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By Jonathan S. Tobin (JNS)
Maybe he isn’t Hitler after all. That’s the upshot of the announcement by political talk-show hosts Mika Brzezinski and Joe Scarborough after they journeyed to the Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida this past weekend for a chat with President-elect Donald Trump.
The pair is being roasted by critics on both the right and left (including staffers at their own network) for seeming to back away from their claims that Trump is a fascist seeking the destruction of democracy. Despite all that, they were right to journey to his Florida resort, even if it meant subjecting themselves to catcalls about kissing his ring. More to the point, their example ought to be emulated by those who look to them for political guidance. At a moment in history when the political left in both the United States and Israel have adopted a strategy of demonizing the leaders of their opponents as an organizing principle, it’s high time for opinion leaders to stop acting as if doing so is appropriate or not damaging to democracy. That’s especially true for American Jews, who should be prioritizing the battle against antisemites over partisan grudges and smears.
The married hosts of the MSNBC “Morning Joe” program came under heavy fire from fellow liberals for a meeting that the couple pompously spoke of as if it were a major international diplomatic mission. In their defense, Brzezinski said the question to ask was “Why wouldn’t we” wish to restart communication with the president? Yet as comedian Jon Stewart, a leading liberal voice, satirically noted, the answer to that question was fairly obvious: “Uh, because you said he was Hitler.”
Smearing Trump and lying about Biden
The couple has done as much as anyone at the hard-core, left-wing cable-news network or anywhere else to demonize Trump over the last eight years. That included promoting smears alleging that he was an authoritarian and a fascist, as well as making specious and slanderous comparisons between his rallies, such as the one held in October in New York\
That ought not to be forgotten. The same is true of their mendacious claims, which they based on their closeness to the incumbent, that a visibly aging and confused President Joe Biden was not mentally incapacitated. They only backed away from that lie once Biden’s problems became obvious in his disastrous June 27 debate with Trump.
Similar to some other Democrats in the weeks since Trump’s victory, Mika and Joe have come to realize that their incendiary rhetoric leaves them in a precarious position. Like many others who wanted Vice President Kamala Harris to win, they were willing to say just about anything about Trump, including bogus claims that he was a threat to democracy at a time when it was his opponents who were undermining it by promoting censorship of political speech and trying to jail their leading opponent to justify his defeat.
Now that he’s won, they are putting the talk about fascism and Hitler on hold. That demonstrates that this line of argument was never sincere. They are being widely lambasted by those on the right, who have called out their hypocrisy, as well as their preposterous claim that they aren’t seeking to “normalize” a person who had just won a presidential election.
As absurd as they might be—it’s good television optics, after all—the stars of what many still consider to be the leading political talk show on cable are right.
The argument for Trump being a threat to democracy was always a product of quotes taken out-of-context, deliberate lies (such as the false claim that he called neo-Nazis who attended the “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Va., in August 2017 “very fine people”), myths about Russian collusion, and a disingenuous attempt to confuse his politically incorrect and highly unpresidential manner of speaking and posting on social media with support for racism and tyranny.
Having gone out on a limb to make these points, people like Mika and Joe—and the countless others who took the same line—haven’t left themselves many options as Trump’s second term begins. They can double down on their wild attacks on Trump and their fellow Americans who have voted for him while claiming that the only reason their side lost was the manifest awfulness of the country they profess to love, as some on the left have done. Or they can behave the way that political factions are supposed to when they lose an election by acting as a loyal opposition and biding their time until they can win the next election.
A destructive ‘resistance’
That’s not the path that was chosen by Trump’s opponents in 2017 as they sought to “resist” the new president as opposed to merely oppose him. In doing so, they strained the fabric of American democracy to the breaking point, spreading conspiracy theories about Russia electing a stooge to the White House and justified efforts to censor news that might damage Trump’s opponents. That helped beat Trump in 2020 as the nation floundered amid his administration’s confused response to the COVID-19 pandemic. It also set the stage for a period during which Democrats have come to believe that any tactic, no matter how anti-democratic, is permissible if it hurts Trump.
Even after his victory earlier this month, they can continue along those lines by treating his justified efforts to strip the administrative state—an unelected fourth branch of government that is both a partisan stronghold for Democrats and the authors of a growing body of law in recent decades—of its power as evidence of his fascism.
Trump’s astounding political comeback, however, has appeared to put a damper on the enthusiasm of his detractors for more trips down the conspiratorial rabbit holes in which they have dragged so much of the country’s political discourse. They may still despise the “bad orange man,” but the idea that they can go on pretending that he is not a legitimate president is no longer viable.
They’d do far better to drop the “resistance” tactics. By contrast, engaging in normal political tactics in which they criticized Trump’s missteps rather than pretending that he is another Hitler will do more to enhance their prospects of winning back power in Washington. Doing so will also help to calm the waters that both sides have helped to stir up and restore some confidence in the government as well as legacy mainstream media whose credibility was undermined by their vicious attitude towards Trump, and willingness to ignore Biden’s misrule and mental incapacity.
Fight antisemitism, not Trump
All this should give those liberal Jewish groups who are now preparing to join the new resistance to Trump 2.0 a reason to reassess their position.
Both the supposedly mainstream Jewish Council for Public Affairs and the left-wing lobby J Street that support efforts to halt the supply of U.S. weapons to Israel to allow Hamas to survive, as well as a host of other even more marginal groups, seem prepared to join those bitter-end Trump-haters. They seek to duplicate efforts to obstruct and topple the president’s first administration and are uninterested in playing the role of loyal opposition. And it’s more than likely that many of those liberal Jewish groups who prioritize a domestic “social justice” agenda will join those who may wish to try to sabotage Trump’s efforts to protect the U.S. border against illegal immigration and deport many of those who have violated the law.
That would not only be irresponsible but would do little to take the country back to a place where political disputes are not treated as a religious holy war in which compromise or mercy for opponents is considered beyond the pale. It will be bad for democracy and likely won’t hasten the Democrats’ return to power.
Just as important, they are ignoring the fact that the real peril to American Jews is not from Trump. Love him or hate him, efforts to tie him to antisemitism or to claim that he is a fascist are false. They are a distraction from the ongoing threat to American Jewry coming from an increasingly aggressive leftist wing of the Democrats that has used the post-Oct. 7 war to advance blood libels against Israel and Jews as “white” oppressors and guilty of genocide.
By doubling down on lies about Trump and his voters (a group that includes the not insignificant number of Jews who voted for him in states like New York and Florida in greater numbers than before because, among other reasons, of his sterling record as a friend of Israel) as fascists and allies of Nazis, liberal Jewish groups will be undermining attempts to do something about an unprecedented surge of antisemitism in this country and beyond.
The reality of the post-Oct. 7 era is that American Jews need to stop prioritizing partisan politics over their obligation to fight back against the scourge of Jew-hatred on the left as well as on the far-right.
It’s long past time for the Jewish members of the anti-Trump resistance to stop playing politics and start fighting the real bad guys, including those they might otherwise consider their political allies. Much like Joe and Mika, they have to tone down the rhetoric about Trump and realize that their hard feelings about the election are not as important as responding to the hundreds, if not thousands, of Charlottesville-type anti-Israel and anti-Jewish demonstrations carried out by left-wingers demonizing an entire country and its population over the past year. Those who think that sabotaging Trump is more important than fighting left-wing Jew-haters will only give undeserved assistance to those who seek Israel’s destruction and the silencing of American Jewry.
Jonathan S. Tobin is editor-in-chief of JNS (Jewish News Syndicate). Follow him @jonathans_tobin.
