Getting it Wrong

David R. Henderson’s case that Trump is less bad than his opponent

I’ve not been posting over the summer, but shall be returning! To start us off for the new (academic) year, though the following is a guest post from my friend Dr. Daniel Shapiro, who responds to another friend. Enjoy! As always, feel free to comment; one of us is likely to respond.

In his Substack I Blog to Differ David R.Henderson lays out arguments why Trump was less bad than Biden.

Trump's Immigration Plans

(With Biden gone as a presidential candidate, I presume he thinks his arguments apply to Harris who is now the Democratic nominee.). Part of his argument is that Trump is less of an interventionist in foreign affairs and is less likely to get us into an all- out war than Biden. I set that aside except to note that Trump has indicated he may go to war with Mexico which may eliminate this advantage (see this). My main concern is this passage:

We often hear that Trump would end democracy by siccing the government on his political opponents. But we had 4 years to judge him on that and he didn’t do it…. During the 2016 campaign, when he attacked his main opponent, Hilary Clinton, many of his fans chanted “Lock her up.” It was creepy. [W]hat did he do to sic the feds on Hilary once he was elected? Nothing. And it’s not as if she wasn’t vulnerable legally…Biden has an Attorney General who has appointed a special prosecutor (who, by the way, according to Yale Law Professor, Steve Calabresi does not even have legal standing) to go after Donald Trump. 

But Trump did try to end democracy by doing what he could to remain in office despite having clearly lost the election. He conducted a “stop the steal” campaign which convinced and still convinces a majority or near-majority  of Republicans of his lies and his deception (see this). He pressured the Georgia Secretary of State (a conservative Republican, by the way) to falsify the election results (“So, what are we going to do here, folks? I only need 11,000 votes. Fellas, I need 11,000 votes. Give me a break." See this). He conspired with his lawyer John Eastman to get a scheme of fake electors in seven states. (See here.) He pressured Vice President Mike Pence, who bravely resisted the pressure, to reject the legitimate electors in those states and thus reject the result of the election. (See here.)  And then came January 6^thwhen he gave a fiery speech to the “Save America” crowd saying that “if Mike Pence does the right thing, we win the election,” urging the crowd to “fight like hell,” which then led to a mob breaking into the Capitol. (See this.) (At the end of the speech Trump did say to keep it peaceful, which is why he may be exempt from the charge of inciting a riot--but the crowd was there only because of Trump and the Capitol break-in was because of his protracted campaign of lies, deception, and angry rhetoric. Trump also called at least one senator (see this) during the riot asking them to delay certification, which suggests he was using the violence as a form of leverage to remain in power.

Trump is the only President in the history of the republic who used fraud and threatened force (by ginning up a crowd) so he could stay in power after losing an election. A principal virtue of democracy is that it reliably enables the peaceful transfer of political power, and trying to block this is perhaps the most serious crime one can commit against the democratic process. For this reason, it badly misses the point to say that Biden “went after his political opponent.”  It wasn’t because Trump was an opponent that criminal cases were brought against him; it was because he tried to subvert the election. For a good argument why libertarians should support the prosecution of Trump, see Ilya Somin’s blog post here.

But did Jack Smith have legal standing as a special counsel to bring the cases against Trump? I don’t know, and this appears to be a controversial matter. (See this for an analysis.) But notice that the chief complaint against Jack Smith was that when he was appointed by Attorney General Garland he was not already an employee of the Department of Justice. This was done to help maintain his independence from the DOJ. This independence counts against the view that Trump’s indictments were political persecution, not for it.

So David gets things almost exactly backwards. (I use the first name because we are friends). He makes it sound like Biden is the problem by trying to prosecute his political opponent, whereas it was Trump who tried to prevent his opponent from legitimately becoming president after he won the 2020 election. Because Trump was the only US president who tried to prevent the peaceful transfer of political power, all lovers of liberty should vote against him and/or urge others to do so.

Daniel Shapiro is Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at West Virginia University

Thanks to Neera Badhwar, Andrew Jason Cohen, Mark LeBar, Aeon Skoble, and Ilya Somin for comments on an earlier draft.