Newsletter: But what if democracy really is at risk?
Good morning. I’m Mariel Garza, and it is Wednesday, July 17. Let’s look at what’s happening in Opinion so far this week.
After the assassination attempt on Donald Trump on Saturday, Republicans were quick to blame incendiary rhetoric for creating a toxic political atmosphere. But not their own rhetoric, of course. Just that of President Biden and other Democrats for saying that Trump is a threat to American democracy just because that one time he said he would be a dictator on Day One.
“The central premise of the Biden campaign is that President Donald Trump is an authoritarian fascist who must be stopped at all costs. That rhetoric led directly to President Trump’s attempted assassination,” Sen. J.D. Vance (R-Ohio) tweeted Saturday, perhaps already sensing he would be tapped as Trump’s running mate and hoping to cement the position with a strong show of support.
(If you are wondering, is that the same Sen. J.D. Vance who posted this of another member of Congress less than 30 minutes earlier? “Kick his ass out of Congress. Absolute scumbag.” Why, yes. Yes, it is.)
Vance is not the first person to make the accusation. Practically every Republican elected official seems to have gotten the message to repeat the same specious sentiment. (If you are wondering, does the GOP have an app that sends out daily alerts with the latest talking point? That I don’t know. But it would explain a lot.)
Democrats, and many others besides, are not wrong when they say that Trump is an existential threat to our democracy. How else would you characterize a man who tried to overturn the results of a legitimate election for his own benefit? A man who says he wants to send armed troops onto the streets of America to round up millions of people, to fire tens of thousands of federal workers and replace them with loyalists and to use the power of his office to punish his political enemies?
“In the current climate, however, attacking Trump as a threat to democracy sounds like extreme rhetoric — as it has been at times. But if Biden can no longer prosecute that case against Trump — after spending tens of millions of dollars on ads laying it out — what case does he have?” writes Times columnist Jonah Goldberg.
The idea that Biden and the Democrats should stop telling the truth about a second Trump term because it’s too harsh is absurd. And besides, we already know that Trump and the Republicans aren’t going to stop slinging their own “extreme rhetoric.”
A vacation from politics? After the Trump shooting, no thanks. I need to be back in my country. Times letters editor Paul Thornton began his holiday in Europe with the idle thought about staying until the Nov. 5 election. On Saturday, he changed his mind. “It’s an unusual kind of helplessness to be so removed from your home when it’s burning down.”
Judge Aileen Cannon is flat-out wrong, again. “From the outset, Cannon, who was appointed to the federal district court bench by Trump, has handled the case in a way that seemed designed to protect him,” writes Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of the UC Berkeley School of Law.
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What’s behind the Anti-Defamation League’s troubling complaints against L.A.-area colleges. Mark Dery, a cultural critic and a 1982 graduate of Occidental College, says that the civil rights organization is shredding its “reputation with reckless and unsupported accusations of antisemitism” in regards to protests against the war in Gaza.
America’s definition of ‘refugee’ needs an update. Bill Frelick, a refugee and migrant rights director at Human Rights Watch, explains that expanding the criteria for asylum protection would make it easier to protect those who need it and reject those who don’t.
More from opinion
From our columnists
- Robin Abcarian: The once-secretive right-wing ideology emerging as an overt threat to American democracy
- Jackie Calmes: How to save the Republican Party
- Harry Litman: Aileen Cannon’s ruling isn’t just legally flawed. It has nothing to do with the law
From guest contributors
- Trump’s trials are turning all of us into legal scholars
- The mental health crisis hotline is working. So why doesn’t it get the funding it needs?
- From legal bribery to Trump’s immunity, a dark theme ran through the Supreme Court’s term
- Some in a blue-collar job are just one injury away from homelessness
From the Editorial Board
Letters to the Editor
- Not even George Clooney can get everyone to agree on if Biden should step aside
- California’s inmate firefighters deserve better
- Readers react to the attempted assassination of Donald Trump
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As always, you can share your feedback by emailing me at paul.thornton@latimes.com.
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