If we were looking for one moment that captures both Donald Trump’s appeal and why he is so dangerous, it came yesterday in Las Vegas. At his final rally before today’s Nevada Republican caucuses, Trump launched into a tirade about the effrontery of a protester who had been ejected from the venue. Hecklers repeatedly interrupted Trump and according to the candidate, one who was being ejected had thrown punches — a claim that was later contradicted by the security guards that tossed the dissident out.
“The guards are being very gentle with him,” Trump said. “I’d like to punch him in the face, I’ll tell you that.” …
“We’re not allowed to punch back any more,” Trump lamented. The billionaire said he missed the “good old days,” when the man would be treated differently.
“You know what they used to do to a guy like that in a place like this?” Trump said. “They’d be carried out on a stretcher, folks.”
Mark it down as just one more moment when Donald Trump said what a lot of people were thinking, but a responsible leader when never say aloud.
The frustrating thing about democracy is its basic premise. Being forced to endure the speech of those with whom we disagree is hard for those of us who don’t argue politics for a living. Faced with obnoxious hecklers who want to disrupt events or speakers that we support, who doesn’t think about wanting to shut up such people? But the mark of an experienced politician and mature leader is the ability to rise above such challenges. More to the point, such moments are excellent opportunities to demonstrate not only tolerance of opposing viewpoints but also the strength to listen to critics with wit and the ability to counterpunch.
But while counterpunching is his specialty with respect to his competitors for the presidency, he isn’t big on showing tolerance or absorbing abuse with good grace.
Moreover, saying that he’d like to punch a critic is exactly the sort of politically incorrect talk that his fans adore.
Trump supporters are sick and tired of the conventions of democracy that require us to accept that we can’t silence opponents or run roughshod over their ability to thwart our desires via the checks and balances provided by the Constitution. Like Trump, they, too, long for the return of the “good old days.” In that mythical past, dissent was silenced. Like his complaints that America doesn’t win anymore — something that will be magically corrected by his presidency, the desire to suppress other points of view is a manifestation of impatience with the hard work of democracy.
Seen in that light, rather than merely a humorous aside, Trump’s desire to punch critics in the face is more evidence that his candidacy is a visceral expression of the authoritarian impulse.
Any normal politician that spoke of his desire to inflict violence on opponents would be tarred, feathered, and ridden out of the public square on a rail. But Trump gets away with it — as he has gotten away with every other outrageous, insulting and false statement he has made during the course of the last several months — because his fans roar and a captive media dutifully tut-tuts while treating his every utterance as the top news of the day.
As much as many of us may be frustrated with a popular and political culture in which political correctness and liberal orthodoxy is unquestioned, Trump’s alternative is just as bad if not worse. Punch him in the face politics is not a path to greatness for America but a detour into some very un-American authoritarian impulses. If Republicans fret about an Obama administration that ignores the Constitution, makes end runs around Congress in order to impose its will on society, how can they regard a presidency by a person who wishes to see his critics carried out on a stretcher with anything but alarm? Trump’s voters may think such bare-knuckled tactics will only be used on their opponents, but it is their rights that Trump will traduce as much as those of the left.
A president must do more than “tell it like it is.” A president must defend American values and the norms of democracy. A president that is temperamentally incapable of doing so will ensure that ordinary Americans continue losing even as he boasts of mythical victories. Trump isn’t the first man on horseback (or its 21st-century moral equivalent) to tempt Americans to discard their democratic traditions but like all demagogues and bullies, he represents a threat to the rights of those who applaud him as much as to those they oppose. A president that can cheer the beating up of a liberal critic can just as easily choose to do the same to conservatives.
Let no one say that Republicans weren’t warned.
