'No deference at all': Conservative lauds GOP judge for exposing MAGA con

President Donald Trump has been employing a certain political two-step incessantly for years, conservative analyst David French wrote for the New York Times on Monday — and, ironically, it took a judge he appointed himself to stand up and unmask it.

"For a very long time, Trump and his supporters have gotten away with a double game. First, they’ll cheer anything and everything that makes him a thoroughly unconventional president — from his bizarre social media posts to his extreme use of executive power — as necessary, absolutely necessary, to save the country and drain the swamp," wrote French.

"But when Trump’s unprecedented behavior meets with an unprecedented response, MAGA is aggrieved. How dare you treat him differently from other presidents, they say."

In other words, said French, the pattern goes: "When Trump is on offense, he’s celebrated as a president like no other. But when he has to answer for his actions in court, he demands that he be treated as a president like any other."

This was most clear when Trump and his followers declared war on former special counsel Jack Smith following his indictment of Trump in two federal cases, involving the conspiracy to steal the 2020 election, and hoarding classified documents. But it's also evident in his deployment of troops to keep order in progressive cities, French wrote.

The president, French continued, is "posting wildly false statements about American cities online, and then he’s directing that soldiers be sent to cities governed by officials he sees as his political enemies, even though none of the historic circumstances that have justified military deployments in the past — like widespread unrest — are present. The level of violence in Portland is a far cry from the multiple urban riots of the 1960s or the Los Angeles riots of 1992 — much less the riots that spread across American cities after George Floyd’s murder in 2020."

Enter U.S. District Judge Karin Immergut, one of Trump's own appointees, who issued a ruling bluntly slapping Trump down and telling him he could not deploy troops to Portland.

"Judge Immergut is supposed to give the president 'a great level of deference'" as to what constitutes a "rebellion" for the purposes of calling in the Guard, French wrote.

"But how much deference should you give a president who constantly lies?" noted French. "The right answer is that a president can forfeit judicial deference through his own conduct. In Newsom v. Trump, the Ninth Circuit also said that the president’s determinations must be made in 'good faith.' If there’s no good faith, there should be no deference."

Immergut noted that Trump kept lying that Portland was "war-ravaged" over a handful of minor, peaceful protests at an ICE facility. “The president’s determination was simply untethered to the facts,” she wrote.

This sort of refusal to play Trump's game, wrote French, is a model for how courts should respond to the new wave of Trump-directed prosecutions against his political enemies, including former FBI Director James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James.

At the end of the day, "the best way to evaluate the reasoning behind Trump’s actions is to examine Trump’s words, and Trump’s words reveal a man who isn’t just 'untethered to the facts'; he’s also untethered to the law," French concluded. "Dishonest presidents should be entitled to no deference at all."