If Donald Trump laid his right hand upon a Bible and swore, “The sky is blue, the sun rises in the East and sets in the West, and the New York Yankees have the most World Series titles, with 27,” many in the media and on the left still might call him a “liar.”
Trump has been out of the Oval Office for more than 16 months, and yet, he seems to be living rent-free in the minds of many Americans and international elites who have come to loathe him.
But, facts are facts. Just because many people hate Trump does not mean that he can’t be correct sometimes — or even, often.
Tens of millions of Americans believe in his policies. Hillary Clinton may think of Trump’s supporters as “deplorables,” but most of these people consider themselves to be pragmatic, commonsense, rule-of-law Americans who are trying to survive difficult times.
When Trump offers an opinion or makes a pronouncement, he’s generally directing his remarks to that demographic. But those statements can be factual. Consider two recent broadsides from him.
First, Trump reached out to the Pulitzer Prize administrator to rescind the 2018 prizes for national reporting awarded to The New York Times and The Washington Post for their investigative reporting of the then-alleged Trump-Russia interference into the 2016 presidential campaign.
Said the former president to the Pulitzer office: “There is no dispute that the Pulitzer board’s award to those media outlets was based on false and fabricated information that they published. The continuing publication and recognition of the prizes on the board’s website is a distortion of fact and a personal defamation that will result in the filing of litigation if the board cannot be persuaded to do the right thing on its own.”
Now, all but the most partisan Democrats realize that the rumors, charges and investigations of Trump’s alleged coercion with Russia during the campaign were suspect from the start. These allegations were tainted by troubling partisan connections to the Clinton campaign and Obama administration officials — including, sadly, some in the FBI and the Department of Justice.
The Times and the Post should have uncovered that the “shameful smears” against him were political and partisan in their investigations, Trump pointed out.
That raises an important question: Did those news organizations do honest investigations, or were they simply hoping the charges were true because of some journalists’ inherent biases against Trump, which were exhibited in hundreds of negative stories they printed about him?
With regard to the Pulitzer Prize — or the Nobel Prize, for that matter, awarded to President Obama in 2009 for nothing more than inspiring “hope” — it’s becoming clear that the award is generally given to those on the left, by the left.
Maybe the Times and the Post would be better served investigating the Pulitzer and Nobel committees for ignoring conservative voices. In the meantime, they should display the ethical good grace to return awards given under false premises.
Then there is Trump’s professed outrage following the news that a jury acquitted Michael Sussmann, an attorney who once represented the Clinton campaign and the Democratic Party, of a charge of lying to the FBI.
“Our Legal System is CORRUPT, our Judges (and Justices!) are highly partisan, compromised or just plain scared, our Borders are OPEN, our Elections are Rigged, Inflation is RAMPANT, gas prices and food costs are ‘through the roof,’ our Military ‘Leadership’ is Woke, our Country is going to HELL, and Michael Sussmann is not guilty,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social site.
Now, it’s logical to assume that Trump’s opinion is biased, considering that the case revolved around alleged political dirty tricks against him. But even Georgetown University law professor Jonathan Turley said on Fox News, “I don’t believe the jury got it right. … No one could seriously not argue that it was a very favorable jury for the defense.”
Unfortunately, this case — like so many things that impact our daily lives — is now increasingly viewed through the prism of partisanship. It’s a trend that bodes ill for us all.
Partisan award committees rewarding partisan media for political hit jobs, and potentially biased jurors exonerating “the enemy of my enemy,” might seem like a good idea to like-minded ideologues, but it is ultimately a recipe for disaster.
No one has to agree with Trump all the time — or ever. But sometimes he raises the alarm on fairness issues that are worth debating for the sake of our nation.
Douglas MacKinnon, a political and communications consultant, was a writer in the White House for Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush, and former special assistant for policy and communications at the Pentagon during the last three years of the Bush administration. His latest book is “The 56: Liberty Lessons From Those Who Risked All to Sign the Declaration of Independence.”