Daily Herald opinion: Two leadership portraits: Utah governor’s plea provides a rebuke to violent partisanship
In a response to a question from friendly interviewers on Fox News’ Fox & Friends program Friday, President Trump said “he couldn’t care less” if he got in trouble for statements he was about to make.
Someone — preferably the Republican minions in his cabinet, the House, the Senate and across the country — should make him care.
In a stirring address before news media cameras on Friday morning, the Republican governor of Utah offered what should be a rebuke to the president that everyone who cares about the Republican Party and the state of the country should join.
First, the Fox & Friends softball from co-host Ainsley Earhardt, that should have provided the president an opportunity for leadership to calm his jittery nation. In the wake of the Charlie Kirk assassination, Earhardt referenced radicals on both the left and right and asked, “How do we come back together.”
The president’s response?
“I’ll tell you something that’s going to get me in trouble, but I couldn’t care less. The radicals on the right oftentimes are radical because they don’t want to see crime. They don’t want to see crime. Worried about the border. They’re saying, ‘We don’t want these people coming in. We don’t want you burning our shopping centers. We don’t want you shooting our people in the middle of the street.’ ”
So, instead of answering the question, the president — knowing his words would “get me in trouble” — made a statement that appeared to justify violence from the right while vilifying that from the left.
One wonders how reasonable viewers would respond if a Democratic president justified violence declaring, “The radicals on the left oftentimes are radical because they don’t want to see hungry people homeless in the streets. Worried about poverty. They’re saying, ‘We don’t want masked law enforcement officers assaulting people in our streets. We don’t want children deported without due process. We don’t want you invading our homes and killing our leaders.’ ”
Such justifications for violence are outrageous, of course. And they’re beneath the leader of the country that, for good reason, considers itself the beacon of freedom and democracy to the world.
In contrast, Utah’s Republican Gov. Spencer Cox, speaking after almost two straight sleepless nights, appealed for forgiveness and some way to “find an off-ramp” from political violence. He described Republicans and Democrats in his state already reaching out to each other to talk and to search for answers.
“We can return violence with violence. We can return hate with hate, and that’s the problem with political violence — is it metastasizes,” he said. “Because we can always point the finger at the other side.”
It bears noting that that observation applies to untempered political vitriol as well.
Cox indicated as much when he turned his attention to what he called “a cancer on our society right now” — social media.
“I would encourage people to log off, turn off, touch grass, hug a family member, go out and do good in your community,” he pleaded.
Two Republicans. Two very different portraits of leadership. One guarantees a continuation of the ugly divisiveness that is plaguing our time. One offers a route for hope.
One offers raw meat for partisan supporters. One offers leadership for an entire nation.
It is time, indeed long past time, for responsible Republicans, and indeed people of good will whatever their political or social affiliations, to decide which approach they will support — and to make those whose only goal is partisan obeisance learn to care about getting into trouble for excusing any political violence.