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Another day, and another ferocious controversy straight from Donald Trump's mouth, and as we've come to expect, Mr. Trump is being shot at from all sides - which bothers his supporters not at all.
As the media has taken great pains to inform every single American, Mr. Trump is being sued over his defunct venture Trump University. TU purported to teach students the Trump way of reaching financial success - which would certainly be worth the price of admission if it worked.
In common with a great many other educational institutions, though, there are a fair few ex-students who feel ripped off. Obviously, America is not filled with thousands of newly-minted billionaire Trump U alumni, so on some level they have a point.
Was Trump U actually a fraud, any more than plenty of other colleges whose graduates earn less than if they'd just stayed home? We have no idea. That is why we have a court system: the plaintiffs will have the opportunty to make their case before a judge, Mr. Trump will have the chance to make his defense, and the jury will decide.
For this to work, though, it is absolutely vital for the court system itself to be seen as impartial - and that is just what The Donald is attacking in the person of Judge Gonzalo Curiel who is hearing the case.
Speaking with Jake Tapper on Friday, Trump zeroed in on the “Mexican heritage” of Curiel — a man who was born in Indiana, battled Mexican drug cartels as a federal prosecutor and has been appointed by prominent Republicans.
But Trump insisted, even after being asked more than 20 times, that there’s nothing racist about his racism.
“This judge is of Mexican heritage,” Trump said in the interview.
“I’m building a wall, OK? I’m building a wall. ... He’s a member of a society where, you know, very pro-Mexico. And that’s fine. But I think he should recuse himself.”
First, we need to make one thing perfectly clear: Regardless of how many times the media repeats this lie, it IS NOT racist to dislike Mexicans or Muslims. The simple fact is, Mexican is not a race! Neither is Muslim. So the very premise of these complaints is a lie.
It is, however, possible to be bigoted against (say) Mexicans, which would be almost as bad. But bigotry, like racism, also involves lies - by which we mean, it is not racist or bigotry if you are simply stating facts. Of course, to our liberal media, telling the truth is the very worst possible form of racism and bigotry all at the same time.
When Donald Trump pointed out the objectively true fact that illegal Mexican immigrants commit a great many violent crimes, he was accused of racism, even though every word he spoke is provably true.
Again, when Mr. Trump proposed that Muslims should be banned from United States immigration, the commentariat went nuclear, even though within living memory Democrat Jimmy Carter did much the same for a time. As Muslims themselves admit, virtually all current terrorists are Muslim, so why on earth would we want any more of them than we've already got?
Yet there are plenty of people in powerful positions who would willingly sacrifice American safety and security, to say nothing of our culture, in favor of other people who have no natural right even to be here. Mr. Trump, responding to the protests of the majority of the American people, wants this to stop, which has certainly made him a great many enemies.
So, is it possible that Donald Trump is actually on to something that the massed media, and even normally-sane conservatives like Erick Erickson are incapable of seeing?
As it happens, he is. Who, pray tell, is Judge Gonzalo Curiel? What sort of man is he?
What makes La Raza racist? Let's ask no less an authority than the famous far-left Hispanic union activist Cesar Chavez, for whom La Raza was too odious to be associated with:
"I hear more and more Mexicans talking about la raza—to build up their pride, you know," Chavez told me. "Some people don't look at it as racism, but when you say 'la raza,' you are saying an anti-gringo thing, and it won't stop there. Today it's anti-gringo, tomorrow it will be anti-Negro, and the day after it will be anti-Filipino, anti-Puerto Rican. And then it will be anti-poor-Mexican, and anti-darker-skinned Mexican. ... La raza is a very dangerous concept. I speak very strongly against it among the chicanos."
Mr. Chavez even associated the concept of "La Raza", which is Spanish for "the race," with Hitler's beginnings!
Cezar Chavez died some time ago. La Raza's racism, alas, didn't, as Michelle Malkin, Victor Davis Hanson, and others have thoroughly documented. That's understandable: if your group's very name is "The Race," how could you possibly be anything other than bigots?
La Raza is every bit as Hispanic-supremacist as the KKK is white-supremacist, with the one distinction being that La Raza does not (yet) string white men up from lampposts.
So let's put Judge Curiel in perspective.
Imagine that you had a judge in 1960 who was an active member of the KKK. There certainly were such biased, unjust judges in earlier years; maybe in 1960 there were still a few, so this isn't much of a stretch.
Wouldn't we all agree that, while as an American you have an absolute right to join even so odious a group as the KKK, you certainly don't belong anywhere near the judicial bench if you do?
Let's go further. Let's suppose this bigoted judge one day found himself presiding over a trial of Dr. Martin Luther King., Jr., famous for arguing - well, pretty much the exact opposite of what the KKK teaches, let's put it that way.
Is there any possible way that Dr. King could expect a fair trial in that particular courtroom? Of course not, and history tells us of several occasions where Dr. King did not receive the justice that, as an American, was his right. At the very least he'd have every reason to demand that Judge KKK recuse himself, and if he didn't, history would record that justice was not served regardless of what ruling the biased judge made.
Now comes Donald Trump, whose signature policy is a) building a wall to keep illegal immigrants, mostly Mexicans, out, and b) immediately and completely deporting all the illegal immigrants, mostly Mexicans, that are already here with no legal right to be.
In fairness, he has also spoken of building a big, beautiful door in his wall so that legal immigrants can enter. People who say "We're a nation of immigrants" forget that the truth is, "We're a nation of legal immigrants." Open borders didn't work out any better for the Native Americans than it has for us, but the media will never mention any of those facts.
Mr. Trump has nothing bad to say about Hispanic citizens of Mexican descent in general, or even Mexicans in this country legally. Indeed, he's hired many of them, and compliments their hard work.
Judge Curiel was born in Indiana, so he is indeed a Hispanic citizen of Mexican descent, but that shouldn't render him immune to criticism of his own choices and associations with overtly racist groups. After all, aren't we supposed to judge people by the content of their character, which we can judge based on what they do?
And the "character" of a judge who supports and endorses illegal immigration, all by itself, should constitute grounds for impeachment. What sort of a judge actively encourages people to break the law?
It's abundantly clear that, once again, Donald Trump is spot on. There is no possible way that he could receive justice from Judge Curiel when his famous beliefs so directly conflict with Judge Curiel's lawless ones, as another Hispanic - Attorney General Alberto Gonzales - pointed out.
We've been down this road before. Have we so quickly forgotten the disgusting fate of California's Proposition 8 in 2008? This was a ballot proposition and state constitutional amendment forbidding same-sex unions, which was duly passed in overwhelming numbers by the people of the state of California.
This didn't stop Chief Judge Vaughn Walker from finding this constitutional amendment to be unConstitutional (how exactly is that even possible?) Why, you ask? Well, shortly after he created a previously unknown constitutional right to homosexual marriage out of whole cloth, he retired from the bench and disclosed that he himself had been in a homosexual relationship for a decade.
How could that possibly not be a conflict of interest? How could any judge with a shred of decency not recuse himself from a case that hits so close to home? Yet, because Judge Walker and Judge Curiel are leftists who support leftist causes, it's all fine as far as the left is concerned, and most well-known conservatives silently and sullenly put up with it.
Except, that is - Donald Trump. Once again, Mr. Trump is boldly bellowing the politically-incorrect truth that no other leader dares speak but which the common people know all too well.
We have no idea what true justice would be in the case against Trump University, but we'd like to find out in accordance with the rule of law. But if Judge Curiel remains at the helm of this case, we never will know. In that case, we wouldn't even need to have a trial, because the outcome is a foregone conclusion.