Former George W. Bush speechwriter slams Trump administration in Calgary speech

The conservative author, David Frum, most famous for coining the term "axis of evil" as the United States was preparing to go to war against Iraq, is no fan of the Donald Trump presidency, and pulled no punches at a University of Calgary speech on Monday.

"We are moving fast toward a major American constitutional crisis," Frum told CBC Calgary News at Six later in the day.

"Donald Trump's defenders say the president can't obstruct justice. They make this as a legal point, because on a fact-based matter, it's increasingly clear he did obstruct justice.

"Why did he do it? To cover up the way his campaign was involved with Russian espionage in order to win the election."

Frum, who once worked as a speechwriter to George W. Bush, is the senior editor at The Atlantic, a best-selling author and a political commentator. He says the truth has been a casualty in Trump's presidency.

"There are some strange gifts of Donald Trump. A lot of things we didn't know were precious or valuable, Donald Trump has taught people," Frum said.

"A lot of academics will call themselves post-truth and they mean that as a compliment. I think a lot of people are realizing the alternative to truth isn't post-truth. The alternative to truth is lies, and lies are absolutely unacceptable in a democratic government."

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He says threats against democracy are also showing up beyond the U.S.

"We have got, across the western world, not just in the United States, parties that are arising that are coming in second or third in elections, taking seats in parliament, that are opposed to democratic institutions as we know them, that work with the Russians and that have in mind, trying to break constitutional restraints on government."

Frum says economics and immigration have been exploited by some politicians to create an 'us versus them' scenario.

"We are here because of the slowdown of economic growth, because baby boomers in particular are arriving in the years when they are going to depend on government and they are finding they have less in their pockets. We are here because in a lot of countries, they have unsuccessful immigration policies that have stoked distrust between groups and created a competition, one ethnicity against another."

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Removing Trump from office would take a lot, Frum says, but there's still significant opposition to his presidency.

"He got more votes in the electoral college and there are very limited ways that he could be removed from office before his term is up. They either require you to show that he is incapacitated or that he has committed high crimes and misdemeanours and to get the congress to agree to vote," Frum said.

"He is not the face of America. Sixty per cent of Americans don't like what he is doing, don't like the way he talks. The America you think you knew, it is still there."

Frum's new book, Trumpocracy: The Corruption of the American Republic, is out in January.

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With files from CBC Calgary News at Six