Book Offer
This will close in 10 seconds
There is no doubt that Donald Trump has had – by any measure – a fantastic start to his second Presidential term. That said, here’s a thing he tweeted at the weekend which caught my eye, and, clearly, the eyes of the 216 million people who have thus far viewed it:
In case one was wondering whether this tweet was just the idle social media meandering of a President occasionally prone to that kind of thing, the White House followed that up with this, thrilling millions of right-wingers in the United States and beyond:
The interesting thing about this position is that it is identical in form and function to the position of another group also famous for their over-deployment of the colour orange in their public-facing disposition: Extinction Rebellion.
Extinction Rebellion is the UK-based climate revolutionary group famous for disrupting public events, blocking roads, and trying to prevent airports from working properly. They deface paintings, assault monuments, block the roads, and generally ignore the law whenever possible to make the point that the planet must be saved. Ask them why they do it, and they will reliably tell you that he who saves the planet does not violate any law.
The context of the Trump tweet, and the timing, is interesting. Most of the stuff that Trump does tends to cross the Atlantic like lightning, to the extent that Irish people tend to know as much about what he is doing as Americans do.
This is not likely to be the case in respect of the abrupt resignation of acting US attorney for New York, Danielle Sassoon.
Ms. Sassoon’s letter of resignation was delivered to President Trump’s Attorney General, Pam Bondi. You can read it here. I shall briefly summarise the reason for her resignation:
Last week, the US Department of Justice directed Ms. Sassoon to drop all charges against the Democratic Mayor of New York, Eric Adams. Ms. Sassoon says that this decision to drop all charges (he was facing charges of corruption in public office) was connected to a “quid pro quo” deal he had made with the White House: So long as he co-operated with Trump’s policy of removing illegal immigrants from New York and deporting them, the Government would drop all charges against him. Ms. Sassoon said this was unethical, and so she resigned.
Her opinion might be summed up as “if Mr. Adams is corrupt, then he should be prosecuted”. The Trump administration view might be summed up as “so long as Mr. Adams is co-operating with us over immigration, he should get a pass”.
He that saves his country violates no law.
There is no pretence, by the way, from the Trump administration that the decision to drop charges against Adams is anything other than a quid pro quo. In fact, they’re making a virtue of it, and you can quite understand the appeal of the messaging: The strongman President twisting the arm of a feckless liberal Democrat into finally cracking down on the plague of illegals doing crime in the Big Apple. Finally, someone doing something rather than just talking.
The problems with this approach should be self-evident.
First, it’s a licence to corruption, so long as you have Presidential approval. You might think here to an Irish example – Charles J. Haughey – who by and large lived by the same credo. Haughey enriched himself and took money from people left, right, and centre, and justified it on his departure from public office with the line “I have done the state some service”. Even that was not quite as explicit as “we don’t mind corruption in public office so long as you are using that office to advance President Trump’s policies”, which is the effective position of the administration vis a vis Mayor Adams.
Second, it is precedent: One should never expect one’s enemies to play by different rules than the ones you yourself set. If liberal politicians can be blackmailed by a conservative and nationalist President, then the reverse must also be true in future.
Third, it is a theoretical standard of behaviour that applies to everybody. Not everyone agrees with what “saving the country” means. To a communist, the country might need saving from the ravages of capitalism. To a Green, it might need saving from big farmers. To a racial extremist, it might need saving from White People, or Jews, or Black people.
The whole reason we have laws is precisely because there is no agreed definition of what saving a country looks like, who our domestic enemies are, or how far the state can go to pursue a particular goal.
There are those on the right, in Ireland and overseas, who see Trump as a kind of revolutionary and therefore justify his tearing up of the rules and limits on the powers of Governments that wusses like this writer have long cherished. Those people would do well to remember what happens to revolutionaries. Robespierre, that great leader of the French revolution, ended up on the Guillotine with everyone else.
Sometimes it’s not “Trump Derangement Syndrome” to disagree with him and his instincts. It’s just that everybody who is interested in politics should know the maxim of Chesterton’s Fence:
Before you tear down a fence, you would do well to know why that fence is there, in the first place.
This will close in 10 seconds