent paramilitary troops into Portland; COVID-19 spiked to new highs in Red states; major media disclosed that Putin had put a bounty on the heads of US troops in Afghanistan, which Trump ignored; and a politically desperate president began predicting a rigged election due to lawful mail-in ballots, threatening to delay, discredit, or steal the November election.

To frame our chronology another wayFake President began when it was considered bad form to openly call him a liar or fascist, American-style, while Wrecking America concluded when it was naive not to.

While we each worked on all sections, Ralphs focus was on the introductory Essay and Epilogue and Marks on the Bullshit Detector and . We worked with a small team of excellent researchers/writersDouglas Grant and Chris Gelardi primarily, with supplemental research and editing from Harut Minasian and Deni Frand (who moonlights as Marks wife).

Wrecking America would not exist without the talent and devotion of publisher/agent Esther Margolis, whom we met at Bantam Books in 1972 while publishing our No. 1 bestselling Who Runs Congress?, and the very dynamic team at Skyhorse Publishingespecially publisher Tony Lyons, editor Julie Ganz and publicity director Kathleen Schmidt. Also, without John Richards assistance throughout, this volume wouldnt have existed. Were grateful to all.

Unless otherwise noted, quotes are straight from the mouth (or tweet) of Donald Trump.

This small volume is illustrative but not exhaustive given the previously unfathomable number of lies and scandals that have pockmarked his presidency. For more encyclopedic compilations, please see Glenn Kesslers Fact-Checker collection in the Washington Postand especially his book, Donald Trump and His Assault on Truth; Amy Siskinds The List; and Daniel Dales continuing chronology in the Toronto Star.

If youd like to add to your library of knowledge about this unpresidented man, we suggest that you look at two early, probing books: David Cay Johnstons The Making of Donald Trump and Tim OBriens TrumpNation.

More recently, theres Bob Woodwards Fear: Trump in the White House; David Corn & Michael Isikoffs Russian Roulette; Michael Wolffs Fire and Fury; David Cay Johnstons Its Even Worse than You Think ; David Frums Trumpocracy; Rick Wilsons Everything Trump Touches Dies; Cliff Simss A Team of Vipers ; Steve Kornackis The Red and the Blue; Greg Sargents An Uncivil War: Taking Back our Democracy ; Laurence Tribe and Joshua Matzs To End a Presidency; Peter Wehners The Death of Politics ; and Brian Klaass The Despots Apprentice: Donald Trumps Attack on Democracy.

And the past few months, these too are valuable additions to the Trump library: Brian Stelters HOAX: Donald Trump, Fox News, and the Dangerous Distortion of the Truth; Stuart Stevenss It Was All a Lie; Mary Trumps Too Much and Never Enough; Marsha Gessens Surviving Autocracy; Norman Eisens A Case for the American People; Andrew Hackers Downfall; Anne Applebaums Twilight of Democracy.

And at the risk of being understood, Mark Green read biographies of Lenin, Hitler, and Mussolini during this books gestation to learn how the worst authoritarians of the past century abused their power.

Mark Green
Ralph Nader
August 1, 2020

PROLOGUE: FAKING IT

H aving won over 270 electoral college votes in 2016 (despite losing the popular vote by nearly three million), Donald J. Trump is of course the lawfully selected president of the United States... yet still a fake president engaged in an audacious effort to wreck the country in order to stay in power.

FAKE: Untrustworthy... deceptive... false to persons due allegiance, especially to a nation or superior.

American Heritage Dictionary

Exactly a century ago, Woodrow Wilson was also a president in form but not function because a disabling stroke led his wife Edith to run the government behind the scenes during his final 18 months in office.

Trump similarly has the trappings of office. But due to a disabling messianic narcissism that warps his every decisionas well as an unusual lack of knowledge, integrity, empathy, and stabilityhe cant perform many of the duties of office that the Constitution anticipated.

Staff sometimes remove papers from his desk or refuse orders they consider untenable or unconstitutional in the hope that he might neglect to follow up. Indifferent to the separation of powers, he repeatedly obstructs justice and intervenes in judicial proceedings based on partisan whim. He makes rash decisions that cause irreparable damage to Americans for decades in order to please Foxs prime-time lineup. He feeds on and fuels hatred. He erupts with a daily lava of lies that bury truth and progress.