Chuck Muth is president of Citizen Outreach and publisher of Nevada News & Views
(Chuck Muth) – You know what I like best about this latest Donald Trump brouhaha over the possibly biased judge hearing his Trump University case? The fact that the weak links among the GOP’s elected elites are exposing themselves NOW rather than in the fall.
From House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-K Street) to Sen. Lindsey Graham (RINO-SC) to Nevada Gov. Brian Sandoval (R&R-Partners), tepid Trump supporters – if not closet #NeverTrumpers – have jumped up out of their foxholes and run for the hills.
Better to find out who these cut-and-run “yellow bellies” are in June than October.
And it’s a shame, too. Because Trump’s concern in the case is absolutely defensible. Indeed, his positions on certain hot-button issues make it entirely possible that a judge of Mexican heritage or Muslim religion could harbor innate bias against the man in court.
To suggest that judges aren’t also imperfect human beings who may hold biases based on a variety of factors is absurd. Indeed, Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor – a liberal Obama appointee – has famously admitted it and championed it.
“Whether born from experience or inherent physiological or cultural differences, our gender and national origins may and will make a difference in our judging,” she once said.
How is that position any different from Trump’s? It’s not. So if Trump is a racist for what he said, then so is Sotomayor.
And so is New York Mayor Bill de Blasio.
As the “Mexican judge” brouhaha raged on, de Blasio inked a column for CNN Money in which he essentially declared that white teachers were unable to effectively teach minority children. As such, he announced a program to hire “1,000 men of color in the next two years to teach our public school children.”
“Teachers who share cultural backgrounds with their students can help soothe tense classroom climates, reducing suspension rates and keeping kids in school,” the Big Apple mayor wrote. “Kids seeing teachers — role models — who look like they do won’t just make learning more likely, it will provide a valuable potential visual gateway to an important future profession.”
Now imagine if Donald Trump, or any other white person, suggested that overwhelmingly white classrooms should be taught by white teachers who “look like” the students they’re teaching. The howls of racism would be deafening.
But de Blasio will get away with this “reverse racism” without a peep of protest. It’s sickening, it’s disgraceful and it’s outrageous.
Ryan, Graham, Sandoval and the rest of the gaggle of fair-weather friends could have and should have pointed all this out. They didn’t. Instead, they took the first opportunity to “frag” the GOP’s presidential nominee.
Gen. George Washington would have had them shot. Sometimes I miss the good ol’ days.
(Mr. Muth is president of Citizen Outreach and publisher of NevadaNewsandViews.com.)
