(Dobbs) Is It Demonizing Donald Trump To Simply Quote Him?

Other presidents have always found their better angels at times like this. This president doesn’t seem to have any.

What other president, what other normal president, would answer a reporter’s question like this?

The reporter: “What do you make of Pam Bondi saying she’s gonna go after hate speech? A lot of your allies say hate speech is free speech.”

The president: “We’ll probably go after people like you because you treat me so unfairly. It’s hate. You have a lot of hate in your heart. Maybe we’ll go after ABC.”

The reporter yesterday on the White House lawn was ABC’s chief Washington correspondent Jonathan Karl. The president was Donald Trump.

Can you imagine any other president, in the recent or distant past, giving an answer like that? Every other president, certainly in modern memory, has seen healing as a part of his job description. Every other president in times of national crisis has done his best to turn down the heat on the fire. But not Donald Trump. In Trump’s world, there is no damping the flames. He walks on fire. When he’s challenged, hate speech is the only language he knows.

So, threatening a reporter who asks a perfectly legitimate question in the aftermath of Charlie Kirk’s assassination? This president won’t hesitate for a moment.

And his disciples are laying the groundwork.

Monday on a podcast, Attorney General Pam Bondi said, “There’s free speech and then there’s hate speech. We will absolutely target you, go after you, if you are targeting anyone with hate speech.” As if it’s up to Bondi to define what hate speech is and what it isn’t. Which, for her, is pretty predictable: hate speech is speech that pillories the president.

What Ms. Bondi doesn’t seem to have learned is, until hateful speech melds into threats of violence, the First Amendment protects it. That’s one of the beauties of America. We can vent, we can protest, and yes, we can hate, without fear of prosecution, without fear of imprisonment, thanks to the foresight of the Founding Fathers. At least we could, until now.

Last night on CNN, Bondi’s number two, Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche— he’s the guy who defended Trump during his criminal trial last year in New York and got rewarded for it big time— made that clear.

After protesters evidently spoiled the president’s restaurant dinner in Washington last week and the president threatened, “They should be put in jail, what they’re doing to this country is really subversive,” Blanche said, implying an evil leftist conspiracy, “So is it, again, sheer happenstance that individuals show up at a restaurant where the president is trying to enjoy dinner in Washington, DC, and accost him with vile words and vile anger? And meanwhile, he’s simply trying to have dinner. Does it mean it’s just completely random that they showed up? Maybe. But to the extent that it’s part of an organized effort to inflict harm and terror and damage to the United States, there’s potential, potential investigations there.”

Harm and terror and damage? What these protesters shouted was, “Free DC, free Palestine, Trump is the Hitler of our time.” At a president with the Secret Service on every side of him.

“Vile words, vile anger?” It’s all in the eyes of the beholder. But the beholder is Donald Trump. So now, we prosecute people like that?

This is very much in line with the hateful speech coming out of the White House after the assassination one week ago of Charlie Kirk.

That night, Trump spoke from the Oval Office and blamed “leftist radicals” and insisted that “violence and murder are the tragic consequence of demonizing those with whom you disagree.”

As columnist Frank Bruni wrote, “President, edit thyself.” When campaigning for his second term, Trump told a rally, “Either we surrender to the demonic forces, abolishing and demolishing, and happily doing so, our country, or we defeat them in a landslide on November 5th, 2024.” Forgive the cliché, but that is the pot calling the kettle black. The “demonic forces?” These were the people who, in a free society, supported his opponent.

It’s Trump who demonizes everyone who doesn’t kiss his ring. He has called his rivals “vermin,” “the enemy within,” “thugs, horrible people, fascists, Marxists, sick people,” “an enemy of the state,” “Marxist, fascist and communist tyrants who want to smash our Judeo-Christian heritage.” On Fox just last week, berating “radicals on the left,” he said “They’re vicious. And they’re horrible.”

But now he laments “the tragic consequence of demonizing those with whom you disagree.” Is it demonizing Trump to simply quote him? Is it demonizing Charlie Kirk to quote him saying racist things like this: “If I see a black pilot, I’m going to be like, boy, I hope he’s qualified. If I'm dealing with somebody in customer service who's a moronic black woman… I wonder is she there because of her excellence, or is she there because affirmative action?”

That isn’t a smear?

Monday, when Vice President Vance hosted Charlie Kirk’s podcast, he declared, “It is a statistical fact that most of the lunatics in American politics today are proud members of the far left.”

Besides being flagrantly unsupportable, isn’t that a smear?

Trump & Co. have reached a whole new level of, “Either you’re with us, or you’re against us.” Those on the other side aren’t just citizens who disagree with what this president and this administration are doing to the nation. They are the enemy. As Dan Rather put it here on Substack, Trump “exploits others’ violent acts to further his own vengeful agenda.” He “is using Kirk’s killing as a call to arms for his supporters.”

Now he’s talking about taking vengeance on bedrock institutions that don’t embrace him, even including the Ford Foundation. He has floated everything from removing tax-exempt status, to filing racketeering charges, to even applying the label of “terrorist organization.” But only for the ones who aren’t “with us.” By blatant contrast, he pardoned and praised the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers and others who terrorized the nation on January 6th, 2021, to keep Trump in office.

So it’s no surprise that Trump lashes out at a reporter doing his job and threatens legal jeopardy. Or at protesters exercising their constitutional rights. Or at anyone who doesn’t think he’s making America great again. Other presidents have always found their better angels at times like this. This president doesn’t seem to have any.

Over more than five decades Greg Dobbs has been a correspondent for two television networks including ABC News, a political columnist for The Denver Post and syndicated columnist for Scripps newspapers, a moderator on Rocky Mountain PBS, and author of two books, including one about the life of a foreign correspondent called “Life in the Wrong Lane.” He also co-authored a book about the seminal year for baby boomers, called “1969: Are You Still Listening?” He has covered presidencies, politics, and the U.S. space program at home, and wars, natural disasters, and other crises around the globe, from Afghanistan to South Africa, from Iran to Egypt, from the Soviet Union to Saudi Arabia, from Nicaragua to Namibia, from Vietnam to Venezuela, from Libya to Liberia, from Panama to Poland. Dobbs has won three Emmys, the Distinguished Service Award from the Society of Professional Journalists, and as a 39-year resident of Colorado, a place in the Denver Press Club Hall of Fame.

You can learn more at GregDobbs.net