As news of the Brussels terrorist attacks unfolded Tuesday, liberal and conservative intellectuals rushed to insure that the obvious culprit, Donald Trump, could not do further harm.
Washington Post blogger Phillip Bump belched out an item about Trump’s comments on the attacks to “Fox and Friends” that fit the typical media narrative about the GOP front-runner’s supposedly dangerous Islamophobia. He further discredited Trump by speculating Trump called the show from the safe cocoon of his own Manhattan skyscraper residence–after all, tall building in New York are famously immune to terrorist attacks.
Similarly, Bump’s conservative WaPo counterpart, Jennifer Rubin penned an item titled, “Brussels and the danger of Trump.”
But Belgian Jews Wednesday, curiously, seemed more afraid of Muslim terrorists than Donald Trump.
As WaPo reporter Julie Zauzmer recounted shortly before noon, “With the holiday falling the day after terrorist attacks that killed at least 31 people and injured 270 more in the capital city, the Jewish congregations in Brussels decided that celebrating Purim would not be appropriate — or safe.”
She quoted an unnamed official of the Brussels-based Great Synagogue of Europe explaining, “In the street now, it’s dangerous to walk with a kippah in the street.”
And it is not Trump supporters they need fear encountering.
Rubin and other conservative intellectuals might pleasure themselves immensely by depicting Trump as unhinged and dangerous. But the reality is their arguments simply make it easier for liberals to argue that trying to contain Muslim terrorism with robust measures is just Islamophobic overreach.
Anybody who glanced over Rubin and Bump’s posts would have concluded that notwithstanding the terrorist carnage, with apologies to FDR, the only thing we have to fear is Trump himself.