Lara Trump Failed the Hogan Test
In this era of political correctness and cancel culture, it’s amazing what you just can’t say anymore. Like, for example, that the rule of law is good and worthy of respect.
That’s what the Republican U.S. Senate candidate Larry Hogan is finding out. Last week, minutes before a jury announced that it had found former President Donald Trump guilty of 34 felonies, Hogan, who is running in Maryland, posted on X: “Regardless of the result, I urge all Americans to respect the verdict and the legal process. At this dangerously divided moment in our history, all leaders—regardless of party—must not pour fuel on the fire with more toxic partisanship. We must reaffirm what has made this nation great: the rule of law.”
This is extremely mild stuff. Once upon a time, respecting the rule of law was not controversial. Not anymore. Chris LaCivita, a Trump aide who is also a top Republican National Committee official, replied, “You just ended your campaign.” And on CNN’s State of the Union on Sunday, the RNC co-chair (and Trump daughter-in-law) Lara Trump refused to say whether the RNC would support Hogan’s campaign but attacked the anodyne statement furiously.
[Adam Serwer: Trump wishes his trial were rigged]
“I will tell you one thing. I don't support what he just said there. I think it's ridiculous,” she said. “He doesn't deserve the respect of anyone in the Republican Party at this point and, quite frankly, anybody in America, if that's the way you feel. That's very upsetting to hear that.”
This is deeply corrosive. Lara Trump is well within her rights to be upset about anyone criticizing her father-in-law. The RNC can even cut Hogan off if it wants; political parties can back or not back whomever they choose. And anyone is entitled to questionable arguments about the verdict. But although Trump wasn’t ready to announce anything as drastic as a decision about political spending, she had no hesitations about blasting Hogan for respecting the rule of law, a hallmark of the American experiment.
(One person who’s probably not upset about all of this is Hogan, a former governor who’s trying to win a Senate seat in a very blue state and who has been running ads on TV saying that the GOP can’t rely on his vote. What better way to demonstrate that than a public feud with the RNC?)
Less than 15 years ago, when Barack Obama criticized the Supreme Court for its ruling in Citizens United in his 2010 State of the Union speech, he faced a chorus of critics from both the right and the left, saying that such a public attack on the justices was inappropriate. Today, as Lara Trump attacks the rule of law itself, “responsible” Trump-skeptical conservatives are criticizing her, but rather than recoiling from the substance, they seem mostly worried that she is endangering the GOP’s chances at winning a Senate seat: “Internecine warfare may make for some lively prime-time cable news segments, but it’s no way to run a national party,” writes Noah Rothman. What about a nation, though?
In a separate interview over the weekend, Donald Trump suggested—or, depending on your view, made a veiled threat—that if he were sentenced to jail, mass violence might result. These flashy statements rightly drew a great deal of attention. But as my colleagues Ali Breland and Juliette Kayyem wrote, the immediate danger of serious violence seems low.
[Read: The MAGA internet calls for war]
Lara Trump’s statements are less flashy, but they, too, pose a great danger in the long run. Scholars who study threats to democracy have found that the words and actions of political leaders are an essential factor in driving the spread and effect of anti-democratic attitudes. The presidential scholar and occasional Atlantic contributor Tim Naftali predicted on Friday that trashing the judicial system would become a new litmus test for any Republican who wants to remain in Donald Trump’s good graces. He’s already being proved right.