Trump Campaign Speeches Sound A Lot Like A Reincarnation of Joe McCarthy

Seventy years ago this nation first experienced the demagoguery of Senator Joe McCarthy who prided himself on indifference to rules and who would recklessly level charges of treason however unfounded at anyone he choose. This was a time of fear of Russian expansion in Europe and its own development of the atomic bomb. McCarthy artfully played on these fears of the country without opposition of members of his own party. He routinely accused government institutions of being filled with communists without any evidence. As a chair of a Senate Committee he required officials of the U.S. Army to appear before his Senate Committee to listen to diatribes against them personally. An exchange between McCarthy and the attorney for the Army, Joseph Welch as the result of McCarthy’s attack that a young attorney in Welch’s law firm was a communist subversive become legendary. Welch in response to McCarthy's attacks said. “Until this moment Senator, I think I never really gauged your cruelty or your recklessness…. Let us not assassinate this lad further. Senator you have done enough. Have you no sense of decency. Sir at long last, have you left no sense of decency? Ultimately this event began a trail by which McCarthy was ultimately censored by the U.S. Senate and his influence waned. Today the term “McCarthyism” is broadly used to mean demagogic, reckless, and unsubstantiated accusations and public attacks on the character or patriotism of political opponents. 

The speeches that I heard from Donald Trump on the 3rd and 4th of July this year could have been written by Joe McCarthy. They were demagogic, abusive, divisive and essentially untrue. As Roy Cohn, who was McCarthy’s chief counsel during the Senate hearings and would later became counsel to the Trump family who introduced Trump to Robert Murdoch, the principle owner of Fox News, there may be some legacy of thought. In any case, as the demagogic and reckless statements of McCarthy led to his downfall, the similar demagogic and reckless assertions by Trump must similarly lead to a denial of his reelection in order to save the Soul of America.