Resistance (At All Costs)

September 16, 2019
It’s not President Trump who is violating democratic norms but his overzealous opponents, according to this scathing takedown of anti-Trump elites. Wall Street Journal columnist Strassel (The Intimidation Game) spotlights politicians, government officials, judges, and journalists whose attacks on Trump’s presidency, she argues, transgress decency and legality. The book’s centerpiece is an extensive account of the Trump-Russia collusion probes by the FBI and Special Counsel Robert Mueller; Strassel makes a cogent case that these investigations were politically motivated, based on spurious allegations, and overstepped the law. She lambastes congressional Democrats for using “smear tactics and ambush politics” to oppose judicial nominees including Brett Kavanaugh; Washington bureaucrats for impeding Trump’s environmental agenda; federal courts for “trashing basic judicial norms” in blocking Trump’s travel ban and other executive orders; and the media for hyping Trump-phobic fake news. These machinations, the author argues, have discredited governing institutions and proven “corrosive to democracy.” Strassel’s pro-Trump bias sometimes take over, as when she skates past credible charges that the president tried to obstruct the Russia investigation by firing FBI director James Comey, or dismisses climate change as “liberal science.” Still, her stinging critique of the anti-Trump establishment hits its targets often enough to pose a bracing challenge to mainstream political narratives.