"Who's always writing on the wallWho's always goofing in the hall
Who's always throwing spit balls . . .
He's gonna get caught just you wait and see(Why's everybody always picking on me?)"
The Coasters, 1959
Donald Trump demonstrated an extraordinary fact about politics in this era. People believe one's con if one sticks to the story. Never apologize. Never accept your accusers’ frames of reference. Crimes done openly are not understood as wrongdoing by people inclined to agree with you if you stick to the story. The rule or its enforcement is put into question, not the rule-breaker. The key to pulling this off is shameless self-confidence as a performer. Create the moral reality.
Trump illegally destroyed and removed documents. His aides reported finding torn up documents in wastebaskets. Aides fished documents out of clogged toilets. Trump defied people to stop him. Even Fox News this morning acknowledges that Trump illegally brought material to Mar-a-Lago. The National Archives recovered 15 boxes of it in January. Trump's removal was a crime. But like Trump, Fox doesn't treat that as the frame for their story. Their story about the unprecedented raid, voiced with a tone of amazed outrage. How come everybody's always picking on Trump?
Trump knew the law. He had repeatedly criticized Hillary Clinton for mishandling government materials by moving them from government's electronic systems to her own personal one. He led crowds who chanted "Lock her up. Lock her up" for doing just that. Fox had endless stories about Hillary's off-site emails. Now his story--and Fox's--is that he is picked on.
America is experiencing a clash of two realities, political vs. legal. Trump demonstrates that in a political context supporters do not respond to the objective legality of a behavior. They respond to whether the politician believes his story. In theater it would be staying in character. In professional wrestling it would be maintaining the kayfabe. Trump understands that politics is more like science fiction or theater. Characters can do what the author declares they can do within the reality frame of that story. If the story presumes witches at Hogwarts, then Harry Potter can fly. Trump is the author and star character of his reality. He says he is making America great by breaking stupid rules, along with having won the 2020 election in a landslide. He is a persuasive communicator of that story. Trump's supporters are gathered outside Mar-a-Lago carrying signs saying Trump is picked on.
The political reality and legal reality will combine if, in fact, the FBI finds material that people find shocking. Trump's reality will triumph if they find nothing surprising. The legal crime is that any documents are at Mar-a-Lago. The political crime will be if the documents break the Trump spell--his supporters' willful suspension of belief that sees Trump as a populist hero. Images found on Hunter Biden's laptop of a drug abuser solidify Hunter as criminal, not victim, regardless of how the laptop images were found. Antony Weiner's text messages of dick-pics did the same. At the moment Fox News and Republicans are all-in on defending Trump as victim.
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| Huffington Post headline |
What is found, or not found, has enormous consequence. The FBI will look like politically-motivated bullies if they find nothing. There will be hell to pay if that is the story.
They had better find something big.
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12 comments:
“There will be hell to pay.” There already is hell to pay. We had an attempted coup, remember?
“Aides fished documents out of clogged toilets.” And you probably thought it was all those Big Macs he eats.
Amid all the sound and fury, let’s not forget that Christopher Wray, the head of the FBI, is a Trump appointee and they couldn’t have done it without a judge’s approval.
He will say that the documents are fake and were planted. His cult will believe it. Truth does not matter to people in a cult. Haven't we figured this out by now? Just saying
In Trumpworld, the FBI is part of the "Deep State." Unfortunately, historically the FBI has not always been on the right side of the law. (Same with the CIA.) People remember when the top cops do bad things.
The drumbeat of ongoing legal issues will continue for Trump until he dies and even after. If his loyalists want to be outraged, oh well. Let the law dictate the direction of these investigations. The loyalists need something to be upset about, so let’s give them the legal system holding Trump accountable. Sane Americans will see it for what it is, namely Trump is corrupt.
If we are to live in a country under the rule of law and with justice we have have no choice but to pursue justice and enforce the law. Of course, discretion in enforcement should be employed, but if the crimes are of the nature and proportion as shown by the January 6 committee, the Mueller Report and the Stormy Daniels case, among other matters, then enforcement is necessary.
It may be true that Ford was right to pardon Nixon, but the legal principle that accepting the pardon was an admission of guilt is key to how justice was accomplished in that case. Perhaps a pardon with its concomitant acceptance of guilt by Trump is the way to end this issue. Until such a resolution is accomplished, our rule of law nation has to continue enforcement.
In the aftermath of the violent events at the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, one year ago today, Senator Amy Klobuchar and other federal legislators reminded us that we have “a republic,” but only “if you can keep it.”
The source of this quotation is a journal kept by James McHenry (1753-1816) while he was a Maryland delegate to the Constitutional Convention. On the page where McHenry records the events of the last day of the convention, September 18, 1787, he wrote: “A lady asked Dr. Franklin, “Well Doctor what have we got, a republic or a monarchy?” “'A republic', replied the Doctor, if you can keep it.”
With ALL the evidence of Trump's criminal activities, including an attempted coup, I surely hope he gets convicted of all of them. We are “keeping it” by the skin of our teeth. The actions by the Department of Justice, in the near future, will play a major part in whether we continue to have a republic or not. I hope like hell the Department (as the intestinal fortitude to prosecute the monster to the fullest extent of the law-on ALL counts.
Poor Trump the Traitor. The FBI is picking on him for no good reason, just as they did Al Capone.
"They had better find something big."
I'm sorry, the DOJ had probable cause that a federal crime was committed at the home of an twice impeached ex-president and got a to sign a warrant to search it for evidence.
That's not big enough?
What? Does he have to shoot someone on 5th Ave?
I agree with Mr. Sage that there had better be another shoe to drop, and I mean a heavy boot, not some comparatively ticky-tack dispute wherein DOJ is taking the part of the National Archives (!) over material any president has the unilateral right to declassify before leaving office anyway.
I mean in the court of public opinion, not in the courtroom. I'm sure AG Garland hasn't moved illegally. The problem is the continued, often valid perception of selective prosecution and politicized timing and process, if indeed it's just the meh misdemeanor of which Sandy Berger was convicted and James Comey and Hillary Clinton could easily have been as well but for the exercise of prosecutorial "discretion" in favor of officials WITHOUT even that unique plenary power to declassify. DOJ/FBI suddenly went heavy-handed in unprecedented fashion via a via a federal magistrate to boot, not even an Article III judge, to "secure" what they'd long known was there anyway? There had better be proof of a more significant crime, or at the very least reason to know that classified items were finally about to be destroyed, or sold. You could see Trump secretly hawking items here or abroad.
What's that "hell to pay"?, whiners, say many Democrats with a view only to transactional advantage, enjoying long-anticipated satisfaction of some sort, of any sort? Answer, besides the midterms? Recall for instance the consequences of Harry Reid saying what the hell to traditional proprieties, recall the subsequent outage sufficiently buoyed by public opinion, albeit partisan, and finally recall the present makeup of the Supreme Court. "That's just not DONE!" often comes back around to bite....unless there's that aforementioned other boot.
I'm starting to think that if he actually did shoot someone on 5th Avenue at High Noon, with hundreds of witnesses, FAUX would find a way to legitimize the crime. Incidentally,most of the coverage of the Federal Judge who was appointed by twice impeached 45, has been about how the Judge once worked for Jeffrey Epstein. They're ignoring that this Judge was nominated by the Federalist Society, as all of Former Guys Judicial appointments were.
Even if all the FBI retrieved from their search were documents belonging to the government, it would be justified. If Trump still has government material after all this time, there’s good reason to believe he doesn’t ever intend to return them.
Considering Trump’s criminality, however, the odds are there was something far more serious at stake. In that case, they should have waited until he was home and served a no-knock warrant in the middle of the night, as the police did for Breonna Taylor.
The judge who approved the search warrant was NOT appointed by Trump. He was selected by a panel of judges, and is on record, a campaign contributor to an Obama related group, and to Jeb Bush's campaign.
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