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Are Trump’s Transgressions Always Worse?
I do not like the president. I have never liked the president. I will never like the president. Yet I am confused by statements about the president that seem to bolster his political opponents per a game of degrees that I honestly do not understand.
Today I heard two examples of this.
First, I was listening to an old episode of the Joe Rogan show. An attorney who works with the Innocence Project was discussing Kamala Harris’s criminal justice record per the possibility that she would be chosen as Biden’s VP candidate. Before saying anything else, Josh Dubin carefully held out the caveat that anyone running for office would be better than the current administration.
Then he described how Harris had fought to stop men he believed she knew to be innocent from exploring DNA evidence that might clear their names and get them out of prison. He detailed the cases of men on death row–death row–whom he believed were being denied justice by Kamala Harris. He talked about the disparate impact of Harris’s approach on minority communities. He discussed a case on which he had worked that had robbed a client of literally decades of his life per the type of zealousness that he saw in the now VP candidate when she was the lead prosecutor in California.
At some point in the conversation, Jason Flom, another advocate for the wrongfully convicted, added from another microphone that he would certainly vote for a Biden/Harris ticket despite misgivings about Harris’s record because he believes we are in an “existential crisis” with our current White House. And I smacked my head because I seriously don’t understand the logic.
Donald Trump is a blowhard. He is not a guy I want to have over for dinner. He rubs me the wrong way. I think there is plenty of evidence to show he is a narcissist and was a horrible business partner. He bilked people out of money at various times in his career. Some of these people were rather vulnerable such as the students who signed up for a Trump University degree. Per what I think I know about his history, I would not loan the president a dollar. But did he stop someone on death row from making a case for his innocence?
Actually, he signed the First Step Act to begin criminal justice reform. He signed the Emmett Till Anti-Lynching Act, which should have been a law all the way back when Theodore Roosevelt was president.
There seems to me to be some intellectual dissonance that I just can’t process.
Being a blowhard is as bad as keeping men behind bars to advance one’s own career?
How is saying dumb stuff worse than destroying real people via the criminal justice system?
How do these things balance on the “transgression scales?”
I add the caveat that I do not know the basis for these men’s hate of the president. Still, I do know they feel Kamala Harris worked in a material way against the missions to which they’ve dedicated their lives, and I can’t imagine why that isn’t worse than anything I can think of Donald Trump doing, and I have no problem saying he’s an idiot.
Then I turned on the Commentary podcast earlier today. This is one of my favorites! I often feel I am of like mind to these presenters, and I even wonder if any of them will reluctantly vote for Donald Trump in November. I’m not in the mind-reading business. Still, I can say this crew has no problems calling Donald Trump a clown when he acts like one, but they are never silent about the real successes of the administration either. In other words, unlike most of the media, they strike me as fair, which is why I keep listening to them.
Yet, yet, yet, I am baffled by one thing Monday morning.
John Podhoretz says that President Trump is in a poor position to attack influence peddling a la Hunter Biden per the positions of his children, and I have long accepted this per face value as true. I, too, have a cultural bias against nepotism, and it seems to me as if the whole Trump family is engaged in the White House. What does Jared Kushner really know about the Middle East? Why is Ivanka heading up a task force looking at cold case killings of indigenous children? Surely these people are only where they are because of who they know???? It’s so distasteful.
But, but, but… is that really the same thing as peddling influence to a government currently hosting concentration camps? Putting a drug-addled child on a board of a corrupt company in a foreign country?
Isn’t it more like grooming your own kid to be the editor of your own magazine, a position that many other people would want, because you trust he’ll do a good job?
(Oh, my God! Am I becoming a deplorable with blinders on per that comment?)
Let me tell you. I understand the deep skepticism of the Trump family, but in the end, Jared did a good job in the Middle East, didn’t he? Is Ivanka rolling in the dough because of her various tasks organizing people to look into the dead or whatever other committees she’s fronted?
Let me digress for just a moment while I make a weird admission.
Before Covid hit, I saw the cutest dress at, I think, Neiman Marcus. It was pricey, but it was on sale. I wanted to try it on until I saw the label: Ivanka Trump. I’m not proud to say it, but I put that little blue number with the pearl collar back on the rack like it was a hot potato because I just couldn’t face the cashier.
Is that an example of Ivanka Trump benefitting from being the president’s daughter?
Weren’t Jared and Ivanka already pretty rich before Trump gained his office?
What exactly did they gain?
Power as King and Queen of Pariahs?
Now, I have no idea if anything in the current Hunter Biden scandal is true or not true. I no longer know what is really happening in the world. There are too many conflicting stories, too many different narratives. I’m not even allowed to read the story per various forums, so who can say what is real? Still, Donald Trump didn’t destroy the media for me with his cries of “fake news.” My trust was blown up a long time ago by scandals in coverage over events like Benghazi. At this point, it’s mostly just noise for me, as I think about planting mums in an autumn garden…..
Yet, yet, yet, I can clearly see there are people working on the Innocence Project who will vote for someone they think knowingly prosecuted innocent people for the sake of ambition simply because she isn’t Donald Trump, and that frightens me. I can see myself accept a narrative that the president doesn’t have a leg to stand on when it comes to appearances of impropriety and family in a knee jerk way until I wonder aloud is there a memo involving Tiffany or Barron or Don Jr. or whoever that says the “big guy gets 10” on the Trump side of the ledger? From China? I mean, I seem to recall something floating back somewhere about a golf course in Scotland, but I can’t remember the details anymore, and the loan sharks from Russia don’t seem to be real, so can anyone tell me the deal to which I’d apply equivalency?
By the way, I’ll be shocked if Donald Trump wins re-election with the media thumb so firmly on Biden’s scale, but I won’t be surprised, if that makes sense. Either way, I’ll vote for him in 2020 because the Bidens and Harris don’t seem to be an improvement in any department that I can measure. At least Donald Trump acts like a Catholic when it comes to saving the babies, and I really do care quite a bit about saving innocent lives.
Published in General
I understand. But such an action still has real consequences for real people. I’d rail against Emory, too. Who even cares if they named the dry cleaner that per proximity to the school? These are frivolous lawsuits that are often unjustified and harm communities more than they help brands.
But again…. Trump is not treated equally.
For example, Biden’s calling a driver a drunk multiple times to advance a political reputation as the aggrieved untouchable defamed that driver in a way that was more harmful, I think, than attacking a sign on a building.
I could not see this as easily 4 years ago, but I have no emotional reaction anymore to politics. I’ve started to feel like a Vulcan beyond manipulation. It’s just easier to see how much the scales are weighted now.
AND the democrat media complex has done anything and everything, including conspiring to dream up a Russian hoax, to impeach Donald Trump, and following that microscopic colonoscopy, still come up with absolutely nothing.
If a similar colonoscopy were done on Clinton, Obama or Biden, you would find concrete evidence of corruption, bribery and the personal economic gain from their position in government to their respective crime families. It is the democrat way, after all, and it comes straight from Saul Alinsky who learned directly from the mob.
The Godfather
I too am a little put off when politicians appoint family in governmental positions, however the rationale is this is done for the built in loyalty inserted into the administration.
Whether one likes Trump or not, for this reason or that, Trump has ample reason to be wary of disloyalty in his administration.
No. I don’t think that what has been presented is the same sort of thing at all. That is, actually, the reason I wrote the article. Or included Point 2 of the article, at least.
Pod says that Trump can’t speak against his kids peddling influence, but I don’t see the same sort of “peddling” that seems to have happened with Biden’s son. I took it as an article of faith that the Trumps did do something unsavory, but I’ve started to question that orthodoxy without throwing out the truth that the Trump kids would not be in the positions they are in without Trump being president.
The only thing that I think that I’ve heard discussed that would have been equivalent per Trump kids/Biden kids would have been securing loans for the Trump empire per the president changing foreign policy. That was definitely an accusation levied in accordance with Russia. But it’s been years now, and I’ve never seen any credible proof that that was anything other than a fever dream created to be a political attack ad….
Since I have never been a fan of the president’s, I have no need to rationalize anything to make him look better. I just wanted him treated in the same way. That’s all.
I’m a little surprised we still have an anti-nepotism culture.
Nearly everyone in any high position of influence in this country is a legacy. If they aren’t, they are in their 80s.
The media is especially guilty of this.
American nepotism may put more effort into at least garnering the proper credentials, but that doesn’t necessarily confer merit.
I think even Obama was a legacy on his mother’s side.
Yeah. Well. We do.
I worked as a freelancer in Europe for a company where my husband was above me. (I was completely qualified.) We both know I could never be hired to do the same work here in the US per how it would look, even though my writing skills did not diminish when we crossed the ocean.
It is a little silly, but what can I say? Culture is complicated. Truly powerful people aren’t held to the same standards as the middle class either.
(Gracious. Now I’m sounding like a populist!!!!! What is happening to me?????)
Do you still accept this per face value as true? Yes, our culture makes it generally difficult for Donald Trump to defend his nepotism. I don’t see that as making it difficult for Trump to attack what it appears the Bidens have done which has little to do with nepotism in any commonly accepted description. John Podhoretz is just wrong since there is not comparability.
The thing that’s really been annoying me since 2016, but is currently peaking higher than our COVID numbers is how Democrats/Media/Left can pretty much level any accusation against the President no matter now nonsensical it is, and they know that nobody will call them on it, nobody will challenge them, and it’ll just get out there as “accepted truth” no matter how much of a lie it is.
So you have media figures talking endlessly about how the President is a stooge of Putin, when in fact he’s been harder on Russia than any President in the last 40 years. They declare how he’s turning his back on NATO, when in fact he’s managed to get our NATO allies to start pitching in their share of the costs. He’s also strengthened Poland in direct response to Russia’s expansionism. They make vague charges of authoritarianism or how he’s shredding the constitution or that he’s only in it for himself, but they won’t give you any details. And those vague charges rule the headlines.
This is how I stopped being a Never and ended up becoming a Trump supporter. I looked for evidence that what the left was saying was true. “Trump said this terrible thing!” Sure, if you take it out of context. But listen to the whole quote. Now you understand what he meant. It is infuriating that Biden et al are still using the Charlottesville smear. You’d have to be a complete idiot not to know the entire quote by now. The media still claim that he doesn’t denounce white supremacy while he denounces it again for the 847th time.
No, I won’t agree that he’s a blowhard or a narcissist because I don’t know the man. To accept those descriptions is to accept the views of those who hate him. But when I see the President interacting with the citizens, I see someone who loves America and Americans, and who wants what’s best for this country.
His Prison Reform Summit was eye-opening because he just kept asking these former prisoners to come up on stage and tell their stories. He wanted to put them in the spotlight, not himself. He wanted us to hear their stories. That’s the opposite of narcissistic.
I appreciate the post, LL.
It just goes to the point Trump supporters have been hashing on about – that nearly all the Trump criticism is built on vapor. With just the slightest of critique, it proves itself to be nothingness.
Ronald Reagan called the Soviet Union “The Evil Empire,” and broke it up. I agree with your assessment of the other presidents since then. :-)
Well, no. I wrote the article in part because I have started to question some of that acceptance. I am no Trump apologist, but it strikes me that the standards that are applied so differently to Trump are deeply unfair.
My measure of the man’s personality is based on my observations of him over the years… not what I’ve read about him in the media. I think President Obama was a narcissist, too, and we haven’t exactly had brunch.
However, I also think that you are 1000% right about Democrats never being called on any of their distortions. I grew tired of that years before there was a Trump, but it’s escalated to heights even I thought weren’t plausible. I also don’t have to like someone to appreciate what they’ve done in office.
Anyway, you’ve provided a very good example to support the downright weirdness of the Innocence Project guys that I mentioned in my article. Here President Trump is doing exactly what they would want a president to do. Yet the president is an “existential threat” for some reason.
It makes no sense.
Truly mind boggling scary propaganda is how many true believer (D) voters have clearly been indoctrinated into believing, to this day, that Trump “colluded” with the Russians to win the 2016 elections and the fact that Manafort, Gates, Cohen, Papadopoulos, Flynn, Stone were all convicted of something entirely unrelated to a Trump/Russia conspiracy is the proof Trump colluded with the Russians.
Now, because of this successful indoctrination the (D)/MSM/Schiff Show can announce a Russian disinformation campaign surrounding the Hunter Biden laptop revelations and there is a built in audience of idiot Jonestown true believers who chug the entire line of Bull Schiff then beg for seconds.
There are two reasons it is hard to persuade what I consider persuadable voters who don’t pay a lot of attention to the details of politics, to support Trump. I say this as someone who is actively trying to do so and as someone who only very reluctantly finally decided to vote for him in 2016 but is fully supportive of him this year despite still considering him a jerk.
First is the media bubble they exist in. Even if they don’t pay a lot of attention to the details they constantly are barraged with “facts” about Trump that just ain’t so ranging from “good people on both sides” in Charlottesville and his speech at Mt Rushmore this year which they heard over and over again was “dark, divisive” and a defense of Confederate monuments. And they’ve had four years of the Russian collusion hoax. When you talk with them there is so much of what they “know” that you have to deal with that they think you are the crazy one. When you tell them that it was the Clinton campaign that colluded with the Russians in 2016 they simply will not believe you.
The second factor is Trump himself – not his actual actions, but his loose rhetoric and mannerisms, which reinforce the unhinged and authoritarian image created by the media. The irony is his actual actions in office have not been authoritarian but his language undercuts this as did his appearances at those Covid-19 briefings where he seemed like a man not in control of himself. The reverse is true of the Democrats as far as many of the persuadables I talk with. The media shields them from the worst statements and actions by the Dems and though they are the ones who are authoritarian, intolerant and threatening American democracy and now even have a paramilitary wing. When I talk with people I do not try to defend Trump rhetoric (a losing proposition) but talk about his accomplishments and the reality of what the Democrats have done and are planning to do.
Just a peeve of mine … apologies, but …
Being a populist or Populism per se is NOT a bad thing! It depends upon the ’cause’ and ‘means’ used by the group of Populists. If a cause is righteous and the means used do not infringe on the freedom of others, a majority of folks (i.e. populists) can and should exercise their First Amendment rights to speak with force as a united group. The righteousness of the cause is obviously in the eye of the beholder, but there are a great number of examples in the history of America that show Populists with a righteous cause being a very Good Thing.
I agree with your reasons. It seems I can make no headway on Trump himself with people who have reached certain conclusions about him, no matter what I say. I just can’t tame their emotional elephants. (I was exactly like them, actually, in 2016. I voted third party.)
Therefore, my strategy is one that I’ve had some success deploying: getting them to split their tickets.
I mean, I am voting for Trump, and that’s fine. If my suburban women friends go to the polls intent on removing “the orange one” from power, I just want to try to make sure they don’t replace him with something they really, truly can’t control.
Split government seems to be the one place where I can advance with them.
I think what you have described here is in some way a major aspect of modern warfare coupled with economic and trade actions. It is really a new world, we have not had such impediments before to getting some agreement on truth, even when we didn’t really find it.
Of course! I am poking fun at myself, @Columbo. Populism is threaded throughout American politics. Sometimes it’s good. Sometimes it’s bad. It’s normally always complicated.
Fully agreed. This is another frustrating thing that keeps popping up — the idea that populism itself is a bad thing. So all you have to do to denounce the President is sputter “P-p-p-populist!” and you have a bunch of people that immediately assume that’s bad.
Similarly the word “nationalist” has come to mean all sorts of nefarious things. So you have a group of Nevers who constantly bark about nationalism and populism in an attempt to scare people into voting for Biden. But they refuse to engage with the question “what is populism” or “what is nationalism” leaving it to the listeners to pick up the severely negative connotations.
Even here on Ricochet we have many members who cannot conceive of a good form of nationalism or populism. And some who, if you try to explain that both those descriptors applied to Saint Reagan, would have a fit of screaming ooperzootics.
Your post has given us a very good conversation appropriate to the times.
Well, you will all be happy to know that I have an exam question that goes something like: What is true about populism in American politics? a) It is always bad, b) It is always good, c) It is often a byproduct of democracy, d) It exists in only one political party.
Boom.
I don’t teach populism is good or bad. I also teach students that they need to define what they mean when they deploy any term in my classroom. ;)
Very good. Well done, as was this entire conversation @LoisLane! It is just something that I have seen previously mentioned multiple times on Rico (as the fake Lincoln Project regularly does) is to brand populism as always negative and only associated with President Trump. They FAIL … again.
I know of at least one Ricochetti that needs to attend your classroom. Well done, Professor!
I believe Biden’s wife had the stop sign. Then it was her fault. Biden couldn’t live with that. He blamed the truck driver for his own problem. He’s still doing that today. “How dare you ask me about my son’s corruption?! You’re the corrupt one.”
You know, I totally don’t judge Biden for making up the story in his mind to help him deal with these deaths. That even makes telling the story a bit forgivable the first time. (People can convince themselves of their own lies when it helps them survive.)
On this, I am much more forgiving than our media.
However, after he was contacted by the other driver’s family and told about the distress it was causing someone who carried guilt for something that wasn’t even his fault, Biden should have ceased and desisted… shaken his head… found a different coping mechanism.
It is when he continued the lie after that point that I find myself judging him.
I assume whichever answer a student goes for they must then explain. I wish we were getting this approach across all ideas and all across our nation.
Exactly. This incident parallels much of Biden’s lying in so many other areas of his life. And because of Joe’s lying, Curtis Dunn, died a broken man.
Let me say, I’ve known a few people like Trump. They are above average intelligence, always have a cogent pertinent remark, have come from upper middle-class or higher backgrounds, are not religious but respect those who are, like the ladies, drive nice cars, help strangers, very generous to friends, decisive when dealing with employees, require loyalty, are creative, meticulous in planning, work systems to their advantage, can deal with everybody, have made themselves rich, are tall, fairly good-looking, have diverse friends and interests, have an active social life, and are mostly respected by the community.
There are very few people who are outstanding in most everything they do. Trump is one of these people.
And judging by his favorite twenty books on China, he’s not the illiterate that he is portrayed to be.
And he doesn’t even drink or smoke.
Come to think of it I’ve never known anyone quite like Trump.
In the case of this particular question, there is only one possible answer. “Always” in a history class is (almost) always a tell. Human beings simply don’t work in absolutes. In addition to going in depth where they would have deeper discussions about the populism of the 1890s, we also discuss how different presidents from different parties have used their “bully pulpits” to stir the people to their causes.
Fun fact: Most kids think “bully pulpit” was named this because T. R. sometimes pushed people around like a bully. This, of course, is incorrect. “Bully” was a slang term that meant “grand” or “excellent,” and T. R. sprinkled this word throughout his daily discourse, i.e. he would have told anyone who asked that being in charge of the United States was bully. He had a bully time in the White House.