Victor Davis Hanson
The opposition to President Trump from both the Left and the vestigial Never Trump Right has mostly lost the policy debate. The American people support Trump’s success at border security, energy development, the economy, military recruitment, trade agreements, massive foreign investment, and spectacular foreign policy deals and ceasefires. The Left has offered no real alternative agenda to win public support.
Mostly, the furor has now refocused on Trump’s cultural and social wars on supposedly entrenched progressive domestic norms: de facto amnesty for millions of illegal aliens, DEI, transgender males in female sports, holding to account federally funded higher education, addressing defunding the police, and decriminalizing violent acts—and lawfare.
To sum it up, the Left believes it had a moral imperative to use the law to destroy the “fascist” Trump by any legal means necessary—on the expectation that such a legal jihad would never be waged against itself, even after setting such an awful precedent.
Yet after facing 91 lawfare-inspired indictments in four local, state, and federal courtrooms, attempts to remove him from the ballot in 25 states, and an FBI SWAT raid on his home, it is logical that Trump is sensitive about the weaponization of the federal DOJ and FBI.
He is especially irked over the past coordination between the Biden administration and federal prosecutor Jack Smith, county prosecutor Nathan Wade, and city prosecutor Alvin Bragg.
But nonetheless, Trump showed up for dozens of court appearances. He spent a fortune in legal expenses and fines, all by leftwing design to cripple his 2022–24 reelection campaign.
Few voices from either the currently outraged Democratic Party or the saner Never Trump coterie ever objected much to what were obvious trumped-up charges that had little if any legal merit. They would never have been filed by leftwing prosecutors against anyone other than Donald Trump.
So naturally, Trump felt that the justice system was weaponized, asymmetrical, and designed to punish its political enemies—and therefore should atone for its excesses.
The current and impending indictments of many of his political foes do not ipso facto translate into a revenge tour against his current political enemies—at least not quite yet, and for several reasons.
One, all prosecutors, for good and bad reasons, favor high-profile targets.
Federal attorneys seem to fixate on the high and the mighty to achieve iconic deterrence of “encouraging others” not to follow suit. They also assume that their targets, as grandee government officials, or captains of industry and influence, should fairly or not, be held to a higher standard.
Why did Patrick Fitzgerald still go after Scooter Libby when it was clear to him that Colin Powell’s own deputy Richard Armitage, not Libby, had first leaked the CIA identity of Valerie Plame? Why did James Comey go on a vendetta against celebrity Martha Stewart, inter alia, for allegedly lying to an FBI agent?
It was clear that prosecutors, aside from their careerist and vanity desires for the spotlight when posing as celebrity headhunters, thought that if they brought down the influential, then others less powerful might be deterred into more carefully following the law.
Apparently, it is one thing for a low-level federal clerk to leak classified material, hide government documents in one’s safe, transmit classified documents over email, repeatedly lie under oath to Congress or to federal investigators, and falsify federal affidavits. But it is quite another when top officials do so serially and without consequences, as allegedly did John Bolton, John Brennan, James Clapper, James Comey, Letitia James, and Andrew McCabe.
The point is not necessarily to deny that the Trump administration especially targeted these current and possibly future defendants because they had gone after Trump or his associates. Their excesses and hypocrisy no doubt earned them greater scrutiny from their former target.
Nevertheless, the current indictments can also make a point that the Attorney General and chief cop of New York has no business lying about her principal residence, her marital status, or the nature of her properties in order to lessen her mortgage or tax obligations.
Is there no value in reminding the American people that the head of the CIA cannot brazenly and admittedly lie to Congress on at least two occasions under oath, or to point out that the interim FBI director simply cannot mislead and lie on four serial occasions to federal investigators—and still claim the FBI is the public watchdog?
To be continued…
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narcissists always think they are invisible and are thus above the law meant for mere mortals. They become indignant and morally outraged when someone tries to hold them accountable., These traits are pathognomonic of a personality disorder and are important criteria for diagnosis. Unfortunately, this disorder is at the core of the entire Marxist movement in all its forms. Who else thinks they can control the earth's weather with EV's, alter natural laws like supply and demand with legislation without negative consequence and lie to congress repeatedly all while self sacrificing themselves to perfect humanity?