As you watch this Roger Stone atrocity play itself out keep in mind that Trump is still selling himself as “the law and order” president:
President Trump’s approach to law and order is informed to some significant extent by having lived in New York City at its most dangerous. His infamous call for the restoration of the death penalty after the rape of a jogger in Central Park — a crime for which a group of black and Hispanic teenagers were falsely convicted — encapsulates his approach to crime in the abstract: better that an innocent stranger be punished harshly than that someone guilty walk free.
Speaking to a group of governors on Monday, Trump again praised extremely harsh punishments as a deterrent.
“States with a very powerful death penalty on drug dealers don’t have a drug problem,” Trump said. “I don’t know that our country is ready for that. But if you look throughout the world, the countries with a powerful death penalty — death penalty — with a fair but quick trial, they have very little, if any, drug problem. That includes China.”
China, of course, is an authoritarian state for which any number of actions can result in capital punishment. Trump has at other times embraced the approach taken by President Rodrigo Duterte of the Philippines, whose acceptance of extrajudicial killings in his country’s war on drugs has earned international condemnation but repeated praise from Trump.
Trump’s approach to crime is uncoupled from justice. It is, instead, about the manifestation and exercise of power.
Even after the five teenagers accused of the crime in Central Park were exonerated (thanks to a jailhouse admission by a convicted rapist), Trump insisted that they must nonetheless be culpable. For Trump, it was a way to show voters that he would deploy a powerful hand against any whiff of criminal behavior — at least, when the alleged behavior came from those who stood outside Trump’s cultural and political sphere.
He simultaneously took credit for criminal justice reform and is feted by celebrities for his great compassion by pardoning their personal causes. It’s amazing how easily he gulls people into seeing what they want to see.
What he said above is Trump’s real worldview: “Show ’em that you’ll kick hard and they won’t mess with you.” He’s made that clear over and over.
I wouldn’t have thought Trump’s primitive and crude manifestation of this thuggish philosophy would work in 2020 but it appears to be quite potent, at least with Republicans. They are either cowed or thrilled.