Donald Trump is an extremely lucky man. In the blink of an eye and sudden turn of his head, he survived an assassin’s bullet. But his good fortune extended far beyond that harrowing moment. His astonishing election victory also represented a stroke of brilliant luck. If Trump had lost, he was going to be convicted not once, not twice, but three separate times, beyond his guilty verdict on thirty-four felony counts in New York.
Anyone who listened to the taped phone call between Trump and Georgia election officials or followed the Florida documents case or the January 6th investigation and prosecution, knows he was investigated and prosecuted for one reason alone. There was compelling evidence Trump engaged in criminal activity. Four separate grand juries concluded the evidence assembled against him warranted a criminal trial.
In other words, if Trump did not return to the White House, he was likely headed for the Big House. He is the first convicted felon to sit in the Oval Office. But surely, he would have been convicted of other more serious crimes.
And now our felon in chief seeks retribution against all those who worked valiantly to hold him accountable for his criminal activity. We need to be very clear. And we need to state repeatedly: there was no weaponization of the FBI or the Justice Department. There was no witch hunt to destroy Trump’s political career. The FBI and the Justice Department was not corrupt and partisan. These are Trump’s big lies.
Just the opposite was true. The fact Trump was investigated and prosecuted was powerful evidence our justice system worked as designed. It proved no one in our country, not even an ex-president, was above the law. It demonstrated we are still a nation of laws, not of men. Make no mistake, Trump’s mission to seek revenge on those who investigated and prosecuted him is not merely an attack on the integrity of the FBI and the Justice Department. It is a frontal assault on the rule of law, on the defining hallmark of our democracy.
Many were incredulous when Trump chose supremely unqualified people to wield enormous governmental power. Candidates like Pete Hegseth, Kash Patel, Pam Bondi and RFK Jr., to say nothing of the obscene nomination of Matt Gaetz to be attorney general, shared one quality: a slavish loyalty to their boss. This time around, Trump ensured there would be no adults in the room who would inhibit and constrain him in any way. This time around, he wanted to appoint sycophants and cronies intent on doing his bidding.
Can anyone seriously imagine our nation is safer now from terrorist plots or cyberattacks given the alarming number of layoffs or reassignments at FBI or CIA, and the identity of those leading our law enforcement and intelligence agencies? Can anyone seriously imagine we are safer from a medical health crisis, say, from a measles or an Ebola outbreak or the emergence of a new coronavirus, with layoffs at the CDC and RFK Jr. running HHS? Of course, anyone who would pilfer and then hide boxes of highly classified documents pertaining to our nuclear arsenal in his bathroom could never be considered a steward of our nation’s security.
The president of the United States works for all citizens. The White House is the people’s house. And yet Trump does not behave as a public servant conducting business on behalf of citizens. He remains in the business of enriching himself, his family, and billionaire friends, and keeping his personal brand relevant and lucrative. Trump’s brazen and corrupt scheme to issue crypto coins in his own and his wife’s name is a stark portent of things to come. Fortunately, his declining poll numbers indicate people are paying attention to his corrupt and unlawful behavior. Here is a prediction: the ultimate guardrail against Trump’s authoritarian power grab will be his own recklessness, impulsivity, and foolishness. More people will realize his constant lies do not merely broadcast outlandish conspiracy theories, but express disturbing figments of his imagination. It will be increasingly obvious that he simply makes things up. Recent egregious examples include his proclamation Zelensky is a dictator who started a war against Russia and whose approval rating in Ukraine stands at four percent, or that the January 6th rioters did not attack police officers but were themselves attacked.
It will become increasingly clear Trump prefers to bully opponents both here and abroad to coerce them to kiss the ring. But Americans did not go to the polls last November to elect a king. And they certainly did not vote for a president to act like a kingpin. But that is who we have. The next four years will be a grand civics lesson about the fragility of our democracy. In a recent speech at the Munich security conference, JD Vance lectured European leaders about what he deemed the “enemy within” their democratic societies. He referred to their stubborn refusal to embrace right-wing populist movements. But Vance’s abhorrent rhetoric ironically defines an important truth we must recognize about ourselves: Donald Trump is a cancer on our body politic, a powerful enemy to our democracy. And it is up to each of us to resist this political threat. All hands on deck.
Neal Aponte, Ph.D.
Editor of Delano