Conservatives, aren’t you sick of Trump’s nonsense?
Timothy P. Carney
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Maybe the federal charges against Donald Trump will be as weak as Alvin Bragg’s charges were. Certainly, President Joe Biden’s Justice Department is politicized and weaponized. And maybe Trump didn’t harm the country at all by taking and showing around secret or classified documents that didn’t belong to him.
But “should Trump be convicted?” isn’t the only question on the table these days. For Republicans, a more operative question is, “Should we nominate this guy for president again?”
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And I would answer that with one more question: Come on, aren’t you sick of Trump’s nonsense?
This entire incident, in which Trump brought presidential records to Mar-a-Lago, obstructed the efforts by federal authorities to regain them, and reportedly waved the records — which he admitted were secret and not unclassified — before journalists, reflects the reasons he’s unfit to be president and a terrible standard-bearer for the party.
First, treating presidential records as his own property is typical of Trump, who seemed to believe that the federal government was like the Trump Organization — that the government belonged to him.
Those records didn’t belong to him. The Presidential Records Act states, “The United States shall reserve and retain complete ownership, possession, and control of Presidential records.” Do presidents walk off with presidential records at times? Yes. But Trump didn’t accidentally or thoughtlessly walk off with presidential records; he stubbornly insisted they were his.
The conservative view is that we have lots of laws that exist to constrain the government, including the president. Trump never accepted that.
Second, Trump’s absurd efforts to obstruct and cover up his taking these documents show how thoroughly he lacks decent counsel. By the time he left office, he had burned through every competent and knowledgeable attorney he could find — Don McGahn, Pat Cipollone, Bill Barr, etc. He was left with pillow salesmen and worse.
Why? Because any qualified staffers he tried to hire quickly angered him by telling him that being president didn’t give him absolute power to do with the federal government whatever he wanted.
Consider this handicap when you consider a potential second Trump term. He will be unable to surround himself with competent and ethical counsel, making him totally ineffective.
Finally, this incident reflects how utterly self-serving Trump is. What the hell was he trying to accomplish by taking these documents and refusing to return them? Was it so he could grind some axes? Was it for his own amusement?
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At least when Ronald Reagan did his unethical stuff, he was trying to win the Cold War and rescue hostages. Trump did what he did with no concern for the fallout and with no greater good in mind.
When the indictment comes down, we’ll have a clearer picture of his guilt or innocence. We don’t have to wait, though, to have a clear picture of Trump’s unfitness to lead.