All Trump’s other stuff – dodgy tax, paying off prostitutes, stealing White House documents and dumping them in his toilet etc, never bothered me much. We all know he’s vain, loose-mouthed, corrupt, and dumb. But so are many other people. If you despised everyone who was a bit thick and / or a bit hooky, you’d be cross 24×7 lol.
No, it was Trump’s role in trying to overthrow US democracy that really defined the character of the man. That was a Rubicon moment for me.
Up to then, I knew he was a draft-dodging, venal, narcissistic, Putin-loving, thick-as-champ moron.
But until 6 January, I hadn’t realised he was a wannabe-dictator and a traitor, someone who holds both democracy and the US Constitution in utter contempt.
The guy is an unadulterated piece of spray-tanned shit.
Read the indictment:
According to the charges, not only did Trump try to overturn the election; he presided over a clutch of co-conspirators who intended to put down any further challenges to Trump’s continued rule by force. According to the indictment:
The Deputy White House Counsel reiterated to Co-Conspirator 4 that there had not been outcome-determinative fraud in the election and that if the Defendant [Trump] remained in office nonetheless, there would be “riots in every major city in the United States.” Co-Conspirator 4 responded, “Well, [Deputy White House Counsel], that’s why there’s an Insurrection Act.”
The Insurrection Act allows the president to deploy the U.S. armed forces against American citizens. The alleged plot inside the White House was not merely to invalidate an election; it included the possibility of unleashing the American military against its own people.
As this UK corporate lawyer commentator notes:
“A future historian, tasked with working out from contemporaneous sources what ‘witch-hunt’ meant in 2023, would conclude it meant a slow methodical and evidence-based process, with full due-process rights, used to prosecute someone with significant political and media power.”
Disjecta 