After a criminal complaint against Trump, his party closes ranks

His biggest political rival (Governor DeSantis of Florida) immediately promised on Thursday that he will not extradite Donald Trump with a request for legal assistance from the state of New York. The man (former Vice President Pence) he would prefer to see hanged, called the charges against Trump – unread, because not yet public – “a disgrace”. The channel (Fox News) where they mock the former president behind his back, warned Thursday evening that “the country will not put up with this”. The presenter felt it himself, he said, “I’m angry, I don’t like this.”

Once again Trump knows his conservative compatriots, with whom the phrase the rule of law usually up front, to get them to bend or even abolish the rules of the rule of law in order to support him. On Thursday it was announced that a grand jury of New York – 23 average citizens of that state – finds the evidence against Trump so convincing that they give prosecutor Alvin Bragg the green light to open a criminal case against the former president, unique in American history.

This prosecution of Trump – there are a handful of other cases in preparation – most likely revolves around the hush money that Trump’s lawyer says he paid to one (or two) woman(s) who allegedly had a brief affair with Trump. The money was then allegedly illegally declared as “legal expenses” – a possible violation of campaign law.

For some, the prosecution is the ultimate proof that the rule of law is healthy: even a still powerful former president cannot evade legal authority. For the other, this is the ultimate proof of injustice: they believe that Trump is being prosecuted merely because he is the opponent of the incumbent president.

The latter feeling is continuously fed by Trump himself and reinforced by the media who see him as the supreme populist of their dreams. Trump has harnessed the anger of a large part of the American population (in short: ‘they always have to have me too’) and it is very difficult for his party members to evade these social forces.

Even rivals for the Republican nomination for the November 2024 presidential race think they should give him full support because there is no route to the presidency without Trump and his Make America Great Againmovement. The few Republicans who have turned away from him in recent years have been dumped by their party.

A twist of its own

The Republican politician who most sharply embodies this dilemma is Florida Governor Ron DeSantis (44), who is preparing for a presidential campaign. He is happy to compare his own capabilities as governor to Trump’s, but implicitly. “I am not a bringer of chaos,” he said in an interview, with a nod to the most shared criticism of the former president.

When Trump himself predicted two weeks ago that he would soon be “arrested”, DeSantis remained silent for a day and a half. He was immediately blasted by Trump supporters online and on TV. At a press conference, DeSantis later tried to put his own spin on it. He blasted District Attorney Alvin Bragg as partisan. And he tried to sneak in another little Trump attack: “I don’t know what it takes to buy off a porn star.”

Now DeSantis is back in the loft all the way. After the news broke on Thursday that Trump will be prosecuted, the governor a statement out, in which he, without mentioning the name of the suspect, called the criminal complaint “un-American”. He again suspects Bragg and said that “Florida will not cooperate with Trump’s deportation,” who was in the Sunshine State lives.

Murder on Fifth Avenue

The question is whether DeSantis’ spin will be enough to help his electoral chances. But the fact that he is willing to use his office to thwart the course of justice is telling. Trump directs his rival here like a puppet. And it is now up to Trump what the next step looks like. His lawyers said the former president will voluntarily report to New York on Tuesday for arraignment. But if he suspects greater gains from a more adversarial stance — and that stance has already earned him more than $1.5 million in donations since he predicted his arrest — Trump won’t budge.

What such a scenario looks like is as uncertain as ‘January 6’ was uncertain when Trump invited his supporters to Washington and that things would get ‘wild’. In any case, that day proved that his supporters are willing to use force to protect their “Avenger” (Trump’s own word).

When Trump was a candidate in 2016, he said he could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue and then lose no voter. Newspapers at the time still wrote that it was a joke.