Come November of next year, Donald Trump might be elected president of the nation whose democracy he attempted to overthrow. Although it’s early, Trump is polling strongly against his successor, President Joe Biden, despite having been indicted for state and federal crimes, including a conspiracy to keep himself in power after his 2020 election loss.
The indictment, filed by Special Counsel Jack Smith yesterday, offers a detailed recounting of Trump’s effort to “overturn the legitimate results of the 2020 presidential election and retain power,” using as pretext claims of voter fraud that Trump knew were false—in the words of one of his advisers, “conspiracy shit beamed down from the mothership.” In addition to simply making unfounded allegations of electoral fraud, which is irresponsible but protected as free speech, Trump and his advisers hatched one bizarre plan after another to illegitimately seize power by overturning the election. If you’re trying to understand how, despite all of this, Trump could still be president again, you need look no further than the reactions of his primary rivals and the conservative media.
Despite acknowledging that he “had not read the indictment,” Florida Governor Ron DeSantis tweeted that prosecuting someone for trying to overthrow constitutional democracy in America was an example of the “weaponization of the federal government.” Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina wrote that he was “concerned about the weaponization of Biden’s DOJ and its immense power used against political opponents.” The Fox News host Jesse Watters called the indictment “a political war crime.” National Review editorialized that the indictment was an attempt to “criminalize protected political speech and flimsy legal theories.” Then there are those who insist that it is the prosecutions themselves that sustain Trump by provoking a defensive reaction in the conservative base—even as right-wing media figures tell their pliant audiences that those prosecutions are politically motivated, though they surely know better.
If you’re wondering how Trump has survived as a candidate for office, you can look squarely at the conservative elites in politics and media—including many people who would prefer to be rid of him—who have staked out the position that trying to overthrow the government is not illegal if a Republican does it. Those defending Trump after his indictment over his attempted autogolpe are not opposing the politicization of justice; they are demanding it.
Smith’s indictment documents in detail that Trump’s attempt to stay in power was not mere verbal advocacy, but a series of comprehensive schemes that failed. Trump attempted to coerce Republican state legislators into overturning the results in their states on the basis of his false claims of election fraud. He and his co-conspirators hatched a scheme to put forth “fraudulent electors” to be used as a substitute for the real ones so as to alter the election results. He tried to force the Department of Justice to substantiate those false claims in order to provide pretext for overturning the outcome of the election, then threatened to replace the department’s leadership with one of his cronies. He tried to pressure then–Vice President Mike Pence to use his nonexistent authority to hold up the election certification so the results could be overturned. Trump invited a mob to Washington, D.C., on the false premise that the election had been stolen and the crowd’s presence could change the outcome, and then tried to exploit the chaos of the riot he inspired on January 6 by pressuring senators to continue to hold up the certification. The indictment shows that, when told that seizing power would lead to “riots in the streets,” his advisers contemplated using the military to repress prodemocracy protesters by force, turning the nation’s military against its own citizens for opposing a coup. “That’s why there’s an Insurrection Act,” one Trump “co-conspirator” said to the deputy White House counsel, according to the indictment.
Saying that this is mere “political speech and flimsy legal theories” is ludicrous. If you ask to borrow money from a bank, that is not a crime. But if you demand cash at gunpoint, it is a crime, and laws against armed robbery do not become a threat to free speech simply because the act involves saying the words “empty the register.” If Trump had merely bloviated about fraud without taking material steps to stay in power illegally, there would be no crime. But Trump did so much more than fume.
More to the point, the indictment underscores the extent to which Republicans with authority tried to resist Trump’s efforts to seize power. Most of his attorneys and advisers told him the election was over. The then-leadership of the Justice Department threatened mass resignations if Trump replaced those in charge with his own quislings to further his conspiracy. Republican state legislators rejected his demands to overturn the results in their states. The Supreme Court did not go along with ratifying the campaign’s nonsensical legal claims. Pence, up to that point a reliable Trump enabler, refused to assert power he did not have. Indeed, if there is any evidence of “weaponization of the Justice Department,” it is in Trump’s attempts to use its authority to aid his conspiracy to seize power.
I do not want to overstate things here: Refusing to go along with an attempted coup is the minimum to be expected from the political elite in a democratic system. They fulfilled their responsibilities in doing so, and that’s much better than the alternative. We do not know if they would resist so strongly a second time.
Outside the administration and conservative movement, Trump’s political opponents defeated him at the ballot box, impeached him, and were prevented from convicting him by Republican legislators. The independent counsel assigned to the case has indicted him on the basis of a detailed record of his crimes that offers clear evidence of criminal intent and action.
The hard-core authoritarian right that has risen in Trump’s shadow, the one contemplating political purges, noncompetitive elections, and iron-fisted state repression of its political opposition, has no commitment to democracy as an ideal, and its continued support is no mystery. The group is small in number, even if a committed political vanguard can have influence beyond its numbers, especially given its growing acceptance in mainstream-Republican circles.
The majority of conservative elites, however, retains some philosophical commitment to democracy and self-governance. They have nevertheless repeatedly failed the most basic test of democratic citizenship posed to them, defending the right of their public to choose their leaders. Right-wing media knowingly encouraged the delusions of the conservative base that the election was stolen out of fear that their audiences would flee. Republican lawmakers, now including Trump’s own primary opponents, have validated the idea that Trump is a victim of political persecution rather than someone who engaged in a conspiracy to keep himself in power, because they fear the electoral cost of opposing him. Immobilized by their own cowardice, both groups remain indefinitely in his thrall.
These two factions are the only ones with the moral authority among conservative voters to erode the fanatical devotion that sustains Trump. No one outside their coalition can do this persuasive work, because of the right’s spectacular success in convincing their own supporters that anyone who is not a conservative is a mortal enemy to all they hold dear.
Yet conservative elites lack the courage and will to use their influence to oppose Trump, and that is why he remains a force in American politics. Everyone else in the American system has done their duty. The responsibility for Trump’s ongoing political relevance is borne solely by the right-wing elites who, despite a desire to be free of him, continue to sacrifice their own dignity to his ambition.