Former President Donald Trump is the defendant in a slew of civil and criminal cases. The most serious charges against him include mishandling classified documents, obstructing justice, making false claims and engaging in a conspiracy to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election. This week, a grand jury indicted Trump and 18 others for participating in a criminal enterprise to change the outcome of the election in Georgia.
In response to these allegations, most of which rely on evidence presented by members of his own administration or Republicans who endorsed his reelection, the former president has launched personal attacks and portrayed himself as a victim and a martyr. This pre-trial “testimony” reveals a lot about his temperament, his character and his priorities for a second term in the White House.
Trump’s insults against prosecutors and political opponents are, well, juvenile. Trump declared that Alvin Bragg, the Manhattan district attorney, is a “degenerate psychopath.” New York Attorney General Letitia James, Bragg and Fani Willis, the Fulton County, Ga., district attorney (all of whom are African American) “are vicious, horrible people, they’re racists, and they’re very sick, mentally sick.” Using his favorite phrase, “they say,” Trump posted an unsubstantiated claim that Willis had a sexual relationship “with the head of a gang or a gang member.”
According to Trump, Special Counsel Jack Smith is “deranged,” “a sick man,” “a maniac”; his Department of Justice colleagues are “thug prosecutors.” Nancy Pelosi, the former Speaker of the House, is a “Wicked Witch … a sick and demented psycho who will someday live in HELL!” President Biden “is not only dumb and incompetent, I believe he has gone MAD, a stark raving Lunatic.” (All quotes retain their original Trumpian capitalization.)
Trump’s claim that “Joe Biden has weaponized law enforcement,” which has been parroted by so many GOP politicians, is a classic case of projection (attributing an individual’s malign feelings, motives, urges or flaws to another person). When he was president, for example, Trump wanted the Internal Revenue Service to investigate the taxes of former FBI Director James Comey, Deputy Director Andrew McCabe and Hillary Clinton. He told Attorney General Bill Barr to indict Barack Obama, Joe Biden and former Secretary of State John Kerry.
Barr said that Trump’s repeated pressure on him to go easy on his political allies made “it impossible for me to do my job.” According to John Kelly, his chief of staff, Trump “was always telling me that we need to use the FBI and IRS to go after people — it was constant and obsessive and is just what he’s claiming is being done to him now.”
Moreover, although Trump, like all defendants, should be presumed innocent until proven guilty, the indictments filed by the special counsel and by the Fulton County district attorney are serious, substantive and sobering. The voluminous evidence of criminal behavior in them was not invented by weaponized “thug prosecutors.”
Trump leaves little doubt about what would be his highest priority, perhaps his only priority, if he returns to the White House. He has said little or nothing about his plans to address the challenges facing the United States. Instead, he talks incessantly about revenge against his political adversaries.
“If you go after me, I’m coming after you,” he declared recently. Trump has promised to “totally obliterate the deep state” and appoint a special prosecutor to “go after” the Biden family. “This is the final battle,” he emphasizes, “Either we win or they win.” That battle justifies “the termination of all rules, regulations, and articles, even those found in the Constitution.”
At the same time, Trump insists his campaign is not about his grievances, or, as Will Hurd, a longshot candidate for the Republican presidential nomination, has suggested, “to stay out of prison.” “I am your warrior,” Trump maintains. “I am your justice. And for those of you who have been wronged and betrayed, I am your retribution.” The Biden administration is trying to “take away my freedom,” Trump tells his supporters, “because I will never let them take away your freedom.”
Trump’s claim is — or should be — a very hard sell. Chris Christie, the former governor of New Jersey and one-time Trump ally, has delivered the appropriate “give me a break” retort to the former president. “How lucky we are,” Christie says, “that we have such a selfless, magnanimous leader. Because you know that the government was coming to get you, and on their way to get you, lo and behold, they came across Donald Trump and they said, ‘Okay, we won’t get you, we’ll get him for you.’”
Reelection, it’s clear, would be very good for Donald Trump. But for Americans, including Trump’s most fervent supporters, not so much.
Glenn C. Altschuler is the Thomas and Dorothy Litwin Professor of American Studies at Cornell University. He is the co-author (with Stuart Blumin) of “Rude Republic: Americans and Their Politics in the Nineteenth Century.”