A President indicted
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6/9/2023
Donald Trump on being indicted: “I never thought it possible that such a thing could happen to a former President of the United States.”
Me either.
Throughout the various investigations of Mr. Trump’s behavior, from paying hush money to a porn star to trying to overturn a fair and free election, I’ve had this bug that it would look horrible to the rest of the world if America appeared to be putting political enemies behind bars, taking away our moral authority.
Squaring that with “no one is above the law” was difficult. And I never could square it.
The truth is that no one is above the law here and if someone is convicted of a crime, they do the punishment.
Trump’s reaction to his indictment yesterday was not shocking:
- He ordered a satellite truck to feed out his supporters and himself to the world.
- He cut a poorly produced video (amazingly poorly produced by the man considered the best at manipulating the media and his supporters and his staging).
- Less than an hour after he announced his own indictment, he sent out a fund-raising letter.
Nothing has changed. He’s still the arrogant, narcissistic, deluded soul he always has been.
I know his supporters believe there is a “deep state” that has it in for him. And I know those supporters believe that a president can control what the Justice Department does. You think they would have seen that even when Trump was president and tried to order his Justice Department to take down his enemies, they wouldn’t do it. Why? Because there was no evidence for his allegations. Some of the evidence for Trump’s indictment played out in full view of the public.
Yet, here we are.
The special prosecutor cut off various potential Trump appeals when he set the case for Florida trial, where Trump has a better chance of finding a jury pool that doesn’t hate him. That should say something about the Justice Department’s approach to this most serious case.
It’s a case that, as has been pointed out, is ironic because Trump tried to tar his 2016 opponent, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, with mishandling classified documents and pledging that would never happen if he were president.
