Jay Ambrose: The perils of defending Trump
I am not a Republican, I did not vote for Donald Trump. I castigated him during the primaries, focused more on the outlandish alternative during the general election, but still hold him in low regard. The tweets, the mostly ignorant, buffoonish tweets, sum up the worst of him in my opinion, but what I wrote after the election was that we should give him a chance. The opposite has occurred. Not only have critics overstated almost every flub he has made, governmental officials in the executive and judicial branches have shoved aside rule of law through felonious leaks, phony decisions and much more in trying to get him no matter what. Through such means, the left has illustrated repeatedly why it is twice the danger to our republic that he is.
It has in fact been a danger for some time. Consider the limp argument about Trump’s supposed autocracy and then compare him to President Barack Obama. To the extent Trump is a tyrant, it’s mostly in what he says, not what he does, as in references to “fake news” supposedly ruinous to our press.
Obama was a man of action. His administration actually spied on reporters. It threatened them with jail if they did not reveal sources. It set a record in refusing to release government information requested by citizens. And his verbal jabs at Fox News were just as vicious as Trump’s jabs at the New York Times and CNN. By the way, CNN did have three reporters resign after an inaccurate story about a Trump adviser having a secret meeting with an official of a Russian investment fund.
Other examples of autocracy?
His administration set records for major, costly regulations that stymie business and reduce your freedoms even if some do some good. His Clean Power Plan would have dictated to states that they had to get rid of certain laws. His education department told colleges and universities they must abandon due process for any male accused of sexual harassment. He granted legal status to illegal immigrants after saying some 20 times it would be unconstitutional to do so. He unilaterally rewrote laws. He refused to enforce others.
He also skipped the constitutional requirement of having the Senate vote on treaties, thereby making them mere executive orders that Trump could reverse, and fortunately has in the case of Iran. As sure as anything, an enriched Iran is still pursuing nuclear armament and Middle East hegemony. The Obama philosophy was to ask for little, to get less and then to declare the United States a winner. Obama
Trump is said to have done nothing good, but, even with its faults, the GOP tax reform was maybe the single biggest gift to working- and middleclass Americans in decades, and that includes minorities. After the worst recovery since World War II, much had been trending in the right direction, but here was a mighty push we would not have had under Hillary Clinton.
At the same time, I do believe Trump’s international trade games could be economically ruinous and his casualness about the debt is enough to make one shiver. I believe in border security but think the idea of a wall is overkill.
Trump can still be less a threat than the Democrats and I defend him when I think he is, thereby earning downright trashy, hateful emails along with a few thoughtful ones. Even many of the supposed intellectuals out there seem to think any defense of Trump at all puts you in a basket of deplorables.
All of this along with what we see from activists pretty well sums up how many Trump opponents are dogmatically sure of themselves, as shorn of norms as he is and disrespectful of their national inheritance. Following good luck in midterm elections and his impeachment, the hope is to enforce more semi-socialist, liberty-imperiling central planning.
They make me want to defend Trump all the more.