I personally found this paragraph from a WaPo report on Trump’s situation following the Cohen and Manafort disasters dismaying, if unsurprising:
Trump and his legal woes are unlikely to recede into the background. Republicans face 77 days of midterm campaigning that could be jolted by unwelcome legal surprises. Still, the president remains overwhelmingly popular in his own party — with an almost 90 percent approval rating. And supporters like [Trump supporter Dan] Eberhart still support much of the president’s agenda.
90% is where I start shaking my head. Granted, there’s not been much in the way of polling since Tuesday, so perhaps the Republican base might be losing its faith in a tainted President – but there’s little reason to make such an assumption, outside of a hopeful heart.
But I fear there’s two factors working against such an outcome. First, there’s the allegiance to conservative media which feeds them partial facts, dubious assertions, and then emotional appeals. Even on an ostensibly NeverTrump site such as The Resurgent, I ran across this ugly post from Marc Giller:
One thing that [New York Post reporter Salena] Zito doesn’t mention, however, is something equally as important—and that’s role of the Swamp in making Trump practically immune to scandal, even when it comes to possible criminal matters. Because for all the indictments, trials and even convictions surrounding Robert Mueller’s investgation, people have noticed a distinct lack of the same when it comes to Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and all the cronies who ran interference for her when she broke national security laws and used the intelligence resources of the United States to try and subvert a presidential election.
So far, the only one of that bunch serving any jail time is Anthony Weiner—and that’s because of his proclivity to sext with underage girls, not because he had a ton of Cilton’s emails, many of them classified, on his personal laptop. Even after an Inspector General investigation determined serious irregularities in the way that the FBI and the DOJ handled the probe into Clinton’s homebrew email server, not a single person in her orbit had been indicted, charged or tried for a crime.
Add to that Obama’s serial abuse of his surveillance powers—abuse that would have garnered nonstop headlines had George W. Bush done it back in 2008–and yet there is no special counsel looking into what happened there, no prosecutor leaning on Susan Rice or Eric Holder to get them to talk, no former Obama administration staffers hounded into bankruptcy because of mounting legal defense bills. Why is that, one might wonder?
Reading the first couple of responses was interesting[1], which I’ll leave to the footnote. Giller then commits the cardinal sin – he claims that none of this excuses Trump. The problem is he just spent a couple of paragraphs proclaiming that Trump is not being treated fairly, that the Democrats were just as bad – despite the obvious fact that Federal Prosecutors appointed BY Trump are also those ripping his former team members into shreds for their chronically illegal ways.
Does Giller really think these Federal Prosecutors, appointed by Trump, are just going to ignore these alleged crimes committed by Obama, Clinton, Holder, and anyone else from the previous Administration? Prosecutors don’t make their career by refraining from red meat prosecutions; taking down the high ‘n mighty can lead to even greater things for the ambitious, such as Guiliani, who went from a Federal prosecutor taking down Mob dons to the Mayor’s seat of New York City. On the other hand, pursuing a false prosecution could gain them a janitorial position at, say, the Barack Obama Elementary School in St. Paul (which is right across the street from my fencing club). Absent personal knowledge of ill-doing by members of the previous Administration, I think the sober citizen must take their cue from their fellow Americans who happen to be these Federal prosecutors and assume that whatever illegalities may have occurred in the previous Administration were exceedingly trivial and quite probably accidental.
But, ironically, Giller may be correct on his primary thesis – the GOP base will not be swayed by these legal hand grenades that Trump’s own Prosecutors are tossing into Trump’s backyard, because of the lies that people like Giller have decided to believe in. I’d be completely unsurprised if Giller said he really believed what he said, I just think it’s misinformation motivated by a mistrust of the evil liberals[2] and the belief that conservatives, as a brand, cannot possibly be worse than conservatives, even if they ally themselves with Trump. It’s a strong emotional motivation for those who have committed themselves to the position that liberals are bad and conservatives are good.
Which is why I stay an independent and a strong believer that those folks who are within, say, a standard deviation of the political mean of this country have much to contribute – I’m more than willing to consider suggestions from both sides within that parameter. The problem for the GOP? They’re now mostly 2, 3, or more standard deviations out there, and heading further out because they’ve closed off their information intake. That is, they believe the mass media, which tries so hard to bring the truth to their customers because of the free market practices, is really fake news – despite a century long pedigree in many cases – while upstarts like Fox News, documented as not serving up all the information for its viewers that it should by Bartlett, and allied organizations continue to spoon feed them information which feeds into their sensibilities.
Giller is almost certainly right in his prediction – because of perceived unfair treatment, which is untrue in itself, but still rings true to me. His base will go off in a huff and “how about Clinton and Obama” with no idea that if there was something there, career-hungry prosecutors would be all over them like maggots on a bunny carcass.
So the problem isn’t Trump – it’s the tendency of the conservatives to believe the worst of their opponents without due consideration that maybe they’re wrong – maybe they’re being lead around by the nose.
And that second factor I mentioned? Sorry, I forget what it was. Maybe I worked it into the above. I suppose I could go back and rework that paragraph so I didn’t have to admit to this mental goof on my part, but what of it? My reader might as well know that I can be forgetful from time to time.
1First came a fist pump for Trump, with a list of his accomplishments. The first one was truthful, if troubling for those who want a quality judiciary, the second, not an accomplishment but a failure, the other twelve mistakenly attributing to Trump what Obama had already accomplished – or just another mistake committed by Trump. That was followed by someone noting that, no, Clinton had not committed any crimes, so please stop fucking saying that. An honorable but, I fear, futile paean to truth.
2Which makes any reverence for George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Ben Franklin, or other leading, but ancient, liberals a bit of a conundrum. I classify them as liberal using my simple, yet fair, definitions of liberal and conservative.
The conservative is someone terrified of what the future might bring and bent on conserving that which has gotten them, or us, this far. This is a fair definition in that it recognizes that many cultural and legal practices are of value.
The liberal is someone who is horrified at certain events in the past and seeks to improve those aforementioned practices as a way to eliminate the horrors of the past. Sometimes they have foolish ideas, but at least they recognize there have been problems which can be addressed.
There is no doubt that Washington, et al, were liberals, as they were horrified at the abuses of the English monarchy, and sought to replace it with something new.
