The Danger of 'Magical Thinking' as Trump Tramples the Rule of Law

The Master of Marketing pushes the boundaries in his assault on democracy

Donald Trump is not President today because of his great vision or his positive agenda for a better and stronger America. He is in the White House for the most 21^st Century reason: Trump is a genius at self-promotion and marketing. He understands exactly how to play his audience and how to enrage and engage people. Trump makes the unbelievable believable, not just for voters, but for himself. He is the modern-day version of Lewis Carroll’s White Queen in “Alice in Wonderland,” who said she has believed "as many as six impossible things before breakfast.”

Creating a skewed version of the world is his stock in trade. The surprise no longer is that his irrational and unhinged thinking is embraced by so many Republicans, but that there are so many Democrats who continue to be naïve enough to think that there are lines of decency Trump won’t cross. Yet, Trump’s attacks on democracy continue. And the longer the Democrats wallow in their timidity, the more difficult it will be to rein in the abuses Trump imposes on the country, the Constitution and the rule of law every day.

Democrats believe there will come a point when Trump and company will collapse from their own deeds. When first-time recipients of Social Security have to travel to distant offices to register, when veterans are denied care because doctors and nurses have been terminated, when summer comes and national parks are closed, when farmers are stuck with loans and no markets and on and on, Democrats believe their wait-and-see approach will pay dividends.

But the problem for Democrats is that voters like them even less than Trump. Sure, they voters will be angry at Elon Musk, but in their minds at least Donald Trump is draining the swamp. Of course, there will be those inconvenienced by the results of spending cuts; there will be many more who see Democrats as the party of big government, the allies of the educated elites and the defenders of the rights of a few even at the expense not just of the many but of common sense.

Democrats need to start drawing lines and the longer they wait, the bigger the challenge. Take the case of Mahmoud Kahlil, the Columbia University student who was arrested at his home, transferred to a prison 1,300 miles away and, as this is being written nearly two weeks after his arrest, still has not been charged with a crime.

Kahlil is a green card holder. Trump and his minions call Kahlil a “visitor” to the U.S. and a “guest.” He is not. He is a “lawful resident of the U.S.,” as the law and U.S. Customs and Immigration Service define green card holders. He is entitled to the constitutional protections of due process.

None of that matters to Trump. He knows the marketing value of a foil, especially one who is part of a minority community. It’s not enough to call Kahlil a threat to national security while not presenting a shred of evidence. Trump always goes big. Kahlil is the “first of many” who abuse their rights and threaten the security of the U.S. (and another arrest was made while this was being written). How? Don’t get bogged down in details; Kahlil is Palestinian and he took part in protests unpopular with the MAGA crowd. What more evidence is needed.

This isn’t a new tactic for Trump. In 1989, he took out full page ads in many newspapers, including the New York Times, calling for restoring the death penalty in the cases of the “Central Park Five,” the five Black and Hispanic teenagers wrongly convicted of a violent assault on a jogger. At a time when the case raised racial tensions in the city to a peak, Trump fanned the flames.

In 2002, the five were exonerated. New York City paid them a multi-million dollar settlement. One would think that would be enough for Trump. That’s not his style. As recently as last fall during the presidential debate, Trump defended his call to execute the five by claiming “they pled guilty, they badly hurt a person, killed a person ultimately.” None of that is true. The five never pled guilty to the charges. While a person was badly injured, she still is alive. And, as DNA and other evidence has shown, the the five young men were innocent. Had Donald Trump had his way, it is the five Black and Hispanic men who today would be dead.

So, here we are with Trump finding a new target for his venom and his skewed view of the world. He sends special police to arrest a person who wasn’t charged with a crime during the protests (and, by some accounts, helped to calm the chaos on campus), secret him away to a prison 1,300 miles from family and legal counsel and hold him without charges.

Democrats should stand up for Kahlil, as unpopular as his defense might be. They should ask the big questions: Does Kahlil’s arrest cause flashbacks to uglier times in history? Isn’t anyone scared that the government can nab a legal resident off the streets and send him to a distant prison all without a single criminal charge? Does it frighten people that the arresting ICE officers when confronted with Kahlil’s legal residency essentially said they were just following orders and went on with their work?

Trump’s line of assaults on democracy keeps moving. If Democrats can’t stand tall for Kahlil, how do they find the courage to raise legitimate questions about the 238 Venezuelans who were deported as alleged gang members? Hard to defend this group, to be sure. But someone SHOULD oppose a process that likely defied a court order, may have included people as young as 14 who just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time and is now sending detainees not to a prison in the U.S. but to one in El Salvador notorious for its abysmal conditions and its treatment of prisoners.

Few will object, though, because Trump has convinced people that most immigrants who entered the country illegally are evil, that they are rapists and murders sent to the U.S. as foreign prisons empty their jails.

None of that is true, but Trump and team know how to create and sell a story. They know how to organize a good perp walk, parading heavily tattooed and intimidating-looking young men before cameras. They know how to play on the fears and the reality of the terror gangs have inflicted on American communities. They know how to tell stories of the savagery of the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua, an especially brutal group.

Marketing replaces legitimate legal avenues. A narrative of brutality is more compelling than fact-finding that assures Americans that innocent people aren’t being sent to a hell hole where the likelihood of a Central Park Five exoneration is non-existent. Because to do that ruins the narrative of Donald Trump, the only one who can fix a problem that he exaggerates and exploits for his personal gain. Is the country safer with 238 Venezuelans deported to El Salvador? Maybe, and if Trump can sell “maybe” as “absolutely,” he wins.

Will we continue to be a country governed by the rule of law even when the beneficiaries of the defense may be unpopular? Will we defend a country in which the least among us can depend on the full extent of protections guaranteed by the Constitution?

Or have we become a people where it’s just easier to remain silent, to assuage whatever discomfort one might have by saying, “Well, they probably deserved it.” Here’s the problem. No one knows better than Donald Trump that if he can replace doubt with his version of truth, he wins.

We are well on our way to believing at least six impossible things before breakfast. Magical thinking should frighten us most of all.