TRUMP FACES MULTIPLE TRIALS FOR DEFYING A WHOLE LOTTA LAWS
Trump currently faces 3 active civil cases and 3 active criminal cases with another criminal case likely to be indicted in Georgia. Here is the list of legal cases coming at Donald Trump:
CIVIL
- New York Trump Organization civil fraud suit (Letitia James)
- E. Jean Carroll civil defamation suit (because he defamed her again!)
- Pyramid Scheme class action civil lawsuit (cheating his supporters)
CRIMINAL
- New York AG lawsuit hush money case–(Criminal case Alvin Bragg=prosecutor)
- Florida Classified Documents case –(Criminal case-Jack Smith=prosecutor)
- DC Coup Plot to stay in power after losing to Joe Biden–(Criminal case- Jack Smith = prosecutor)
- Trump could be criminally indicted again in Georgia for his conduct related to the 2020 election and his efforts to get the Secretary of State, Brad Raffensperger, to find him just enough votes to credibly lie about winning in that state when he actually lost it. (Fani Willis=prosecutor)
If anyone else broke all these laws they would be heading for prison or possibly already in jail. But Trump seems to be immune to consequences or accountability. Why is he above the rules and laws that apply to everyone else? Many of his voters think all of these lawsuits are just “witch hunts”, just unfair ways to try to take Trump down.
TRUMP USES BEING INDICTED TO HIS ADVANTAGE
Trump gets away with being a one man crime wave because so many Republicans who know better are silent about it. They are silent because they are afraid of him and because they need the Trump base to vote for them. Trump might be a former reality TV star turned political figure pretending to be a populist hero, but he is also a criminal and mob boss. He breaks the law with impunity.
Trump would not be on the receiving end of these indictments without sufficient criminality to trigger them. Contrary to what Trump wants his followers to believe, prosecutors don’t generally want to open up huge cases on former presidents running for office again. It’s messy, it’s expensive, and if they lose it sends a terrible message. But when it comes to Trump, failure to indict him would signal to the world and future presidential hopefuls that committing serious crimes is perfectly ok. Trump has forced the hand of prosecutors by committing such serious crimes they cannot look away.
- He took many of our country’s top secret documents and refused to return them, endangering the lives of confidential informants our intelligence agencies have cultivated over the years by building trust. That trust is now being damaged by Trump’s actions. How can future confidential informants believe their identities will be kept secret? He is probably profiting off of these documents somehow –probably by sharing them with the Saudis or Russians or Chinese — our enemies– and getting something for himself in exchange. That’s how he rolls.
- He tried to overturn a free and fair election to stay in power. We all saw that happen on January 6th although it was a far more extensive plot than what we saw on the 6th.
His base functions as his cult and his brown shirts– threatening anyone who defies or crosses Trump. As Trump ramps up his aggressive attacks on prosecutors and judges, his base not only fiercely defends him, some of them who are deranged take it up a level and start acting on their impulses.
TRUMP WILL USE ROBERTSON’S DEATH AS A CALL TO ACTION
A Trump supporting Utah man, Craig Robertson, posted death threats targeting Biden, Kamala Harris, Alvin Bragg, Letitia James, Gavin Newsome and others. The social media company where he was posting these threats reported this information to the FBI. This prompted the FBI to investigate. They found out that Robertson had a lot of weapons and his posts were belligerent and aggressive as well as targeting high profile Democrats who had been Trump’s targets. The FBI first tried to reach out to him directly in person to judge the level of threat he posed. When they did, he told them not to come back unless they had a warrant for him. Because Biden was scheduled to appear in Utah, the FBI did get a warrant and returned to Robertson’s house. Robertson confronted the agents and pulled out a weapon. He was shot dead. Here are some more details:
Robertson posted online Monday that he had heard Biden was coming to Utah and he was planning to dig out a camouflage suit and begin “cleaning the dust off the M24 sniper rifle,” a post that came after months of graphic online threats against several public figures, according to court documents. Robertson referred to himself as a “MAGA Trumper,” a reference to former President Donald Trump’s “Make America Great Again” slogan, and also posted threats against top law enforcement officials overseeing court cases against Trump.
Let’s be clear about what’s happening here. Trump actually wants this. Trump is baiting the judges. He is daring them to stop him from speaking out so that he can claim he is being persecuted. It’s good for him to be indicted and for his followers to be threatening people he tells them to target. The more scary the better. He will use the Robertson incident to warn his mob that the FBI is coming for them next and he is their Jesus, suffering for them because they are unfairly prosecuting and persecuting US. This is how he riles up his scary deranged base. He thinks that this is the way he will somehow beat these criminal cases and regain the presidency.
Many Democrats think that in a rematch between Trump and Biden, Biden will win again, this time by a bigger margin. A lot of Democrats WANT Trump to be the Republican nominee because he hurts the down ballot races in more moderate districts. Trump is evidence of how extreme the party has become. Rightly or wrongly some Democrats like their odds with Trump as the nominee for the GOP. Right now, however, Biden and Trump are running neck and neck in the polls–both at 43%. Given the way the country is gerrymandered and how much voter suppression exists that keeps black and brown people and young people from having an easy time of voting, Trump could win re-election.
HOW IS THE PUBLIC REACTING TO THESE INDICTMENTS?
The polls reflect some movement about how Americans view Trump after being criminally indicted three times. He remains very strong with his base, as we know. They fiercely support him.
And yet the MAGA movement and Trump himself are not popular based on nationwide polls.
President Donald Trump is still unpopular and so is the political movement created in his image, according to a new national NBC News poll.
The Make America Great Again, or ‘MAGA,’ movement, which takes its name from Trump’s first campaign slogan, was the least popular individual or group tested in the new survey. Just 24% of Americans have positive views of the movement, while 45% voice negative views.
What matters for the general election, of course, is not Trump’s loyal base. What tips election for Democrats or Republicans are independent voters. There are about 6 or 7 crucial battleground states that make or break the presidential election. These were the same states where Donald Trump and his co-conspirators were engaged in plotting with state legislators to try to replace the Electoral College electors, chosen based on the popular vote, with fake electors who were Trump loyalists. The plot included Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Arizona, Nevada. North Carolina and Georgia.
With the advent of his third criminal indictment in Washington, D.C. for trying to overturn the 2020 election, there are some indications that Trump’s support among independents and members of the Republican Party who are persuadable are softening.
- Few of his supporters showed up at the courthouses where he was arraigned on federal criminal charges in Florida and Washington, DC. The same anemic response happened in New York when Bragg indicted him.
- Trump is still begging for money for his defense and that of other co-conspirators who are using attorneys he pays for (which helps him to keep them under his control), but small dollar donors are petering out as he mounts appeal after appeal asking for funds for his proliferating cases.
- After his most recent indictment, a Reuters/Ipsos found 45% of Republican respondents said they would not support Trump if he were convicted of a felony while 52% of those same respondents said they would not support Trump if he were currently serving time in prison.
- Many in the donor class, and specifically the Koch Brothers, Ken Griffin and other big spenders have decided not to support Trump. The Koch brothers are actively running commercials against him.
- Trump’s campaign received a smaller bump in donations during his second indictment compared to the huge spike after his first, Politico reports.
- Since last October, the percentage of Republicans who said they believed that Trump had committed a crime in handling classified documents rose from nine to twenty-five.
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The number of independents who believe that Trump has done something criminal is growing especially in relation to the classified-documents case, at least so far. In a Bright Line Watch survey carried out last October, thirty-four per cent of independents said that a crime had been committed in that case. In the latest poll, that number had grown to forty-six per cent. Brendan Nyhan, a political scientist at Dartmouth who co-founded Bright Line Watch, said. “On the one hand, the public is incredibly polarized on these cases. On the other hand, the new evidence does seem to be moving the needle.”
- Perhaps most telling is that many Americans who are being polled about their views of Trump seem to be unaware of the charges in the indictments. Roughly one-third of respondents said that they are not particularly familiar with the allegations. (Politico).
What this suggests is that as more evidence against Trump is exposed to the public, opinion will shift against him among less partisan voters (independents and persuadable Republicans).
PROS AND CONS OF TELEVISING TRUMP’S TRIALS
Americans need to know what Trump did. If there is a televised trial it’s important that they see and hear the evidence for themselves without a filter.
It’s true there are biased sources of news on the left and right affecting politics today. But the news on the right is not just biased. It is often disinformation, propaganda or misinformation that is not corrected. Why? Because the Republican Party has become a more extreme and desperate minority party. Conservative media is the mouthpiece and megaphone for this more extreme Republican Party. Along with that, there is greater willingness to lie to a base that wants to be lied to in order to sustain their anti-majoritarian viewpoint. Trump does not represent the mainstream but his followers are louder and more malignant. Trump has convinced them they are being targeted so that he can benefit from their radicalization.
Fox news is one of the worst offenders when it comes to appeasing an extreme anti-majoritarian base. Fox allowed their hosts to claim voting machines were rigged to deliver votes to Biden even though they knew that was a lie. Dominion (whose voting machines were maligned) sued Fox for defamation and Fox lost that lawsuit. In the discovery process, many emails and texts to and from Fox hosts exposed the network and key hosts as knowingly lying about these voting machines in order to keep their audience returning to Fox hosts instead of flocking to OAN or Newsmax for news they preferred to hear. Those channels were more robustly pushing the Big Lie right after the election. Those emails prove that Fox is willing to permit its hosts to lie to the viewers without correcting the lies or acknowledging the truth. The same is true to varying degrees with OAN, Newsmax and conservative radio generally.
If Trump’s trials take place behind closed doors, conservative media will tell its viewers what they want to hear. They will pick and chose the tidbits they report or simply lie about what was said. There may also be some bias in the reporting with MSNBC or CNN. It would be better for everyone if the trial were public. Everyone but Trump.
If the rest of America could learn for themselves what the grand jury members who indicted Trump learned about him by hearing testimony from Trump’s inner circle, more persuadable Americans would accept the truth about Trump. The problem is if these trials are public, witnesses will be subjected to terrifying threats from Trump supporters. Trump and his followers are already going after the judge in DC and Jack Smith and his family. Many of these people who support Trump have been lied to and are victims themselves, in a way, but they also don’t educate themselves about the truth. And that’s on them. Some of them believe they should seek revenge for their cult leader and they have guns thanks to our lax gun laws in America.
Think about it. Would you want to testify in a public hearing and tell what you know about Trump when you know darn well he will verbally assault you and you could be killed by a lone wolf cult follower? I didn’t think so.
AMERICANS NEED TO KNOW WHO THEY ARE VOTING FOR
Trump’s trials need to be public for the good of our country even though that is going to be a horrible experience for the witnesses and might make them refuse to testify. I don’t know of any other way to make sure that Americans can hear and understand the evidence from witnesses directly without the filter they get from conservative media.
A televised trial is probably the only way to break through the sealed off alternate universe where so many Republicans are hiding from the truth these days.
For the sake of our our democracy, we would benefit from publicly televised trials of Donald Trump. But we also need to make sure the witnesses are protected from this guy. He is worse than a mob boss because he has more power, a larger public presence and a following of angry heavily armed people.
