Remember, Remember, This Fifth of November
The Case Against Donald Trump, Part 1
Donald Trump is unfit for the presidency on about seven different levels.
No, seriously, when I began to jot down my notes for the case against him, I identified seven major issues, any one of which would be sufficient reason to vote against him: January 6, his current threats against democracy, his hostility to Ukraine, his disastrous proposals on tariffs and mass deportations, his method of thinking (or lack thereof), his unrelenting series of con-man schemes, and his repellent personality.
I managed to condense that down to four posts that I will send out between now and Election Day. The purpose of these posts is to convince the last few stragglers, but also to provide my readers with clear summaries of the case against Trump to use in your arguments with friends, neighbors, and random people on the internet, should you choose to do so.
At the end, I will present the case for Kamala Harris. But look, the thing that most recommends her for the presidency is simply that she is not Donald Trump—and to appreciate what a compelling motive that is, we first have to survey the full scope of his threat to the country.
But first, I will undoubtedly lose a few subscribers over this election recommendation. I usually do, and it’s just the price of writing about politics and actually taking a stand. So if you approve of what I’m saying, but you’re still lurking on this list for free, please consider compensating for the inevitable loss by becoming a paying subscriber.
Remember, Remember, This Fifth of November
A reader recently challenged me to name “what specifically you think Trump could actually do in order to destroy ‘liberal democracy’”? I’m going to answer that below, but first I’m going to balk at the verb tense. What he could do? What about what he already has done? This reader insists that “it is the next four years (and beyond?) that is under discussion.” But why limit the discussion that way? And isn’t the record of the past crucial to determining what we can expect from the future?
The strangest thing about the current era is the way so many voters and observers have agreed to treat the January 6 insurrection at the US Capitol as if it didn’t happen. In a moment that will, mercifully, be the only thing remembered from the vice-presidential debate, Tim Walz challenged J.D. Vance to affirm that Donald Trump lost the 2020 election. Vance replied, “I’m focused on the future.” Walz characterized it as a “damning non-answer,” though I suppose that’s open to interpretation. It could mean that Vance is already preparing to deny the 2024 election result, too.
The point is that this is what Trump and Vance are relying on—that January 6, 2021, will be viewed as irrelevant, ancient history (a point insisted upon by people who are still flying Confederate flags) and the American people will agree simply to forget that it ever happened and start from a fresh slate and a blank mind. This was the clear theme of Vance’s performance at the debate, which was to act as if Trump’s policies and personality are normal and reasonable and to count on us to forget everything we know about a man who has been in the public eye since the 1970s.
When a politician really wants us to forget something, it is crucially important to remember it. Since this year’s election takes place, by a helpful coincidence, on November 5, I think we can adapt an old British rhyme.
Remember, remember, this fifth of November, Fake electors, insurrection, and plot. I know of no reason, the sixth of January Should ever be forgot.
When I say “January 6,” I should be clear that I am not just talking about the riot at the US Capitol. That was merely the culmination of a months-long plot to substitute fake electors for the legitimate slates submitted to the Electoral College and use them to overturn the 2020 election results. Donald Trump was deeply, personally involved in every stage of this scheme.
I first warned my readers about this before the 2020 election, after a widely circulated report described Trump’s plans to do exactly what he would later attempt: declare victory on election night, before all the results were announced, then attempt to get the actual vote tallies thrown out.
I’ll just quote from the Supreme Court’s summary of the charges against Trump in their decision on presidential immunity, because this succinctly outlines every stage of the plot.
First, he and his co-conspirators “used knowingly false claims of election fraud to get state legislators and election officials to...change electoral votes for [Trump’s] opponent, Joseph R. Biden, Jr., to electoral votes for [Trump].”
Second, Trump and his co-conspirators “organized fraudulent slates of electors in seven targeted states” and “caused these fraudulent electors to transmit their false certificates to the Vice President and other government officials to be counted at the certification proceeding on January 6.”
Third, Trump and his co-conspirators attempted to use the Justice Department “to conduct sham election crime investigations and to send a letter to the targeted states that falsely claimed that the Justice Department had identified significant concerns that may have impacted the election outcome.”
Fourth, Trump and his co-conspirators attempted to persuade “the Vice President to use his ceremonial role at the January 6 certification proceeding to fraudulently alter the election results.” And when that failed, on the morning of January 6, they “repeated knowingly false claims of election fraud to gathered supporters, falsely told them that the Vice President had the authority to and might alter the election results, and directed them to the Capitol to obstruct the certification proceeding.”
Fifth, when “a large and angry crowd...violently attacked the Capitol and halted the proceeding,” Trump and his co-conspirators “exploited the disruption by redoubling efforts to levy false claims of election fraud and convince Members of Congress to further delay the certification.”
This is what the January 6 riot was supposed to accomplish.
The words in quote in that passage are from Special Counsel Jack Smith’s original indictment against Trump, based on extensive testimony from witnesses in the White House and Trump’s accomplices. The court’s immunity ruling sent Smith back to rewrite his indictment to define how he is prosecuting Trump for actions in his private capacity as a candidate, rather than for the abuse of his official powers (because, bizarrely, the court gave Trump a free pass for crimes committed by abusing his official power). See the recently released new version of the indictment, and some highlights from it.
The upshot is that we know Donald Trump wants to overthrow our basic system of government because he already tried to do it, and he got alarming close to succeeding.
Lock Us Up
But sure, let’s also focus on the future. What has Donald Trump promised for the future?
Trump infamously campaigned in 2016 with chants of “lock her up,” a promise to prosecute and jail Hillary Clinton for mismanaging a computer server used for classified information. This time around, he is campaigning on a promise to lock everybody up—every single one of his critics.
He wants to jail lawyers, political operatives, and donors for his rivals, as well as election officials who don’t support him. Here’s the whole rant from his social media site.
CEASE & DESIST: I, together with many Attorneys and Legal Scholars, am watching the Sanctity of the 2024 Presidential Election very closely because I know, better than most, the rampant Cheating and Skullduggery that has taken place by the Democrats in the 2020 Presidential Election. It was a Disgrace to our Nation! Therefore, the 2024 Election, where Votes have just started being cast, will be under the closest professional scrutiny and, WHEN I WIN, those people that CHEATED will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the Law, which will include long term prison sentences so that this Depravity of Justice does not happen again. We cannot let our Country further devolve into a Third World Nation, AND WE WON’T! Please beware that this legal exposure extends to Lawyers, Political Operatives, Donors, Illegal Voters, & Corrupt Election Officials. Those involved in unscrupulous behavior will be sought out, caught, and prosecuted at levels, unfortunately, never seen before in our Country.
This is billed as a threat to jail people for “cheating.” But given that there is no evidence for cheating—just as there was no evidence the last time around—it’s just a threat to jail anyone who doesn’t support him politically.
He also wants to lock up us journalists and commentators, especially those—I’m raising my hand here—who have criticized court rulings favorable to him.
After praising the Supreme Court for favorable opinions at a rally Monday in Indiana, Pa., the former president turned to those who express the opposite view.
“And they take a lot of hits because of it,” Trump said of the justices. “It should be illegal what happens. You know you have these guys that are, like, playing the ref like the great Bobby Knight. These people should be put in jail the way they talk about our judges and our justices, trying to get them to sway their vote, sway their decision.”
Trump has been slowly building toward an explicit threat of jail time. He’s previously said criticizing judges is or should be illegal.
In Bozeman, Mont., in early August, Trump said what critics of judges were doing was “in my opinion, totally illegal.”
The next week, in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, Trump said, “I believe it’s illegal what they do.… I really think it’s illegal what they do with the judges and justices.” He later added that “playing the ref with our judges and our justices should be punishable by very serious fines and beyond that.”
This month, Trump at a news conference suggested prosecuting critics of US District Judge Aileen M. Cannon, who delivered favorable rulings for him in his federal classified-documents case before ultimately dismissing it. (Previous judges had rejected the justification she accepted, and the Justice Department is appealing.) “I think it should be illegal; that’s what the DOJ should look into,” Trump said. “The legality of these people taking a brilliant judge and demeaning her, and taking other people that are fair and solid and demeaning them.”
And then he’s going to prosecute Google for not biasing its search engine in his favor.
Trump in a social media post wrote that if the Department of Justice does not prosecute Google “for this blatant interference of Elections” he would request its prosecution “when I win the election and become President of the United States!”
He seemed to be reacting to a new study by the right-leaning Media Research Center, or MRC, which purportedly found that Google search engine results tended to show news articles that supposedly were positive to the Democrat Harris ahead of Trump’s own campaign website when a user searched for “Donald Trump presidential race 2024.”
In his post on Truth Social, Trump wrote: “It has been determined that Google has illegally used a system of only revealing and displaying bad stories about Donald J. Trump, some made up for this purpose while, at the same time, only revealing good stories about Comrade Kamala Harris.”
The “Media Research Center” is itself a biased outfit run by a well-known partisan hack. But remember what I said about the “stolen election” claims. Their purpose is to allow him to steal the election. Similarly, the purpose of fake charges of bias is to allow Trump to impose his own bias. Google will know, from now on, that the only way to avoid prosecution for their supposed bias against Trump will be to create a noticeable bias for Trump.
Trump’s eager sycophants are following his lead. Sean Davis tried to cope with Trump’s disastrous debate performance in September by responding with this demand: “Remove ABC's broadcast license and criminally charge the moderators and executives for campaign finance fraud.” That post was then spread approvingly by Mollie Hemingway. If you don’t remember who these people are, I do. They were my colleagues once upon at a time at The Federalist—the people who told me not to bother criticizing Trump when he first announced his candidacy, then dismissed him contemptuously, then caved in to support him, then realized that they could exploit pro-Trump fanaticism to raise their own profiles.
I can’t dismiss this as the rantings of a few marginalized crazies, because it is coming from many people I have personally known throughout the political right—and it’s coming from the man who is a few percentage points away from the presidency in the current polls.
A World Without Guardrails
Prosecuting his political opponents is something Trump already tried in his first term. See a rundown from the New York Times. If you read the report, you will find that Trump failed at these attempts because he was surrounded by responsible people who knew that this was an unconstitutional abuse of power. But that’s why Trump is determined to hire only pliable lackeys and partisan fanatics in his next administration. The Times’s conclusion: “His defenders often seek to explain away Mr. Trump’s threats to take legal action against opponents as campaign trail bluster. But those who worked directly for him in the White House said Mr. Trump should be taken at his word.”
This is where that Supreme Court immunity decision comes in, because it perversely shields him from prosecution specifically for actions that abuse his official powers.
Don’t take it from me. Take it from a Reagan-appointed appeals court judge who started his career prosecuting a Watergate-related case. He looks at the Supreme Court’s ruling and concludes that Watergate would be considered legal now.
You might think that Trump would not actually be able to prosecute his political enemies, just as he was never able to lock up Hillary Clinton. The collapse of all the institutional guardrails against the abuse of presidential power suggests otherwise.
But also: Who cares?
Who cares if he can actually carry out his threats? That he would make those threats at all is cause enough to cast him out of electoral politics for the rest of his life.
Free Robert Tracinski!
Now let me declare my personal interest in this. To be sure, I am making this argument out of a principled admiration for our system of government and our political freedom. By I have another, far more personal motive. When Trump threatens to jail people for criticizing his favorite court decisions, and I am one of those people, he is threatening to jail me. Maybe not me first—he would go after more prominent people to begin with—but me eventually and inevitably.
A vote for Donald Trump is—simply, directly, and predictably—a vote to send me to prison. If you decide to cast that vote, I can only quote Benjamin Franklin: You are now my enemy, and I am yours.
Like I said, this alone ought to be sufficient. But one of the distinguishing characteristics of Donald Trump’s role in politics is that it is so vast and malignant that it is difficult to grasp its scope all at once. I will continue this series soon with a look at Trump’s equally disqualifying foreign policy.
Oof. Man. You did a brilliant job personalizing this. Free Robert Tracinski indeed. And thank you again for having a steady enough pen to again summarize everything in an easy to digest manner. It's such a sewer, I appreciate your service.
Well said. The facts are plain and voluminous with Trump. I welcome your cogent laying them out.
“It Can’t Happen Here.” No, sadly and dumbfoundingly, it is happening here.