Routine institutional obligations become destructive when a president attacks democratic norms

Evidence

A president who regularly attacks the press as purveyors of “fake news” and enemies of the people would have been extraordinary and is now routine. Yet malignant normality involves more than the routinization of unprecedented and destructive presidential language and behavior. We have malignant normality when the ordinary business of elected representatives, administrators, and civil servants is turned upside down or inverted inside out. Many in government accommodate and do what is demanded of them. The duty of executive branch officials is to serve the duly elected president, regardless of party or program. This obligation, which under ordinary circumstances supports the constitutional order, comes to threaten it. From the White House press secretary, whose job becomes endorsing the president’s falsehoods, to the director of national intelligence, who cannot both serve the president and accurately report the threat Russia poses to American elections, malignant normality endows routine obligations with destructive consequences. Accommodation to malignant normality advances the momentum of delegitimation. — Russell Muirhead and Nancy L. Rosenblum, A Lot of People Are Saying, 175

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines ‘malignant normality’ precisely: routine official duty, ordinarily order-supporting, turning order-threatening under a delegitimizing president.