Shaming Trump donors: Fair game or out of bounds?
Since when did it become acceptable “to target private citizens for their political opinions?” said Karol Markowicz in the New York Post. Liberals have worked themselves into such moral outrage over President Trump, they think anyone who donates money to his 2020 campaign is “complicit in this great evil and therefore fair game.” Last week, droves of outraged blue staters canceled (or claimed they canceled) their memberships to Equinox and SoulCycle, the high-priced, New Age–y fitness centers, because Stephen Ross, billionaire owner of both gyms’ parent company, hosted a fundraiser for President Trump in the Hamptons. Just days earlier, Democratic Rep. Joaquin Castro— presidential candidate Julián Castro’s twin brother and campaign manager—tweeted out the names of 44 San Antonio residents who had donated the maximum $2,800 to Trump’s re-election campaign, and accused them of “fueling a campaign of hate that labels Hispanic immigrants as ‘invaders.’” In the current polarized atmosphere, this “retaliatory intimidation” is dangerous, said Guy Benson in TownHall.com. Castro’s clear goal was for “anti-Trump partisans to find and punish these people” for their political beliefs. The same hypocritical liberals who blamed the El Paso massacre on Trump’s “incitement” are now circulating “hit lists” of Republican donors, including the home addresses of retired people.
What Castro did “was not doxxing,” said Suzanne Nossel in The New York Times. That Twitter-era term means the unauthorized sharing of your political opponents’ private information: unlisted phone numbers, home addresses, names of children’s schools, etc. A person’s history of political contributions, by contrast, is publicly available information in our democracy, and rightly so. As long as it never crosses the line into harassment or menace, calling out people for their donations is absolutely “fair game.” Trump’s donors deserve to be named and shamed, said Zak Cheney-Rice in NYMag .com. They’re giving their money to “ensure a two-term presidency for a virulent bigot.”
The Left’s “shaming of Trump supporters won’t work,” said Kathleen Parker in The Washington Post. Trump’s fans don’t “think he’s a racist, and don’t think they are, either.” But they do believe that liberals are out to get them, using charges of “racism” and “white supremacy” to drive them out of polite society. These shaming campaigns will only rally Trump’s supporters to his side. The true believers may feel that way, said Michael McGough in the Los Angeles Times. But those who supported Trump for cynical reasons—such as their gratitude for his tax cut for corporations— may find the charge that they are actively funding Trump’s xenophobia, hatred, and racism a “hard argument to refute.”
These two cases aren’t the same, said the New York Daily News in an editorial. It makes perfect “strategic sense” for socially conscious gymgoers to let Stephen Ross know that lending big-dollar support to “an unstable, dangerous, and divisive president may have consequences for the bottom line.” But the public shaming of individuals who gave Trump less than $3,000? That’s “a path toward endless civic warfare.” With his constant Twitter trolling of his opponents, Trump “bears some responsibility for this,” said Jonathan Tobin in NationalReview.com. But in insisting that anyone who supports him is “unworthy of even minimal respect,” liberals are turning their backs on “the basic rules of American democracy.” As both sides gear up for 2020, the nastiness to come will likely “make Castro’s tweet seem like a church picnic.”