Trump supporters and the corruption of law.

A friend of mine recently asked my opinion of the Atlantic Magazine's article Why Trump Supporters Believe He Is Not Corrupt by Peter Beinart.  The article argues that "What the president’s supporters fear most isn’t the corruption of American law, but the corruption of America’s traditional identity."  It views Trump as a a fascist politician and makes the claim that for Trump supporters corruption is less a matter of breaking the law than of violation of established hierarchies, such as America's racial and sexual norms.  While it is true that Trump supporters tend to favor established hierarchies, this article totally fails to understand the strong concern for the corruption of law that motives those who support Trump.

The first example offered of the Trump supporter's concern for corruption of established hierarchies over and against the corruption of law is Fox's coverage of the alleged murder of Mollie Tibbetts by an undocumented Latino immigrant, Cristhian Rivera.  Beinart claims that what makes this such a hot issue for Trump supporters is not that it violates the law, but that it violates an established American norm that white women must be protected from non-white men.  Frankly, this is nonsense.  As Beinart says a little later in the article, Trump has tweeted nine times about "rule of law" and seven of those mentioned illegal immigration.  This is what makes Tibbetts' murder such a hot issue.  Calling Rivera an "undocumented immigrant" shows where Beinart's sympathies lie, but Trumps supporters call him an illegal alien and wonder why Rivera was allowed into the country, and why he as been allowed to stay now that he is found to be here illegally.  That Rivera remains here and is not deported is a corruption of American law and it is this that Trump supporters are concerned about, not Beinart's "established American norm".

The second example offered by Beinart is how Hillary Clinton is seen by Trump supporters as the more corrupt candidate when "reporters uncovered far more damning evidence about Trump's foundation than they did about Clinton's".  As I am not a subscriber of the Washington Post, I can't read the article linked to substantiate this, but it's not really relevant, as the issues of the Clinton Foundation are only a small fraction of what is viewed as Hillary Clinton's corruption.  Her manipulation of the Democratic Party to secure the nomination over Bernie Sanders, her scheme to circumvent campaign financing laws by routing donations through the state DNC chapters (see also here), her storage of classified emails and work related emails on her email server and perjuring herself in sworn testimony about these issues, etc. are all part of the evidence of Clinton's corruption, and this does not even touch the now evident corruption the FBI, of which she was clearly a beneficiary.  For those who care about corruption of law, these issues are FAR more significant than the management of Clinton or Trump foundations, however significant they may be in other circumstances.  As for the currently hot issue of the payoff of a mistress to get her to keep quiet about Trump, the precedent for that was set by Bill Clinton.  One's sexual behaviors were then deemed to be irrelevant to one's role as president, and to consider them relevant now because Trump is president is hypocritical.

Beyond that, the corruption of the FBI (which used a report drafted by the DNC to obtain a FISA warrant to tap an associate of Trump and by extension Trump himself, and put someone who clearly hates Trump in charge of their investigation against him) now renders any accusations made by the FBI against Trump suspect.  It is clear that they were willing to use unscrupulous means to gather evidence against him, so any accusation they bring against Trump must be scrutinized with extraordinary care to confirm that we don't find in it another fabricated effort to discredit him.  It is this corruption that that Trump supporters care about, and this corruption that they attach to Hillary Clinton as heir apparent to the Obama presidency in which the rot blossomed, for it is clear that had Clinton been elected, absolutely none of this would have come to light, and the weaponization of both the DNC and the FBI to elect pre-selected candidates would have continued unabated, leaving us with the appearance of democratic elections but not the reality.

Beinart's claim that powerful women threatens Trump supporters needs no more refutation than to point to Sarah Huckabee Sanders and Nikki Haley as prominent figures in Trump's administration.  They have earned the admiration of many, and it has been suggested that Nikki Haley in particular could find a place on a future presidential slate if she desires.

None of this is to say that Trump is blameless here.  Had the DNC fielded a less corrupt candidate than Hillary Clinton, the FBI not used its powers to try to influence the election, and previous administrations demonstrated a little more concern to enforce our immigration laws as they are written, then Trump's failures might have been sufficient to disqualify him as president.  Some Trump supporters felt they had to hold their nose while voting for him, but the risks of a Clinton presidency were too great to be scrupulous about what had to be considered secondary issues.

The claim that Trump supporters are more concerned about corruption of norms than they are about corruption of law could only be plausible to someone who has already decided that Trump is fascist and then analyzed his supporters through that lens.  This label has been attached to Trump and his supporters when in fact those on the left, notably the profoundly misnamed "Anti"Fa demonstrate far more fascist tendencies than do even the extremists on the right.  The fascists' tendency to suppress free speech (whether through violence, as with Antifa, legal means (witness California's attack on sexual orientation counseling), or simple power, as with Facebook, Google and YouTube censorship) and their willingness to assault those with whom they disagree simply because they disagree are much more characteristic of the left than the right.  If analogies to fascism can be fruitful in analyzing our current social tensions, Beinart might be better served applying them to the left than to the right.