One Democrat Just Capitulated to Trump in the Worst Way

The Colorado’s Governor’s kowtowing will only embolden Trump to turn up the heat on his enemies.

The news broke about a week ago that Colorado governor Jared Polis commuted the sentence of election denier and Steve Bannon acolyte Tina Peters. I held off on saying anything because I’d been trying to get Jared Polis on for an interview to discuss. He deserved the opportunity to come on and explain his rationale. I emailed nearly every day, and only got excuses as to why he wasn’t available.

Though his team had granted an interview to Kaitlan Collins at CNN, the decision by Polis to go to legacy media and cut out independent media altogether is a pretty apt microcosm for Democrats’ failures. Jared Polis has learned exactly no lessons in the last few years, whether it’s about where people on the left are consuming information or whether it’s a good idea to commute the sentences of people who wanted to overturn the previous election on behalf of Donald Trump. (Spoiler: it’s not).

Here’s my interview with Polis last year, when I pushed him to step up and fight back in the redistricting war. Based on his response then, I’m not surprised we find ourselves here, now.

Now, thanks to Jared Polis, Trump has a blueprint. He knows that if he attacks someone enough, if he threatens to sic his army of supporters on someone enough, if he uses the government as a cudgel against his enemies enough, they will relent and bend to his will. And so in the face of so much capitulation from news networks, and tech companies, and CEOs, and law firms, and universities, we can add Democratic governors to the list of those who Trump knows will eventually succumb to his whims if he just pushes hard enough. This will teach him Trump the wrong lessons, and it will make everyone worse off as the result of it.

As for Tina Peters, she decided to come out, fresh off her commuted sentence, and say that the Democratic censure of Polis for granting her clemency is further evidence of an election rigging coverup. Polis burned his political capital so that an election denier could further entrench her election denialism. Bravo.

Worth noting: the Colorado Court of Appeals had already thrown out her sentence in April, though they upheld her convictions, and sent the case back for resentencing. Polis jumped the line before that could happen. Why he didn’t simply allow the appeals court to re-sentence her is anyone’s guess, but obviously sends the absolute worst message.

I’ve said this before and I’ll say it a thousand more times if I have to: if there is one thing I want to see change on the left, it is this impotence and fecklessness where we bend over backwards to show goodwill to the other side while they wouldn’t be caught dead doing the same thing for us. They game the refs by complaining about a rigged election – demonstrably false – and they get their goons in the media to repeat it over and over again, to the point where weak-willed Democrats feel the need to offer concessions to the other side. The message that the right gets is, “all we have to do is lie loudly enough, and we get what we want.”

Jared Polis is perpetuating this problem. He is a weak Democrat who has learned zero lessons from the past, and is instead teaching the Republicans exactly how to continue to game the system— by manipulating people just like him.