The president's boundless benefit of the doubt for the Rob Porters and Roy Moores of the world, combined with off-with-their-heads capriciousness for immigrants accused of even minor crimes, is not a contradiction. It is the expression of a consistent worldview that he campaigned on and has pursued in office.
In this view, crime is not defined by a specific offense. Crime is defined by who commits it. If a young black man grabs a white woman by the crotch, he's a thug and deserves to be roughed up by police officers. But if Donald Trump grabs a white woman by the crotch in a nightclub (as he's accused of doing, and denies), it's locker-room high jinks.
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A political movement that rails against "immigrant crime" while defending alleged abusers and child molesters is one that has stopped pretending to have any universalist aspirations. The president's moral framework springs from an American tradition of cultivating fear and contempt among its white citizens against immigrants, indigenous people and people of color, who are placed on the other side of "the law." It's a practice that has taken on new strength at a time when many white people fear they may be outnumbered, outvoted and out of time.