A party of frauds
E. Jean Carroll’s attorney Shawn Crowley last week rebutted Donald Trump lawyers’ argument to the jury in his $83.3 million defamation case. She distilled Trump and Trumpism to his/its essence (CNN):
Crowley concluded her rebuttal by saying essentially that Trump believes he is above the law.
Trump believes that “He gets to lie. He gets to threaten. He gets to ignore a jury verdict. He gets to defy the law and the rules of this courtroom,” Crowley said. “You saw how he behaved through this trial. Rules don’t apply to Donald Trump.”
“Ladies and gentleman, this isn’t a campaign rally. It’s not a press event. It’s a court of law and Miss Carroll’s life,” Crowley said. “Donald Trump sexually assaulted her. He defamed her. He is not the victim.”
But MAGA Republicans are MAGA Republicans because they believe, as Trump believes of himself, that they are victims. Trump portrays himself as the patron saint of victims, and their avatar.
Trump is special. Oh so special.
“Donald Trump is just not a regular man,” Doug Roberts, a retired electrician and Trump fan, said outside a Nikki Haley rally in South Carolina on Sunday. Roberts showed off his “I Voted For Trump” tee shirt for the AP camera. White on black.
“Through him, and with him, and in him,” as the Eucharistic Prayer concludes, MAGA partakes of Trump’s glory. Elevated, sanctified in his body and blood, they are, as Trump is, above the law and beyond it. They may lie, threaten, reject election results, sack the Capitol, and claim “hostage” status when held to account. In His Name their sins are forgiven.
And increasingly without him. Trumpism is a symbol of conservatives’ rejection of all they once claimed holy. But he is not the source of their apostacy. He is its expression.
Aaron Blake writes (Washington Post):
A consequential development of the Trump era is what increasingly looks like the Republicans’ acrimonious divorce from the rule of law.
The party that once prided itself as the law-and-order side has leaped headlong into highly speculative theories about the “weaponization” of the justice system, spurred by former president Donald Trump. Both Trump and his former lawyer Rudy Giuliani recently flouted civil defamation verdicts against them by continuing to defame their victims — cheered on by many on the right. Republican voters increasingly want a president who is willing to break both rules and laws to get things done.
But some members of the party have in recent days crossed a new threshold: by suggesting that it’s okay to disregard the Supreme Court.
After the Supreme Court ruled last week that federal authorities can remove razor wire that Texas put on the U.S.-Mexico border, Rep. Chip Roy (R-Tex.) posted on X, formerly Twitter, that “Texas should ignore it.”
Chip Roy was not alone.
By Friday, Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt (R) had gone on CNN and indicated that it would be okay to disregard the Supreme Court in certain circumstances.
Stitt’s office did respond to a request for clarification.
The behavior, even if not an explict violation of the Supreme Court ruling, now adds to a pattern of defiance not unlike that of southern states ahead of April 1861.
The Roy and Stitt comments come after Alabama Republicans last year flouted a Supreme Court order regarding the state’s congressional map. The court had upheld a lower-court ruling that required a second district “in which Black voters either comprise a voting-age majority or something quite close to it.” The resulting district was just 40 percent Black. The lower court again rejected it, saying it was “not aware of any other case in which a state legislature” declined to abide by such an order. The Supreme Court again upheld that ruling.
Republican claims to the rule of law are as much a fraud as Trump himself. We are headed into “dicey territory,” Blake writes, with rhetorical clashes that “come from a party that has demonstrated increasingly little regard for the current application of the rule of law.”
Except when it can be used as a cudgel against adversaries.