Last Saturday, the day after the announcement of the charges brought against him by Special Prosecutor Jack Smith, Donald Trump gave another of his delirious speeches in Columbus, Georgia, in front of a few thousand people gathered near a building that was another era a factory making mortars, guns and cannons for the Confederate Army during the Civil War. “This is the final battle,” he told his supporters in what amounted, without much subtlety, to a call to arms.
He did not behave otherwise, Tuesday afternoon, leaving the Miami courthouse where he had just pleaded not guilty to 37 counts. After briefly stopping at Versailles, a well-known Cuban restaurant in Little Havana, he boarded his plane, free to continue his campaign as if nothing had happened, to go to his golf club in New Jersey. , where he delivered a vindictive speech full of lies on the same theme, denouncing “the greatest abuse of power in the history of the United States”.
The extreme gravity of the charges against Donald Trump, becoming the first former president to be indicted by federal justice, is matched only by his narcissistic determination to use them to promote his victimhood campaign. And it works since, according to a CBS News/YouGov poll, 76% of Republican voters consider the lawsuits politically motivated — and therefore questionable or downright unjustified. They believe it all the more so since Trump is in their opinion the victim of unfair treatment, in view of the history of Hillary Clinton’s private messaging. Fox News is doing its job.
Yet the evidence is overwhelming that Trump — with a flippancy and contempt for the rule of law more astounding than ever — jeopardized national security by piling classified documents all over his Mar-a-Lago castle containing including critical information about US military and nuclear capabilities. Evidence all the more solid that the charges of obstruction of justice are based in part on the notes of one of his own lawyers, Evan Corcoran. Notes that state in black and white that Trump knowingly instigated Corcoran to lie to federal investigators.
Three remarks, that said: the fact is that Donald Trump could have avoided a lawsuit by simply returning the documents to the National Archives… Go figure. The indictment, let it be said, paints the portrait of a crazy man. The fact is then that his conviction is not acquired, insofar as a conviction requires the unanimity of the jury and that the trial will take place in pro-republican electoral terrain. Finally, it turns out that, even if he were convicted, that would not prevent him from being a candidate or becoming president.
Other charges hang at the end of his nose – for his role in the failed coup of January 6, 2021 and for his attempt to overturn the result of the presidential election in Georgia. Violence was feared on Tuesday, as it was feared two months ago when he was indicted in the Stormy Daniels case. They didn’t happen. Nevertheless, the last few days have been characterized by unprecedented verbal violence on the part of Trump and his political and media devotees, announcing between now and the 2024 presidential election an unbreathable political and social climate in the United States.
More than half of Americans don’t want another Trump-Biden duel next year, according to FiveThirtyEight. But that’s apparently what they will have. Nor does Wall Street want it, moreover, who deems Trump too dangerous and Biden both too old and not slavish enough, believe it or not, with regard to high finance. The business community will have its sights set — and its billions — on Florida Governor Ron DeSantis for a while, but his anti-Woke hysteria and, therefore, his inability to hold his own against Trump in the polls has chilled them.
In the absence of an alternative Republican candidacy, they would seek one in Joe Biden, some advancing the name of Jamie Dimon, CEO of JPMorgan, the first bank in the United States. In this improbable scenario, it would therefore be the wealthy banker against the crooked populist… Americans deserve better, namely, in all realism, the re-election of the Biden-Harris team.
As for the Republican Party, it is tragic to see it remain silent and complacent in the face of recent developments – and therefore in the face of its own drift. A few rare voices have dared to criticize out loud the behavior of the ex-president, which some observers would like to be able to interpret as the sign of the start of a rebellion. Headwind against Trump? We are far from it. When will the saturation point face the ex-president? Trumpism is a trap into which the party, wanting only power, fell in 2016 and in which it locked itself.