He deserved far worse than having his house covered in a giant condom that read, “Helms is deadlier than a virus” (a brilliant stunt AIDS activists somehow pulled off in 1991). Instead, he spent 30 years in the Senate, retired in 2003, and died five years later, old and comfortable, on the Fourth of July.
Helms was so Trumpian that researching him made me wonder if he had hidden a piece of his soul for our president to discover, like Tom Riddle’s diary at Hogwarts. He started out as a pundit on talk radio. He disregarded norms. He knew how to harness white male anger through blistering populism. He was even said to have small hands.
Plus, he opposed sending US aid down what he called “ratholes” in poorer countries of the world, places that decades later Trump would call “shithole[s].” That was why he introduced the Helms Amendment in 1973, a ban on the use of foreign aid funds for abortion—a policy that under Reagan expanded with the Global Gag Rule. Fifty years later the Helms Amendment remains in place, renewed regularly by Congress, and an estimated 17,000 women die each year as a result. Trump, fittingly enough, broadened the Global Gag Rule’s restrictions on foreign aid in January, reaching beyond abortion to restrict international work around diversity and transgender rights. Helms would have been proud.