During the campaign, Joe Scarborough asked Trump about Vladimir Putin — particularly Putin’s killing of political opponents. “Well, I think our country does plenty of killing also,” said Trump.
Just now, Bill O’Reilly has questioned Trump in the same way. The president responded, “There are a lot of killers. We’ve got a lot of killers. What, you think our country’s so innocent?”
Back to the campaign — when Trump was asked about Turkey’s Erdogan, and that leader’s vicious crackdown after a coup attempt. Trump said that America had to focus on its own problems. Fair enough. But he went on to say, “When the world looks at how bad the United States is, and then we go and talk about civil liberties, I don’t think we’re a very good messenger.”
The Right had a name for this, long ago: “moral equivalence,” and a false moral equivalence at that. The label still applies, or ought to.
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