Trump's criminal justice balancing act

Can Trump be the law-and-order candidate while simultaneously painting Biden as being too tough on crime?

President Trump.
(Image credit: Illustrated | leonardo255/iStock, RTimages/iStock, Chris Jackson-WPA Pool/Getty Images, phochi/iStock)

In his quest for re-election, President Trump is casting himself as a defender of law and order; a booster of border security and broader immigration crackdown; a sworn enemy of ISIS and the MS-13 gang; and a staunch opponent of the 1994 crime bill.

One of these things doesn't look like the other. Yet the president who campaigned in 2016 warning against "American Carnage" — and hasn't really let up since — has come out swinging against the 1994 legislation, formally known as the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act. It was signed into law by then-President Bill Clinton at a time when violent crime rates were substantially higher than they are today. The bill encouraged states to get tough on crime and included the infamous "three strikes" rule. The law has had disproportionate effects on African Americans and Hispanics in the years since.

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W. James Antle III

W. James Antle III is the politics editor of the Washington Examiner, the former editor of The American Conservative, and author of Devouring Freedom: Can Big Government Ever Be Stopped?.