A truism of the Trump era is that every accusation is a confession. When Donald Trump lobs wild accusations against his opponents, he telegraphs what he intends to do to them, preemptively justifying the violation of laws and norms by presenting himself as the victim of the very wrongdoings he will commit.
This is how we should understand Trump’s ramblings following his 34 felony convictions last week. After being found guilty, he said Reporters gathered outside the courthouse: “This was done by the Biden administration with the intent to injure or injure an adversary. » It is tedious to verify such claims – the MAGA movement does not care what is true and what is not – but President Biden has nothing to do with the case brought by Alvin Bragg , the Manhattan district attorney. And as if to underscore Biden’s refusal to interfere in Justice Department decisions, federal charges against the president’s son, Hunter Biden, began this week. In developing this fantasy about Biden, Trump telegraphs that, if he returns to the White House, he will attempt to use the Justice Department in exactly the way he claims it was used against him. When the former president compared himself with the leader of the Russian opposition Alexei Navalny, who died earlier this year in a penal colony in the Arctic, he allows himself to act like Vladimir Putin.
In a interview With three Fox News hosts on Sunday, his first since his conviction, Trump virtually promised that his second term would be even more corrupt and vindictive than his first. In his account, he never called for Hillary Clinton to be imprisoned and magnanimously resisted others’ pleas to punish her. Next time, he suggested, he won’t be so nice. “They always said lock him up, and I felt – and I could have done it, but I thought it would have been a terrible thing,” he said. “And then this happened to me, and so I may feel differently about it.”
Speaking to Fox hosts, Trump denied saying the words that were the refrain of his first presidential campaign: “I didn’t say, ‘Lock her up.’ absurd lie, the kind of thing that demonstrates Trump’s strongman ability to make his supporters accept nonsense. And “lock her up,” it’s important to remember, was never more than rhetoric. As the Mueller report revealed, Trump demanded that his first attorney general, Jeff Sessions, who had recused himself from investigations into the 2016 campaign, go after Clinton. “According to Sessions, the President asked him to rescind his recusal so that Sessions could order the Justice Department to investigate and prosecute Hillary Clinton,” the Mueller report said. Eventually, trying to appease his boss, Sessions called on U.S. Attorney John Huber of Utah to investigate right-wing allegations about the Clinton Foundation, but Huber came empty.
