As different as President Trump is from the Democrats, they often go about the business of politics the same way.
As I wrote last week, Trump, Joe Biden, and Kamala Harris have all been employing bad and dishonest arguments about coronavirus policy to try and gain an electoral edge. The intersections extend to another electoral strategy: equivocating on dangerous ideas.
Trump was thrilled when “future Republican Star” Marjorie Greene won a congressional primary in Georgia. “Marjorie is strong on everything and never gives up — a real WINNER!” Trump tweeted.
Though she now says she decided to “choose another path,” Greene rose as a big-time believer in QAnon, a wide-ranging conspiracy theory that accuses anti-Trump Democrats of being involved in child sex-trafficking, among other things. She also once suggested that an airplane never crashed into the Pentagon on Sept. 11.
The reach of QAnon within the GOP extends further than Greene. Axios has counted 11 Republican congressional candidates who have embraced the theories in some form or another, a serious concern considering that the FBI has connected QAnon to domestic extremists. A bureau report from 2019 included QAnon in a list of “anti-government, identity-based, and fringe political conspiracy theories” that could “very likely motivate some domestic extremists to commit criminal, sometimes violent activity.”
Trump has not denounced QAnon explicitly. Considering the presence of QAnon paraphernalia at his rallies and other pro-Trump events, the reason is quite obvious: They share a constituency.
As for Democrats, protests and occasions of violence and other criminal activity have been happening concurrently for months, in such proximity that it is often difficult to determine which protests actually prioritize peace. Portland has seen nonstop demonstrations and rioting since May 29, a mix of protest and assembly with arson, property damage, and assaults against police officers.
Out of fear that it would alienate those protesting police brutality, Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler spent months virtually ignoring the violence occurring in his city. It was only after federal law enforcement drew down that he came out forcefully against the rioters for such acts as barricading Portland police inside a precinct building and lighting it on fire.
House Judiciary Chairman Jerry Nadler went so far as to say that the violence was a “myth that’s being spread only in Washington, D.C.” When Nadler’s committee convened in late July to question Attorney General William Barr, Democrats were distressed about the presence of federal officers in Portland but showed no concern about the criminality that made their presence needful.
Earlier in the summer, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was asked whether people should take it upon themselves to pull down statues and throw them into rivers. “People will do what they do,” she responded. The lack of a willingness to call out what is so obviously wrong and illegal showed a strategic moral weakness.
Ultimately, Trump avoids disavowing QAnon fanatics for the same reason that Democrats fail to disavow those committing arson, property damage, and violence against police. In both cases, the radicals and the much larger group of their respective sympathizers comprise a share of their constituencies. They want the votes.
