Political violence finds a welcome audience in Trump

[BloombergOpinion]( [Early Returns]( [Jonathan Bernstein]( David Leonhardt has an excellent column up about how, to put it bluntly, [President Donald Trump incites violence by bigots](: It isn’t very complicated: The man with the world’s largest bully pulpit keeps encouraging violence and white nationalism. Lo and behold, white-nationalist violence is on the rise. You have to work pretty hard to persuade yourself that’s just a big coincidence. As Leonhardt points out, it’s impossible to draw a straight causal line between Trump and any specific episode of violence. But it’s also not necessary. And, at any rate, it’s not unusual that we can’t make those kinds of specific causal connections. We can’t know, for example, if the government shutdown or the [vacancy at the top of the Federal Aviation Administration]( directly caused the 737 Max disaster. Nor can we say with any certainty, to pick a positive example, that President Bill Clinton’s aggressive management of the bureaucracy in 1999 prevented the [millennium plot]( from succeeding. In many cases, all we can do is tell if a president or a public policy made an outcome more likely or less likely. In this particular case, it’s not hard to determine which direction Trump is pushing things. I’d add one more thing: Harmful rhetoric of this kind is, by itself, not really a justification for a legitimate impeachment and removal of a president. But it’s absolutely reasonable — indeed, necessary — for Congress to take it into account when assessing whether to move forward with an otherwise legitimate impeachment. The president has sworn an oath to “faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States” and to “preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.” Giving comfort — and, even worse, encouragement — to political violence is a direct violation of that oath. After all, one of the core principles of the Constitution of the United States is that of the republican rule of law; one of the reasons a republic exists is to banish violence from domestic politics. And this is true of another of Trump’s frequent themes: his attacks on the media. Some criticism of the press is perfectly normal, of course. But Trump’s rhetoric, from calling the media an “enemy of the people” to questioning whether government agencies should [“look into”]( TV comedians attacking him, is not. It’s not necessarily an [unconstitutional violation]( of the First Amendment if Trump restricts himself to talk. It can, nevertheless, be an abuse of power and a violation of his oath to defend the Constitution. Impeachment is always going to be a political decision, and even more so when the evidence of presidential misconduct is in the gray area where removal would be legitimate but the evidence doesn’t absolutely demand it. Indeed, many criminal indictments are, in a sense, the political choices of prosecutors faced with that same gray area, and it’s only going to be more political when the prosecutors and the grand jury are the House of Representatives, and the jury is the Senate. We don’t know where the facts will come out on (other) abuses of power and of obstruction of justice. But it sure seems to me that Trump’s repeated and ongoing attacks on democratic norms and constitutional principles should, if it’s a close call at all, push Congress toward impeachment and removal. 1. Sarah Binder at the Monkey Cage on [Congress’s action](to overturn Trump’s declaration of a state of emergency. 2. Also at the Monkey Cage: Andrew Rudalevige on [why Congressional action matters]( even if they can’t override Trump’s veto. 3. Julia Azari [on parties](. 4. Eve Gerber interviews Julian Zelizer [about Congress](. 5. Eric Levitz interviews [Ta-Nehisi Coates on 2020 and more](. 6. And Karen Tumulty salutes [C-SPAN](. Thank you, Brian Lamb! Bloomberg L.P. ● 731 Lexington Avenue, New York, NY 10022 [Web]( ● [Facebook]( ● [Twitter]( [Feedback]( ● [Unsubscribe](