President Trump should say ‘you’re fired’ — to himself

In recent days President Trump has engaged in Russian-style purges with major firings at the Department of Defense, which protects American security on the global stage, and the Department of Homeland Security, which protects America at home.

Throughout official Washington today there are repeated rumors — which may or may not be proven true — that Trump plans more purges, of the FBI director and the CIA director — two critical agencies whose mission is to protect America from enemies both foreign and domestic.

Trump has already effectively fired his own COVID-19 task force, which he has reportedly not met with in five months and whose expert advice he either mocks or ignores, while the death toll from the deadly virus has skyrocketed to more than a quarter of a million members of our American family.

In my view, Trump should fire himself, now, today, before he does further damage to American democracy, American health, the American economy, America’s reputation throughout the world, his presidential history, and his future legal and business interests.

In a column last week, I suggested one way for Trump to fire himself: by resigning before his term ends and letting Vice President Mike Pence grant him a presidential pardon for federal offenses.

Here I offer an entirely different way for Trump to fire himself, to terminate his doomed attempts to fix the presidential election he has decisively lost, to recuse himself from making policy involving COVID-19 and let Pence work with the current task force and the transition team of President-elect Joe Biden to devise national policy, and to end his Russian-style purges of his own appointees. 

In reality, on many aspects of the governing responsibilities of the presidency, Trump has already effectively fired himself.  He has largely become a recluse in the White House, abandoning most public appearances of the president, abandoning many of the core governing functions of the presidency, writing angry and ludicrous tweets that border on being little more than a pandemic of lies designed to make excuses and false accusations about an election he has lost.

Privately, many prominent Republicans (who publicly continue to support him) are privately terrified for both patriotic and political reasons by the president’s reckless and arguably unpatriotic actions.

For example, while the coming Georgia runoff Senate elections will determine which party controls the Senate, the two Republican Senate candidates are calling for the resignation of the Republican secretary of state. When Georgia Republicans attack Georgia Republicans about whether to negate the votes of Georgia citizens, the big winners are the two Democratic candidates in the runoff races!

On a more deadly front, Trump’s negligence on COVID-19 policy and his contemptible refusal to allow his administration officials to coordinate with the Biden transition team have led to countless preventable deaths — in the past, today, and in the coming months.

In Afghanistan, when Trump seeks precipitous withdrawals of American troops while negotiations continue, which American military commanders warned against, who wins? The Taliban wins. The terrorists win. The Russians win.

When Trump continues his purges against major national security officials, who wins? The Russians win. The Iranians win. North Korea wins. Terrorists win.

When Trump refuses to cooperate with the Biden transition, as almost all leading medical authorities urge, who wins? The deadly COVID-19 virus wins. Who loses? Doctors lose. Nurses lose. More dead Americans and their families lose. Endangered teachers lose. Student lose. The American economy, harmed by the spread of death and disease, loses. American workers lose. 

Donald Trump should stop firing people he appointed. One way or the other, he should fire himself.

Budowsky was an aide to former Sen. Lloyd Bentsen (D-Texas) and former Rep. Bill Alexander (D-Ark.), who was chief deputy majority whip of the House of Representatives. He holds an LLM in international financial law from the London School of Economics.