David Frum
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Writer, political commentator
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Claims by David Frum (20 of 175)
Courts overstep by blocking plenary immigration power
The courts striking down Trump's Muslim ban are reaching the right outcome but are overstepping, because the president's authority over immigration is plenary and his actions—though capricious, motivated by animus, and irrational—were clearly within his rights until recently, so the rulings represent a cost of the Trump era.
Doubt over nuclear command makes US a banana republic
The fact that observers now wonder whether the military would obey a Trump nuclear-launch order the way they would have obeyed past presidents reflects a banana-republic condition, where military personnel no longer reliably defer to civilian leadership—a serious cost of the Trump presidency.
Best defense of Trump is the leaks argument
The strongest argument working in Trump's favor is that much of the damaging information about him comes from intelligence officials breaking oaths and revealing to the Russians that supposedly secure communications were compromised, which is a real loss to the United States—paralleling the betrayal of secrets by Snowden and Manning.
Trump's advent itself damages US institutions
Trump's accession to the presidency is itself a terrible blow to American institutions, and the defensive actions society must take against him—leaks, judicial intervention—come with terrible costs, so that however the story ends the institutions will suffer major losses.
Post-WWII order made international politics like domestic
After World War II, the advanced democracies replaced the pre-war Hobbesian all-against-all competition with structures in which disputes between countries are settled like domestic disputes—agreed rules, neutral binding arbitration, enforceable in courts—creating a zone of peace among NATO countries, Japan, Australia, and others that is one of humanity's signal political accomplishments.
Kushner is the wrong person for any back channel
Kushner's proposed Russian back channel makes no sense under either legitimate meaning of 'back channel': deniable channels require an intermediary the US can disavow, which Kushner—obviously acting for the president—cannot be; and three-way intermediary channels (like Obama's via Oman to Iran) require a neutral go-between, not a direct undeniable presidential agent putting his head in the Russians' noose.
Trump reframes allies as power competitors
The Trump administration told Europe that the cooperative rules-based order is over, refusing to acknowledge the EU and treating European countries as power competitors regulated purely by short-sighted interest rather than values—a might-makes-right approach where the stronger imposes its will on the weaker.
Many secrets but no mysteries about Trump
The Trump-Russia story involves many secrets but no mysteries: the broad outline is understood—Trump fired Comey to stop the investigation into his campaign's Russia ties—and while whether this is legally provable obstruction of justice is debatable, his intent to obstruct in the ordinary sense is obvious.
Advising on hack use may be legal but disloyal
Even if the Trump campaign coordinated with Russia on how to deploy the WikiLeaks material, it is hard to identify a crime they committed, because while hacking, receiving hacked content, or inducing a foreigner to spend money on a campaign are illegal, merely advising a Russian on how to use an already-completed hack for maximum effect may break no law—making such conduct anti-democratic, un-American, and disloyal but possibly not prosecutable.
National loyalty should outrank ethnic and ideological loyalty
The anti-Trump case rests heavily on the principle that loyalty to one's nation should be stronger than loyalty to one's ethnicity or political affiliation, but a growing number of Americans, especially on the right, increasingly elevate ethnic and ideological loyalty above national loyalty—making it sinister when figures say 'the Russians did us a favor.'
A vast media network will obfuscate accountability
A vast network—the most powerful cable network, much talk radio, and much of the Republican Party—will obfuscate by insisting that without a specific prosecutable offense Trump's conduct was just politics, and they will be able to rally many people to the belief that holding him accountable is 'criminalizing politics.'
Russification of politics erodes rule by integrity
Foreign policy matters to ordinary lives because the global wave of Russian-origin corruption is changing political systems abroad (Italy, the UK) and threatens to 'Russify' American politics, where a self-enriching president destroys the norm that most officials obey the law because they believe corruption is wrong rather than from fear of being caught.
Trump demands higher standards, not relaxed ones
Because Trump is a moral catastrophe, the correct response is not to relax standards of decency but to raise them and be more vigilant—following the example of Soviet dissidents who, precisely because the state was deceitful and hysterical, held themselves to extra strictness in truth, honor, and legality.
Obama had integrity; Trump is qualitatively different
Despite disagreeing with most of Obama's policies, Frum holds Obama was a man of personal integrity whose misstatements (e.g. 'keep your doctor') were political art or honest errors rather than conscious Trumpian lies, making Obama not analogous to Trump, who is qualitatively different from anyone in American history.
Trump's North Korea handling proves he is no dealmaker
Trump is no dealmaker, as shown by his North Korea handling: while amping up military threats requiring coalition support, he threatened to tear up the US–South Korea trade agreement and reneged on missile-defense cost-sharing days before a South Korean election, alienating the indispensable partner and helping elect the less America-friendly candidate.
Real estate world sees Trump as a con artist
Within the real estate community Trump's name is mud or a laughingstock, no business professional respects him, and he was a virtual nonentity among top developers—essentially branding his name while lying and leaving severed relationships—making him perhaps the greatest con artist in history given his results, which reflects worse on those taken in than on him.
This election will never be nullified or effaced
The 2016 election will never be nullified; America will be 'wearing' it for a long time and will not efface the stain or undo the damage to its standing in the world, so the concern is not reversing the result but protecting national security from a president behaving dangerously for suspect reasons.
Trump won on a lucky electoral bounce
Trump is president on a lucky bounce: he won less of the popular vote than Mitt Romney but more than Michael Dukakis, with his vote distributed more efficiently than Hillary's not by campaign design but by chance, making him a middling figure in American political life who happened to win.
Impeachment requires opposing party control of House
All three US impeachment-like events—Andrew Johnson, Richard Nixon, Bill Clinton—occurred when the House was controlled by the party opposing the president, suggesting impeachment is structurally improbable while the president's own party holds the House.
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