Washington Wednesday: Escalation politics

Editor's note: The following text is a transcript of a podcast story. To listen to the story, click on the arrow beneath the headline above.

LINDSAY MAST, HOST: It’s Wednesday the 17th of December.

Glad to have you along for today’s edition of The World and Everything in It. Good morning, I’m Lindsay Mast.

NICK EICHER, HOST: And I’m Nick Eicher.

And I’m Nick Eicher. Time now for Washington Wednesday!

Today, we back up to last week—

NATPOP: The Senate will now come to order.

—a moment in the ruby-red Republican state of Indiana, when GOP lawmakers had the power to act—and chose not to. The issue was whether to use their power to redraw the political district map to make it more favorable, as Texas Republicans and California Democrats did, and maybe pick up an extra congressional seat.

MAST: Democrats voted no as a bloc and so the debate was entirely up to Republicans. Indiana state senator Andy Zay framed it as a real opportunity to keep a national GOP majority.

AUDIO: There’s a lot of consternation about the midterms coming up, and Indiana is in position to be able to help with that by broadening our seats where we have more opportunity for the Republicans.

State Senator Sue Glick is a Republican who says her district was overwhelmingly opposed.

AUDIO: I like to reflect my district, as well as my belief that government is a representative form of democracy, and we want to be fair to everyone concerned.

EICHER: Senator Zay said passions were high—too high.

AUDIO: I had a bomb threat at my business that was a surprise to me, and it does come down to a question of, is it worth it? I mean, is our family safety worth it?

he idea that political maneuvers can escalate beyond institutions and spill into real-world instability … is something U-S Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky warned about over the weekend.

He was talking about redistricting nationwide, and what happens when voters begin to believe the system is rigged. This is from NBC’s Meet the Press.

AUDIO: I'm concerned if there are no Republican representatives in California, or no Democrats in Texas that it will be so thoroughly one sided that people will feel like their vote isn't counting. And so I think it's a mistake, but I'm not saying it's a mistake of the Republicans. I'm saying it's a mistake of both parties. And I don't know exactly how we de-escalate this …. And how do you put the genie back in the box? I mean, how do you do something better? But I think there is the potential that when people have no representation, that they feel disenfranchised, that it can lead and might lead to violence in our country.

Joining us now is political philosopher and WORLD Opinions contributor Hunter Baker. Hunter, good morning.

HUNTER BAKER: Good morning.

EICHER: You heard all that, Hunter, more Indiana Senate Republicans opposed a new partisan map that would’ve helped them, than Republicans who supported it. Do you think Democrats will see reason here—and reciprocate in deep-blue states when they get the opportunity? And what about Rand Paul’s warning we just heard: how should we understand that warning without treating violence as justified or inevitable?

BAKER: We may remember that Rand Paul was himself a victim of political violence. I think he was badly injured in an assault by one of his neighbors. But I resonate very strongly with his comments. Even in the normal case, redistricting can be a pretty toxic thing. I remember being around the Capitol in Georgia around the turn of the millennium, when it was happening there, and I have never seen such vicious fighting and sort of enemy making, as I saw at that time. And so the idea of, let's not just keep doing it the way we did after each census, but let's do it literally every time we think there might be an advantage in redistricting. I think it's a terrible idea, and I'm sorry that we kicked it off with Texas doing that, and now California, all we do is kind of encourage more rivalry, more hatred, more advantage seeking. And so this is a good time to try to return to some of our previous political traditions and habits, because I think that we'll do better that way.

MAST: Also this week we’ve been following the tragic murder of Rob Reiner and his wife—apparently by their deeply disturbed son.

This story covers several categories: a terrible local crime story, it’s a culture story, but we think it also fits here in Washington Wednesday for two reasons: First, Reiner was active and outspoken in his politics–he was a fierce critic of President Trump. And second, the president’s reaction to the double homicide, when presidents typically speak healing words.

Instead, Trump took to his social media platform and blamed Reiner for his own death ,and I’ll use Trump’s words here. He said the killings were the result of the “anger he [Reiner] caused others” by “Trump Derangement Syndrome.”

Actor James Woods appeared on Fox News, he worked closely with Reiner and deeply disagreed with him politically,Woods is as outspokenly conservative as Reiner was liberal. Listen to this:

WOODS: … When people would say terrible things to me on social media about him, I said you got it all wrong. And yes, I can see how you can disagree with him, but because you disagree with people doesn't mean that you have to hate people. And what Rob and I could do, Rob and I could sit in a room … and say, “look, I think you're wrong about this, this and this,” and … we would find a way to work it out. And that was one of the great things about him …

Hunter, this is an unspeakable tragedy: Reiner and his wife are dead, and their son’s life may be effectively over: he’s in custody awaiting charge and arraignment for first-degree murder charges.

Has the president crossed a new line here—not legally, but morally—in how a national leader speaks about a political opponent after a violent death? We were all rightly horrified by people wishing the would-be assassin in Butler, PA had had better aim ... and Trump talks this way about someone’s murder?

BAKER: It is really tragic. The crime itself is tremendously tragic. I think that many of us can probably identify with the sort of idea of a family where there is one member, you know, often a child who is badly out of step, who, when you see the family portraits, that's the child that's never smiling. Obviously a family tragedy. And so that's something that we, you know, we can all kind of have in common with Reiner in terms of the circumstances that he's had and that we can understand, and even though he is a person who would have thought that conservative Christians were really wrong, really, really wrong, and used his talents to try to demonstrate that, I can also think about him as the guy who directed The Princess Bride,

MAST: As you wish…

BAKER: And what are we looking for from a president? I think that surely we expect that in times of tragedy, that we want a president to be something of an exemplar. Now we all remember that in his first campaign, he criticized John McCain for being captured during the Vietnam War, and I really thought that he would not be able to survive, that he did, right? He did. He won office, and he's won office again. But I had really hoped that after his assassination attempt, that we were going to see a new Donald Trump, somebody who had really sort of been at the precipice, who I believe God probably delivered, and had an opportunity to reconsider, but it looks like he's returned to some of his old habits. Now what's going to happen? I think that, you know, there's about 35% who are ride or die with Donald Trump, no matter what, but with everybody else, this strikes a very discordant note, and he's gonna, he's gonna struggle with some of the skepticism that he engenders in people by making these kind of comments.

EICHER: Hunter, I want to turn to immigration and the tension between the state and federal governments. Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker last week signed a law aimed at blocking federal immigration officers from detaining immigrants near courthouses, colleges, and other public places—

PRITZKER: This legislation that I'm signing today will allow for a civil lawsuit against law enforcement officers who violate the Illinois or United States Constitutional rights of the members of the public that they are supposed to be protecting.

Hunter, we’ve talked about the legal challenges surrounding National Guard deployments to protect federal agents and facilities in blue states and cities, but this is new. What do you make of it?

BAKER: Well, I think it is new, but I actually see it more as a political issue than a legal one. I think that legally, the issue is pretty well settled. The Federal Government cannot make the states enforce federal law, but the federal government is certainly entitled to actually carry out that enforcement itself. The supremacy clause has not been overturned, and governors are not suddenly permitted to interfere in the enforcement and federal law. So what I see with these laws is not not something that's actually going to change sort of our legal regime, but really probably represent more of an opportunity to capitalize on the issue. I think that governors like Pritzker believe that this is a way to highlight their differences with Donald Trump, and maybe to gain more momentum for their own coalition. So that's what I see. I see politics rather than law at work here.

MAST: One last question: On Monday Pro-democracy media mogul Jimmy Lai was convicted in Hong Kong…without a jury trial. You’ll remember he was arrested in 2020 after major protests against a law subverting Hong Kong’s British justice system. That law was turned against him, and now he faces up to life in prison. For a 78-year-old man who’s spent 5 years in solitary confinement, that may not be long.

Trump on Monday said he’s asking Chinese President Xi Jinping to let Lai go.

TRUMP: He's an older man, and he's not well. So I did put that request out. We'll see what happens

Trump is planning to meet with Xi in April, but do you think he has any real leverage to get Lai released?

BAKER: Well, really Great Britain should be taking the lead. Lai is a British national, and so they should be the ones who are really pushing for some sort of legal relief for Lai now. Certainly the American president can join with the British prime minister and try to work out some kind of diplomatic solution that will save face for the Chinese or not cause them embarrassment. We'll see if that can happen.

But really, what this highlights for me is that is that in the late 90s, when we saw Hong Kong handed back to China, we really wondered what's going to happen. You know, Hong Kong, really one of the great world cities. Would Hong Kong influence China, or would China control Hong Kong? And I think a lot of us thought that Hong Kong is such a great city with sort of a magnificent experience of the 20th century, that it would lead China to be both more economically successful and to respect human rights. And really, we've seen half of that happen. We have seen China become much more economically successful in the way that Hong Kong has been for a much longer time, but in terms of democracy and human rights, that has not materialized. We have seen Hong Kong dragged backwards in that sense, and that's what's going on with a great publisher like Jimmy Lai being arrested here. You know, as far as we can tell, he's really guilty of nothing other than being an advocate of democracy.

To me, this looks like political repression, and that's not new from China, and neither is religious repression. China is a nation that occasionally knocks down churches simply to send a message, and so we're not getting the future that we expected when we opened up free trade with China, we have empowered a nation that has become a rival and possibly a dangerous one.

MAST: Hunter Baker is provost at North Greenville University. Thank you, Hunter.

BAKER: Thank you.

WORLD Radio transcripts are created on a rush deadline. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of WORLD Radio programming is the audio record.