This column starts out poorly, by saying in the first paragraph: “Donald Trump is rightly smacked for calling his impeachment antagonists… lowlifes.”
If I were someone who endured years of being called a Nazi Racist White Separatist Hitler by the bitter haters on the left, “lowlife” seems a mild riposte. It has the advantage of being accurate. So the way to interpret this is the author of the column trying to distance himself from the president–a kind of virtue-signaling to the left and the five Never Trump RINOs still remaining.
The column does makes some good points, like taking aim at the false Russia collusion narrative and, unusually, gets the Charlottesville incident right. But then it returns to saying that the president “may spread false or dubious claims.”
“May?” That’s a little like “I may be pregnant” or “a nuclear war may have just started.” Certainty is desired. If the president is spreading “false or dubious claims,” then kindly say so directly. Otherwise don’t serve up halfhearted allegations.
I think Victor Davis Hanson’s article on norm violations is more persuasive:
Indeed, the aim of the so-called Resistance to Donald J. Trump is ending Trump’s presidency by any means necessary before the 2020 election. Or, barring that, it seeks to so delegitimize him that he becomes presidentially impotent. It has been only 16 months since Trump took office and, in the spirit of revolutionary fervor, almost everything has been tried to derail him. Now we are entering uncharted territory — at a time when otherwise the country is improving and the legal exposure of Trump’s opponents increases daily.
VDH wrote that last year. The situation is worse, and more perilous, today.
This column starts out poorly, by saying in the first paragraph: “Donald Trump is rightly smacked for calling his impeachment antagonists… lowlifes.”
If I were someone who endured years of being called a Nazi Racist White Separatist Hitler by the bitter haters on the left, “lowlife” seems a mild riposte. It has the advantage of being accurate. So the way to interpret this is the author of the column trying to distance himself from the president–a kind of virtue-signaling to the left and the five Never Trump RINOs still remaining.
The column does makes some good points, like taking aim at the false Russia collusion narrative and, unusually, gets the Charlottesville incident right. But then it returns to saying that the president “may spread false or dubious claims.”
“May?” That’s a little like “I may be pregnant” or “a nuclear war may have just started.” Certainty is desired. If the president is spreading “false or dubious claims,” then kindly say so directly. Otherwise don’t serve up halfhearted allegations.
I think Victor Davis Hanson’s article on norm violations is more persuasive:
VDH wrote that last year. The situation is worse, and more perilous, today.