"The most destructive, vile, corrupt man ever to darken America’s presidency" (Rick Wilson)

The most destructive, vile, corrupt man ever to darken America’s presidency has left the White House for the last time. 

He has disgraced himself, the office, his oath, and the nation in ways more profound and lasting than we can account. 

His incompetence, malfeasance, and evil shouldn’t be laughed off as narcissism or ignorance. 

He was surrounded by corrupt, wicked, cruel counselors and reveled in it. 

Emerson once said of Lincoln’s presidency “an institution is the lengthened shadow of a man.” He was right. 

Trump’s cruelty, division, insurrection, treason and corruption are unrivaled in history. 

He is the nadir of presidential leadership. 

He was enabled by the weak, the venal, the desperate, and the compromised. It was empowered by voices normalizing and rationalizing his evils. 

His abuse of power should come as no surprise. There are no better angels in Donald Trump’s nature. There was never a bottom. There was never any maturation, self-reflection, or a “day he became president.” It would always end this way. 

A life free of consequence, accountability, justice, or moral reckonings put a man in charge of this nation with no guiderails, no boundaries, no ethical compass. The American carnage from his inaugural address was real, and he embodied every iota of it. 

The claque of his sycophants will haunt us for a generation. They will try to clean up his philosophy and embody his authoritarianism while wearing better suits and waving credentials from an Ivy. His cult will await the second coming and his spawn will run for office.