On June 10, John J. Pitney, Jr. — author of the book “Un-American: The Fake Patriotism of Donald J. Trump,” took a look at the Republican Party’s 2016 platform in a Twitter thread. That platform was meant to attack President Barack Obama, but as Pitney’s thread demonstrated, it now reads like an indictment of Trump’s presidency. And journalist Napp Nazworth has responded to Pitney’s thread with a Twitter thread of his own.
On June 10, Pitney tweeted, “The Republican National Committee has decided to rerun its 2016 platform. Some planks will be.... awkward.”
For example, Pitney noted in his thread, the platform opposed “crony capitalism” and a huge national debt. But both are problematic in light of Trump’s obvious preference for his cronies and how much the national debt has increased under his watch.
On top of those things, Pitney wrote, the Republicans of 2016 claimed that the Obama Administration had “abandoned America's friends and rewarded its enemies.” Trump’s critics, of course, have accused his administration of doing exactly that.
Nazworth, in his response to Pitney’s thread, writes, “So the GOP won’t write a new platform, which means the 2016 platform remains, which reads, ‘The current administration has abandoned America’s friends and rewarded its enemies.’” And Nazworth goes on to list some things from the 2016 GOP platform that were meant to attack Obama but are things Trump is guilty of — for example, “The current administration has exceeded its constitutional authority, brazenly and flagrantly violated the separation of powers, sought to divide America into groups and turn citizen against citizen.”
Another one Nazworth quotes is “Our most urgent task as a party is to restore the American people’s faith in their government by electing a president who will enforce duly enacted laws, honor constitutional limits on executive authority, and return credibility to the Oval Office.”
Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden’s campaign is now arguing that Trump has destroyed the Oval Office’s credibility and is vowing to restore it if Biden is elected in November.