Donald J. Trump said Sunday that a Muslim judge might have trouble remaining neutral in a lawsuit against him, extending his race-based criticism of the jurist overseeing the case to include religion and opening another path for Democrats who have criticized him sharply for his remarks.
The comments, in an interview with John Dickerson, the host of CBS’s “Face the Nation,” come amid growing disapproval from fellow Republicans over his attacks on Judge Gonzalo P. Curiel, a federal judge in California overseeing a suit against the defunct Trump University, whose impartiality Mr. Trump questioned based on the judge’s Mexican heritage.
It’s really sort of hard to know where to start on this one. The appropriate follow up question should be, but apparently was not: Would you agree that a black, brown, or Muslim defendant should be allowed to disqualify a white or Christian judge? We all know, of course, what the answer would be. It has also been observed that the very Republicans who are expressing “growing disapproval” of Trump’s attitude toward the judiciary are holding a Supreme Court seat hostage in the hopes that he will get to fill it.
But, I think it should be noted that Trump’s argument here is no different than that expressed by so much of the loony Republican base, which not only Republican politicians, but Republican judges have embraced. The basic argument is that bigots are a repressed minority; victims of political correctness. It’s most obvious in the patently absurd religious liberty claims that are getting so much traction these days. Trump is arguing that, as a racist (and presumably as a misogynist), he is entitled to be judged only by white male judges. There isn’t much difference between his argument, and that of the religious loonies, who argue that their right to practice their religion includes the right to impose their religious views on others. If I am against birth control, they argue, it violates my religious liberty rights if others have access to birth control. If I undertake to fill a governmental post in which it is my duty to issue marriage licenses, I have the right to withhold those licenses if I disapprove of the people who come to me for a license, so long, of course, as I dress up my objection in religious terms. To a certain extent, these arguments are winning. Witness the Hobby Lobby case where a corporation, no less, was allowed to deprive its employees of access to contraceptive services because of its asserted religious scruples. These “religious liberty” claims are certainly being embraced by Republican politicians, as the Kim Davis controversy proved. Trump is simply extending this logic. He is arguing that the merely bigoted are entitled to the same rights as religious bigots. In other words, bigots should be considered a protected class, whether their bigotry has a religious basis or not. So despite the official clucking of some Republican tongues, there’s not much doubt that Trump’s base is totally with him on this one. They can no longer claim superior rights merely by virtue of being white, but they can claim, along with Trump, that they deserve special treatment in light of their bigotry.
Post a Comment