At his rally over the weekend, Trump predictably claimed that Kamala Harris should be prosecuted and the crowd predictably started ecstatically chanting “lock her up!”
As NY Magazine’s Jonathan Chait wrote:
It is obviously unsurprising that Trump would conjure up imaginary crimes by his political opponent. In 2016, he made “Lock her up!” a signature campaign chant. In 2020, he branded Joe Biden a criminal. The pretext for Harris’s prosecution is that, as vice-president, she presided over border-enforcement policies that Trump opposes. In 2016, the pretext was Clinton’s violation of State Department email protocol. In 2020, it was disproven charges that Biden profited from his son’s business activity in Ukraine.
Obviously, none of the particulars of these allegations — in Harris’s case, Trump hasn’t even managed to manufacture a pretextual criminal allegation — matter to Trump in the slightest. His view of the law is fully relativist. Actions taken on Trump’s behalf are by inherently legal, and actions taken against him are inherently illegal.
That is why Trump continuously brands his political opponents as criminals. In addition to all three of his Democratic campaign opponents, Trump has called for criminal charges to be brought against a long list of targets, including (but not limited to) Barack Obama, John Kerry, Liz Cheney, anybody who criticizes pro-Trump judges, “lawyers, political operatives, donors, illegal voters, and corrupt election officials” involved in the 2024 election, among many others.
Just this weekend, he called for charges against Google (for allegedly showing too many negative stories about him in searches) and Nancy Pelosi (for the second time; four years ago, he called for her to be charged for tearing a copy of his speech, and this weekend, he said she should be investigated because her husband sold shares of Visa stock prior to an anti-trust investigation against the company).
It is also why Trump continuously encourages criminal behavior by his allies and defends it as lawful. Paul Manafort did “nothing” and was the victim of a “hoax.” The violent coup attempt by Trump allies on January 6, 2021, was actually a riot by overzealous police officers, and the criminals who carried it out were “hostages.” Trump frequently promises to pardon the J6 criminals, in keeping with his first-term policy of granting mass amnesty to political allies who committed crimes.
We all roll our eyes at this BS. He’s been doing it so long we hardly notice it anymore. But we shouldn’t grow inured to the threat. He
He’s obviously very, very angry about being held accountable for his crimes. There is no way that he will let it go and there’s no one to stop it if he wins. The entire Republican party is bought into his “vengeance is mine” trip and have no problem with allowing his co-conspirators to skate. This will be the new “rule of law” in a second Trump administration: “the law for thee but not for me.”