What Trump Brings Out in Americans
This story seems to be about:
- Allow ★★★
- America ★
- American ★
- Americans ★
- Arkansas ★
- Bad Combination ★★★★
- Carlson ★★
- CBS News ★★
- China ★
- Chinese ★
- Clinton ★★
- Confederate ★★
- Conor Friedersdorf ★
- Damon Linker ★★★
- Debate ★
- Democratic Party ★
- Donald Trump ★
- Doug Burgum ★★★
- Federalist Society ★★
- Florida Governor Ron DeSantis ★★
- Fourteenth Amendment ★★
- Georgia ★
- Hillary Clinton ★★
- Hunter ★★★
- Hunter Biden ★★
- Internal Revenue ★★★
- IRS ★★
- Jack ★★
- Jersey Governor Chris Christie ★★★
- Joe ★
- Justice ★★
- Justice Department ★
- Maryellen Noreika ★★★★
- Middleground ★★★
- Mike Pence ★
- Mount Sinai ★★
- Mr Shapley ★
- Mr Ziegler ★
- New ★
- Nikki Haley ★★
- Noah Rothman ★★★★
- North Dakota ★★
- Note ★★
- Patriotic Republicans ★★★★
- Peggy Noonan ★★★
- Pence ★★
- Republican ★
- Republican Party ★
- Rich Lowry ★★★
- Ross Douthat ★★
- Scranton ★★★
- Seth Masket ★★★
- Shapley ★★★★
- Smith ★★
- South Carolina ★★
- Special Agent Joseph Ziegler ★★★★
- Supervisory Special Agent ★★★★
- Tim Scott ★★
- Trump ★★
- Tucker Carlson ★
- Ukraine ★
- Ukrainian ★
- Vivek Ramaswamy ★★
- Wall Street Journal ★
- Week ★★
- Wilmington ★★
This story seems to be about:
- Allow ★★★
- America ★
- American ★
- Americans ★
- Arkansas ★
- Bad Combination ★★★★
- Carlson ★★
- CBS News ★★
- China ★
- Chinese ★
- Clinton ★★
- Confederate ★★
- Conor Friedersdorf ★
- Damon Linker ★★★
- Debate ★
- Democratic Party ★
- Donald Trump ★
- Doug Burgum ★★★
- Federalist Society ★★
- Florida Governor Ron DeSantis ★★
- Fourteenth Amendment ★★
- Georgia ★
- Hillary Clinton ★★
- Hunter ★★★
- Hunter Biden ★★
- Internal Revenue ★★★
- IRS ★★
- Jack ★★
- Jersey Governor Chris Christie ★★★
- Joe ★
- Justice ★★
- Justice Department ★
- Maryellen Noreika ★★★★
- Middleground ★★★
- Mike Pence ★
- Mount Sinai ★★
- Mr Shapley ★
- Mr Ziegler ★
- New ★
- Nikki Haley ★★
- Noah Rothman ★★★★
- North Dakota ★★
- Note ★★
- Patriotic Republicans ★★★★
- Peggy Noonan ★★★
- Pence ★★
- Republican ★
- Republican Party ★
- Rich Lowry ★★★
- Ross Douthat ★★
- Scranton ★★★
- Seth Masket ★★★
- Shapley ★★★★
- Smith ★★
- South Carolina ★★
- Special Agent Joseph Ziegler ★★★★
- Supervisory Special Agent ★★★★
- Tim Scott ★★
- Trump ★★
- Tucker Carlson ★
- Ukraine ★
- Ukrainian ★
- Vivek Ramaswamy ★★
- Wall Street Journal ★
- Week ★★
- Wilmington ★★
Welcome to Up for Debate. Each week, Conor Friedersdorf rounds up timely conversations and solicits reader responses to one thought-provoking question. Later, he publishes some thoughtful replies. Sign up for the newsletter here.
Question of the WeekIf you could pose one earnest question to any of the Republican candidates, what would it be? (No insults disguised as questions allowed.)
Send your responses to conor@theatlantic.com or simply reply to this email.
Conversations of NoteOn Wednesday, the Republican Party held a presidential primary debate. Eight candidates attended: North Dakota Governor Doug Burgum, former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, former South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley, former Arkansas Governor Asa Hutchinson, former Vice President Mike Pence, the entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, and Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina. Donald Trump, who did not attend, is leading all polls by a wide margin.
Here’s the political scientist Seth Masket’s reaction to the event:
The debate did what it was supposed to do, which was tease out the differences among the candidates for the sake of the viewing audience. Vivek Ramaswamy calling climate change a hoax while Nikki Haley says it’s real but we need to pressure China to do more is a useful data point for voters who care about that issue. Pence calling for “leadership” on restricting abortion while other candidates called for consensus was also useful. The disagreements about Ukraine were vast and notable … You could also get a good sense of just where the party is when the subject of Trump came up. The median position seemed to be that Trump had done wrong on January 6th, Pence had done right, that it would be better for the country if Trump weren’t the nominee, but that, for at least six of them, this wasn’t a dealbreaker and they’d still support Trump over Joe Biden.
Here’s Rich Lowry, the editor in chief of National Review:
Much of the night was a beguiling peek into an alternate reality where Donald Trump isn’t running for president. But no matter how nice it was to hear talented Republicans (mostly) discuss things other than Donald Trump, the sad fact is if he had been there he likely would have completely dominated the stage.
And Noah Rothman, also writing at National Review:
The former president did not take up much of the field’s attention on the debate stage—outside the segment focused exclusively on Trump’s legal peril, he felt like an afterthought. That unfamiliar condition will be shattered by tomorrow afternoon when Trump will surrender to authorities in Georgia to be arraigned. Twenty-four hours from now, the most famous mug shot in American criminal history will already be finding its way onto t-shirts and social-media profiles, and this brief window into an alternative universe in which Trump is no longer the dominant force in American political life will feel like a distant memory.
Donald Trump and the Presidency: A Bad Combination
In lieu of appearing on Wednesday’s debate stage, Trump gave an interview to Tucker Carlson, who asked as his final question, “Do you think we’re moving toward civil war?”
Trump answered by talking without apparent remorse about the day that his supporters stormed the Capitol.
This exchange ensued:
Trump: There’s tremendous passion, and there’s tremendous love. You know, January 6 was a very interesting day, because they don’t report it properly. I believe it was the largest crowd I’ve ever spoken [to] before … and people who were in that crowd, a very, very small group of people––and we said patriotically and peacefully, peacefully and patriotically, right? Nobody ever says that, go peacefully and patriotically––but people that were in that crowd that day, a very small group of people, went down there, and then there were a lot of scenarios that we can talk about.
But people in that crowd said it was the most beautiful day they’ve ever experienced. There was love in that crowd. There was love and unity. I have never seen such spirit, and such passion, and such love. And I’ve also never seen, simultaneously and from the same people, such hatred of what they’ve done to our country.
Carlson: So do you think it’s possible that there’s open conflict? We seem to be moving toward something.
Trump: I don’t know, I don’t know, because I don’t know what it––you know, I can say this: There’s a level of passion that I’ve never seen. There’s a level of hatred that I’ve never seen. And that’s probably a bad combination.
That bad combination is what Trump brings out in Americans: passion and hatred. When that is a politician’s demonstrated effect as a leader, it follows that reelecting him would be foolhardy. Patriotic Republicans should nominate someone who doesn’t evoke hatred in their fellow citizens.
A Perilous Moment
At Notes From the Middleground, Damon Linker, who abhors Trump, warns against certain efforts to stop him:
On the one hand, I think there should be severe consequences for defying the peaceful transfer of power that is a hallmark of America’s centuries-long experiment in self-government. On the other hand, I also think that what we call “the rule of law” is founded in a paradox that could well be exploded by prosecuting a man with a decent shot of winning the highest elected office in the land.
Allow me to explain.
The rule of law and its advocates claim that it resides above the political fray, serving as the rules that dispassionately apply to all citizens equally, regardless of political conviction. Or put in somewhat different terms, the rule of law and its advocates claim it is prior to politics, or that it’s the foundation on which politics rests. Yet in truth, the rule of law is not prior to politics. It is not the foundation on which politics rests. Politics comes first. We made the law, we can change it, and we can reject its legitimacy. The last of these happened in 1776.
Then there are cases in which we are fundamentally divided about whether the law and those empowered to enforce it are doing the job well. This is how I put it in a post I wrote just after Trump’s third indictment.
Federal law wasn’t handed down on Mount Sinai. [Special counsel Jack] Smith doesn’t hold tablets in his hands backed up by a divine pillar of fire. The law and the institutions of its enforcement receive their power from their perceived legitimacy. If an overwhelming majority of the country accepts that legitimacy, we have the rule of law. If an overwhelming majority of the country denies that legitimacy, we are ripe for revolution. As it is, the country has two major political parties. One of them strongly affirms the legitimacy of what Smith is doing. The other party does not.
What strikes me about a number of my friends and colleagues in the liberal center-left and center-right is how oblivious they are to this dimension of our current situation—and just how dangerous it is. They are so convinced Trump is a criminal, so convinced he’s deserving of punishment, and so convinced that the rule of law as they construe it is legitimate that they appear not to realize (or care?) that under these conditions the attempt to vindicate the rule of law could end up shredding it far more fully than Trump alone ever could—and could even end up sundering the polity.
The most oblivious of all are those making and promoting the argument that Article 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment, written in the aftermath of the Civil War to prevent Confederate officials from holding office, automatically renders Trump (post-January 6) ineligible to run for or serve as president. Ross Douthat did a nice job in a recent column of sorting through the various legal arguments surrounding the proposal before turning to a final prudential consideration that aligns precisely with my own thinking:
The idea that the best way to deal with a demagogic populist whose entire appeal is already based on disillusionment with the established order is for state officials—in practice, state officials of the opposing political party—to begin unilaterally excluding him from their ballots on the basis of their own private judgment of crimes that he has not been successfully prosecuted for … I’m sorry, the mind reels.
It sure does … What this reading of the Constitution amounts to is a pretty egregious proposal for political disenfranchisement. …
If vast swaths of both parties had acted to ban Trump from serving in public office again at the conclusion of his second impeachment trial in February 2021, that would have been one thing. It would have been an expression of bipartisan consensus, which, truthfully, is the only foundation the rule of law ever has. But Democratic Party officials and a small handful of Federalist Society law profs cannot do the same thing on their own several years later. They simply can’t—because they lack the requisite authority and legitimacy to pull it off.
Provocation of the Week
In The Wall Street Journal, Peggy Noonan argues that the Hunter Biden story will spell trouble for Democrats:
In the old understanding of the Hunter story, a druggy sex addict recorded his adventures on a mislaid laptop. An embarrassment, but every family has one. The emerging Hunter story is different in nature. It is: This guy was actually good at something, being a serious influence peddler and wiring things so he never got caught …
In May and late July two Internal Revenue Service whistleblowers, Supervisory Special Agent Gary Shapley and Special Agent Joseph Ziegler, put their careers on the line in congressional testimony. It was credible; they were impressive. They said the IRS had impeded its own investigation of Hunter Biden’s income and its sources, including from overseas business dealings. Mr. Ziegler said the investigation was “limited and marginalized” by Justice Department officials. Mr. Shapley told CBS News that his efforts to follow money trails that involved “dad” or “the big guy,” Hunter’s euphemisms for his father, were blocked by the Justice Department.
Also in late July, in federal court in Wilmington, Del., the plea bargain deal blew up. It dealt with tax and gun-possession charges against Hunter. Judge Maryellen Noreika told federal prosecutors and defense attorneys to go back and try again, the deal didn’t look normal and she wasn’t there to “rubber-stamp” it …
Another thing breaking through: when speaking of Hunter Biden, people use language like “the president’s troubled son.” There’s always the sense he’s a kid, that he tragically lost his mother as a child, had a troubled adolescence as the younger, less impressive son.
Hunter Biden is 53. At that age some men are grandfathers. He was doing business with Ukrainian and Chinese companies not as a wayward 25-year-old but as a middle-aged man. An age when adults are fully responsible for their actions.
Here is the unexpected political turn in the story. The president’s calling card to middle America has always been “middle class Joe,” the family man from Scranton, a normal guy of a certain assumed dignity who lived, as he said, on his salary, and who had known personal tragedy. Fully true or not, that was his political positioning, and it served him well. But the Hunter story is threatening to shift his father’s public reputation into Clinton territory—the sense that things are sketchily self-seeking, too interested in money. Hillary Clinton lost in 2016 because of that aspect of her political reputation.
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