President Trump’s critics are their own worst enemies.
Their love for baseless speculation and broad generalizations often undercuts whatever legitimate criticisms they might have for the current state of affairs in the nation’s capital.
Washington Post columnist Max Boot, for example, argued this week that the Trump takeover of the Republican Party means it must be razed to the ground and rebuilt – just like Germany after the rise and fall of the the Third Reich.
“As a true conservative,” Boot wrote in a column published July 4, “my primary motivation is always based on what is in the best long-term interest of my country, and my family. I can’t believe it has come to this, but I am now sure that this means actively hoping that the Republican Party gets crushed in November.”
He continued, claiming that the GOP is no longer “a conservative party with a white-nationalist fringe,” but that it is a “white-nationalist party with a conservative fringe.”
“Like postwar Germany and Japan, the Republican Party must first be destroyed before it can be rebuilt,” Boot writes.
He clarified later on social media that he didn’t mean to say the GOP equals Nazis, “just as I don’t mean that it should be carpet-bombed. [Should] be obvious what I meant: GOP is a sick institution that needs to be rebuilt from ground up.”
President Trump’s enduring legacy will be that he revealed so many in the news and entertainment industries to be just as absurd as he is.
Boot isn’t wrong when he talks about the populist takeover of the Republican Party. They are in control now. But we can say all of that without also triggering Godwin’s Law.
This is the problem with much of the criticism aimed at Trump. The White House is indeed deserving of harsh critique, and it’s guilty of plenty of deeply unethical behavior, but much of what ought to be said gets lost in the circus of white-knuckling hyperbole and performative acts of dissent.
Ask yourself this about Boot’s column: Whom does it serve?
If the point of his article was to persuade, rather than preach to the choir, he missed the mark. The Nazi references will resonate only the people who agree with him already; the people on the other side (or even the fence), not so much. Boot is smart enough to know this, which makes one wonder if playing to an audience wasn’t the point all along. If he is, then forget about it. All criticism loses its bite when it appears to be a performance, as opposed to an earnest and good-faith appeal.
The funniest thing about the Boot-style criticism of White House is that there is absolutely no need for it. This administration is already an absurd place, a target rich environment for harsh rebukes. Merely quoting the president’s own words is often damning enough. One need not embellish to make the point.
But I suppose Trump just inspires the dumbest in everyone.
