Vol. 30: McConnell’s misjudgment

With Trump, he was too clever by half

         By the time President Trump was impeached for inciting the January 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, Trump himself had already left office. And when the Senate convened in February 2021 to render its required verdict in his impeachment trial, the Republican Senate leader Mitch McConnell delivered a remarkably straightforward judgment of his fellow Republican’s role in those events.

         “January 6^th was a disgrace,” McConnell said that day. “American citizens attacked their own government. They used terrorism to stop a specific piece of domestic business that they did not like. These fellow Americans bloodied our own police. They stormed the Senate floor. They tried to hunt down the speaker of the House. They built a gallow and chanted about murdering the vice president.

         “They did this because they had been fed wild falsehoods by the most powerful man on Earth. He was angry because he lost an election. President Trump’s actions preceding the riot were a disgraceful, disgraceful dereliction of duty… There is no question— none—that President Trump is practically and morally responsible for provoking the events of the day. No question about it. The people who stormed this building believed they were acting on the wishes and the instructions of their president.”

         Those were unusually courageous and unequivocal words from a politician usually more interested in jockeying for power than speaking truth to power. Nevertheless, that day McConnell voted to acquit Trump, arguing that it was unconstitutional to convict someone who was no longer in office.

Unanswered question

         All but seven of McConnell’s fellow Republicans followed McConnell’s lead, and consequently the vote to convict Trump failed the two-thirds threshold by ten votes. Nevertheless, McConnell insisted, there were other ways to hold Trump to account: “We have a criminal justice system in this country. We have civil litigation. And former presidents are not immune from being accountable by either one.”

         When Trump was indicted this month for interfering with the 2020 Presidential election, a New York Times editorial remarked, “In that, at least, Mr. McConnell was right.”

         I disagree. Trump’s conviction by the Senate in February 2021 would have been more than a mere symbolic act; it could have disqualified Trump from holding federal office in the future. That would have spared Americans our current national preoccupation: wondering how jury verdicts will affect the 2024 Presidential election.

         In effect, McConnell passed the buck to the criminal justice system for a question that should have been addressed by the political system: Should this man be allowed to hold public office?

         “The Democrats are going to take care of the son of a bitch for us,” McConnell reportedly told two associates just days after the January 6 riots. McConnell assumed— wrongly— that Trump was a spent force politically. By voting to acquit, McConnell could rid himself of Trump without alienating Trump’s supporters.

‘Historic disaster’?

         He was too clever by half. Trump has now been indicted for three separate criminal acts, with a fourth indictment likely any day now in Georgia. (He also lost a civil suit related to his alleged rape of the magazine writer E. Jean Carroll in the ’90s.) Yet each legal case has merely solidified Trump’s supporters, who see him as a victim of political retaliation.

         No matter how egregious Trump’s crimes, as a political candidate he can now claim that his need to prepare for his trials is hampering his need to campaign. Or he can claim that he’s being singled out for prosecution by his political rivals. Or both.

         Meanwhile, you can’t pick up a newspaper or turn on TV news without encountering some pundit worrying whether Trump’s trials can produce a verdict before election day.

         “If the prosecution fails (especially if the trial concludes after a general election that Mr. Trump loses),” the Harvard law professor Jack Goldsmith agonized in Friday’s New York Times, “it will be a historic disaster.”

         It wasn’t supposed to be this way. Our criminal justice system exists to adjudicate crimes— not to influence elections.

Eugene Debs and Jean Valjean

         In a democracy, everyone— even indicted or convicted criminals— enjoys the right to seek public office. (The Socialist Eugene Debs ran for president from jail in 1920 after his conviction for criticizing the government’s prosecution of its critics.) And everyone has the right to vote for a convicted criminal— unless the people’s representatives rule otherwise, through the impeachment process. (Debs received 914,000 votes in 1920.)

         And why shouldn’t we, since ex-convicts can sometimes make salutary citizens and public officials? Eugene Francois Vidocq, the model for Victor Hugo’s fictitious Jean Valjean, was a reformed ex-con who became the first director of France’s crime agency, the Sureté Nationale.

         But suppose an accused criminal exercises his right to seek public office before his criminal case is resolved? Should the court delay his trial until after the election? Or should it rush the trial so it occurs before the election? I mean, when exactly is the right time to prosecute a political candidate for crimes he may have committed?

         Political verdicts belong to the people and their representatives, not to the courts. And criminal verdicts belong to a jury, not to public opinion.

George Wallace’s lament

         Given his insatiable hunger for attention, Trump will run for president as long as he breathes. If he wins a second term in 2024, he will seek to amend the Constitution so he can seek a third term. Failing that, he’ll run for some other high office— maybe Pope, or Saviour.  If he loses, he can always claim the vote was rigged. (In any case, he’d be assured of receiving 40% of the Republican vote.)

         And he has every right to do so. So do you and I. Eugene Debs ran for president five times between 1900 and 1920. Lyndon LaRouche (remember him?) ran for president eight times, beginning in 1976. Harold Stassen, the “boy wonder” governor of Minnesota, ran for president nine times between 1944 and 1992; and when that didn’t work out, he ran for mayor of Philadelphia in 1959 (also unsuccessfully).

         George Wallace ran for governor of Alabama four times (all successfully) and for president four times (all unsuccessfully). When reporters asked Wallace why he kept running, he replied: “What else can I do?” A similar logic, I contend, drives Donald Trump, whatever the voters or the criminal courts may say.

         Trump’s guilt or innocence on any of his alleged crimes has little bearing on the political question: Is he qualified to hold public office, compared to his opponents?

         I personally would not vote for Trump, whatever a criminal court decides. (Well, OK— maybe if he were running against Steve Bannon.)

         Conversely, Trump’s devoted followers will doubtless vote for him regardless of what transpires in a courtroom. They remind me of the true believers who, for nearly 20 years in the 17^th Century, swallowed Shabbetai Zevi’s claim to be the long-awaited Jewish messiah. That con job didn’t collapse until 1666, when the Ottomans made Shabbetai an offer he couldn’t refuse: Convert to Islam, or we’ll kill you. (He chose the former.)

         In effect, The Ottomans did for Shabbetai what Mitch McConnell should have done back in February 2021 for Trump.

         That leaves just one question: Where are the Ottomans now, when we really need them?

Enjoy Dan Rottenberg’s new memoir, The Education of a Journalist: My Seventy Years on the Frontiers of Free Speech. You can also visit his website at www.danrottenberg.com