Trump recently dropped a couple lulus that offer stark caution to the impulse many skeptics have had to soften their concerns. In full law-and-order mode, he put forth an assertion that the murder rate is the highest it’s been in 47 years. His claim is demonstrably false, but as we’ve seen in the past, the President isn’t one who readily backs off a misstatement or admits a mistake. It seems that he may be expanding on a not-quite-as-egregiously-wrong statement about big city homicide rates from last summer, but that is in itself troubling. Someone who said something problematic should let it fade away rather than doubling down. But, we’ve seen that the Untethered Orange Id prefers loud over accurate.
In parallel, Trump helpfully offered to “destroy” the career of a Texas state senator that is introducing legislation that would require a conviction in cases of civil asset forfeiture. If you’re not up on the horror that is asset forfeiture, I strongly suggest you read this Institute for Justice article. Many parts of the country allow law enforcement to take an asset (money, car, real estate, etc) that they suspect “participated” in a crime without having to actually convict or even charge the owner with a crime. Through various incentive programs, police departments get to keep big chunks of the forfeited assets, with the federal government sharing in the spoils as well. It is a system that violates the fundamental premise of due process and steals from citizens. It’s defended as a vital anti-drug-trafficking measure, but the list of abuses is long and shocking. In other words, it’s a grotesque government overreach.
Trump’s words suggest that he sees no problems either with forfeiture or with using ugly political power to derail reform efforts. Rather than simply argue against the state senator’s proposal, he casually offered to destroy the man’s career.
Both Trump’s murder rate assertion and his forfeiture comment fit into the “law and order” narrative that brought us the blanket immigration ban, the promise/threat to involve the Feds in Chicago law enforcement and the exaggerated claims about illegal immigrant criminals. It speaks of a loosey-goosey authoritarian bent that serves as a stark counterweight to the things he’s gotten right re shrinking government. It tells us that, no matter how much one might like some of his actions on matters economic (pipelines, hiring freeze, regulatory freeze and deregulating, undoing/fixing ObamaCare and Dodd-Frank) and some of his nominations (Gorsuch, Mattis, Tillerson, et al), it remains that Trump is no friend of liberty when it gets in his way.
The press, of course, LOVES his unforced errors. And, they love even more his mulish stubbornness in refusing to acknowledge them. Simple, factual mistakes are very easy to pounce on, and are very easily repeated and emphasized. The fact that Trump hasn’t come to grips with this, the fact that he and his people keep making them, may very well prove to be the biggest obstacle to his success.
The Left, meanwhile, continues its full-hysteria over Trump, and has pushed its political leaders from an early stance of guarded “lets see if we can work with him” to obstructionism theater. This is a giant gift to the administration and to the GOP, because it affords them the opportunity to sell themselves as the rational and reasonable ones. Trump skeptics (I number myself among them) are likely to be turned off by the Left’s derangement and thus softened in their skepticism, but when Trump does things that remind skeptics of why they were skeptical in the first place… golden opportunities get squandered.
Still, it’s good to keep in mind that everyone has a core personality and core beliefs, and we are better off when we learn what they are than when they artfully mask them with measured rhetoric. The Left is doing that for us with their scorched-earth attitude, and Trump is doing that for us with his untethered-id style. We are now sufficiently informed on both accounts.
It remains to be seen which side reins itself in first and most effectively. Will Trump and his team stop handing a hostile and not-married-to-the-truth press all these gimmes, or will the Left calm down enough to stop making Trump appear the sane and measured one?
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I completely agree with you