Donald Trump was finally indicted this week by the Department of Justice and special counsel Jack Smith for crimes connected with his coup attempt on Jan. 6 and the larger plan to end multiracial democracy by nullifying the results of the 2020 Election.
The specific charges are "conspiracy to defraud the United States; conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding; obstruction of and attempt to obstruct an official proceeding; and conspiracy against rights." The second paragraph of the indictment summarizes Trump's alleged coup plot:
Despite having lost, the Defendant was determined to remain in power. So for more than two months following election day on November 3, 2020, the Defendant spread lies that there had been outcome-determinative fraud in the election and that he had actually won. These claims were false, and the Defendant knew that they were false. But the Defendant repeated and widely disseminated them anyway to make his knowingly false claims appear legitimate, create an intense national atmosphere of mistrust and anger, and erode public faith in the administration of the election.
This is the third time that Trump has been charged with breaking federal laws – with the indictment for Jan. 6 and the coup plot being a literal crime against democracy and the worst betrayal ever committed by an American president against his own country.
On Thursday, Donald Trump was arraigned at the E. Barrett Prettyman Federal Courthouse in Washington D.C. This is the same courthouse where more than 1,000 of Trump's foot soldiers who overran the Capitol as part of his coup attempt were also arraigned.
In a cover story at the New York Times, Peter Baker perfectly describes the implications of Trump's repeated historic lawbreaking:
What makes the indictment against Donald J. Trump on Tuesday so breathtaking is not that it is the first time a president has been charged with a crime or even the second. Mr. Trump already holds those records. But as serious as hush money and classified documents may be, this third indictment in four months gets to the heart of the matter, the issue that will define the future of American democracy.
At the core of the United States of America v. Donald J. Trump is no less than the viability of the system constructed during that summer in Philadelphia. Can a sitting president spread lies about an election and try to employ the authority of the government to overturn the will of the voters without consequence? The question would have been unimaginable just a few years ago, but the Trump case raises the kind of specter more familiar in countries with histories of coups and juntas and dictators.
In effect, Jack Smith, the special counsel who brought the case, charged Mr. Trump with one of the most sensational frauds in the history of the United States, one "fueled by lies" and animated by the basest of motives, the thirst for power.
At the Atlantic, Tom Nichols implores every American who claims to love their country to reject Trump and his neofascist movement:
The rest of us, as a nation but also as individuals, can no longer indulge the pretense that Trump is just another Republican candidate, that supporting Donald Trump is just another political choice, and that agreeing with Trump's attacks on our democracy is just a difference of opinion. (Those of us who share our views in the media have a particular duty to cease discussing Trump as if he were a normal candidate—or even a normal person—especially after today's indictment.) I have long described Trump's candidacies as moral choices and tests of civic character, but I have also cautioned that Americans, for the sake of social comity, should resist too many arguments about politics among themselves. I can no longer defend this advice.
The indictment handed down today challenges every American to put a shoulder to the wheel and defend our republic in every peaceful, legal, and civilized way they can.
At the Daily Beast, former Tea Party conservative and now leading never-Trumper and pro-democracy advocate Joe Walsh does not soften the truth that Donald Trump is a violent criminal who needs to be put in prison:
Please don't breeze past this fact: The former President of the United States believed violence was ultimately how he could execute his attempted coup. He incited that violence for months, and he exploited that violence on Jan. 6.
You can't read this 45-page indictment and not understand that Donald Trump tried everything he could to overturn the election results, knowing his argument was based on nothing, and that he'd use his power as Commander in Chief of the armed forces to remain in office. (I repeat: Trump wanted to use the military.)
"This was his plan all along. He wanted, he needed, depended upon, encouraged, and incited violence. And he was prepared to order the military to act violently on his behalf."
Per the indictment, when Trump was warned by his Deputy White House Counsel on Jan. 3 that there was no "outcome-determinative fraud in the election," and that if Trump remained in office there would be "riots in every major city in the United States," the unnamed co-conspirator 4 responded, "Well [Deputy White House Counsel], that's why there's an Insurrection Act."
As I write about Trump's political crime spree against the nation, I keep thinking about one of the greatest "what if?" moments in recent history. Forgotten in the swift and filthy and disorienting currents of the Age of Trump and a media machine that enables and feeds off of it, was that moment in October 2020 when then-President Trump left Walter Reed Medical Center after almost dying from COVID and he had plans to tear open his shirt, revealing a Superman logo underneath it. If Trump had done such a thing – and I believe that he should have ignored his aides and followed his instincts – it would have been one of the most memorable events in presidential history. Would that have won Trump the 2020 Election by itself? We will never know. But my instincts tell me that gambit, the theater and spectacle of it all, would have pushed Trump closer to the finish line.
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Of course, Donald Trump is not Superman; he shares none of Superman's qualities of selflessness, courage, strength, integrity, self-sacrifice, goodness, and love of humanity. But that does not matter: in reality, Trump is a supervillain who he and his followers delusionally believe to be a hero.
I also keep thinking about Donald Trump as a professional wrestling heel. And why does the heel inevitably end up losing to the babyface? Because the very traits that allowed the heel to stay on top – egomania, hubris, arrogance, lying, cheating, stealing, manipulation, bullying, and other bad behavior – are the cause of their final undoing.
That is Donald Trump's story to this point.
Let us not overlook how Donald Trump's criminal trials are a type of narrow legal remedy. Unfortunately, the harm and damage that Trump, the MAGA movement and the Republican fascists, and larger white right have done and continue to do to the nation cannot be solved or healed by legal means alone. So what does justice look like for those crimes and other acts of grand wrongdoing committed by Trump?
In all, Trumpism (and American neofascism) is much bigger than any one person or persons; it is a cultural problem that will persist far into the future. As I explained in a previous essay here at Salon, to begin that process of healing and purging Trumpism and neofascism from American society and life, requires that he be defeated in the courtroom(s) and at the ballot box.
In a press release, the pro-democracy advocacy group the Lincoln Project warned:
The nation needs to wake up to the very real threat that Trump will win the presidency. He IS the Republican nominee. He IS leading in the polls against Joe Biden. The MAGA GOP is a cult that no longer cares about the rule of law and wants to send Trump back to the White House. No indictment is going to stop his campaign.
All Americans must realize the only choice before voters is between a functioning democracy versus a disgraced former President who tried to overthrow the government. There is only one functioning party in America that cares about the rule of law and believes in democracy - and President Joe Biden is its candidate.
At the Bulwark, Kim Wehle also warns that:
This indictment is a step toward justice. And it is a document of historic importance. But it is also—for the Republican party and for America as a whole—a reckoning. Because Trump's treasonous, criminal, and malevolent character, as described in this indictment, is exactly what could get him re-elected in 2024.
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Villains imagine in their own minds that they are the real victims. On Wednesday, Trump sent out the following fundraising email in response to his indictment and imminent arrest for the crimes of Jan. 6:
The Swamp that I am on a mission to drain is trying to imprison me for life as an innocent man.
But I am not afraid in the slightest.
This is the mission I signed up for when I first chose to run for president as a complete political outsider.
When you begin to drain the Swamp, you finally catch a glimpse of the vile monsters that had been lurking at the bottom.
Summoning the phrase that is looming over Trump's criminal trials that "our long national nightmare is finally over," I very much wish that were in fact true. Unfortunately, the nightmare that is the Age of Trump continues, and it will be many months and perhaps longer with trials, appeals, a presidential election, and other things we can't accurately predict at this point in time before the traitor ex-president and the Republican fascists and their forces are finally defeated and vanquished – assuming such an outcome is even possible given the country's deep problems.
Yes, Donald Trump may be surrounded. But that also means Trump can hit a target in any direction when he rages and lashes out. He has lost the ability to fully write his own narrative. This enrages Trump. His rage will not be contained or disciplined. Now is not the time to lower our defenses because that is how evildoers and supervillains like Donald Trump win.
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