By David French
Thursday, June 29, 2017
So, he did it again. As we’ve learned countless times
since his inauguration, President Trump is the exact same person as celebrity
Trump and candidate Trump. He’s crass, vicious, and petty. This morning, he
tweeted this:
I heard poorly rated @Morning_Joe
speaks badly of me (don’t watch anymore). Then how come low I.Q. Crazy Mika,
along with Psycho Joe, came..
— Donald J. Trump
(@realDonaldTrump) June 29, 2017
Then this:
…to Mar-a-Lago 3 nights in a row
around New Year’s Eve, and insisted on joining me. She was bleeding badly from
a face-lift. I said no!
— Donald J. Trump
(@realDonaldTrump) June 29, 2017
And of course, like clockwork, his loyalists rose to his
defense. Online, his Twitter army exulted in his ability to “get inside the head”
of his opponents and essentially adopted the line that Mika got what she
deserved. Sarah Huckabee Sanders pulled a twofer, adopting victim status and trying to claim a position of
strength — saying that the president “fights fire with fire.”
.@SarahHuckabee just on Fox:
“People on that show have personally attacked me many times. This is a
president who fights fire with fire…” pic.twitter.com/bWVKyfoQfM
— Sopan Deb (@SopanDeb) June 29,
2017
It’s a sad symbol of our times that one feels compelled
to actually make an argument why the president is wrong here. The pitiful
reality is that there are people who feel like the man who sits in the seat
once occupied by George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Dwight Eisenhower, and
Ronald Reagan should use his bully
pulpit for schoolyard insults and vicious personal attacks. But this is what
we’re reduced to. So, here goes.
First, it is simply and clearly morally wrong to attack
another person like this. I’m tired of hearing people say things like, “This is
not normal.” Normality isn’t the concern here. Morality is. It doesn’t matter
if Mika has been “mean” to Trump. Nor does it matter that we can point to any
number of angry personal attacks on Trump from others. We have to get past the
idea that another person’s bad acts somehow justify “our” side’s misconduct.
Morality is not so situational. Trump is under a moral obligation to treat
others the way he’d like to be treated, to love his neighbor as he would love
himself. Yes, he can engage in ideological and political battles, but to attack
another person in such vicious terms is to cross a bright line.
Second, it’s not classist or elitist to make this moral
argument. It’s no justification to argue that Trump simply speaks the way “real
Americans” do, or that he’s brought into public the language that “everyone
knows” people use behind closed doors. People of every social class and
economic standing have the same moral responsibilities, and our society suffers
when we relax those responsibilities, whether for a steelworker in a mill
outside Pittsburgh or the real-estate developer in the Oval Office.
Third, even if your ethics are entirely situational and
tribal, Trump’s tweets are still
destructive. Attacking Mika like this doesn’t silence her or anyone at MSNBC.
It doesn’t move the ball downfield on repealing Obamacare. It does, however,
make more people dislike Donald Trump. It’s a misuse and abuse of the bully
pulpit, all the more galling because it comes at a time when the positive parts
of his agenda truly do need public champions.
Fourth, please stop with the ridiculous lie that this is
the only way to beat the Left. Stop with any argument that this kind of
pettiness is somehow preferable to the alleged weakness of other Republicans.
There are thousands of GOP office-holders who’ve won their races (including by
margins that dwarf Trump’s, even in the toughest districts and states) without
resorting to Trump-like behavior. In fact, at the state level many of these
same honorable and moral people are currently busy enacting reforms that the
national GOP can only dream about.
The election is over. Trump isn’t running against Hillary
Clinton anymore. Americans are no longer faced with the awful choice of either
pulling the lever for an unfit candidate or voting for someone who has no
chance of winning. If there were ever
a time for Republicans to show some backbone, to tell their president that some
conduct is out of bounds, it’s now, early in his first term, when he has time
to turn the page and put his past misconduct in the rear-view mirror. Instead,
the desire to cozy up to power, the desperate need to win each news cycle, and
frantic efforts to rationalize and justify their own moral compromises mean
that people continually choose to enable the president’s worst conduct.
Words still matter, and the president’s words are often
reprehensible. Even those who say, “Talk to me about what he does, not what he
tweets” know this to be true. How can I tell? Because these same people
incessantly point to liberal words and are unceasingly outraged by liberal
tweets. Indeed, they often act as if a random news anchor’s comments are
somehow more consequential than the president’s. I know. I see the clickbait
everywhere.
A conservative can fight for tax reform, celebrate
military victories over ISIS in Mosul, and applaud Trump’s judicial
appointments while also condemning
Trump’s vile tweets and criticizing his impulsiveness and lack of discipline. A
good conservative can even step back and take a longer view, resolving to fight
for the cultural values that tribalism degrades. Presidents matter not just
because of their policies but also because of their impact on the character of
the people they govern. Conservatives knew that once. Do they still?
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