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After the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Donald Trump’s favor on the question of the former president’s eligibility, the Republican was predictably delighted. No one was surprised when he announced that he’d take a brief victory lap at Mar-a-Lago a couple of hours after the justices released their decision.
But at a press conference that was supposed to be about the high court’s ruling, Trump focused much of his attention on an entirely separate matter: the criminal cases currently pending against the GOP candidate.
Trump said, for example, “You cannot take somebody out of a race because the opponent would like to have it that way.” As NBC News reported, he soon after went a little further.
Finally, Trump called on [incumbent President Joe] Biden to interfere in the criminal indictments against him, portraying the four sets of charges as a coordinated effort by the president to use the legal system to achieve political ends — an allegation for which there is no evidence. “Stop weaponization,” Trump said, addressing Biden directly. “Fight your fight yourself. Don’t use prosecutors and judges to go after your opponent.”
At this point, we could spend a few paragraphs noting how odd it was to see Trump denounce efforts to disqualify political rivals, given that he has spent years trying to disqualify political rivals. We could then follow it up with several more paragraphs noting that while Trump now claims to be against using prosecutors to go after opponents, the Republican, while in office, tried to use prosecutors to go after opponents.
Indeed, for all of the former president’s recent whining, the fact remains that Trump, during his tenure, spent much of his time in the White House trying to turn Justice Department prosecutors into his own personal attack dogs, weaponizing federal law enforcement to scandalous degrees.
But as important as those dimensions to this story are, it’s also worth appreciating what we’re learning about Trump’s perspective. The Republican appears absolutely convinced that Biden — the incumbent whom Trump claims is too old and addled to understand what’s going on around him — is secretly conspiring with prosecutors, across multiple jurisdictions and levels of government, as part of an elaborate election plot.
What’s more, as the former president sees it, the Democrat didn’t just order his predecessor’s indictments — a ridiculous assertion for which there is no evidence — Biden could also, at any moment, simply snap his fingers and make the 91 criminal counts against Trump disappear.
Indeed, yesterday was hardly the first time the Republican has made such an argument. Trump has pushed the same line repeatedly, including at a rally over the weekend.
The former president apparently assumes that the sitting president has total control over who is and isn’t indicted, and has the authority to dismiss criminal cases at will.
This is, of course, utterly bonkers. It’s also wildly at odds with how the United States’ system of government is designed to function.
But the likely GOP nominee’s rhetoric reflects how Trump apparently believes the criminal justice system is supposed to work — and likely will work if he’s given another opportunity.
It helps explain why Trump routinely pushed to have certain political foes prosecuted. He simply assumed that as a sitting president, he had the authority to draw up an enemies list, and decide who would be indicted on trumped up charges.
It’s similarly led him to assume that Biden has done the same thing, reality be damned.