Mr. Trump and Abp Kurtz

Michael Sean Winters | Oct. 19, 2016

Tonight’s debate will be Donald Trump’s last chance to really change the dynamic in the race for the White House. He is trailing in all the polls. His path to 270 electoral college votes shifted from narrow to virtually non-existent with his poor performance in the first debate and the subsequent release of a video in which he spoke with unspeakable vulgarity and misogyny about using his power to assault women.

Mr. Trump is also a man for whom the nastiest thing you can say about a person is that he or she is “a loser.” That alone should have given Christians of all stripes pause before supporting him: We worship a God who has identified His justice and mercy with the cause of the losers throughout history. But, as the prospect of not only a loss but a humiliatingly large loss looms, Trump is likely to become more and more dangerous. I suspect we shall see just how dangerous on display tonight.

He has consistently thrown unsubstantiated aspersions at his opponents, first his fellow Republicans seeking the presidential nomination, but also at others, such as Ghazala Khan, the Gold Star mother whose son died in Iraq. No longer content to attack his political opponents and their supporters, he has recently questioned the very fiber of American democracy, the integrity of the ballot. Many Republican Secretaries of State, who are constitutionally charged with protecting the integrity of the franchise have understandably voiced their disquiet at his attacks, such as the Secretary of State of Ohio, Jon Husted.

Trump is playing with fire. Questioning the validity of an election he seems destined to lose in advance shows the degree to which he is a big cry baby, unwilling to take responsibility for running the worst campaign in modern history. It shows a recklessness that is stunning: For all of its flaws, democracy remains a human achievement of the first order. Those who seek to casually undermine it are doing a very immoral thing, and a very dangerous thing.

A good rule of thumb in life is to stay away from people who are dangerous. Many Republicans, including Speaker of the House Paul Ryan, are certainly staying as far from Trump as they possibly can be. So, it was all the more startling to see this video and read this statement from Archbishop Joseph Kurtz, President of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, speaking in terms we have only previously heard from surrogates for Mr. Trump.

https://www.ncronline.org/blogs/distinctly-catholic/mr-trump-and-abp-kurtz