Editorial

Demagogue’s Demise

Special Counsel Jack Smith has finally brought the “main event” indictments in US District Court for the District of Columbia, charging Donald J. Trump with four more felonies:

• Conspiracy to defraud the United States by using dishonesty, fraud, and deceit to impair, obstruct, and defeat the lawful federal government function by which the results of the presidential election are collected, counted, and certified by the federal government;

• Conspiracy to corruptly obstruct and impede the Jan. 6 congressional proceeding at which the collected results of the presidential election are counted and certified;

• Obstruction of and attempt to obstruct the certification of the electoral vote; and

• Conspiracy against the right to vote and to have one’s vote count.

The Aug. 1 indictments bring to 78 the total of felony charges brought against Trump in federal and state courts so far, and Trump is likely to blow past 80 felonies when Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis reports grand jury results from Atlanta, Ga.

In addition to Trump, the indictment implicates six unnamed conspirators who may be charged later; but it also indirectly implicates Republican officials who have embraced the Big Lie that claimed Democrats stole the 2020 presidential election from Trump, and now defend his “First Amendment right to lie.”

Trump claims Jack Smith, acting for the Biden administration, was criminalizing his free speech, but Smith addressed that claim in the first page of the 45-page indictment.

“The defendant had a right, like every American, to speak publicly about the election and even to claim, falsely, that there had been outcome-determinative fraud during the election and that he had won,” Smith wrote. Trump had a constitutional right to tell his “prolific lies” – falsely claiming, for instance, that “there had been substantial fraud in certain states, such as that large numbers of dead, non-resident, non-citizen, or otherwise ineligible voters had cast ballots, or that voting machines had changed votes for the Defendant to votes for Biden.” All those lies were covered by the First Amendment. “Indeed, in many cases, the Defendant did pursue these methods of contesting the election results. His efforts to change the outcome in any state through recounts, audits, or legal challenges were uniformly unsuccessful.”

While Trump continues to insist he believe the election was stolen, the indictment lists the following – mostly Republicans — as among those who told Trump the election was legitimate: the vice president, senior leaders of the Justice Department, the Director of National Intelligence, the Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, senior White House attorneys, senior campaign staffers, state legislators and officials, and state and federal courts.

Trump disregarded them all, and used his position to weaponize his lies in an attempt to overthrow democracy. He crossed the line when he tried to pressure state officials to ignore election results and change electoral votes for Biden. He plotted to organize fake slates of electors in seven swing states (Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, New Mexico, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin). And he pressured Vice President Pence to refuse to certify the election. Then, after it became public on Jan. 6 that the vice president would not fraudulently alter the election results, “a large and angry crowd — including many individuals whom the Defendant had deceived into believing the Vice President could and might change the election results — violently attacked the Capitol and halted the proceeding. As violence ensued, the Defendant and 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 based on those claims.”

As the indictment states, “The defendant’s knowingly false statements were integral to his criminal plans.”

Of course, under the law, Trump is considered innocent until proven guilty, but Smith has presented a pretty solid case. And, unlike the previous federal indictments in Florida relating to Trump’s refusal to return classified documents he had taken from the White House, and his alleged obstruction of that investigation, the Jan. 6 case shouldn’t be delayed by concerns over security clearances of defense attorneys and the sensitive nature of the documents at issue.

Republicans aren’t helping their case by embracing Trump’s First Amendment defense that he is being charged for his beliefs. They remain in thrall to the grifter who emerged in 2015 as a demagogic force in the Republican Party, who took advantage of the racist backlash against the presidency of Barack Obama.

Description of Trump as a populist is ridiculous, as his whole shtick was to distract White working-class voters from the malignant works of corporate monopolists. When he unexpectedly won the presidency, he helped billionaires consolidate their control of the party, and rewarded them with a major tax break as he completed the transition of the Republican Party into the Greedy Oligarch Party.

Trump’s cult is the opposite of the Populist movement, whose roots go back to the 1880s when farmers formed alliances to challenge the power of railroads, corporate monopolies and bankers in what became known as the Gilded Age. Farmers’ alliances organized to educate working people — Black and White, male and female — to be informed voters. They became a force on the left to force reforms on the Democratic and Republican parties heading into the 20th century.

When they organized as a political party in 1890, the Populists called for corporate regulation, a progressive income tax on the rich and increased funding for public education — reforms that were achieved in the 20th century, but have been under attack by Republicans since the Reagan administration. The Populists also called for direct election of senators and female members pressed for women’s suffrage. The People’s Party largely fell apart after the 1896 election but Populists helped grow the progressive wings of the Democratic and Republican parties and many of their proposals made it into Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal in the 1930s.

Trump is no populist, but he has fooled enough people to keep him in a commanding lead to win the Republican nomination again, and polls show him basically tied with President Biden, who has revived the economy since the COVID pandemic, but he isn’t getting credit for it because working families still can’t pay the rent, and gas prices are going back up as oil companies seek record profits, and the corporate media won’t tell them why that is not Biden’s fault.

We can hope for quick trial on Trump’s efforts to overturn the election. In the meantime we have a year and a quarter to convince friends and neighbors it’s worth their while to vote for Biden and the Democrats in 2024, because we can’t afford giving Trump and his radical enablers another grab at power. — JMC

From The Progressive Populist, September 1, 2023

Populist.com