Trump’s ‘Dirty Harry’ theory of justice People reject law when it fails the majority

Democrats seem to imagine they have a political winner on their hands with the case of the Trump administration’s improper deportation of Klimer Abrego Garcia to a notorious El Salvadoran prison. To drive home the perceived advantage, Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) recently visited Abrego Garcia in El Salvador, even staging a photo op with him, notwithstanding the allegations of gang membership lodged against him by multiple law-enforcement agencies, and his own wife’s 2021 claims of brutal domestic abuse.

To understand why this isn’t an anti-Trump slam dunk — indeed, why Democrats bound to crash against majority opinion — look no farther than the noir-action classic Dirty Harry, from 1971.

Harry Callahan — the film’s hard-boiled, hard-hitting protagonist — became Clint Eastwood’s iconic role. A San Francisco police officer, Callahan becomes increasingly disillusioned with how liberal proceduralism gets in the way of combatting his city’s criminal element. In response, he tortures a depraved serial killer to get him to tell him where his kidnapped victim is, and ultimately shoots the man dead when he could arrest him. The movie ends with Callahan throwing away his badge.

He knows he can’t pursue justice while upholding the law — or at least, the law as Earl Warren-style judges and prosecutors defined it.

At the time, Left-of-centre critics railed against the film’s politics, even as many conceded its unquestionable artistry. The late Roger Ebert called its message “fascist”, while the legendary reviewer Pauline Kael called it “deeply immoral”. The New Republic, then as now the organ of mainstream liberalism, called it “disgusting”.

Yet audiences loved it. Eastwood went on to make four sequels, and even his subsequent career as an Oscar-winning director hasn’t overshadowed Harry in public consciousness. President Ronald Reagan even went so far as to use one of Callahan’s catchphrases (uttered as he’s about to shoot a criminal): “go ahead, make my day”.

It’s easy to see why the character struck a nerve on both sides. Progressives devoted to procedural rights found Callahan’s legal shortcuts revolting. But for many others, Callahan was vindicating a deeper moral precept: namely, that when the law prevents justice, justice should triumph, all the same.

Team Trump is relying on this same principle to maintain public support for the rough justice of its immigration policies. People want to obey the law, and they revere the rule of law. But when the law no longer serves justice — when it systematically works to the advantage of scofflaws and criminals — their sympathies shift. They want justice first and foremost, not the rigorous adherence to procedure. The results can be, and often are, troubling. But once public opinion reaches this stage, arguing against it is like arguing against the weather: it is what it is.

The conflict between law and a deeper justice is at the heart of the public debate over Garcia’s fate. It is undisputed that he was wrongly sent to El Salvador in violation of a court order. Nor is it unclear that a unanimous Supreme Court has ruled that the Trump Administration must “facilitate” Garcia’s return to the United States. In other words, it is clear that as a matter of law, Garcia should come back to the United States.

But Team Trump and their adherents are playing the justice card. They note that a local law-enforcement agency and the Department of Homeland Security determined that Garcia is a member of the infamous MS-13 gang. He has also been credibly accused of being a wife-beater by his own wife, who filed a police complaint in 2021 alleging that his beatings left her bleeding. He is apparently a “bad hombre”, the type of man Trump has consistently said needs to be expelled from the country.

Law versus justice. Democrats argue that the legal violation is more important than the man he apparently is. Team Trump says it’s more important to protect the safety of the many than the procedural rights of the malefactor. The American majority is likely to side with the Trumpians, for the same reason it cheered Eastwood’s Callahan.

That’s not to say that Trump’s actions aren’t troubling. The law should be followed, and it’s clear that Garcia can be deported if the charges are true. Conservative columnists Ross Douthat and Byron York each contend the right solution is to bring Garcia back, give him his due process, and then deport him to another country. That seems like the reasonable thing to do, and it’s troubling that the administration seems uninterested in pursuing it.

It’s also disturbing that the administration is seemingly ignoring a unanimous Supreme Court. The court’s conservative majority will be the only block against Democratic power if they return to power. Disregarding a Court order might look good to MAGA now, but the Trumpians will rue the day when the tables are turned on them.

But none of that is getting traction now because of Garcia’s history, which looks worse by the day. Americans, especially on the Right, are distrustful of institutions in record numbers. Trump voters are especially distrustful judges after watching the system be perverted by the years long lawfare campaign mounted against Trump.

The Biden administration’s blatant refusal to enforce the laws against illegal migration, and its twisting of laws regarding refugee status to enable that refusal, also harden conservative hearts. This disobedience of the law, purportedly to pursue justice, is why we have so many hardened gang members and criminals in the US homeland today.

Trump voters will happily say what’s good for the goose is good for the gander and look the other way as their man gets rid of the bad guys — and, no doubt, some innocents — by whatever means necessary.

This spectacle will go on for a while as both sides seem dug into their current positions. Trump thinks it’s good to be on the side of the popular sense of justice and public safety, while Democrats think it’s good to be on the side of judges and the law. Neither has the incentive to actually solve the problem, either for Garcia’s case or for the many similar cases that will surely arise as Trump’s mass deportation ramps up.

But politically speaking, it’s Democrats who are likely to pay the higher price. Democrats once had public opinion on their side regarding immigration. Before then-President Joe Biden allowed millions of people to stream across the border, Americans opposed Trump’s immigration policies. Today, CNN political analyst Harry Enten points out that a clear majority of Americans supports Trump’s policies and backs the immediate mass deportation of all illegal migrants.

Mistakenly deporting a “bad hombre” is exactly the mistake Americans today will tolerate, if it means undoing four years of Biden’s mess. That conclusion will outrage liberals and Democrats. But they should know better, as this is exactly the course the country took as crime rose between the Sixties and Nineties.

A country that once veered toward protecting the rights of the accused when their streets were basically safe increasingly demanded strict law enforcement and longer jail terms. President Bill Clinton’s shift toward this position, encapsulated in the 1993 crime bill that hired 100,000 more police officers and cracked down against crime, was one reason he was able to win as a “New Democrat”.

Democrats belatedly realised back then that they could not win national elections by catering to their liberal base. They seem light years away from accepting reality today, captured as they are by a base that wants nothing more than to see their representatives fight everything Trump does.

Trump and Republicans should realise, though, that public forbearance in this case doesn’t extend to all conflicts with judicial orders. Even Trump voters don’t think he should ignore court orders with respect to immigration cases, and an overwhelming majority (78%) of Republicans generally believe he must obey Supreme Court orders.

In other words, when law doesn’t clearly prevent justice, Americans back the rule of law. Politics is always about public opinion. As Abraham Lincoln said, “with it, nothing can fail; against it, nothing can succeed”. On the Garcia case, public opinion is and will remain with Trump. On the broader question of the rule of law, however, it is squarely with the court system.

Democrats, and Trump, should take heed.

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Henry Olsen is a Senior Fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington, DC. He is the author of The Working Class Republican: Ronald Reagan and the Return of Blue-Collar Conservatism.

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