Why is Trump attacking black prosecutors who investigate him?
The question answers itself, and racism is not the answer.
The Bulwark is Bill Kristol’s publication dedicated to indiscriminately attacking Donald Trump. The indiscriminate nature of its Never-Trumpism has seldom been displayed more starkly than in this article by Jill Lawrence. It purports to find a “racial element” in Donald Trump’s attacks on three prosecutors who have investigated him.
Lawrence’s case for a racial element rests on nothing more than the race of the three prosecutors — Letitia James, Fani Willis, and Alvin Bragg. Each is black.
But Trump regularly lashes out his critics and sometimes even at allies who don’t support him with enough vigor. Of course, he's going to attack anyone who tries to have him imprisoned.
Race has nothing to do with it. The way Trump speaks of an individual is purely a function of how that individual has spoken and acted towards Trump. It’s that simple.
Late in her article, Lawrence acknowledges that Trump has smeared Jack Smith, the white Justice Department lawyer who is leading major investigations of the former president. She points out that Trump has called Smith a “thug,” a “terrorist,” and “fully weaponized monster,” among other charming labels.
Lawrence doesn’t even try to reconcile Trump’s bashing of Smith with her assertion that Trump’s bashing of the three black prosecutors is racist. The best she can do is to assert:
The way Trump goes after black and Hispanic prosecutors and judges poses a special menace because of the example he sets—the permission structure he creates—for white nationalism, white supremacy, racism, antisemitism, and immigrant-bashing.
The only sense I can make out of this salad of invective and jargon (permission structure?) is that Trump should grant preferential treatment to blacks and hispanics who cross him. Otherwise, he’s a racist.
That’s not sense, it’s nonsense.
Lawrence is enamored with the three prosecutors. She offers them these paeans:
James’s parents reportedly wanted her to marry a plumber. Instead she became a lawyer, a path she chose as a young teen in a courthouse watching her brother fight a false bike theft accusation.
Willis was raised by her father, John C. Floyd III, a defense lawyer and former Black Panther. She was organizing his home office files at age 8. . . .
Bragg was elected Manhattan D.A. in 2021. In his victory speech in Harlem, where he grew up, he told supporters he wouldn’t be simply the first black district attorney of Manhattan. “I think I’ll probably be the first district attorney who’s had police point a gun at him,” he said. “I think I’ll be the first district attorney who’s had a homicide victim on his doorstop. I think I’ll be the first district attorney in Manhattan who’s had a semiautomatic weapon pointed at him. I think I’ll be the first district attorney in Manhattan who’s had a loved one reenter from incarceration and stay with him. And I’m going to govern from that perspective.”
Interesting stuff, if true. But none of it can be expected to immunize the three from Trump’s wrath or, indeed, from criticism by those of us less directly affected by their grandstanding.
Consider Bragg. His case against Trump is so embarrassingly weak that even the Washington Post and the New York Times have criticized it. And Bragg’s lack of seriousness about prosecuting crime put him at loggerheads with New York’s Democratic mayor.
It’s difficult not to conclude that Lawrence’s high regard for the three prosecutors is rooted, not in their alleged “life stories,” but rather in the fact that they are pursuing a man she hates. However, she also lauds them because they “embody a national racial transformation.” I assume she has in mind the election of black prosecutors in major U.S. jurisdictions.
That’s transformative, but is it good for the jurisdictions? Not in itself.
Before Willis and Bragg came Kim Foxx (Chicago) and Kim Gardner (St. Louis). Both have been awful.
It’s not racist to point this out. But Lawrence seems intent of taking away the “permission structure” for doing so.
I do agree with Lawrence on one point. Trump has called Willis and James “racist.” He should not have.
Just as no racial angle is needed to explain Trump’s ire at those who want to prosecute him, no racial angle is required to explain why the three black prosecutors went gunning for Trump. Their non-race-based hatred of Trump, their ambition, and their lack of good judgment fully explain their actions.
Lawrence’s article descends to Trump’s level of invective and willingness to play the race card. That’s nothing to be proud of.
At the risk of abusing the author's kind hospitality, I'd like to just add one more remark. It was not long ago that Bill Kristol argued that he was not going to adopt the left's worst excesses, and that his affiliation with the Democrat party was based on its presumed centrism. He also chided Republicans for allegedly accepting everything that their leader would say, even if contradiction to established principles, and observed that this "cultish" behavior was part of a basic logic of group-think. As I once recall him saying on some news network or podcast, "first you accept one outrage, and then you accept more," (sic). Well, Mr. Kristol, are there mirrors in your house? He has evinced an almost complete inability to shield himself from adopting the left's party line on essentially each and every issue. It's not exactly a profile in intellectual courage or consistency. And frankly, this is hardly the worst of the examples. Just another case in point. Truly sad to see. Disagreement and dissidence, is a value to be encouraged and cherished. I don't begrudge him his criticisms of the former President. I condemn the moral bankruptcy he has adopted as a result of turning this into the central organizing principle of his thought.
I must say that I'm generally amazed and appalled at the bottomless abyss that Bill Kristol has become. Childish, petty, shallow, hypocritical. His writings and those of his peers these days, are befitting angry adolescent brats. The only difference being, that adolescents tend to be able learners. It is not necessary to descend to some moral and cognitive nadir, in order to be distressed by Trump's own serious shortcomings. To the contrary, maintaining a worthy criticism of the former President, REQUIRES being able to show a level of maturity and a quality of reasoning, that does not exhibit the former President's worst qualities. And yet, Bill Kristol consistently fails to do so. I come to increasingly understand why the left used to despise the man.
Speaking for myself, I'm perfectly capable of recognizing the former President's faults. But I cannot see a justification for this obviously political and absurd prosecution, and I find it again, shocking but perhaps not surprising, that Kristol-- a self-styled promoter of "democracy"-- cannot see the inherent threat to democracy that is implicit in a political prosecution of an individual seeking the highest office in the United States. And as a New Yorker, I've been appalled by Alvin Bragg for some time, as I'm familiar with his outrageous lack of prosecutorial discretion, which reveals itself on a serial basis. There's nothing racial about my dislike for him. I cheered the election of the present mayor, although he's disappointed me by not living up to his campaign promises of enacting a tough on crime agenda.
The surpassing shallowness and childishness of Mr. Kristol is an ongoing disgrace all by itself.