The view from the right

Conservative condemnation of the Trump regime is almost as vehement as is progressive condemnation. Will they give cover to business leaders who have so far remained silent?

Friends,

There is an unfortunate tendency for those of us on the so-called “left” to assume that thinkers and pundits on the “right” disagree with us about Trump.

But what is occurring these days transcends left or right. It is now a matter of democracy or tyranny. More and more of those on the so-called “right” are condemning the Trump regime with almost as much vehemence as you and I condemn it.

Will this give cover to business leaders who have so far remained silent?

A recent sample of condemnation of Trump from the “right.”

Here’s the National Review’s Andrew McCarthy:

“Trump intends to illustrate that he has amassed uncheckable power. That is, having extirpated what made the Republican Party conservative and constitutionalist, and with Congress thus no obstacle (at least for the next 21 months), the president wants it known that such constitutional constraints on executive power as courts and due process are no longer operative. …

‘Constitutional crisis’ is a phrase often invoked and rarely accurate. But now, we actually have one: the evisceration of due process, the justice for all without which we can’t have the liberty in the republic to which we pledge allegiance. But as ever, it is erupting within our clown show.”

Here’s Andrew Sullivan:

“If the administration had wanted to, they could have hailed the quiet border and focussed on deporting illegal immigrants by usual means. But nah. Trump decided he wants to go after legal immigrants and even legal permanent residents who have been charged with no crimes or immigration violations — because they have criticized a foreign country, Israel. He’s deploying a McCarthyite 1952 law to target any legal noncitizen who has criticized or demonstrated against the Jewish state’s wiping of Gaza off the face of the earth, proudly gutting the First Amendment for no good reason.

Wait, there’s more. Trump has also abandoned habeas corpus and due process by invoking the 1798 Alien Enemies Act to seize mere suspects off the streets and transport them instantly to a terrifying foreign jail in El Salvador. The law has only been used twice before in wartime, and, ahem, we are not at war. Anyone with brown skin and the wrong kind of tattoo is therefore now at risk of being carted off to torture by the US government, with absolutely no safeguards that they have gotten the right people. Or do you think that an administration that confuses billions with millions, and puts classified intelligence on a Signal app, is incapable of making an error?

We therefore have no way of knowing if a makeup artist who legally sought asylum was rightly grabbed off the street to face certain rape and violence. And when Tom Homan was asked about due process in this case, he actually answered: “What due process did Laken Riley get?” Unbelievable that this thug is in charge of anything.

Then the utter indecency. These wannabe fascists publicly delight and revel in their acts of domination in a manner that even despotic regimes avoid.”

Here’s The New York Times’s Bret Stephens:

“I have two large — maybe three large — objections to what is going on. Even when the administration does what I think is the right thing, it does it in the wrong way. The second thing is that some of what it is doing — I’m thinking of the case of Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, the migrant who was unlawfully deported, and whom the administration refuses to bring back in compliance with the court order — I think is unconstitutional and un-American.

And I think that there is a mean-spiritedness of vulgarity that sits outside of the spirit of the America that I love. So those three things together do a lot to obscure the increasingly dwindling number of policy decisions of which I say: OK, yeah, that’s what I might’ve done, or what I wish I would’ve seen done by another administration.”

Here’s the American Enterprise Institute’s Matthew Continetti:

“There is no policy. No plan. No logic. There is only Donald Trump.”

Here’s The Wall Street Journal’s editorial board:

“Does President Trump want to force a showdown at the Supreme Court over executive power and the judiciary? That’s the way it looks from the way the Administration is handling the case of deportee Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia. …[who] was deported without due process….Mr. Trump would be wise to settle all of this by quietly asking Mr. Bukele to return Mr. Abrego Garcia, who has a family in the U.S. But the President may be bloody-minded enough that he wants to show the judiciary who’s boss.”

Here’s The Times’s David Brooks:

“Over the centuries, people built the sinews of civilization: Constitutions to restrain power, international alliances to promote peace, legal systems to peacefully settle disputes, scientific institutions to cure disease, news outlets to advance public understanding, charitable organizations to ease suffering, businesses to build wealth and spread prosperity, and universities to preserve, transmit and advance the glories of our way of life. These institutions make our lives sweet, loving and creative, rather than nasty, brutish and short.

Trumpism is threatening all of that. It is primarily about the acquisition of power — power for its own sake. It is a multifront assault to make the earth a playground for ruthless men, so of course any institutions that might restrain power must be weakened or destroyed. Trumpism is about ego, appetite and acquisitiveness and is driven by a primal aversion to the higher elements of the human spirit — learning, compassion, scientific wonder, the pursuit of justice.

So far, we have treated the various assaults of President Trump and the acolytes in his administration as a series of different attacks. In one lane they are going after law firms. In another they savaged U.S.A.I.D. In another they’re attacking our universities. On yet another front they’re undermining NATO and on another they’re upending global trade.

But that’s the wrong way to think about it. These are not separate battles. This is a single effort to undo the parts of the civilizational order that might restrain Trump’s acquisition of power. And it will take a concerted response to beat it back.

So far, each sector Trump has assaulted has responded independently — the law firms seek to protect themselves, the universities, separately, try to do the same. Yes, a group of firms banded together in support of the firm Perkins Coie, but in other cases it’s individual law firms trying to secure their separate peace with Trump. Yes, Harvard eventually drew a line in the sand, but Columbia cut a deal. This is a disastrous strategy that ensures that Trump will trample on one victim after another. He divides and conquers.

Slowly, many of us are realizing that we need to band together. But even these efforts are insular and fragmented. Several members of the Big Ten conference are working on forming an alliance to defend academic freedom. Good. But that would be 18 schools out of roughly 4,000 degree-granting American colleges and universities.

So far, the only real hint of something larger — a mass countermovement — has been the rallies led by Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. But this, too, is an ineffective way to respond to Trump; those partisan rallies make this fight seem like a normal contest between Democrats and Republicans.

What is happening now is not normal politics. We’re seeing an assault on the fundamental institutions of our civic life, things we should all swear loyalty to — Democrat, independent or Republican.

It’s time for a comprehensive national civic uprising. It’s time for Americans in universities, law, business, nonprofits and the scientific community, and civil servants and beyond to form one coordinated mass movement. Trump is about power. The only way he’s going to be stopped is if he’s confronted by some movement that possesses rival power.”

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I continue to disagree with much of what these people say and write and I suspect you do as well. But I also continue to be surprised by how much our views are converging when it comes to the Trump regime’s dangerous drive toward dictatorship.

We’re on the cusp of a national wave of outrage that transcends the old political labels. This hardly means that died-in-the-wool Trumpers will change their minds. But it does give America’s business leaders who have so far remained silent or even supported Trump — the CEOs of America’s biggest corporations, the captains of our largest financial institutions, the heads of media empires — enough cover to come out against this dangerous and despicable regime. Will they?