Donald Trump has spent the better part of the last few weeks ranting that federal judge Gonzalo Curiel should get bounced from the Trump University case. How’s that? Well, since Curiel is of Mexican descent and takes pride in that heritage, he can’t be trusted to be impartial. By Trump’s logic, any nonwhite American who is openly proud of his heritage isn’t really proud to be an American.
Well, on Sunday the Donald not only doubled down, but added another ethnic group that can’t be trusted to sit in judgment of him–Muslims. Shortly after his breathtaking interview with CNN’s Jake Tapper, Trump sat down with CBS News political director John Dickerson. Trump not only doubled down on his claim that Curiel couldn’t be fair to him, but suggested that a Muslim judge couldn’t be trusted to be impartial either.
The interview aired on Sunday’s edition of CBS’ “Face the Nation.” Watch a clip here.
After listening to Trump start a rant about Latino immigration, Dickerson asked him if a Muslim judge would be similarly unacceptable because of his call for a ban on Muslim immigration. Trump kept ranting and dissembling about undocumented immigrants for about 40 seconds before Dickerson was finally able to pin him down.
DICKERSON: My question is, if it were a Muslim judge, would you also feel like they wouldn’t be able to treat you fairly because of that policy of yours?
TRUMP: It`s possible, yes. Yes. That would be possible, absolutely.
Needless to say, Dickerson was dumbfounded. He reminded Trump that we have a tradition in this country of not judging people “by who their parents were and where they came from.” Trump replied that “common sense” suggested that Curiel wasn’t being fair to him because of his Mexican heritage–and if we stopped being “so politically correct in this country,” others would see it his way.
This wasn’t just a dog whistle, folks. This was a dog whistle being blown into a megaphone. If Trump had his way, it would be legal to disqualify judges because one of the litigants thinks his or her ethnic, religious, or social background potentially amounts to bias.
Can you imagine what would happen if a black defendant tried to get a white judge recused, using arguments similar to what Trump is peddling? Or a white defendant recusing a black judge, along similar lines? Et cetera, et cetera, ad nauseum. Let’s call this for what it is, folks–the latest fundamentally wrong, fundamentally outrageous, and fundamentally un-American idea to spew from the mouth of the man who wants to buy the presidency.
