Donald Trump meets prosecutorial realism
Why "Mar-A-Lago raid" trumps all his other legal probems
Did you ever notice that Trump does not quote himself much, if at all?
Most people, particularly politicians, quote themselves frequently, e.g. “As I said”, “At meeting X, I said…”, “When I spoke at….I said”, “I said X two weeks ago….” We take comfort in having CYA statements in business, love, social occasions, friendship, etc.
In politics, self-citation is an essential arrow in one’s quiver. Trump, however, could not care less for it.
Why?
Imagine if there was no “real” past and no “real” future.
Now imagine, you have a “perceived” notion of the past which you use to rationalize your present conduct/actions/words. And, of course, because you never leave the present, you are never faced with being held accountable for the present in the future.
While it’s undeniable that Trump lies, the failure to grasp the concept that Trump doesn’t consider anything he says is a lie is what makes Donald Trump — Donald Trump. If there is no past or future, it is impossible to lie.
Do you realize how difficult it is to deal with someone like this? Trump is never wrong nor ever forced to accept responsibility — it requires an admission to past words or conduct.
Of Donald Trump’s four major legal problems, his intractable obsession with his perception of the 2020 election renders him, in his mind, unprosecutable for three of them.
The January 6th seditious conspiracy, the fake elector scheme, and the Georgia election meddling all have been rationalized by Donald Trump as, in the moment, protecting himself as the true reelected president. The delusionalness of it aside, there are enough people within each of these criminal acts who will willingly or through the politics of deligitimization will be made to “fall on their own sword” to protect Trump from criminal culpability.
Will any of it work? No not really, but the political narrative will succeed — and that’s all Trump and the nihilists in the GOP actually need.
That said there is a growing conservative pushback to the endless desire by Trump and his loyalists wanting to relitigate the 2020 election outcome.1 And it will grow as future political problems will demand that the 2020 election be left in the dustbin.
Who can blame them? The political message “we think we won 4 years ago but still want to run against President Joe Biden” is a worst kind of message and I once worked on a presidential campaign for man who said he was going to raise taxes.
There is one criminal case that does not require Donald Trumps to be anywhere timewise — the Espionage Act crimes are purely possesory. They do not require Trump to make admissions about the past or do much of anything in the present.
The documents being on his property, which does not meet any defensible standard for being there — declassified or not, makes the case against him.
And no Special Master is going to change that fact.2
And as I wrote less than a week ago, the “Special Master” is unlikely to be on Trump’s side.3
https://www.msnbc.com/yasmin-vossoughian-reports/watch/-it-s-an-attack-on-the-constitution-itself-prominent-republicans-push-back-against-trump-s-big-lie-144238661964
https://www.npr.org/2022/09/05/1120885510/doj-trump-special-master-judge
