In her biography, Confidence Man, the Making of Donald Trump and the Breaking of America, New York Times reporter, Maggie Haberman, says that one lesson Trump took from his mentor, the lawyer Roy Cohn, was
“I bring out the worst in my enemies. That’s how I get them to defeat themselves.”
This wisdom of Cohn’s, it struck me, represents the essence of the real danger Trump poses to the republic in his 2024 campaign— if he poses any. One has only to watch the extralegal lengths that his alleged opponents are willing to go to stop him to get the full measure of Trump’s terrible strategy that all but seems to be helping his reelection. Besides the Manhattan DA foolishly indicting him for falsifying business records, or the Georgia DA indicting him for racketeering, recently the comrades struck him off the ballot in two states in a brazen act of high partisanship. I think before you go around prophesying that a single election will, by itself, decide, forever, the fate of American democracy, you would be advised to get your own house in order. Because ironically, trampling all over a private citizen’s, besides a presidential candidate’s, rights to due process to finger him as engaging in insurrection, or in the historical context of the Fourteenth amendment, as a Confederate rebel, has only made Trump more popular in national polls.
This perhaps perverse but predictable phenomenon is the banal consequence of what happens when you bend the law to save “democracy,” rather than adhering to democratic procedures to save the rule of law, our constitutional rights, which is what I would hope people who worry about the fate of democracy really mean when they lie awake at night, (though I suspect these progressive sensibilities couldn’t explain to you what democracy even asked when asked— I myself don’t know). For the blessing of democracy depends on how much we revere the law. When you break or twist, or only bend the law, it shouldn’t be counted as a surprise if democratic norms are broadly disobeyed or violated.
Trump for example did abscond with the most sensitive classified documents he could have possibly taken, then lied about the documents he took and stonewalled the National Archives when they demanded that he return them. For this crime, he faces serious obstruction charges. However, Hillary Clinton emailed classified documents on a private email server, certainly a prosecutable offense for which she faced no charges. Trump was also investigated by the FBI for the nature of his relationship to Russia which yielded nothing. On the other hand, Joe Biden has faced basically no scrutiny for his likely involvement in his son’s extensive and lucrative overseas business dealings when he was vice president. Without the House Oversight Committee, led by James Comer, we would have no knowledge of the Bidens’ influence-peddling racket, as National Review’s Andy McCarthy puts it, besides the reporting from conservative news outlets like the New York Post. Which brings us to another problematic case.
When news of the incriminating evidence of Hunter Biden’s hedonistic lifestyle surfaced in the Post during the 2020 election cycle, the Biden campaign coordinated with former intelligence officials to pressure Twitter to suppress it. Moreover during the lockdowns, the Biden administration played rather loose with the First Amendment to cajole social media companies to censor misinformation online that undermined the government’s Covid policies. This was all for the sake of beating Donald Trump and thereby saving “our democracy.” For me it’s little wonder if Trump’s supporters distrust the our democracy narrative because they think democracy in this sense only works for well-connected Democratic Party elites who control the legacy media, influence the intelligence services, and dominate the federal bureaucracy. It’s not surprising to me either if, in surveys, they think actually Trump’s imprisonment, or another loss to Biden, would spell the fate of democracy; and surveys show Republican voters are at least as worried about democracy in 2024 as Democrats. Let me make a brief statement.
I am neither a registered Republican or a Democrat, if blindingly rabid partisanship explains our pervasive sense of crisis, and maybe I’m a complacent bastard, but I’m not worried about democracy in 2024. In fact, I don’t think democracy is the least bit relevant to the consequences of either Trump going to jail or another Biden term. The prospect of either one or the other certainly marks that, in our national history, we have entered dangerous new territory. On one hand, we have never had a former president since Nixon face the possibility of going to jail. And it wasn’t his political opposition doing the prosecuting. If political violence is the fallout, no one can say they didn’t see it coming. The other thing is the world—I almost want to add literally— is falling apart. And neither Biden nor Trump is fit for global leadership. And though my first impulse is that Trump would be worse, it’s nevertheless horrifying that Biden couldn’t be better for world order than he is now.
The history books will not be kind to Joe Biden, whose decision to withdraw suddenly and completely from Afghanistan with basically no regard for evacuating civilian allies, protecting US troops, or plans to make sure Al Qaeda couldn’t reassert itself, was an impeachable calamity. Shortly thereafter Biden’s evident cowardice and transparent reluctance to confront freedom’s enemies led straight to his failure miserably to deter Russia from waging a genocidal invasion of Ukraine which has implicated Europe in the most far-reaching land conflict since World War II. On top of that, he presided over Iran’s outright enrichment, deliberately easing oil sanctions to try and coax the regime back into Obama’s long doomed nuclear deal. Then his high-wire-act diplomacy to normalize relations between Israel and Saudi Arabia provoked an emboldened Iran to sic Hamas on Israel in the most horrific pogrom against Jews since the Holocaust. Because of all the above, I am afraid that another Biden term would make a catastrophic Chinese invasion or blockade of Taiwan, precipitating a global financial crisis, and possibly a war between America and China, more likely.
But a Trump term would be no better for the world, and possibly it would be worse. For one, Putin would get carte blanche in Eastern Europe. Trump would pull out of NATO to spite “the elites.” He would let Iran go nuclear, just as as not to run the risk of embroiling America in another Middle Eastern quagmire that would jeapordize his “America First” identity with his isolationist fan base. He would cut Israel loose if only because Netanyahu recognized Biden’s 2020 victory, and he would leave Israel to fend for itself against Hamas, Hezbollah and the whole world that hates the Jewish State and that neither appears to remember why Israel exists nor cares to understand why Israel must act take the extraordinary measures it’s taking to protect itself by annihilating the surrounding terrorists who constitute an existential threat to Israeli lives and statehood. A lone Israel with no American support is a very frightening idea. As for China, critics with a positive view of Trump’s foreign policy might argue he was the first American president to confront global Chinese predation since the middle of the Cold War. But I think Trump’s transactional prowess in cutting amoral deals with whomever: could result in Trump giving Xi Taiwan or certain rights in the Western Pacific in exchange for Xi cracking down on the domestic manufacture of precursor chemicals used in the production of fentanyl. All so Trump can singlehandedly boast that he solved the fentanyl crisis. Otherwise Trump will levy inflationary tariffs and set his sights on bombing or invading Mexico to manhandle drug cartels, despite his proclaimed aversion to foreign wars.
That is all to say, though I don’t worry about “democracy”—either Biden wins and Trump goes to jail with only the off sporadic outburst from his supporters, threatening lawmakers, showing up on Paul Pelosi’s doorstep, etc., but most of them deterred by the sight of all the Jan 6 rioters already in prison, or, Trump wins and despite all his fascist rhetoric, the Democrats throw the kitchen sink at him, take the House and Senate, and ensure that he’s a lame duck president all the way through as all the lawsuits against his “enemies” get snarled up in the courts, and the legacy media gets a new lease on public trust again and frantically covers every demented thing he says— I worry about the world.
The democracy we’re so obsessed with will be just as loud and obnoxious, embarrassing, crude and vulgar as it always was. With geopolitical tensions as high as they have ever been since the 1930s, the world, meanwhile, will burn.
— Jay
I’m glad I could be of service Jay. With regards to the current topic, I’ll try and make this my final diatribe for the time being, as I’m even starting to annoy *myself*.
To quote a great man of letters “I would expect more from a CG subscriber.” Your article seems like it would be right at home in The Free Press. I don’t mean that derisively. Though I do mean that it sort of had me banging my head against the wall. I think this may just speak to an honest split in “the center” when it comes to this issue. Your description of the state of affairs wrt Trump, Biden, the indictments, the 14th Amendment issue, and “our democracy” simply doesn’t ring true to me. When you refer to the prosecutions as “bending the law to protect the law” you seem to be treating the entire issue modulo Trump’s guilt or innocence, which to me seems nuts. I view it as “enforcing the law.” It’s true that the Trump prosecutions re 1/6 and the 2020 election involve a lot of novel legal questions. But I don’t think that’s because the law is being bent. It’s because no American president has ever attempted so brazenly to cling to power after losing an election. With regards to the documents case, you seem to concede that crimes were committed, but then wave them off with a “But Hillary’s emails.” On the 14th Amendment case, you said something to the effect of it being pushed by partisan actors (I don’t recall the exact language). But the idea was originally proposed in something written by members of the Federalist society, and it’s being argued in court by a team that includes Michael Luttig, a Regan appointed retired appellate judge. I suppose one might argue that these people are all now on the “other side.” But that can almost become a circular argument, whereby anyone opposing Trump is deemed a partisan Democrat, making any case against him by definition a partisan witch hunt. Also, important to note, many Democrats seem to be running away from the 14th Amendment case, mindlessly parroting “let the voters decide.”
Accidentally posted that before finishing. But given how long it is, I’ll spare you the rest. Just interesting that people who see a lot of other things similarly can arrive at such different places on this particular matter.