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Claude A. Clegg III's book"The Black President: Hope and Fury in the Age of Obama" accomplishes various things. Foremost among them,it serves as an antidote to Donald Trump's gaslighting. Clegg, a history professor from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, first explores how Barack Obama's presidency was experienced by the Black community, an issue central to any accountof the Obama era. In addition, Clegg punctures many of the myths about Obama's administration that have been endlessly repeated by Trump and hisright-wing allies.

When Obama took office in 2009, America was teetering on the verge of economic collapse. The Illinois Democrat'spolicies not only prevented another Great Depression, but saved multiple industries and put the country on a path to long-term prosperity. Trump inherited thateconomy and falsely claimed credit for it, over and over again, during his single term in office. With the unwitting complicity of the media, which obsessedover his every move, Trump then tried to erase Obama's other achievements both as policies and from the public's memory so they would either disappear forever or, if they happened to be popular, get attributed to him. Obama's recordon issues from immigration to foreign policyhas eitherbeendownplayed or revised. His presidency was virtually scandal-free, while Trump's resulted in two impeachmentsfor highly justifiable reasons,a fact no one bothers to mention. This kind of gaslighting can only succeed when thereis a narrative void, one which malicious actors operating in bad faith can takelicense to fill with self-serving revisionism.

Clegg's book is a comprehensive rebuttal to those efforts, and it comes not a moment too soon. While Obama was certainly not a perfect president, he was more successful at pushing through liberal policies than any president of the previoushalf-century. His election in 2008 and subsequent success at governing appeared to forgea viable long-term political coalition, forcing the far right to resort to literal fascist techniques in order to short-circuitan era of likely Democratic dominance. If the story of the early 21st century is going to be told correctly, Obama'sleadership needs to be remembered. He came close enough to dashing the dreams of economic and social reactionaries that theyelected a sub-Paris Hiltonreality TV startrafficking indemonstrable liesas a panicked last effort to alter the course of history.

In so manywords:Obamasucceeded, if not entirely in the way he had hoped. If liberals wantto again capturepolitical momentum, they can't allow the lessons of his presidency to be lost and distorted. I spoke to Clegg recently about his book and the Obama legacy.

This interview has been edited for length, clarity and context.

You talk about making sure that the history of the recent past is understood,because right-wing misinformation might otherwisefill that void. What lies are being told about Obama's presidency?What specific myths do you see being perpetuated that need to be debunked?

There are several.We could start with the original sin of birtherism that is, that this guy was not even born hereand thus was notlegitimate.. Of course, this gave us the rise of Donald Trump within the Republican Party.His ascendancy was based onthat lie. Even though Trump in 2016, right before the election, had this press conference and said, "Oh, I don't believe in this anymore,"hewas still peddling the whole notion that it was illegitimate to have a Black president in the first place. There is a philosophy in the Republican Partytied very closely to the whole idea that it is illegitimate to have a Black president, and that Barack Obamahad no business being in the White House at all.

That's one. Then there is the notion that once Trump comes into office, he can more or less take credit for all the good things that were happening in the economy creating jobs and employment going down and so forth which wasa trend of the Obama presidency, and a trend that was in play long before Donald Trump declared that he was running for office [in 2015], and certainly before he assumedoffice [in 2017]. This notion of a "Trump economy," which was his doing as opposed to this being years in the making over the course of the Obama years,would bethe other Big LiethatTrumppeddles.

There are several others. Immigration is another one, the idea of the Obama administration just having open borders until Trump showed up and planned to build his wall. Of course, we know that Obama was criticized as being the "deporter-in-chief" while he was in the presidency. Hedeported hundreds of thousands of people over thecourse ofhis presidency!As you stated in one of your articles,the immigration issue was never satisfactorily resolved byeither Trump or Obama, but it was not the casethat the Democrats had anopen border whereanyone could come in, and you needed to have Trumpto come in and build a wall and deport people and put them in cages.

Obama was actually harder on the immigration issuethan many in his coalition would have liked. Of course, there isDACA [Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals], whichsoftens some of the rougher edges of his immigration policy, but there is a myththatBarack Obama was soft on immigration. Actually he enforced the lawin ways that many in his own coalition saw as problematic.His thinkingwas that if he was enforcing the law, Republicans would see it and say, "You know, this guy is not soft on immigration. Maybe we can make a deal with himand so forth."But as you know, the Republican Party was trending more and more towarda very hardcore nativismthat made any kind of deal on immigration impossible.

The zone is flooded with allthis misinformation and disinformation about Obama during the course ofthe Trump presidency. I think thatmakes it necessary for historians to reallyget on record with the fact pattern of his presidency.

You already know that I rank Obama very highly among presidents. How do you feel his presidency should be ranked? What would you say were the main narratives of his administration, in terms of his legacy?

I think history is going to be kind to him, and historians are going to be unfavorable to Trump overall. It's funny:People tend not to notice good administration or good management, but they really notice bad management andbad leadership. If you save the country from another Great Depression with the stimulus package,and save the automobile industryand other measures, people don't give you a lot of credit for that. They don't give you a lot of credit for what you prevented from happening, as opposed to giving you the blame if thebad thing actually does happen. I think he has to be given credit along withthose who voted in favor of it in the Congress for the stimulus package, which was around $800 billion. We don't talk in hundredsof billions of dollars anymore, we talk trillions, but $800 billion was a lot of money in 2009. He was able to get that through the Congress. It saved millionsof jobs in the public and private sector. It fortified the social safety netin regard tokeeping public school teachers working, in regard to investments in cleanenergy, in regardto investments in infrastructure.

RELATED:Barack Obama was an awesome president and Democrats shouldn't forget that

It was probably still too small, and it made the countrysort of have to crawlout of the Great Recession, but it was a big deal in regard to keeping the worst of the worst from happening. Itslowed downsome of the home foreclosures.It saved the banks, as noxious as that was to a lot of people.I think it was a necessary thing to savethe banking industry and themortgage loan industry and so forth, even though these guys weresome of the rogues that led us down the path of economic crash in the first place. Of course, the automobile industryhas a lot of other industries adjacent to it,so it's not just the car industry:it's the glass industry, it's the metal industry, the electronics industryand all the other industries that poolinto automobiles. This crisis started during the [George W.]Bush administration, and he did set the ball rolling in regard to an auto bailout during his administration, but it cameto fruition during the Obama administration.

There were several other thingsthat came out of this administration that were positive. There was, of course, capturing and killing Osama bin Laden. There was thewinding down of the Iraq war and some winding down of the Afghanistan war. Obama was a wartime president for the entirety of his years. Bush had been before him, and Trump was as well. Buthe did wind down those wars.

Most of the missed opportunities had to do with him having an unwilling Congress. As you know, they lost the House in 2010and the Senate in 2014. In terms of anything infrastructure, clean energy,a jobs bill,ofcourseallthose things were obstructed. Criminal justice reform, immigration. The missed opportunities and shortcomings of his administration have a lot to do with just having a Republican Congress that waseither outright uncooperative in the House or filibustering everything in the Senate.Even when it came tothe basics of governance, like lifting the debt ceiling so you can pay your bills, there was a lack of cooperation on that scoreto the point that we almost defaulted.

The Affordable Care Act has been more durable than many of us thought it would be. Itsurvived some challenges from the Supreme Court and the Trump administration and so forth. Itis more or less a middle ground between our previous system and a system that may not be single payer, but will approacha systemmore robust than anything that Obama was able to put in place. Maybe a public option ison the table. I don't know about Medicare for All, but I think he set into motionthis idea that the government has an obligation to provide health care and make it accessible to people in the richest country in the world. I think that idea, that health care is a right, has beensort of naturalized by the Obama administration. I thinkan administration in the wake of apandemic is going to push that even further.

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I want todiscuss Joe Biden for a moment because it occurs to me that Biden, like Trump, could never have become president without Obama, but fordifferent reasons. Biden is to Obama what George Bush seniorwas to Ronald Reagan,in that he was the clear successor to apolitical brand. If Biden had not been Obama's vice president, it's absurd to think he would have been nominated in 2020. He would have been anelderly former senator from a moderate state with a moderate record. People talk a lot about how Trump needed Obama to become president, but that's just as much true of Biden,if not more so. I'm curious how you feel about Biden's presidency, as part of the larger Obama story.

Great question!I remember during the campaign that Biden said that he wasan "Obama-Biden Democrat,"which is an interestingcharacterization.It's a very clearappeal to Black voters and the Obama coalition young voters, urban votersand so forth.I think that you're exactly right about that, that he neededObama's brand. Honestly, without it he looks likeall the other people who are running, but even less interestingbecause he's very much a creature of Washington. This is a guy in his late 70s. He'd be the oldest person ever elected. This is his third run for the office. Hewould almost look a bit pathetic, actually, to a lot of people, but for the fact he was aloyaland capable vice president under the presidency of Barack Obama.Obama served for two terms and was the last two-term Democratic president who had convincing margins in the House,in the popular vote and in the Electoral College vote.

At the same time, the Trump presidencywas so out there, in regard to his use and abuse of the office the inside dealing, the nepotism, the Ukraine phone call, the Russian taint that was all over his presidency from 2016 on. So the promise of Biden was also, sort of, "We're going back to the Obama presidency" as you were saying, the third term butI think even further than that,the promise of stability. What's more stable than this guy who's been in the Senate for 20 or 30 years, and thenwas the vice president for eight years?So going back to a certain sort of assumed stability and assumed competencethat Bidenseemed to promise, and that people who were exhausted by the Trump presidencyfeltthey needed.

I think we can't understand Biden's election without the pandemic as well. I think that the country facing a Depression-level unemployment and economic catastrophe, a country that was sicker and poorer than it had been inmany decades, provided an opening.I don't know if Trump is beatable without it.

The way I look at the 2020 election and I'm curious if you agree with me ispretty straightforward. It starts with the fact that Trump made it clear from before the 2016 electionthat he wouldnever accept an electionunless he is the winner. So everything that happened after Election Day was completely predictable, and it didn't matter which Democrat beat him.If Trump lost, he was going to do what he did. It didn't matter who he lost to.

I think in hindsight that's probably true. We couldn't haveactually seen that in 2016.I think if he had lost to Hillary Clinton, we could have actually seen that movie four years earlier. He was heading in that direction, that he could not lose, and if he did lose it was tainted. I don't know if he would have been able to push this as far in 2016, becausein 2020 he had the machinery of the executive branch.

In terms of why Biden won,I think it boils down to several very basic dynamics. The Democratic Party establishment was threatened by Bernie Sanders. Once he started doing well, they were going to unite behind a"moderate" alternative. Biden had tremendous advantages because of his association with Barack Obama's brand, so he won primaries and immediately emerged as the"logical" alternative. So they united behind him and he stopped Sanders. And I completely agree, I think Trumphad the incumbency advantageand had been able to suppress votes through various legislation. Hewould have been reelected withoutCOVID-19.

I thinkthat's a veryreasonable way of looking at things. I think thepandemic is vital to the collapse of Trump's reelection hopes and the emergence of a possible Democratic candidate winning, in this case being Biden. I think the pandemic and the protests in the wake of the killing of George Floyd and so forth, and mobilizing those folks, whether in the South Carolina primary or getting folks to come out and vote in Novemberon the promise thatnot only do you have Obama's guy,but he's saying the right sorts of things to Black voters. Biden says things that Obama himself couldn't get away with saying.I can remember him saying, "The Black community has always had my back and I'm going to have their back." Obama would never say anything like that because of the fearofhow white voters would seeit. He was allergic to the idea thathe might be construed as having a black agenda, or there might be some inside track for AfricanAmericans in his presidency. Headvocated these broad-brush race-neutralpolicies like the Affordable Care Act, raising Pell grants, saving the automobile industry and so forth. He would have never gone to the places that Bidenhas gone to, at least rhetorically, in regard to sayinghe's going tofix the police, and he's going to have the back of African-American voters, and he's going to do these special things forhistorically Black colleges and universities.

I think that, foundationally, you're right in regard to the basic part of the story that without the pandemic,we don't have the collapse of Trump's re-election prospects andBiden being an acceptable choice.I think you're right about Sanders too, insofaras he's the guy that you date, but not the guy that you marry. And I thinkthe Democratic electorate came to that realization in the midst of the pandemic and right beforethe South Carolina primary.At the same time, I thinkBiden was making the right kinds of messaging,especially to the African-American electorate. He was making moves and making commitments that were beyond Obama, really. It'sfunny. He is even furtherleftward, in regard to his embrace ofnot-quite-a-Bernie-Sanders-level ofbig government. It is certainly far beyond whereBarack Obama would have gone in regard to thechild care expenditure, health care, the stimulus packages and so forth.I think a lot of people rate him as acentrist, but he's a bit more left of center. And I think he was pushed a bit more leftby people like Bernie Sanders and so forth, in ways we didn't see Obama being pushed.

Obama,of course, is in a different time. I think Bidenhas turned out to be a bit more than just a third term of Barack Obama, probably not for reasons that he hoped.I think the politics have changed beneath his feet.

In the beginning of your book, you write that you want to discuss how Obama engaged "the aspirations, struggles and disappointments of his most loyal constituency, and how representative segments of Black America engaged, experienced, and interpreted his historic presidency." Which specific examplesdo you consider most salient?

There areseveral things that come to mind. One of the core themes of the book ishis relationship with African Americans, and one of the main arguments of the book is just how diverse "Black America" is. It really comes out during the Obama administration, even though he was, on average, somewhere around 89% job approval among African Americans for the duration of his presidency.(He had 95% of the Black vote in 2008 and 93% in 2012.) There was an array of reactions, experiences andimaginings of the Obama presidency from various coresof the Black community during thattime.

One of the tensions that really showed the diversity of Black opinion of him is this notion of what he owed, as thefirst Black president, to the larger Black community.There were those who would argue, "Well, this guy got 95%of the black vote in 2008, he owesyou.You do something for me and I'll do something for you." Even beyond that, in the face of this economic catastrophe, AfricanAmericans are atthe bottom of it. They suffered the highest poverty rates. They suffered the highest unemployment rates. They have suffered the highest home foreclosure rates. You just go across the board with every metric and statistic. And so the idea was even beyond Obamagetting such a high share of that vote, because they're at the bottom of this economic crisis, he had a moral obligation and the country had a moralobligation to address this most vulnerable group.

So there are those in academia, there are those in the clergy, there are those in the Congressional Black Caucusand others who saythatpolitically, we have a moral obligation to these folks who weathered the Great Recession so poorly.Obama's thinking was thatthestore of white guilt is more or less exhausted in this country,and the argument aboutcorrecting historical racism,historical injustice, systemic injusticeand so forth doesn't sell very well anymore, if it ever did. Soa person who is trying to get a second term, to get re-elected, cannot target remedies towards one particular group, no matter how deserving, no matter how much they've suffered, no matter about argumentsabout historical injustice and discrimination and ongoingsystemicracism and so forth.That just doesn't fly with the majority of the electorate, which is white.

Most of the folks who voted for Obama were white Americans, white voters. So instead oftargeted remedies that were designed to address the particular situation among AfricanAmericans, he instead put in place or advocated for broad-brush policies that on their face were race-neutral. But if you looked under the hood,these universalist policies promisedadditional or extra or disproportionate benefits to the most vulnerable, including African Americans. I think the Affordable Care Act is the quintessential example of that,in which you have a bill that on its face is race-neutral. Wasn't it just trying to get everyone to buy health insurance? There aremany people who itcould cover, and also it expandedMedicaid. But those who benefited most from the expansion of Medicaid andfrom the subsidies wereAfricanAmericans, Hispanics, poor people, working-class peopleand so forth.

Look at expanding Pell Grants.You're helping all students who needed this particular government assistance to afford college. Again, ifyou look under the hood, it's AfricanAmericans and others, working-class people, poor people, who are benefiting from Pell Grants disproportionately. Sothat was hiscounterargument to this notion of targeted remedies. So, yeah, the way AfricanAmericans experience this is asongoing tension over these targeted policies that folks in the Congressional Black Caucus and black academicsand others are saying, "He's not doing enough."And then Obama himself is saying, "I'm the president for the entire United States. And the re-electionmath does not work if in the midst of this economic crisis I'm viewed as picking and choosing winners and losers,especially if I'm picking and choosing winners among my own group. That just doesn't work."

Obama vs. Trump: More of Salon's coverage of these very different presidents:

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Remember the president before Donald Trump? History definitely will - Salon

Two weeks ago, I opined here that I didnt believe former President TrumpDonald TrumpGrant Woods, longtime friend of McCain and former Arizona AG, dies at 67 Super PACs release ad campaign hitting Vance over past comments on Trump Glasgow summit raises stakes for Biden deal MORE would run again in 2024. Boy, did I get some serious push-back from political friends telling me that Trump is a megalomaniac and there is no way he is not going to run in the next presidential election.

My rationale in that piece for his not running was: My hope is that Trumps massive ego will allow enough room for him to contemplate that his name is so toxic to tens of millions of Americans that his nomination might instigate massive civil unrest. If Trump does believe in our nation, as he says he does, then he should know it would be much better to sit out the election and try to use his influence to help the partys nominee.

One of my friends, who had a high-level political career, openly laughed in my face when I offered up that opinion. He, in turn, gave me a definition of a megalomaniac that he had just looked up on his phone: A megalomaniac is a pathological egotist that is, someone with a psychological disorder with symptoms like delusions of grandeur and an obsession with power.

Trump, my friend continued over a coffee, is the personification of that definition. He doesnt care if hes toxic to tens of millions of voters or who turns out in the streets to protest his run. Do you believe his ego actually allows him to logically think things through? Look at Arizona. Look at Georgia.

By Arizona my friend meant that Trump knew he had to win the state in 2020 and he also knew that the late Sen. John McCainJohn Sidney McCainGrant Woods, longtime friend of McCain and former Arizona AG, dies at 67 Will Trump choose megalomania over country? Trump attacks Meghan McCain and her family MORE, a decorated war hero, was seen as the patron saint of the state to hundreds of thousands of voters. Trump knew that if he continued to malign and insult McCain, he would turn off a great many of those voters and yet, his unchecked ego could not stop itself. Consequently, he proceeded to lose the state and its 11 electoral votes by fewer than 11,000 votes out of over 3.3 million cast.

Next, we come to Georgia. Out of almost 5 million votes cast, Trump lost the state and its 16 electoral votes by just under 12,000 votes. Gee, Ill bet he secretly wishes he hadnt demonized mail-in voting after that result. Then, after he did lose the state, he also helped flush the chances of the two Republican candidates for the U.S. Senate down the toilet.

Trump continually cried fraud while smearing Republican leaders in the state. If you were looking for a formula to depress the Republican vote, that would be one. And then, quite surreally, some of Trumps allies were urging Georgia Republicans not to vote in the Senate runoff elections elections that would determine which party would control the Senate come 2021.

No one, perhaps, was surprised to note that approximately 250,000 fewer Republicans voted in the Senate runoffs than in the general election. When we look at the final tally of those special elections and see that Sen. Jon OssoffJon OssoffWill Trump choose megalomania over country? How 'Buy American', other pro-US policies can help advocates pass ambitious climate policies Democrats jostle over health care priorities for scaled-back package MORE (D-Ga.) beat former Sen. David PerdueDavid PerdueWill Trump choose megalomania over country? I voted for Trump in 2020 he proved to be the ultimate RINO in 2021 Draft Georgia congressional lines target McBath, shore up Bourdeaux MORE (R-Ga.) by just 55,000 votes and Sen. Raphael WarnockRaphael WarnockWill Trump choose megalomania over country? Senate Democrats call for diversity among new Federal Reserve Bank presidents On The Money Democrats eye tough choices as deadline looms MORE (D-Ga.) beat former Sen. Kelly LoefflerKelly LoefflerWill Trump choose megalomania over country? I voted for Trump in 2020 he proved to be the ultimate RINO in 2021 Draft Georgia congressional lines target McBath, shore up Bourdeaux MORE (R-Ga.) by about 93,000 votes, we can safely surmise that Trump and his allies hit another level of stupid when it comes to politics.

As my friend offered to bet me that Trump will definitely run again in 2024 a bet I cowardly declined he threw in one more bit of trivia atop the pathological egotist pile: The letters for Trumps MAGA acronym are all included in megalomaniac.

Its amusing, to be sure, in a scary kind of way. All of that said, I still dont believe Trump will run for president in 2024. While the push-back I took may have helped to convince me that Trump is never going to put our country before his ego, I do believe that same ego along with his advancing age (hell turn 78 in June 2024) will force him to decline another run.

That ego might tell him: At 78 years old, we dont need a humiliating loss heaped upon us because now 90 million Democratic voters came out to crush us, while 30 million fewer Republicans voted for us in 2020 because of Trump fatigue. No, much better to not run and to continue to claim voter fraud happened in 2020 while we ride off into a Mar-a-Lago sunset.

In my estimation, Donald Trump would be wise to listen to the voice of that ego.

Douglas MacKinnon, a political and communications consultant, was a writer in the White House for Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush, and former special assistant for policy and communications at the Pentagon during the last three years of the Bush administration.

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Will Trump choose megalomania over country? | TheHill - The Hill

When the House of Representatives select committee on the Jan. 6 assault on the U.S. Capitol issued subpoenas to aides and confidantes of Donald TrumpDonald TrumpGrant Woods, longtime friend of McCain and former Arizona AG, dies at 67 Super PACs release ad campaign hitting Vance over past comments on Trump Glasgow summit raises stakes for Biden deal MORE to testify and provide documents, the former president promised defiance on executive privilege and other grounds.

Neither English common law nor the U.S. Constitution address the executives authority to withhold information from legislatures, the courts, or the public. The Eisenhower administration (which invoked executive privilege a record 44 times) was the first to use the phrase. The Supreme Court formally codified it (while limiting its scope) in United States v. Nixon (1972).

That said, claims of executive privilege are as old as the United States.In 1792, George Washington refused to supply Congress with documents related to a disastrous military campaign against Native Americans. Thomas Jefferson refused to comply with a subpoena to testify at the trial of former vice president Aaron Burr in 1804. Many of their successors followed suit.

These days, executive privilege is being invoked not to promote efficiency, protect confidentiality, and enhance national security, but to delay and thereby deny justice. Abuses of a doctrine that is at best a necessary evil reveal that our system of checks and balances, once the envy of the world, is on life support.

To be sure, the Justice Departments Office of Legal Counsel has decreed that the doctrine of executive privilege should not be employed to shield documents which contain evidence of criminal or unethical conduct by agency officials. The DOJ has recently argued that Trumps use of law enforcement officials and litigation to advance his personal political interests with respect to the results of the 2020 presidential election constitute an exceptional circumstance, justifying a departure from its normal practice of protecting internal deliberations.The Biden White House has authorized the National Archives to supply relevant documents to the select committee. Federal agencies are cooperating with the select committee.

Nonetheless, the former president knows that because litigation in the United States is long and life is short, he can win while losing by using roadmaps provided by the Supreme Court. Heres how:

In Nixon v. Administrator of General Services (1977) the Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of the Presidential Recordings and Preservation Act,which authorized the GSA to assume custody of Nixons presidential material (42 million documents and 880 tape recordings) and make them available for use in judicial proceedings. The court indicated, however, that a former president may also be heard on his or her right to invoke executive privilege (albeit with less deference than that given to the incumbent president), a ruling Trump is certain to exploit.

In Trump v. Mazars (2020), a case involving subpoenas to the Trump Organizations accounting firm, the court claimed that in addition to having a valid legislative purpose, congressional inquiries into behavior in the executive branch must show that other sourcescannot provide the relevant information or issue subpoenas that are not broader than reasonably necessary to achieve the objective and must ensure that the legislative purpose is detailed and substantive. These requirements give Team Trump a lot to contest.

The DOJ is likely to pursue criminal contempt charges against Trump aides and confidantes who refused to obey congressional subpoenas (including Steve BannonStephen (Steve) Kevin BannonJudge to hear Trump's case against Jan. 6 committee in November Poll: Majority of voters view Jan. 6 probe through political lens Biden: Comment that DOJ should prosecute those who defy subpoenas 'not appropriate' MORE, who has the most dubious claim of executive privilege, since he was not serving in the executive branch in 2020). Some or all of theloyalists, however, will surely contest the charges in court and draw the process out for as long as possible.If convicted, they may well accept punishment for a misdemeanor (a $1,000 fine and 1-12 months in prison) rather than testify.

The clock is ticking.Rep. Bennie ThompsonBennie Gordon ThompsonSunday shows preview: CDC signs off on 'mix and match' vaccine boosters The Hill's 12:30 Report - Presented by Altria - Manchin heatedly dismisses rumors of leaving Democratic Party Bannon eyed as key link between White House, Jan. 6 riot MORE (D-Miss.), chair of the select committee, plans to issue a report in the spring of 2022. More important, if the midterm elections in November 2022 result in Republican control of the House of Representatives, Congressional investigations of the Jan. 6 insurrection will end.

In an essay in The New Republic, Timothy Noah candidly, if crudely, expressed his concern about the absence of checks on presidential power amidst political polarization and public apathy: If the crimes of Donald Trump [who has claimed that Article II of the Constitution gives him a right to do whatever I want] dont prompt Americans to call bullshit on executive privilege, nothing will.

Glenn C. Altschuler is the Thomas and Dorothy Litwin Professor of American Studies at Cornell University. He is the co-author (with Stuart Blumin) of "Rude Republic: Americans and Their Politics in the Nineteenth Century."

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Letter to the editor: Delighting in Donald Trump's eventual demise - The Bozeman Daily Chronicle

GOP gubernatorial candidate Gregg Youngkin (L), Former President Donald Trump (R). Getty Images

Virginia GOP gubernatorial candidate Glenn Youngkin has attempted to distance himself from Donald Trump.

The Democratic National Committee has mocked Trump about this by flying a plane with a banner near Mar-a-Lago.

The Virginia governor race between Youngkin and Terry McAuliffe is currently neck-in-neck.

Democrats have been mocking Donald Trump over gubernatorial candidate Glenn Youngkin's attempts to distance himself from the former president.

Republican Glenn Youngkin is currently running for governor in Virginia against former Democratic Gov. Terry McAuliffe, who held the position from 2014-2018.

Although Trump has endorsed Youngkin and called him a "great gentleman," the Republican candidate has subtly tried to disassociate himself from the former president.

The Democratic National Committee flew a plane near Trump's Florida resort Mar-a-Lago, carrying a banner that read, "why won't Youngkin let Trump campaign in VA?"

They also erected a billboard in Florida to highlight the former president's endorsement of Youngkin, believing that associating him with Trump will damage his chances in the November 2 election.

On Thursday, Youngkin criticized attendees of a recent GOP "Take Back Virginia" rally who pledged allegiance to a flag that was said to have been flown on January 6 near the Capitol.

"It is weird and wrong to pledge allegiance to a flag connected to January 6," Youngkin said. "As I have said many times before, the violence that occurred on January 6 was sickening and wrong."

Former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon appeared at the rally and Donald Trump called in on a phone line.

Trump endorsed Youngkin on the call and said, "We've got to get him in. I know Terry McAuliffe very well and he was a lousy governor."

On Thursday, Youngkin avoided answering questions about whether he wanted Trump to campaign for him.

"Anybody who calls me a good man, I so appreciate it, including President Trump," he eventually replied, according to The Hill.

Story continues

The Republican candidate has also previously acknowledged Joe Biden's presidential victory in 2020, putting him at odds with Donald Trump and his allies, who continue to make baseless claims about the election being fraudulent.

Youngkin's decision to distance himself from Trump is likely because of the former president's unpopularity in the state.

Democrats had growing success in Virginia during the Trump presidency. In the 2017 governor race, Democratic Ralph Northam defeated the Republican nominee by the largest margin for a Democrat since 1985.

The party then took full control of the state legislature in 2019, and Joe Biden won the state with a solid margin in the 2020 presidential election.

Youngkin is likely aware that the associations with Trump will not help his chances of winning the race, which according to recent polls, is currently neck-and-neck.

Glenn Youngkin, a former private equity executive and first-time political candidate, has been able to unite the party's business class and its dominant Trump wing, Insider's John L. Dorman recently reported.

Youngkin's approach, along with Biden's sagging ratings, has made the Virginia election very competitive.

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Democrats mock Donald Trump over Virginia governor race ...