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It has been a staple of presidential rhetoric, on both sides of the aisle, to hold up the American example as a model for others (even though there is of course disagreement about the degree to which the United States lives up to its own values). So it was striking this week to read Donald J. Trump's response in a New York Times interview to a question about Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's detention of tens of thousands of Turkish citizens.
SANGER:
Erdogan put nearly 50,000 people in jail or suspend them, suspended
thousands of teachers, he imprisoned many in the military and the
police, he dismissed a lot of the judiciary. Does this worry you? And
would you rather deal with a strongman who’s also been a strong ally, or
with somebody that’s got a greater appreciation of civil liberties than
Mr. Erdogan has? Would you press him to make sure the rule of law
applies?
TRUMP:
I think right now when it comes to civil liberties, our country has a
lot of problems, and I think it’s very hard for us to get involved in
other countries when we don’t know what we are doing and we can’t see
straight in our own country. We have tremendous problems when you have
policemen being shot in the streets, when you have riots, when you have
Ferguson. When you have Baltimore. When you have all of the things that
are happening in this country — we have other problems, and I think we
have to focus on those problems. When the world looks at how bad the
United States is, and then we go and talk about civil liberties, I don’t
think we’re a very good messenger.
This argument — that the United States could not be a model because of
its domestic problems — was made during the early years of the Cold War,
when racial segregation and violence against civil rights demonstrators
generated international criticism. But this case was made by Soviet
propagandists, not American presidential candidates....
As the world looks at the United States’ election this year, it is
ultimately the American electorate that will have a final say about
whether we, as a nation, are ready to embrace the idea that American
democracy has nothing to offer the world.