‘It Wasn’t Me’: Donald Trump and the Art of the Denial | Opinion

President Ronald Reagan was a master of the maxim. One of his favorites was that:

“We must reject the idea that every time a law’s broken, society is guilty rather than the lawbreaker. It is time to restore the American precept that each individual is accountable for his actions.”

The Republican Party Reagan led was once dedicated to principles like this and things like law and order. But it’s current leader, former President Donald Trump, couldn’t be more unlike Reagan and the Republicans of just a few years ago. In addition to attacking American law enforcement agencies like the FBI, in court Trump has refused to accept any responsibility for things he has been accused of and even things he has been found guilty of.

Instead of being the leader of a party of personal responsibility, Trump leads a right-wing MOPE brigade in America—a label often unkindly applied to the Irish— but all too fitting for Trump. He is apparently among the “Most Oppressed People Ever.” Trump’s claims of victimization in court have at least been consistent—nothing is ever his fault:

We can suppose that some of Trump’s most ardent supporters might believe Trump as he mopes around posing in court as the victim of a vast conspiracy by Democrats who want to jail him, but how then can they explain that he has done the same thing about every other failure he has ever had:

• Trump was not responsible for cultivating criminals in his inner circle, including Michael Flynn, Steve Bannon, Roger Stone, Paul Manafort, Michael Cohen, Rick Gates, George Nader, and George Papadopoulos.

Ronald Reagan must be spinning in his grave to be followed by this. Reagan didn’t like whiners. Trump, on the other hand, proudly claimed to CNN, “I do whine because I want to win, and I’m not happy about not winning, and I am a whiner, and I keep whining and whining until I win.”

Most dangerously, Trump is already whining about losing the 2024 election, and getting ready to play the victim again, variously trying out blaming ungrateful Jews, incompetent staff, and fraudulent Democrats. The man lives in a moral vacuum in which all sense of responsibility has been sucked out. He floats in a bubble of entitlement and blame. It is now up to the American people. They can inflate it or burst it.

Thomas G. Moukawsher is a former Connecticut complex litigation judge and a former co-chair of the American Bar Association Committee on Employee Benefits. He is the author of the new book, The Common Flaw: Needless Complexity in the Courts and 50 Ways to Reduce It.

The views expressed in this article are the writer’s own.