The Outrageous False Equivalences That Prop Up President Trump

[dalton99a]

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/11/24/opinion/trump-false-equivalence.html

https://archive.ph/UHKN8

The Outrageous False Equivalences That Prop Up President Trump
Nov. 24, 2025
By Frank Bruni

While President Trump certainly has supporters who adore him and feel no need to justify that, he survives — and too often prospers — with the crucial help of voters who basically regard him as the lesser of evils.

They tell themselves something like this: Trump has shortcomings, but those are merely mirrors of the corruption and craziness on the other side. Almost any accusation leveled at him is lodged as easily — and often more righteously — against his opponents. In a government of bad apples, he’s no mealier than the rest.

But those claims insist on a symmetry that doesn’t exist. They’re equivalences not merely false but fantastical. They ignore the severity, the prevalence, the consequences of the misconduct in question. Imagine defending a suitor who’s a serial arsonist because the other guy has a jaywalking citation; both bachelors are lawbreakers, after all. That’s the perverse moral arithmetic of more than a few Trump apologists.

I find two of their rationalizations especially preposterous, starting with this:

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