Opinion by Kipp Jones
Senate Minority Leader
Chuck Schumer has spent years declaring
“no one is above the law” just about every time
Donald Trump or another Republican lands in legal trouble or behaves questionably.
But on Friday, when Newark Mayor
Ras Baraka was
arrested during a protest at an ICE facility, Schumer abandoned his script.
The New York Democrat posted on X,
“Mayor Ras Baraka has been released, but he should never have been arrested by Trump to begin with.”
ICE and Homeland Security officers arrested Baraka for allegedly trespassing after repeated warnings to leave the facility. Baraka
disputed the details of his arrest
as explained by Acting US Attorney for the District of New Jersey
Alina Habba.
Habba
said Baraka ignored warnings to leave the facility. The mayor told CNN’s
Kaitlan Collins that Habba was wrong.
Schumer chimed in to
portray the then-released mayor as some sort of a political prisoner.
Schumer’s gripe was not about Baraka, or ICE, or Habba. It was about Trump. It was about selling
the crisis story that every bad thing that happens is
the fault of far-right authoritarianism.
But by tying the arrest directly to the Republican in the White House, Schumer didn’t just go after his favorite political target. He undercut the credibility of the men and women on the ground Friday.
Schumer declared Baraka’s arrest unjustified, despite not being present and a well-documented history of declaring, “No one is above the law.”
Comment:
Schumer is trying to save himself from being voted out by attempting to appease the radical left wing of the Democrat coalition.
He has been hyperbolically branding the Republicans as things such as "
far-right authoritarians" and
"hard right" and
"far right extremist." for decades.
But the truth is the Republicans are center right and the Democrats a coalition of far left fringe groups.
It is the Democrats who are far from the center.