To the Editor:
Re “Further Into the Muck With Mr. Trump” (editorial, Aug. 10):
Donald Trump loves to use what Monty Python called “nudge nudge wink wink say no more” rhetoric. He hints; his audience gets the hint and roars back, verbalizing his hints in a shared language of hatred, anger and fear.
He then lectures the media about their “false” coverage of him, insisting on being the only arbiter of his meaning. He rejects the monitoring and accountability functions that a free press is supposed to perform—that rejection is as terrifying as his almost-invocations of violence in politics.
It may be natural to a creature of the private sector to reject scrutiny and accountability. But it is alien to the Constitution and to American democratic politics.
R.B. BERNSTEIN
New York
The writer is a lecturer in law and political science at City College of New York.
Note from KBJ: This is rich. Consider:
- Democrats, not Donald Trump, perfected the art of "nudge nudge wink wink say no more." Every four years, the Democrat candidate says, in effect, "Vote for me and I'll give you all the goodies you want."
- When Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton said, just a couple of years ago, that they oppose homosexual marriage, they were winking and nodding to leftists that they would come out in favor of homosexual marriage as soon as it was politically expedient to do so; and they did.
- Donald Trump doesn't "insist[] on being the only arbiter of his meaning"; he insists that his opponents not be the only arbiter of his meaning.
- Donald Trump doesn't "reject[] the monitoring and accountability functions that a free press is supposed to perform"; he rejects the partisanship that passes for journalism.
- Donald Trump hasn't called for violence; Barack Obama has. Remember "If they bring a knife to the fight, we bring a gun"? Remember Hillary Clinton's suggestion that the 2008 Democrat nominating contest wasn't over because there was still time for Obama to be assassinated (hint, hint)? Remember the books and movies portraying the assassination of George W. Bush? The violent party in this country is the Democrat Party, not the Republican Party. R. B. Bernstein is projecting.
The real danger to the Constitution is not Donald Trump but Hillary Clinton, who views our founding document the way Barack Obama does: as an obstacle to the progressive agenda.
