Chris Hayes: What 'Law and Order' Means to Trump
By Chris Hayes at the N.Y. Times
https://mobile.nytimes.com/2018/03/17/opinion/sunday/chris-hayes-trump-law-order.html?smtyp=cur&smid=tw-nytopinion
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(No president since Richard Nixon has embraced the weaponized rhetoric of law and order as avidly as Mr. Trump.)
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Yet this tough-guy stance disappears when the accused are in the presidents inner circle. In defending Rob Porter, the White House senior aide accused of abuse by both of his ex-wives, the president wondered whatever happened to due process while praising a man accused of giving his wife a black eye. (Mr. Porter denies the abuse.)
Its no surprise that Mr. Trumps critics pounced. Where was this concern for due process, they asked, when the president and his supporters chanted Lock her up about Hillary Clinton, who hadnt even been formally accused of a crime? Where was his devotion to due process when he called for the Central Park Five to be executed, and then, after their exoneration, still maintained that they were guilty?
As tempting as it is to hammer Mr. Trump for his epic hypocrisy, it is a mistake. The presidents boundless benefit of the doubt for the Rob Porters and Roy Moores of the world, combined with off-with-their-heads capriciousness for immigrants accused of even minor crimes, is not a contradiction. It is the expression of a consistent worldview that he campaigned on and has pursued in office.
In this view, crime is not defined by a specific offense. Crime is defined by who commits it. If a young black man grabs a white woman by the crotch, hes a thug and deserves to be roughed up by police officers. But if Donald Trump grabs a white woman by the crotch in a nightclub (as hes accused of doing, and denies), its locker-room high jinks.
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