The Trump Conundrum 2.0
For almost a decade, I have wondered whether it is my place to critique Donald Trump. This isn’t my first time writing about it.
When I taught middle school, the risk lay in eroding my standing as an impartial authority and inadvertently giving students a political nudge. Now, as I devote myself full-time to bridging political differences, commenting on Trump risks alienating those in support of him and exacerbating the divide I work daily to heal. My professional focus is on equipping today’s students with the skills and mindsets to ease tomorrow’s political divide. I am deeply involved with what is known as the “bridging” movement to help mend the fraying fabric of American society across lines of political divide. So I really don’t want to make this divide any worse than it already is.
And yet, it feels awfully important to comment on President Trump. I find his comportment, character, and mean-spirited rhetoric loathsome. His disdain for the rule of law and for the constitution render him, in my view, unfit to serve as president. These truths are worth surfacing in a school, where it is the duty of educators to encourage moral clarity and civic fluency, and they are worth surfacing in our democratic society more broadly. We do not consider it an open question as to whether we support laws, coequal governance, and civil liberties. It is in the common interest to call out an attack against these principles.
It has also felt important to me—when I taught and now, as I build bridges across the political divide—not to comment on Trump. I try not to editorialize on Trump’s policy proposals (including, of course, the many with which I vehemently disagree). I also painstakingly avoid the simplistic trap of opposing the “MAGA movement” or any other label that would include those in the Trump camp. My critique of President Trump does not extend to those who support him.
When Trump first found the political limelight, his appeal eluded me. I am much better these days at empathizing with those who support Trump, though, and I understand that they do so for an array of compelling reasons: our immigration system was broken; it felt hazardous to be a person of faith; globalism had stolen our jobs… and a hundred others. These are my neighbors, my family, my friends, my colleagues, and my fellow Americans. I can be concerned over Trump’s rhetoric and his corrosive effect on our democracy yet simultaneously acknowledge that his support comes from a place of good faith.
Indeed, I can even understand that the issue that is of most concern to me—Trump’s antidemocratic tendencies—is itself contestable. I am shaken by Trump’s attacks against judges and law firms, his blanket pardon of January 6 insurrectionists, his dismissal of the constitution, and his recent promise that he “isn’t joking” about running for a third term. And yet, lots of people support Trump for the very reason I find his actions disqualifying; they cherish the rule of law. They might decry Democrats’ attacks against judges, or understandably condemn the shady origins of the Steele Dossier that set Trump on the road to impeachment. They see in President Trump a man who is willing to stand up to this betrayal of the democratic process.
So it’s a bit of a tricky business, this question of whether one can maintain credibility as a teacher and as a bridge-builder while commenting on President Trump. In each role, one aspires to be trustworthy, fair, and openminded. Does taking a stand on certain aspects of Trump’s governance, even while reserving judgment on most of the political platform on which he stands, undermine the trust of those who focus on Trump’s merits or the promise of his actions?
I’m not the only one thinking about this. Zachary Elwood argued in a recent essay in The Hill that one could do so and still ease toxic polarization. Heidi and Guy Burgess cited Elwood’s piece and added their own thoughts in their March Substack post. The American Bar Association has landed on the side of public condemnation, issuing a series of statements criticizing President Trump’s recent actions. “We reject efforts to undermine the courts and the profession,” wrote the ABA President on March 26. “We will not stay silent in the face of efforts to remake the legal profession into something that rewards those who agree with the government and punishes those who do not.”
Was this the right move? If ever there were a group of professionals trained to see both sides of things, it would have to be lawyers, some of whom have defended Trump with every ounce of their professional abilities while simultaneously disdaining him as a politician. Nonetheless, they appear to feel that Trump has crossed a line. In an earlier statement, the ABA President wrote, “The American Bar Association has chosen to stand and speak…. We invite you to stand with us.”
Braver Angels, whose mission is “Bringing Americans together to bridge the partisan divide and strengthen our democratic republic,” has taken a different approach. In a recent email to members, National Ambassador, John Wood, Jr., wrote that the organization is often pressured to take a stand, by calling out Trump, or condemning “woke” culture, for example. “Yet the moment we do so as an organization is the moment we become a mere faction,” he wrote. “It is the moment we cease to lead a movement for all of America.”
Maybe they have it right. After all, Braver Angels is the only organization I have found across the constellation of bridge-building entities that consistently features a strong chorus of conservative voices to balance the more liberal ones that tend to reign in this space. They appear to me to be truly bipartisan, a feat that may indeed require unwavering devotion to the rule of impartiality. It strikes me that Braver Angels has made the right move for their organization.
But that doesn’t mean it is the right move for me and my organization, Middle Ground School Solutions. When I wrote my book, Learning to Depolarize, I learned a lot about social psychology. Much of our behavior today has its roots in antiquity. For reasons that were once entirely sensible, we cling to those within our tribe and generally mistrust the “others.” We naturally fall into a binary mindset in which we perceive safety and acceptance on one side, and danger beyond. I wonder if, in critiquing President Trump for rhetoric and actions that almost all Americans agree is beyond the pale, we might complicate that human tendency to slice the world in two.
There is broad agreement across party lines about the importance of democratic norms. According to the Polarization Research Lab, whose research is updated weekly, about 85% of both Democrats and Republicans would support the decisions of judges who were appointed by a member of the opposing political party. Other researchers affirm a shared reverence for democracy, with one team summarizing, “Our results show that Americans of all political stripes overwhelmingly endorse democratic norms and reject the use of political violence.” Respect for the democratic underpinnings of society is not partisan—this is not to say merely that it should not be partisan. Rather, research tells us that in fact it is not partisan. Perhaps calling out Trump’s antidemocratic behavior could surface an area of common concern that transcends tribalism.
If Trump were to make good on his infamous boast that he could shoot someone in the middle of Fifth Avenue without losing support, those of us in the bridging space would not hem and haw about whether to condemn the act. Common sense tells us that there are limits to impartiality, even when one’s mission is to bridge political divides. It shouldn’t really be all that hard to determine that we are past those limits. Some of Trump’s words and actions have run afoul of a common sense of decency and democratic decorum and land squarely within the range of “stuff that Americans can agree is not OK for the president to do and say.”
I suggest that we bridgers not shy away from acknowledging this. I sincerely believe that, in so doing, we can model a more nuanced, empathetic way of discussing Trump, one that affirms common American values while frowning upon presidential rhetoric and action that cuts against those values. We can do this. We can call out aspects of what Trump says and does while still holding space for the vast array of presidential action that lies beyond these words and deeds. We can show support for, and ourselves be supporters of, the president without having to implicitly support all that he says and does.
Many of us prescribe intellectual humility as an element of effective bridge-building, and I will exercise a bit of it here. Maybe I wrong to think that calling out aspects of Trump’s behavior will engender agreement across party line. And maybe it’s not even necessary. If I were in the classroom, I would not have to tell students that Trump’s refusal to rule out another term is unconstitutional. Instead, I would help them learn the historical content that would position them to arrive at this conclusion themselves. Maybe in facilitating exchanges across the political divide, the bridge-building movement is facilitating the conditions necessary for people to come to a common understanding that requires no pronouncements. In other words, maybe we can skip the moralizing.
Still, I can’t help but believe there is a place for statements of fact. In engaging with each other, we leave space for passionate disagreement even as we recognize certain truths: we will listen to each other, because we agree on this condition as a prerequisite for building productive community. We agree, too, on the rule of law and on the greater, shared compacts that anchor a wider American community, such as the constitution. That agreement makes it worth critiquing President Trump.
