Wednesday, June 8, 2016

Civility Watchdog: June 8, 2016, Donald Trump

"I don't care where the judge comes from or where judges come from. I just want to get a fair shake. And we've had some very unfair [judicial] opinions coming down. And you wonder, what's going on? And I will tell you, it's a little disappointing, some of the Republicans – and, in all fairness, they're some of the people that I went through war with – and I won – and there's a lot of, there's a lot of anxiety there, there's a lot of, you know, there's a lot of anger, I guess. Anger. They just can't come back, they can't get over it. So they have to get over it, ideally. As to whether or not they endorse me, it's OK if they don't. But they have to get over it. They shouldn't be so angry for so long."
-- Republican presidential contender Donald Trump, June 7, 2016. Trump was responding to criticism of his demand that U.S. District Court Judge Gonzalo Curiel recuse himself from a civil case concerning Trump University, given that Curiel was of Mexican heritage, was a member of a Latino lawyers' association, and that Trump had pledged to build a wall on the U.S.-Mexican border to stop illegal immigration from Mexico.

Comment: Yes, maybe some of the people criticizing Trump for his remarks on Judge Curiel are angry because they lost to Trump in the GOP presidential primary (the "war" Trump refers to). But that doesn't mean their criticism is invalid; to argue that way would be ad hominem reasoning.

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