George Washington’s Worst Nightmare Suggests the Founding Fathers Are Scornful of Joe Biden

In one of his characteristically-deranged Truth Social rants, Donald Trump insists that the Founding Fathers are “looking down on Biden with scorn” and “disbelief,” despite the fact that America’s first president made ominous warnings which describe Trump himself with disturbing precision.

Trump railed against the various criminal indictments arrayed against him, complaining that one of the presiding judges isn’t deferential enough to his political campaign, and baselessly blaming President Biden for his overall predicament.

Beyond the transparent appeal to patriotism, Trump’s assertion that the long-dead Founding Fathers would be scornful of Biden is notable for its irony.

Because perhaps the greatest fear of the most important Founding Father, George Washington, was that an unprincipled demagogue like Donald Trump would lead the country to ruin.

Written in 1797, this passage from his farewell address describes Trump and our present circumstances so vividly that one might be tempted to think President Washington had a quill in one hand and a crystal ball in the other:

They serve to organize faction, to give it an

artificial and extraordinary force—to put in the place

of the delegated will of the nation the will of a party;

often a small but artful and enterprising minority of

the community; and, according to the alternate

triumphs of different parties, to make the public

administration the mirror of the ill concerted and

incongruous projects of faction, rather than the organ

of consistent and wholesome plans digested by

common councils and modified by mutual interests.

However combinations or associations of the above

description may now and then answer popular ends,

they are likely, in the course of time and things, to

become potent engines by which cunning, ambitious,

and unprincipled men will be enabled to subvert the

power of the people and to usurp for themselves the

reins of government, destroying afterwards the very

engines which have lifted them to unjust dominion.

This 226-year-old excerpt intimately describes both Trump and the modern iteration of the Republican Party. Keep it in mind the next time a Republican or MAGA supporter suggests Trump is somehow anointed by the Founding Fathers.

Because, to whatever extent it matters, he is their worst nightmare.