What Mr. Trump taught me about democracy 66%
By James Speyer87%
8/2/2026, 2:00:23 AM
Topics: US Politics
BS Summary: This article contains 27 faulty reasoning types, including Appeal to Emotion, Biased Writer Voice, and Politically Left Leaning Bias, with Negativity Bias as the most egregious example at 23.3% saturation with 143 hits. Analysis detected 1,098 faulty-reasoning hits from 614 analyzed words, generating a BS Score of 52.9% and a BS Rank of 66% (9,495 of 27,714 articles). This article is worse (more manipulative) than 65.70% of the article peer group.
On Jan.
6, 2021, I watched in horror and disbelief as a mob of Donald Trump’s supporters hopped-up on his lies about a stolen election, ransacked the Capitol, viciously attacked Capitol police, and forced members of Congress of both parties to hide in fear for their lives.
The attack forced the postponement of the certification of Joe Biden as the 46th president of the United States.
I grew up understanding that one of the things that made our democracy the envy of the world was our unbroken string of peaceful transfers of power — a string that began with George Washington ceding authority to John Adams in 1797.
The attack on the Capitol ended that unparalleled 224-year streak.
Like many, I wept for our country that day.
The peaceful transfer of power was not something that I had previously given much thought to.
It was just assumed that we would always have peaceful transfers — that’s how it worked in America.
Jan. 6 violently disabused me of that notion.
But that awful day made me appreciate how precious, fragile, and remarkable that streak really was.
It represented a centuries-old collective commitment to resolving our political differences peacefully — an essential element of a functioning democracy.
So in a weird but quite direct way, I have Trump to thank for that appreciation.
Little did I know that in the following years, in the same back-handed way, Trump would be responsible for an invigorated understanding of much of what makes our country special and worth fighting for.
Take the rule of law — the principle that we are a nation of laws, not men, and no man is above the law.
It is the cornerstone of our democracy, and is what separates us from dictatorship.
The rule of law is so fundamental to the American enterprise, so ingrained in our society, that most people never gave it a second thought.
Thinking about it would be like wondering if the sun would come up tomorrow.
It was just…there, a given, an immutable fact of living in the United States.
Until, suddenly and jarringly, it wasn’t.
Trump is now waging the boldest, most comprehensive attack on the rule of law in the history of our country.
In countless ways, he has displayed his contempt for it.
He has declared his right to “terminate” the Constitution and announced that “He who saves his Country does not violate any Law.”
The masked thugs of ICE murder people in broad daylight with no accountability.
His administration imprisons people and deports them without the due process guaranteed by the Constitution.
He has issued unconstitutional executive orders aimed at preventing lawyers — the traditional guardians of the rule of law — from challenging his conduct.
As a federal judge recently wrote, his administration has “likely violated more court orders in January 2026 than some federal agencies have violated in their entire existence.”
He had his attorney general purport to grant him and his family total immunity for all past misconduct — the very definition of being above the law.
I could go on (and on), but you get the point.
As a result, the rule of law is no longer an abstract concept that we can afford to take for granted.
It is instead urgently top of mind for anyone who cares about our democracy.
Ironically, Trump’s depredations have given us a deeper regard for what really makes America great.
In the words of the brilliant Joni Mitchell, “Don’t it always seem to go that you don’t know what you’ve got til it’s gone?”
Speyer is a lawyer and a volunteer for Lawyers Defending American Democracy.
Speakers
2speakers7.5%attributed speech568writer words
Selected voice
100%flagged-word coverageJoni Mitchell
24 attributed words52% of attributed speech77% writer coverage
Attribution is sentence-level. Pattern percentages are calculated only from words assigned to that voice.
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Analysis
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