Trump-Navalny Comparison: Insightful or Unhinged?

Dear Reader,

As you read what follows, please keep this question in mind: Is this analysis on the mark or unhinged? Let’s go: Two world leaders made great strides in destroying their opponents last week.

In Russia, Vladimir Putin dealt a punishing blow to his country’s already weakened resistance when his extraordinarily courageous nemesis, Alexei A. Navalny, was reportedly found beaten but assuredly dead in his gulag prison cell.

In New York, President Joe Biden’s chief rival, Donald Trump, was edged toward ruin when a judge fined him more than $350 million – the penalty could reach $450 million with interest – after deciding Trump inflated the value of his holdings to secure commercial bank loans at a slightly lower interest rate – loans that were paid back on time.

Democrats lack Putin’s quick-strike capability. Their hope is that the politically charged lawsuits executed by party members in New York City, Georgia, and Washington, D.C., and their ballot disqualification case now before the Supreme Court will finish the job.

The unjustness of it all seems obvious – multiple cases launched by Democrats targeting the Republican party’s presumptive nominee. Trump did not shoot a man on Fifth Avenue, as he famously quipped, so every action is an exercise in prosecutorial discretion. Even liberal outlets agree that the campaign finance/hush money case brought in New York City and Fani Willis’ effort to prosecute Team Trump’s effort to challenge the 2020 election results in Georgia by exploiting RICO statutes typically used against organized crime stretch the law. They might work, but they are novel; is it good for the republic to have former presidents serve as test cases for efforts to fine or imprison Americans?

The New York case that just delivered the eye-popping fine – in which, by the way, the alleged victims, giant banks, say they suffered no harm and are eager to keep working with Trump – was brought by the state’s attorney general, Letitia James, who declared while running for office that Trump’s “days were numbered” and whose campaign rallies included a call and response in which she asked “What?” and the audience responded, “Lock him up.”

The prosecutorial discretion of political actors driving the “get Trump” efforts was brought into sharp relief when Special Counsel Robert K. Hur recommended earlier this month that no charges be brought against Biden or anyone in his circle even though Hur established that the president had illegally retained and intentionally shared classified information. Biden’s possession of hundreds of secret documents – some dating back to 1977 – of course, only became an issue after his Justice Department raided Trump’s home in pursuance of such material.

The special counsel in Trump’s classified documents case, Jack Smith, made a far different decision. He brought 37 felony charges against the former president, 31 of which fall under the Espionage Act, which criminalizes the unauthorized possession of national defense information.

The treatment of Putin and Biden’s opponents reminded me of an observation I read years ago – I believe it was Nadezhda Mandelstam’s magnificent memoir “Hope Against Hope” – that described the emerging Soviet police state as “vegetarian” during the 1920s before becoming full-tilt carnivore during Stalin’s terror of the 1930s.

Although Putin is certainly a carnivore, Trump is no Navalny. But dismissing any comparison between the two opposition leaders because their fates – and temperaments – are different is sophistry. The trick is especially rich coming from a crowd that routinely likens Trump to Hitler. In some ways, the situation in America may be more fraught than what is going on in Russia right now. Where Putin commands assent through fear, intimidation, and even death, most of Biden’s supporters – including his base of well-educated and prosperous professionals – are eager accomplices. Instead of standing up to the corruption of the rule of law, most are cheering it on.

How come?

In a nutshell, they don’t see it that way. They believe Trump is a thoroughly despicable person with a criminal mind who deserves to be in jail. Like many conservatives who live in deep blue areas – for me, it’s Raleigh, N.C. – many of my friends are committed Democrats.

I find the idea that Trump is a would-be dictator laughable. But most of my Raleigh friends seem to sincerely believe he would cancel future elections during a second term. I think it is absurd to describe the Jan. 6 riot as an insurrection, but most Democrats here are convinced the mob was intent on overthrowing the government and actually hanging Mike Pence and Nancy Pelosi on makeshift gallows. They see no comparison between the summer of BLM riots in 2020 – which, to my mind, normalized violence as a form of political dissent – and Jan. 6, 2021.

Most of them think “woke” is a word made up by racist right-wingers who want to preserve white supremacy, though, perhaps because it involves their children, they are not so sure what to think about transgender militancy.

I once hoped that the scales would fall from their eyes after Robert Mueller’s report thoroughly debunked the Russiagate hoax that Democrats and liberal news outlets pushed for years to cast Trump as a treasonous puppet of the Kremlin. When I ask, Why do you keep believing the people who lied to you for years about the story that dominated American politics? the typical response is that Trump did, in fact, conspire with Putin.

While they are eager to bash Trump and Republicans, if the pushback comes (sometimes I can’t help myself), they say, “Let’s not talk politics.”

I used to have a “Jordan Peterson fantasy” in which, like the famed psychologist and commentator, I would deftly say the right thing in the right way to carry the day. That never happens, in part because of my lack of rhetorical skills and in part because, in my view, most progressives do not want to concede an inch of ground for fear of legitimizing their enemies. Most Republicans I know will admit Trump’s manifold faults and have little use for the party’s leaders.

At bottom, we are worlds apart. Progressives dismiss observations I consider insightful as unhinged. Biden is like Putin, give me a break, man. It is hard to find common ground when you live on the same streets but somehow breathe different air.

This article was originally published by RealClearPolitics and made available via RealClearWire.