His style is already more than well known today. Donald Trump only conceives politics as a confrontation with the enemy.
When she emerged as the Republican nominee in 2016, Hillary Clinton was cast as the embodiment of evil. She then argued that the Democrat should be disqualified from the presidential race because of her deleted emails from her time as secretary of state and which, according to Trump, contained vulnerable information if it fell into the hands of enemies.
“We can’t have someone in the Oval Room who doesn’t understand the meaning of the words confidential or classified,” he said at one of his campaign rallies. Instantly the cry of “imprison her†broke out, which he also chanted and applauded, displaying a vigilante smile.
Paradoxes brought by the passage of time. Trump will “turn himself in” on Tuesday and appear before a Miami judge charged with 37 counts, making him the first president or former president with a federal criminal charge, and precisely for taking highly classified documents that put national security at serious risk. and that of the allies.
A possible conviction for just one of the most serious crimes, such as violating the espionage law, would imprison him for up to 20 years, a kind of life sentence for a man who turns 77 next Wednesday, June 14.
In addition to the charges in Manhattan for the alleged payment to silence a porn actress. This other matter, of much more criminal relevance, may pose a challenge never before faced. Since the case will most likely not be resolved before November 2024, if Trump wins the Republican primaries he will not only go after the White House, but he will fight not to go to prison. If he became president again, with a stroke of the pen he would annihilate the investigation against him, despite the relevance and amount of accumulated evidence that portrays his contempt for his obligations as commander-in-chief.
Even The New York Post, the leading tabloid of the extreme right, mocked him yesterday Saturday with a full-page headline of “Chamber of Secrets.” They illustrated it with the photo, included in special counsel Jack Smith’s indictment, showing a stack of boxes stored in a bathroom in his Mar-a-Lago mansion. There, or in a shower or in the ballroom of his club, there could be papers about nuclear weapons or plans to attack Iran.
Hillary Clinton was investigated by the FBI for more than a year and was not found to have systematically or deliberately misused secrets. Clinton was ready to remove and took out a tweet on Friday that she unhinged to the right. She wears a cap that reads: “But the emails from her.” She used sarcasm to raise funds for pro-democracy groups.
And this is precisely what is at stake. The reaction of the former president and that of his faithful, such as the speaker of the lower house, Kevin McCarthy, coincide in the strategy that the security and justice forces have been kidnapped by President Joe Biden and the Democrats to eliminate the main rival at the polls.
Trump launched a whole attack against Smith from his Truth Social network, calling him “crazy deranged”, being in the hands of Biden or a “psychopath” who should not be involved in the investigation of any matter “except to look at Biden as a criminal, which he isâ€.
One of his arguments is that Biden took documents, but does not say that he returned them as soon as they were asked for them and did not plan to “hide” or “destroy” them as he did, the accusation document indicates. The Biden issue remains pending while Vice President Mike Pence was acquitted this week.
Trump sent at least 80 messages asking for donations with writings in which he attacks the prosecutor, whom he calls a “coward” or “thug”, where he repeats the lie of electoral theft, the witch hunt or laments that “what he has done to me Biden’s Justice Department is anti-American.”
His escalation went further this Saturday when he posted a parody video on his platform in which he drives a golf car with which he runs over the current president. “America went to sleep last night with tears in her eyes,†she wrote. “Someday soon, though, you will be able to wipe away your tears and smile more than ever,†he added in his message, just before appearing at a conservative convention in Georgia, his first public appearance since the indictment.
In an exercise in political double standards and forgetting what he preached about the Clinton emails, McCarthy assured that the impeachment against Trump will “break this nation because it “goes against the core of equal justice for all, which is not seen today.” . Thinking of Hillary or Hunter Biden, the president’s son, Republican lawmaker Andy Biggs called for dismantling the FBI after Trump’s impeachment. “We have reached the war phase.â€
Ron De Santis, a candidate for the presidency, is at that crossroads that wants to make a difference with the former president, but without angering his base, whom he wants to win over. “The use of federal law is a deadly threat to a free society,†while Pence, also in the electoral fight, equated the charge to what “leaders of third world nations†do. He forgot that France has condemned a former president or that Israel is investigating its prime minister.
There were also Republicans who recognized that the accusation is insubstantial to us. “The indictment is devastating,†said John Bolton, a former adviser in the Trump administration. Chris Christie, another conservative 2024 hopeful, noted that Prosecutor Smith has documented very evident evidence and wondered: “Is this the conduct we want from someone running for president?”
This is the big question.
