Former U.S. attorney: Trump tried his best to break democracy and failed

Former U.S. Attorney Joyce White Vance said Tuesday that for all his threats to democracy, President Donald Trump has revealed something about it.

Speaking at NewSouth Bookstore in Montgomery to promote her book “Giving Up Is Unforgivable: A Manual for Keeping a Democracy,” Vance said that she worried after Trump’s election because so many people said “that they were ready to give up.”

“Folks were devastated and said, ‘I am just going to leave and whatever happens, happens,’” she said. “And to me, that felt like the worst possible outcome for our country; the idea of Donald Trump with no guardrails.”

But Vance said that what she saw was the pushback.

“What Donald Trump showed me during his first 100 days in office was precisely how resilient the rule of law and our democracy really is, because he tried his best to break us; and he failed,” Vance said during the discussion.

For more than 40 minutes, Vance took questions and engaged in conversation with her colleague at the University of Alabama law school Rep. Chris England, D-Tuscaloosa, on issues such as voter suppression, the U.S. Supreme Court and the Trump administration’s efforts to remake federal institutions.

Both England and Vance provided the audience with a rundown of the actions of the Trump administration so far.

“The assault on the concept of democracy was ferocious,” England told the crowd. “It was constant. It was almost to the point that it was intentional, as if they were trying to break it. When you break something, the intent is so that you cannot fix it.”

Among them is the president’s executive orders to deny government contracts and prevent attorneys from having access to government buildings for law firms that he believed tried to undermine him.

“For every law firm, there were a couple of them that, when Trump issued executive orders making it tough for them to keep doing business, a couple of those law firms bent the knee, most of them didn’t,” Vance said. “And they went to court. Every law firm that went to court is winning.”

Trump has also refashioned the executive branch in his image. He effectively abolished USAID and refused to distribute the funds his administration was allotted to fund government programs, which Congress largely shrugged off.

“Look, I had low expectations for Republicans in Congress, and they have met every one of those low expectations,” Vance said. “But what didn’t foresee was that Congress would be willing to cede its power to the president. I thought they would have a little of dignity and self-respect when it came to things like the power of the purse.”

Vance and England also referred to the tariffs that Trump tried to impose, a tax on goods that are imported to the country, throughout his second term. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled last month that he did not have the authority to levy them.

“The Supreme Court has finally responded in kind and said, ‘No, the Constitution gives you power and the Congress power, and you can’t just usurp theirs,’” Vance said.

Vance also cited Maine residents who turned up for a protest as an inspiration.

“It was like six degrees, and there were a couple of hundred people out protesting, signs, coats, hats, and I talked to some folks who said they did that every week,” Vance said. “I thought, ‘If they can come out in seven-degree weather every week in a teeny tiny town and protest, then there is not really anything that we can’t do.”

To begin with, Vance said that people need to encourage others to vote, particularly people who are younger who do not typically exercise their right to the ballot box.

“We are all going to go out and vote for Doug (Jones),” Vance said. “The question is what are our 18-30-year-old children and family members and friends going to do.”

She then encouraged people to discuss the issues with people who they typically do not agree with and listen to their problems.

“The people that you know in your world, they are not going to trust some talking head on television,” Vance said. “They are going to trust their cousin, or their next-door neighbor, or someone they see at the grocery store. And those conversations, they are weird, they are tough to have sometimes. But I try never to miss an opportunity.”

England also said that everyone has a responsibility to listen to others who disagree.

“It takes not only engaging with conversations that would normally be uncomfortable, but also engaging in conversations that make you uncomfortable,” he said.

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