Commentary: Trump wins because nobody trusts anything
6:07 AM EDT POLITICS

BY MICHAEL GRAHAM / CBS NEWS

Is Donald Trump creating a crisis of trust in American institutions, or is he a creation of that crisis?

One effect of the Department of Justice inspector general's report on the handling of the Hillary Clinton email investigation has been to highlight how far America's trust in the FBI—and law enforcement in general—has fallen. In a 1965 Gallup poll, 84 percent of Americans rated the FBI "very favorably." Today, the percentage of Americans who rate the FBI's performance as "excellent" is down to 18 percent......

The president's attacks on the FBI and DOJ certainly aren't helping, but the fact is that America's trust in law enforcement hit a 22-year low in 2015—two years before Trump took office.

And a Morning Consult poll released before the inspector general report raised questions about political motivations inside the DOJ found that more Americans already believed special counsel (and former FBI director) Robert Mueller's investigation into Russia was being handled unfairly than fairly.

Donald Trump isn't creating a crisis of trust in American institutions—he's a symptom of it.....

Most of the focus appears to be on transparency, based on the assumption that the people will trust you if they know what you're doing. But in the era of social media we have more transparency than ever, even as trust is waning. Does anyone have more confidence in how the FBI does business after reading the IG's "transparent" report?

Instead of transparency, why not try accountability? When Trump supporters gasp "How does Peter Strzok still have a job," they may be inspired by partisanship, but they're not wrong. Why would the FBI keep someone so hyper-partisan in a position of trust? Why hasn't he been let go? Instead of protecting his position, how about announcing, "We must be above political reproach" and sending him out the door with his belongings in a cardboard box?

We now know that James Comey released documents that he was not supposed to release. It's very possible that he broke the law, but at a minimum he broke the rules.

Imagine the message it would send if he were charged with a crime, even a misdemeanor, and forced to plead guilty. In other words, if he were treated the same way most Americans think they would be treated if they broke the rules. What would the impact be?

The same for Hillary Clinton and her mishandling of classified emails, of the IRS and its abuse of Americans trying to start Tea Party groups, the bumbling of Benghazi, and on and on. To many Americans, it appears that the end result of every institutional failure is "….and then everybody kept their jobs."

Trump didn't create this feeling. He just tapped into it. The way to end it is for the media, government and others to stop complaining about Trump and his supporters and start holding themselves and their allies accountable to the citizens they claim to serve.


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