America, we must stand up against the bully in the Oval Office

Last week’s performance in the Oval Office presented Americans with a decision. How should we respond to an overt display of bullying of a foreign leader by our President?

Clearly, the event was staged for domestic consumption, not to influence the guest, South African President Cyril Ramaphosa. The purpose was to elicit a response from Americans — admiration, praise, support — to what they were seeing on television. In what Reuters called a “choreographed onslaught,” President Donald Trump unleashed his fury on the South African leader, who was expecting to discuss trade relations between the two countries. Trump asserted that white South Africans were a persecuted minority whose land was being confiscated by Black people, and who “in many cases” were being killed. It was a media event in support of MAGA’s replacement theory claim that, even in America, the once-dominant white population is now under attack by hordes of Hispanic and Black people and immigrants.

However absurd that claim, the media production warrants our attention in its own right. In the newly palatial setting of the Oval Office, with cameras rolling, the most powerful person in the world unloaded on the vastly less powerful president of South Africa.

There is a word for strong people who pick on the weak: “bully.”

This was far from Trump’s first venture into bullying. Recall last February’s visit by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, whose country’s survival depends on America’s support. That, too, was an event orchestrated to impress an American audience. But for Trump the pattern goes beyond the Oval Office and even politics — it’s part of his fundamental character. Recall his “Access Hollywood” remark about grabbing women’s private parts: “When you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything.”

In every case, the question for us is the same: What are you and I supposed to do when we witness the strong abusing the weak? We know that it’s important to stand up to bullies, but who is to do the standing up?

Victims may try to defend themselves, and we admire them when they do. But victims are weak and bullies are strong, so in such fights the weak are by definition at a disadvantage. As a practical matter, therefore, any effective response to bullying has to come not from the bullied, but from intervenors. So in situations such as last week’s Oval Office performance it has to come from the onlookers for whom it was staged — from us, the American people.