By Trump’s logic, is anyone qualified to judge him?
Donald Trump’s insistence that he couldn’t get a fair hearing from a “Mexican” judge in the case over alleged fraud at Trump University makes you wonder who could fairly judge Trump, presuming he had the veto power over judges he seems to think he deserves. The presumptive Republican presidential nominee has offended so many different people and groups that it could be difficult to find anyone suitable.
It couldn’t be the Indiana-born son of Mexican immigrants, because Trump said Judge Gonzalo Curiel couldn’t possibly judge someone who has proposed to build a wall on the U.S.-Mexico border. Trump also ruled out Muslim judges because he has proposed to bar foreign Muslims from entering the country.
And that’s just the beginning. No Asians? Trump mocked their accents when he described negotiating trade deals. No disabled judges? He cruelly imitated a handicapped journalist. No one from Iowa? He called Iowans “stupid” when they supported rival candidate Ben Carson. And, given the way Trump has derided certain women as “disgusting animals” and “dogs,” no female judges — unless, as late-night host Stephen Colbert suggested this week, they’re a 10 on Trump’s beauty scale?
This twisted Trumpian logic — only a bigot is qualified to judge a bigot — might be amusing if it weren’t so sad and disturbing. The nation is on the verge of having a major party presidential candidate so reflexively venomous that news organizations keep lists of all the people he has gone out of his way to insult, one of which contains 224 recipients of Trump invective. Among any president’s most important tools is the power to persuade, and it’s hard to persuade people you’ve called stupid and ugly. Not to mention that a president should help, not undercut, the ability of parents to teach their children to respect authority figures.
Most troubling, of course, is Trump’s apparent cluelessness about the independence of judges, the rule of law, and the system of checks and balances. The famously litigious businessman seems to regard the court system as a tool for settling scores rather than as a means for achieving justice.
Based on no evidence but his own irritation at rulings he deems insufficiently deferential, Trump has accused Curiel of bias, called for him to be investigated and vaguely suggested he’d come back after being elected president and get even.
If Trump really believes the judge is biased, his legal team could make a formal legal request for recusal. It hasn’t, because it has no grounds for doing so. Instead, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee has resorted to innuendo and threats, which makes you wonder how a President Trump would react to Supreme Court decisions he didn’t like.
Republican leaders have it right when they say Trump’s attack on Curiel, suggesting that the judge can’t do his job because of his ethnicity, is “the textbook definition of racism,” as House Speaker Paul Ryan put it.
After Ryan’s rebuke, Trump toned down his rhetoric and said he had been “misconstrued.” But once you’ve rolled in racist muck, it’s hard to wash away the stench.