Donald Trump is headed for a day of reckoning and that’s an absolute. He and his lawyers may huff and puff about election interference and prosecutorial misconduct and whatever other self serving rhetorical excuses they care to make, but there is one fact here that can’t be gotten beyond. How did we even come to be having this level of conversation, let alone actual legal action, against a former president of the United States? The inescapable truth, no matter what happens in the future, is that Donald Trump will go down in the history books as the benchmark of presidential criminality and treasonous crimes. He just took Richard Nixon off the hook. Need I state the obvious, that they’re both Republicans?
Maddow is one of many voices saying the same thing.
This, Tom Nichols writes in the Atlantic, is The One.
“Jack Smith has indicted Donald Trump for trying to overthrow our system of government. There are no other cases. This is the case.”
In 45-fact-packed pages, Special Counsel Jack Smith lays out the case of the United States v. Donald J. Trump in concise, devastating detail. Three counts of conspiracy, one count of obstruction, six co-conspirators.
After more than 30 months, Donald Trump faces accountability for what our partners at Lawfare call “his grandest crime.” The charges laid out in the indictment they write, “will be the ones forever attached to Trump’s name.”
They will appear in the first line of his obituary. They will be the facts school children learn about him as long as school children learn facts about American presidents. Among the many extraordinary features of his most extraordinary presidency, the facts alleged here—and which the government must now prove beyond a reasonable doubt to a unanimous jury—are singularly defining.
Trump will always be the president charged by the government he led with pursuing, as the indictment puts it, “unlawful means of discounting legitimate votes and subverting” the results of the presidential election that he lost.
“They will teach this case in the history books: a president of the United States charged with conspiring against democracy itself.” — Susan Glasser
Glasser writes for the New Yorker. Whatever happens, and I think we all know what’s going to happen, including Trump’s barnyard of blustering, peacocking lawyers, Donald Trump will be the benchmark of criminality in American history. I believe he will be convicted.
Congrats, Don, you just joined Benedict Arnold. Good job, my lad. Not everybody can achieve a distinction like that, and not only achieve the same distinction as, but one-up the greatest traitor to date in our history. It took 248 years, but finally we found somebody to upend both Richard Nixon and Benedict Arnold, and it’s the same guy. Wudda ya know?
Trump now keeping company with Arnold and Nixon. That’s saying something indeed. Might I be so bold to suggest something? Even bearing in mind a lot, hundreds of thousands probably would still have died from the COVID pandemic the combination of denial of and inactivity in starting to address what he knew was a deadly problem, along with a combination of corruption, incompetence and dangerous misinformation cost at least a half-million more people their lives. Perhaps a million even, especially when one adds in people who died from other medical conditions that weren’t properly treated (if at all) due to the system being overwhelmed because Trump allowed things to get as out of control as they did.
Considering all that, I don’t know off the top of my head who the most prolific serial killer in history is but anyone can think of names that are at the top of the list. So you could add whatever name(s) that pop to mind to the list of dubious associates history looks at harshly. And while you’re at it toss in Bin Laden who orchestrated over three thousand deaths of Americans in a single day.
Here’s a delicious bit of irony. I believe or at least hope that circumstances will never again conspire to allow another Hitler or Stalin to do what they did. (Stalins purges killed millions of his own people) Hitler though is the name people remember as the champ or the worst of the worst world “leaders.” Trump won’t be viewed THAT harshly by history. But he’ll be a solid if distant second. In other words, Trump loses again! Much as he seems to have admired Hitler and probably dreamed of that kind of power he LOSES out to the guy. Like I said, ironic.
I was around and politically conscious during nixon and watergate. although I felt the outcome, the downfall and disgrace of richard nixon, was inevitable, I asked myself what would have happened if he didn’t resign?
The “whips” from both Parties on the Hill had done their head counts. It confirmed what was generally believed by Congress Critters but the hard fact was that the House would have voted Articles of Impeachment and though perhaps not with the majority of Republicans going along a large percentage of them would have. Over in the Senate is was the same. Regardless of Party Senators knew what the Articles would be and the evidence which had led to the House Judiciary Committe vote to send them to the floor for full House approval. Again, while there were Republican holdouts in the Senate there was by a significant margin enough GOP votes to join Democrats to convict.
THAT is why Barry Goldwater went to the WH. To give Nixon that news. That if he was holding out hope the GOP was rallying around him he was flat out wrong, and if anything he’d lose what GOP support he had by the time it came for Senators to cast their guilty/not guilty votes. Nixon, confronted with the prospect of being the first American President to get kicked out of office via impeachment had enough “old school” in him to know how bad that would be. Worse even than resigning in disgrace.
But there’s no doubting what would have happened. Also, had Ford not pardoned Nixon Jaworski WOULD have brought federal charges and his team was already at work on the case in anticipation of Nixon no longer being in office. It was denied by both Nixon and Ford, but come on! We all know they had a chat, and Ford, knowing what Goldwater knew had also told Nixon the gig was up. Nixon’s fairly quick (after that Goldwater visit) resignation was a deal, with Ford saying not to put the Party through a lobbying effort that had no chance of winning. Take the hit for the Party, I’ll pardon you and after a few years there are those that will work hard to help soften the impact on your legacy. But for THAT you have to accept the truth that you are going to lose huge on impeachment and step down. And I will risk the political hit for pardoning you.
People WILL always argue whether it was in fact better for the country or worse that Nixon wasn’t tried and convicted for his crimes. As someone who grew up believing for all its flaws (even though some were huge flaws) certain principles really mattered, including that no person should be above the law I think despite the turmoil trial and imprisonment of Nixon would have caused we’d have been better off in the long run. I think what we are living through now is proof of that. Knowing that even Presidents could be held fully accountable would have made not just Trump cautious about pushing things too far.
The GOP of that day was totally different. Goldwater may have had thoughts I considered backwards, but I never questioned that he was anything other than a law abiding man. I never thought of him as a crook, only disagreed with his policies and views. We are in a completely different world today.
“I think we all know what’s going to happen, including Trump’s barnyard of blustering, peacocking lawyers, Donald Trump will be the benchmark of criminality in American history. I believe he will be convicted.”
I believe he will be convicted too, Ursula. And hirs “blustering, peacocking lawyers” will not get paid!
If they didn’t get the retainer up front, they deserve what they get. Caveat emptor.