The MAGA Doctrine Page 16

  This transformation of the courts may be Trump’s true lasting legacy. We spend a great deal of time arguing about presidents and presidential candidates in the United States, but there are three branches of government, not just the executive but also the legislature and the judiciary. Trump’s impact on the judiciary will continue even when his presidency is over and even if members of Congress who share his vision are all voted out of office. Most judges are lifetime appointments.

  Trump’s judicial appointments are one of the clearest pieces of evidence that he is not ideologically rudderless, too. His judges—including a shortlist of possible Supreme Court nominees he floated even before the 2016 election—tend not only to be conservatives but to be favorites of the Federalist Society, the widely respected libertarian/conservative organization that promotes open political debates about topics such as originalist interpretations of the Constitution—that is, the idea that the words of the texts should be interpreted by a familiarity with their meaning in the minds of the Founders, not just their sound to modern ears or their association with sometimes-dubious more recent left-wing analyses.

  Though Trump has often had to butt heads with both the Democrat establishment and the establishment of his party, the swift confirmation of over 150 judges is solid work by the Republican majority in the Senate. As has been obvious since the Bork hearings of 1987, any judge’s nomination can become the occasion for grandstanding and political spin by members of the Senate Judiciary Committee. A moderate can be made to sound like a radical if the politicians know there is enough media interest to echo the spin in confirmation hearings. There has been fairly little time for any of that with most of Trump’s nominees.

  Gorsuch and, obviously more so, Kavanaugh had to get through that gauntlet and will now likely shape American law for many years to come—but in a way, Trump’s lower-court appointments are a more long-lasting gift. Their decisions may on average carry less weight than those of the Supreme Court, but many of them are in their thirties and forties, and they’ll be deciding cases for decades (some, in all likelihood, from the Supreme Court as well one day).

  The Senate even confirmed a few controversially conservative judges, such as Kentucky’s John K. Bush, now of the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals, who, in a reminder of changing times, was opposed by some senators more because of his decade of conservative blogging (pseudonymously) at the site Elephants in the Bluegrass. There, he opposed Obamacare (unlike Chief Justice Roberts) and likened abortion to slavery. He was confirmed, in part by explaining that his personal opinions on such matters would not affect his judging—and indeed, judicial philosophy is a different creature than political philosophy, hinging more on questions such as how much weight to give to precedent, when to send decisions back to lower courts, etc. Still, having conservatives on the bench is bound to affect the overall tenor of the judiciary.

  The scrutiny gets stricter and the gauntlet tighter, sometimes absurdly so, at the Supreme Court level, of course. One thoroughly qualified candidate already feeling the pressure—considered by Trump for the slot on the Supreme Court that went to Kavanaugh and rumored to be on deck as a nominee if Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg passes away, ghoulish as it may be to speculate—is Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Amy Coney Barrett.

  Her 2017 confirmation hearings were a revealing look at how radical the litmus tests used by the Democrats are becoming. Barrett was essentially raked over the coals, in particular by longtime California senator Dianne Feinstein, for being Catholic, and for using the term “orthodox Catholic” to describe herself, as though over seventy million Americans, the single largest religious denomination in the United States, were some fringe group. The real imperative in the minds of Democrat interlocutors in such hearings is “Protect abortion at any cost,” as if the whole of judicial philosophy and politics revolves around the odds that someone might push back against the post–Roe v. Wade legal regime. Like most judges, Barrett contends she will decide cases—on a wide array of issues—on their legal merits.

  The current Supreme Court is already majority-Catholic, by the way, and it hasn’t resulted in a rush to shoehorn the overturning of Roe v. Wade into every case. If you count Gorsuch (whose background includes both Catholicism and Episcopalianism) as Catholic, the Supreme Court is two-thirds Catholic, and they still appear to make their decisions based on solidly secular points of US legal tradition. Maybe Catholics are capable of rationally weighing legal philosophical arguments just like thinkers from any other sect. It’s a little creepy to suggest they’re all on a stealth mission, much as I love it when law reaffirms Americans’ most basic right, the right to life. Senate confirmation hearings obviously can’t be allowed to reinstitute ancient religious tests for participating in public life.

  Trump’s performance on judicial nominees is another great example of him exceeding expectations.

  If he were as philosophically random and reckless as his critics, even some on the right, imply—if his only lodestar were “what helps Trump”—there would likely be no pattern to his appointments. The government is filled with people who are of no particular ideological interest but are “qualified” by dint of prior experience in similar positions. The coast to the political center is so easy when you make appointments out of non-threatening, familiar faces who seem to get along with everyone on both sides of the aisle. Presidents are constantly advised to save their ammunition for more important battles that never seem to arrive. Even in very contentious times, D.C.’s main unwritten rule is “Don’t rock the boat.”

  Trump has just given the ship of state a much-needed tack to the right.

  He has also done it without appointing hacks and cronies who might open him up to charges of caring about nothing but ideology. (His de facto advisors at the Federalist Society recognize the need for wisdom and experience in judges of any party.) NPR, seemingly grasping for some way to condemn the Trump appointments, was reduced to running a piece whining that the appointed judges are about 70% white males. However, only about a third of federal judges were female before Trump took office, and—though the country is getting more diverse all the time and diversity is indeed an asset—the United States is still about two-thirds white. White males will inevitably crop up from time to time, even if complaining about it has gotten a little more fashionable.

  It doesn’t tell us too much about how they’ll decide cases, obviously—probably even less than their religious denominations would. Let’s try to aim higher than simple demographics in debating judges’ track records.

  One of the strangest aspects of watching the left sit in judgment upon conservatives’ legal objectivity, of course, is how lawless the left becomes once such hearings are over and politics as usual resumes.

  Take the weird, belated attempt to rekindle accusations against Justice Kavanaugh late in the summer of 2019, well after he was safely seated on the Supreme Court. A book that had not yet been released quoted a lawyer who recollected hearing that friends of Kavanaugh, back in college, had shoved Kavanaugh’s penis into a woman’s hand. The woman admits she had no memory of such an incident, no other witnesses came forward—oh, and the man with the vague recollection of other people’s recollections was Max Stier, a former lawyer for Bill Clinton who had defended him when Paula Jones sued him for sexual assault, Clinton ultimately paying her $850,000 to settle the case.

  That doesn’t sound like the most airtight case, from the most plausible source, against Justice Kavanaugh—but no matter. Numerous Democrats, including more than one 2020 presidential candidate, promptly called for Kavanaugh to be impeached! Democrats love impeachment now, but needless to say, they didn’t back in Bill Clinton’s day.

  Instead of investigating Kavanaugh for an eighth time (the justice having been successfully vetted for several positions even before his Supreme Court appointment), maybe the FBI should investigate some of these unresolved scandals:

  Representative Ilhan Omar’s immigration fraud (her only response to questi
ons about whether she married her brother temporarily to speed up the process is to shout “racism”)

  Representative Elijah Cummings’s wife’s shady nonprofit (ironic for a member of the ethics-violations-policing House Oversight Committee)

  Senator Dianne Feinstein’s assistant who was a Chinese spy (ironic for a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee)

  Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s campaign finance violations (ironic for someone who thinks dirty capitalist money corrupts politics and society)

  Adam Schiff lying about Russia evidence (but maybe Russia is old hat and he has now moved on to lying about Ukraine evidence)

  An added irony about Omar, by the way—one of the fiercest critics of Trump’s wariness about Muslim terrorism and policy moves like his “travel ban”—she called for impeaching Trump well before it became a cause embraced by the House Democrats in general, ostensibly for campaign violations, though Trump hadn’t been found guilty of any. Omar herself? Found guilty of at least six—and fined a mere $500 for it.

  Don’t let the Democrats get away with pretending to be the party of the impartial administration of justice, much as we’d all like to believe such impartiality prevails.

  The left’s politicization of the cause of justice is made all the more pernicious, of course, by hiding in mountains of seemingly objective procedure—and hiding it in the bureaucracy of the so-called Deep State, the mixture of permanent civil service, intelligence, and police agencies vast enough to generate its own cabals with their own political agendas.

  Recall that even before Trump was elected, one of the text messages (dated September 2, 2016) from Lisa Page, an FBI attorney on Robert Mueller’s investigative team, to the FBI’s Peter Strzok reads: “POTUS wants to know everything we’re doing.” POTUS at that time, obviously, meant then–president of the United States Barack Obama. And she wrote that while she was preparing talking points for then-director of the FBI James Comey, later one of Trump’s harshest—and as a glance through the selfies on his Twitter feed suggests, strangest—critics. Obama knew about the operation that had begun against Trump, on behalf of Hillary Clinton’s cronies and other Trump enemies already ensconced within the ostensibly nonpartisan government bureaucracy.

  In short, Obama presided over an intelligence community trampling normal rules and procedures to undermine Hillary’s competition. These are the same people who went on to lecture us about propriety, ethics rules, corruption, and justice. Let’s see Obama testify under oath about it all, and he might not seem quite so above-it-all as he pretends. Maybe Joe Biden would even have to stop touting Obama as a likely appointment to the Supreme Court. There are certainly some tough questions I’d like to see put to him in his confirmation hearings if he ever has any!

  Maybe he could also be asked whether he thinks it’s okay for Joe Biden’s son to start a hedge fund with no experience, fly to China with his father, and rake in over a billion dollars in Chinese investments. Maybe he could be asked if there’s anything fishy about Hunter Biden taking a $50,000 a month position on the board of a Ukrainian oil company with no relevant qualifications besides being the son of the sitting vice president. I’ll bet he has some interesting thoughts on why it’s illegal for American companies to hire the families of foreign officials but foreign companies can hire the children of American officials.

  Until that hypothetical confirmation hearing, I will go on taking great pleasure in the ones President Trump has made possible. Every Trump confirmation feels like justice.

  Chapter 15

  Promises Kept

  I suspect that what burns many members of the permanent (or formerly permanent?) political class about Trump is that unlike the rest of them, he might do what he says he’s going to do. That wouldn’t just result in policies the political establishment doesn’t like—it would remind the public what frauds the other politicians are.

  Trump has begun construction on literally his most concrete promise, the wall at the southern border. Trump is not opposed to all immigration. I am not opposed to all immigration. We are indeed “a nation of immigrants” in our historical roots.

  It is also true that borders are, and must be, the first line of defense in conflict and a natural checkpoint when watching for criminal interlopers. Even the Democrats know this, though it is not in their electoral interest to say it too loudly these days.

  Consider the strange legal limbo into which we have cast people in recent years victimized by cross-border criminals who our system refuses to oust from the country. If an illegal immigrant plays his cards right and neither gets deported nor treated as a domestic criminal, he might get off free in some cases.

  Montgomery County, Maryland, is one “sanctuary” area for illegal aliens, and in September 2019, for the ninth time in just over a month, an illegal there was charged with a vicious sex crime with a minor—a twenty-one-year-old Honduran native charged with raping a six-year-old child. Democrat policies that insist we put electoral calculations and the rights of noncitizens before the interests of victims like that six-year-old are destroying America.

  Trump is not hateful when he reacts to outrageous incidents like that one. He’s angry. So are the rest of us—aside from the Democrats, who have no real interest in speaking for us. They certainly don’t speak for all members of the ethnic minority populations whom they so often assert a unique right to represent. Consider:

  56% of Hispanic Americans support denying permanent residency to migrants known to have used or are likely to use welfare

  65% say illegal aliens shouldn’t be allowed to draw from taxpayer-funded welfare

  71% of black Americans agree

  The indifference that liberal elites in this country and others would like people to show to their nation-states manifests itself in ways far subtler than the occasional horrific crime by an illegal immigrant, though. Consider the absurdity of the United States offering generous college scholarships, at taxpayer expense, to international students while so many hard-working American students have difficulty affording college, some deciding for purely financial reasons not to go (though I can think of plenty of cultural, noneconomic reasons to skip college).

  Trump promised to govern as a nationalist, and he is keeping that promise whether the left likes it or not. Make no mistake, one should never equate someone who self-identifies as a nationalist with someone who identifies as a white nationalist. The media all too often are happy to make this false leap. Dozens of parties around the world call themselves the nationalist party yet have zero sympathy toward any racial preferences. There is nothing wrong with being proud of your nation, standing up for your nation, and believing in your nation first. That makes you a patriot. There is everything wrong with associating with white power groups or any other racially motivated group or party. In fact, these ridiculous racists explicitly choose race over nation in their rantings. Time and again I have denounced racial groups, white nationalists, and anyone who harbors hatred, yet the media seem to conveniently distort and ignore this fact. If you put being white ahead of being American, you have no place in the MAGA movement.

  Putting America first is not the only big, brave promise Trump made—and has since been keeping, to many people’s shock. Politicians so rarely keep their promises, after all, that it had almost become rude to hold them to their long-forgotten campaign comments. Most presidents decide they have to pick their battles. President Trump picks all the battles—and he doesn’t stop fighting until he wins.

  A few of the most important battles:

  The wall is being built. Despite skepticism from both the left and the occasional impatient conservative such as Ann Coulter, some 450 miles of border wall are expected to be finished by the end of 2020, along a roughly 2,000-mile US/Mexico border. Local officials in areas near the new wall construction report significant reductions in illegal crossings.

  The economy is booming. Every stock market has its ups and downs, but the market’s early and emphatic endor
sement of Trump’s election has continued to pay off.

  ISIS has been defeated. The terrorist group’s collapse was so abrupt after Trump took office one is tempted to conclude—at the risk of being smeared as un-American or a paranoiac who fears the intelligence sector—that Trump ordering the CIA to stop funding Syrian rebels made the crucial difference. By accident or design, money from the United States meant to find its way into the hands of anti-Assad rebels kept trickling over to that subset of the rebels allied with al-Qaeda or ISIS. Your terrorist enemies fare much worse when you stop paying and supplying them. If the old-school hawks learn nothing else from the Trump administration’s foreign policy, let’s hope they at least learn that one. And if they don’t care, we have much bigger problems.

  Trade wars are quietly being won, despite media insistence to the contrary, as countries including China renegotiate tariffs and copyright-enforcement agreements to which Trump has drawn attention and about which he has talked tough. It may not go quickly, but there is no question China needs these deals more than we do.

  NAFTA has been scrapped and is being replaced, one of the most powerful symbols of the neoliberal/neoconservative post–Cold War globalist order undone by one man’s nationalist vision.

  The Trans-Pacific Partnership has been withdrawn. By the time Trump scuttled that deal, you could almost hear the chorus of thousands of trade lawyers who’d worked out its elaborate quotas and sweetheart reciprocal deals crying out in agony. These deals have always been negotiated to benefit the powerful in each country, at the expense of the people in each country. Those days are over.

  Planned Parenthood funding has been decreased. The establishment of a true culture of life is a fight much deeper and more protracted than mere dollars and cents, but it is clear where the president stands on this core issue when presidents who talked more like conservatives did little to advance the pro-life cause. It is not a lost cause.