Meanwhile, other headlines are about the FBI’s raid on former President Trump’s home. It would appear the potential crime is the removal of classified documents from the White House, a serious, albeit obscure, charge. Yet the declassification of such documents is the president’s prerogative, in which case the issue may not be as it appears.
Clearly, the raid has implications for 2024 because if found guilty, Trump could be barred from seeking federal office. At the same time, the (social) media coverage is again exposing deep polarisation. We have the *very* valid argument that all are equal before the law (even Hunter Biden and Hillary Clinton); on the other, muttering that “If they can go after the former president, they can go after anyone.” Even neutral (and some anti-Trump) observers say that unless concrete charges emerge, all the raid will likely do is cement Trump’s base.
A few points: the raid on Trump reeks of desperation no matter how you slice it. There’s a theory going around that Trump “baited” the FBI into raiding him in order to expose their malfeasance to the country and rally his supporters. The idea goes that he let on that he was in possession of some classified documents that would, if made public, ruin the reputation of the FBI. So in a panic, the FBI raided his home and still wound up ruining their reputation anyway (with everyone other than the Snark Social Media Liberals, who bizarrely hate police but love the FBI).
The other theory is that the FBI raided Trump to disqualify him from running in 2024: not much explanation needed here. This is clear desperation.
But not only that, the raid establishes the precedent–should it actually succeed–that a sitting president can simply cook up some charges against a political rival, send the obviously politicized FBI after him, and then, just like that, you’ve got a bogus indictment that bars your rival from ever challenging you electorally.
Rinse and repeat until you’re running unopposed!
Unless the Democrats are punished mightily at the polls for this stunt, I expect to see more and more of this as America descends into chaos.
But from’s Trump’s perspective, even if he is somehow charged and indicted of some sort of nonsense crime pertaining to “mishandling of classified documents,” why wouldn’t he just run anyway on the grounds that if his opponents have no respect for the law, then why should he?
If Trump doesn’t run, he would only be validating and legitimizing the blatant subversion of the nation’s law enforcement and justice system.
Honestly, I would say he has an obligation to run if he is indicted here. For the good of the country, he cannot abide this perversion of the law.
Not running would send the message that it’s okay for the Democrats to be corrupt, and there’s nothing that can be done about it. They can prosecute whomever they want for whatever reason they want no matter what.
That can’t be allowed. It’s the “fruit of the poisonous tree” doctrine. If illegitimate and corrupt people bring an illegitimate and fake charge against you, why would you validate it?
Here’s a genius take I’ve seen going around on social media from, you guessed it, Smug White Twitter Liberals:
I’m sure all the people who liked this tweet were applauding Trump’s promises to lock Hillary Clinton up over her mishandling of classified information on her home email server.
But here’s the issue: there is no trust or legitimacy in the federal government in this country anymore.
It would be one thing if the Justice Department and FBI had a reputation for non-partisanship, honesty and integrity.
But they don’t. They have the opposite reputation. At any given time, 50% of the country doesn’t trust the Justice Department as far as they can throw it, depending on which party controls the White House.
And so there is simply no way for corruption to be prosecuted in this country when the people doing the prosecuting have no credibility–when the general public knows that the prosecutors themselves are corrupt.
Without the public trust, the government has no legitimacy on anything.
What if Trump, as President, sicced the FBI on Hillary for her email server? The liberals would have gone ballistic–way worse than how Republicans are responding today. It would have been denounced as a Stalinist, illegitimate and corrupt political persecution.
The Smug liberals are only pretending this raid on Trump is legitimate because they hate Trump and because it benefits Their Side.
If it benefitted the Other Side, though, they’d be singing a very different tune. And that’s why it’s all so disingenuous.
But it is more complicated than that.
It’s complicated because Hunter Biden is a free man. It’s complicated because Hillary Clinton has never been prosecuted. It’s complicated because Insider Nancy has a net worth of $135 million on a salary of $220,000 a year.
Everyone knows Nancy Pelosi is corrupt. Everyone knows she uses her political power to enrich herself. She secretly brought her son on her trip to Asia with her, presumably so he could broker corrupt business deals on her behalf in Singapore and Taiwan.
And yet there is no one on the left calling for Nancy Pelosi to be prosecuted. Why is that? I thought they wanted all political corruption to be prosecuted?
I thought that’s how healthy democracies worked?
These smug hyperpartisans on social media think that just because they ignore all the corruption on their side, it doesn’t exist.
They don’t actually want a country where all political corruption is prosecuted, because 95% of their favorite politicians would be in jail.
They want a world where Democrats are above the law and Republicans are subject to rampant abuses of power by the FBI and the DoJ. They want double standards.
But they also want to feel smug and morally superior about it, and to avoid having to reckon with the fact that they plainly do not believe in the rule of law and democracy, so they portray this as a simple matter of prosecuting corruption.