Some of you may have heard about Senator Joseph McCarthy and the Red Scare. McCarthy, from my home state of Wisconsin, was the architect. In the 1950s, he went around accusing anyone he didn’t like of being a Communist, terrorizing people, and ruining lives and careers.
Eventually, the Army hired a Boston lawyer, Joseph Welch, to respond to one of McCarthy’s accusations. During a nationally televised hearing, McCarthy accused one of Welch’s attorneys of being a Communist. And in that moment, Welch famously replied:
“Until this moment, Senator, I think I never really gauged your cruelty or your recklessness.”
When McCarthy tried to speak again, Welch added:
“Let’s not assassinate this lad further, Senator. You have done enough. Have you no sense of decency?”1
It was a turning point. A moment when decency still mattered. Overnight, McCarthy lost popularity. He was censured by the Senate, ostracized by his own party, ignored by the press, and three years later, he died a broken man.
That was 1954. Today? We no longer have a sense of shame or decency when it comes to our elected officials. That might sound obvious, but it still needs to be said.
This comes up for me because of what happened last Friday in Minnesota.
State Representative Melissa Hortman, her husband Mark, and their service dog Gilbert, who were assassinated, lay in state in the rotunda of the Minnesota Capitol. It was a political killing in the United States, and another lawmaker and his wife were also targeted and seriously injured.
And yet, the President of the United States, who is supposed to act on behalf of the people, refused to call the Governor of Minnesota. He did not extend condolences on behalf of the American people. He didn’t have to do it for himself. But he could have spoken for the country.
He didn’t.
He didn’t go.
He didn’t even acknowledge the service.
You know who did?
Joe Biden, the president people love to call too old, too confused, too infirm, found his way to Minnesota. Vice President Kamala Harris was there too. They sat together and at one point, quietly held hands, because they still have what this moment demands:2
A sense of decency.
Our culture loves absolutes. We either love everything about a person or hate everything about them. But being human means complexity. And even amid all our debates, we should be able to agree: a president who refuses to call when elected officials are assassinated, who doesn’t care about a little dog named Gilbert who also lay in state—that reveals something deeply depraved.
And what did Donald Trump do instead?
He flew to Florida to visit and take pictures at his so-called “alligator prison,” a facility imagined for people deemed “illegally” in the U.S., a place surrounded by literal alligators. They joked about it. They laughed. They talked about how convenient it would be to just put people on planes and fly them straight there.3
That scene pulled something up in me.
There are stories passed down in Black American communities, especially in the South, about how enslaved children, Black babies, were used as alligator bait. We don’t have photographs. We don’t have confirmation. But we have the stories.4
Hmm, America, have you ever had any decency?
So yes, there was something ancient and revolting about watching Trump stage that moment. To see him revel in the idea of people being hunted, devoured. To watch him mock the possibility of escape with laughter, while somewhere in our shared history, children were literally sacrificed as bait.
He had time to do that.
But no time to honor a woman, her husband, and a dog, public servants who gave their lives for their state and, by extension, their country.
But President Biden and Vice President Harris had the time.
Not because it earned them anything.
Not because they were campaigning.
But because they have:
Decency.
Say what you want about Joe Biden’s faculties, his decency isn’t gone.
Trump, it seems, never had it.
What’s even more disturbing is how normalized this kind of cruelty has become. Some of you may remember Sandy Hook, where small children and teachers were murdered in their school. After the services, President Barack Obama attended the repast. The children, many of whom were siblings of the murdered children, loved him. They climbed on him, tugged his arm, and hung from his shoulders. He held them, laughed with them, and let them laugh again, if only for a moment.
They were grieving. They were children. And he met them with compassion.
And what did the right-wing media do? Rush Limbaugh and others accused Obama of making it about himself. Of being unprofessional. That event wasn’t public. It was private. But still, they shamed him for having the audacity to comfort children.
Decency.
That was “disgusting” to them. But skipping the memorial service of an assassinated lawmaker and her family? That’s acceptable now.
We are in an upside-down world. Worse than Stranger Things could have ever imagined.
We should not want to be led by someone who has no…
Sense of decency.
And yet, here we are. In 1954, Welch’s words helped push McCarthy out of power. Today, Trump grows stronger by feeding off hatred. He is like Stephen Miller, nourished by cruelty. Terry Moran was fired from ABC News for saying this out loud.
Tomorrow, I want to discuss Trump’s so-called “Big Beautiful Bill, " a horrible, terrible, very bad bill filled with rollbacks of rights, regulatory protections, and democratic values. I also want to discuss what we could have had if we had passed the Build Back Better Bill during Biden’s term.
Because that still breaks my heart.
The Build Back Better Act failed by two votes: Kyrsten Sinema and Joe Manchin.
And the loss of what could have been universal pre-K, paid family leave, real climate investment still breaks my heart.
But I couldn’t let last Friday pass without saying this:
It’s not just that Trump has no decency.
America has no decency, now, and perhaps it never did.
https://www.senate.gov/about/powers-procedures/investigations/mccarthy-hearings/have-you-no-sense-of-decency.htm
https://people.com/joe-biden-kamala-harris-hold-hands-at-minnesota-rep-melissa-hortman-husbands-funeral-11763221
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cm2zzdmrd9qo
https://jimcrowmuseum.ferris.edu/question/2017/junejuly.htm
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