Trump’s ‘expletive deleted’ moment

Back in early 1974, President Richard Nixon was waist deep in the rising tide of Watergate. The Senate had subpoenaed Nixon’s tapes, on which he secretly recorded conversations in the Oval Office.

The president countered by releasing heavily-edited transcriptions. He went on national TV and insisted that the versions in the loose-leaf notebooks on the table next to his desk cleared him of any wrongdoing or collusion to obstruct justice.

{mosads}Not surprisingly, political and public reaction divided along party lines. Republicans continued to insist that the president was an honorable man, had done nothing wrong, and the efforts to attack him were nothing more than a partisan witch hunt.

But, the political ground was already beginning to shift under Nixon. Ironically, a seemingly innocuous decision by Nixon to edit out profane words and ethnic and racial slurs from the transcriptions of the tapes proved to be at least as damaging as any alleged crime. 

When Nixon supporters began reading the expurgated transcripts their jaws dropped when they saw the phrase “expletive deleted” used repeatedly. I vividly recall one acquaintance who was a good Christian, solid conservative Republican, and staunch Nixon supporter. She never once criticized the president – until she saw all those “expletives deleted.”

Many members of Nixon’s base had similar reactions. Years later, Associated Press reporter Mike Feinsilber suggested that the edited tapes did irreparable damage to Nixon’s reputation because they exposed him “as a vengeful schemer — rambling, undisciplined, mean-spirited and bigoted.”

The publication of the edited tapes threw open the floodgates and demands for the actual tapes continued to rise. Just a few months later, the Supreme Court ordered the president to turn over the tapes. With impeachment and conviction all but certain, Nixon resigned the presidency on August 9, 1974.

President Trump’s “expletive deleted” moment may have just occurred. The troubling images of innocent children being separated from parents who illegally entered the country shook viewers both in America and abroad.

Many Trump supporters began having second thoughts about their guy just as Nixon’s base reevaluated him after they saw “expletive deleted” sprinkled throughout the transcripts. In both cases, the curtain was drawn back, revealing the true character of the man. President Trump appeared to be more interested in politics than people. He seemed willing to do anything to win points with his base, even if it meant making babies and toddlers cry.

Only time will tell if Trump has finally crossed over the line of what is acceptable behavior for an American president. Too many times before, he has gotten away with blatant lies and outrageous insults about women, African Americans, Hispanics, Muslims, Democrats, journalists, and seemingly anyone who disagrees with him.

Perhaps the difference this time is it’s harder for his supporters to rationalize that Trump was just joking. Seeing the results of the president’s callous “zero tolerance policy” on babies, toddlers, and families offers a disturbing glimpse of the character or lack thereof of the man who ordered that policy.

If Trump’s actions recall Richard Nixon’s character defects, they also remind us of one of the most famous demagogues in American history — Sen. Joseph McCarthy (R-Wis.). During the early 1950s, McCarthy ruined numerous lives and careers with a torrent of baseless attacks that accused innocent Americans of being Communists. 

McCarthy’s true character was finally exposed during the Army-McCarthy hearings televised live in 1954. When Special Counsel for the Army Joseph Welch pressed McCarthy and his legislative aide Roy Cohn (who later became a young Donald Trump’s mentor) about their unsubstantiated allegations of Communists in the army. McCarthy struck back with fury. 

Trying to deflect attention away from his own actions, the unscrupulous senator charged that a young lawyer in Welch’s law firm was a Communist.

Welch quickly came to his colleague’s defense, pointing out that there was no solid evidence to support McCarthy’s scurrilous claim. Welch then posed a question that eviscerated McCarthy’s character in one moment. “Have you no sense of decency sir, at long last?” Welch demanded of McCarthy. “Have you left no sense of decency?” 

Just as the true characters of Joseph McCarthy and Richard Nixon were revealed in a flash, the moment of truth for Donald Trump may have occurred on America’s southern border.

Americans won’t soon forget the stories about an infant being ripped away from its mother’s breast, toddlers crying in fear, and families separated because of Trump’s “zero tolerance” policy. We may have witnessed the moment that Americans saw the real Trump for the first time. If so, Trump may find it difficult if not impossible to repair the political damage done to his image and administration. Over time that could erode his support and lead to Republican defeats in 2018 and 2020. 

Of course, in the past two years, Trump has demonstrated an amazing ability to overcome political missteps that would have ended the careers of less-talented politicians. Arguably, what happened recently with the separation of immigrant families could wind up just another Charlie Brown, Lucy, and the football moment, and nothing will change.

Then again, this latest incident might produce a very different result because it involves children. This time, the young Charlie Brown might kick that political football out of sight. Possibly, we are witnessing Trump’s [expletive deleted] moment.

Richard Aquila is a professor emeritus of history at Penn State University and an expert on U.S. social and cultural history. His latest book is “Let’s Rock: How 1950s America Created Elvis and the Rock & Roll Craze” (2016).