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On the second night of the Republican National Convention, Iowa Attorney General Brenna Bird boasted about her party’s approach to law enforcement: “We put criminals where they belong: in jail.”
She neglected to add, “And also on the RNC stage.”
One Republican speaker after another on Tuesday night denounced those who ran afoul of the law. “Cops are good, criminals are bad,” Montana Senate hopeful Tim Sheehy declared. “Donald Trump stands with the people and the police — our men and women in blue — not with the criminals and rioters,” House Majority Whip Tom Emmer added.
The obvious problem with the rhetoric was the fact that a jury recently found Trump guilty of 34 felonies — which came on the heels of a different jury holding Trump liable for sexual assault — who’s running on a platform rooted in his support for rioters. The less obvious problem is who would speak to the convention the day after attendees were told “criminals are bad.”
As my MSNBC colleague Jordan Rubin explained, former White House adviser Peter Navarro was scheduled to speak at his party’s gathering, just hours after being released from federal prison. We now know that’s precisely what happened — and how he was received. NBC News reported:
Peter Navarro, an aide in former President Donald Trump’s White House, received thunderous cheers at the Republican National Convention on Wednesday as he spoke hours after having left a federal prison in Miami. ... Navarro reported to prison in March after he was convicted of contempt of Congress. He was involved in Trump’s effort to overturn the 2020 presidential election and defied a subpoena from the House committee tasked with investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol and the run-up to it.
For those who might’ve missed his appearance, convention attendees didn’t just give the released criminal a standing ovation, they also chanted, “Welcome home.”
Part of what made all of this notable was the jarring contradiction: Navarro, a member of the so-called “Team of Felons,” was celebrated as a hero at the Republican National Convention literally one day after the party pushed a “criminals are bad” message.
Complicating matters was the former White House’s adviser’s rhetoric. Navarro declared, for example, that the bipartisan Jan. 6 committee “demanded” that he “betray Donald John Trump” and “break the law.” That wasn’t even close to being true.
But stepping back, there’s a larger context to consider. Why in the world would the RNC invite a criminal to the convention stage, just hours after his release and one day after touting a “law and order” message?
Because as Rubin’s piece explained, “The party’s embrace of Navarro fits well within its ‘law and order’ mantra, which doesn’t mandate a literal application of the law but is rather about maintaining a certain social order.”
Quite right. I’m reminded of a New York Times op-ed that MSNBC’s Chris Hayes wrote in 2018:
If all that matters when it comes to “law and order” is who is a friend and who is an enemy, and if friends are white and enemies are black or Latino or in the wrong party, then the rhetoric around crime and punishment stops being about justice and is merely about power and corruption. And this is what “law and order” means: the preservation of a certain social order, not the rule of law.
Navarro is on the right “team,” which — as far as Republicans are concerned — transforms his criminality into nobility.