GOP, the party for law and order? Not.

 I nearly choked when I heard Speaker Mike Johnson claim the GOP party was the party of law and order after a jury of their candidate's peers found Trump guilty of a crime, and the party faithful erupted to agree not to respect the decision. The party of law and order? Not. This candidate they back so slavishly had asked "his" Supreme Court to declare he is immune from being prosecuted for crimes he committed when he was in office, and wants to be immune if he got elected again.  It also seems among Trump's followers the only fair trials are those where the jury, the judge, and the prosecutors have sworn loyalty to him.  They are hanging their hopes now that the appeal of this state case will make it to the federal Supreme Court with its supermajority of Trump-friendly justices.  The following article from ABC presents a list of disrespects of law and order. by members of the GOP.  https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/gops-law-order-message-odds-defense-trump-analysis/story?id=110712858

The most common response for those who claim the hush money trial was unfair shows a basic misunderstanding of how the jury was chosen (each legal team could challenge, and Trump's team challenged only one), that one juror disagreeing with the other 11 could throw it into a mistrial, and that the evidence presented by the prosecution proved guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. The GOP Trump loyalists are also either missing the point of what was charged or are inventing wild conspiracy theories. 

The other response from Trump loyalists and GOP leaders is throwing flak in the air to mislead voters. They conveniently ignore the basic criminal element that there was a cover-up that was involved, which involved a version of what is commonly called cooking the books. Catch and kill was not the crime. A one-night stand with a porn star or a mistress on the side are not crimes. Paying hush money itself is not a crime. Even lies are not a crime as long as the candidate is not sworn to tell the truth in a justice proceeding. The jury found Trump guilty of violating a state law, cooking the books to keep another crime a secret to benefit him in the election campaign, which is the core criminal charge in the hush money trial. Three of the trials Trump faces are about committing crimes to fool and scam voters.

Members of the GOP and rank and file are more supportive of the riois on January 6 than ever before.  That was no orderly happening: the first violent attempt to overturn an election in the history of the US.  Axios in 20204 on the anniversary of January 6 provided this report of where GOP leadership stood 3 years after the event. https://www.axios.com/2024/01/06/jan-6-republican-response-change-anniversary

Trump himself has called for violence in the wake of the hush money verdict, and he got a response from his violent supporters.  That in no way fits the definition of order. https://www.yahoo.com/news/maga-extremists-threaten-violence-trump-151731438.html

Trump's vision to keep order if re-elected is suppression by the active military of opposition demonstrations and he has a long history of advocating political violence on his behalf. That, too, is not order.  https://mufticforumblog.blogspot.com/2024/06/documented-history-of-trumps-call-to.

Trump blames immigrants for crime and that, too, fails the fact check. That fear mongering success,is likely mixed with white nationalism and overt racism. Nonetheless, voters truly think immigrants are the cause for whatever reason. https://www.axios.com/2024/04/25/trump-biden-americans-illegal-immigration-pollhttps://www.axios.com/2024/04/25/trump-biden-americans-illegal-immigration-poll If Trump is against immigration, he must be for order, right?  https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/analysis-opinion/fact-checking-trumps-speech-crime-and-immigrants

What it is all about briefly: Trials Trump faces are about scamming voters

Brief messaging to break through the media clatter:  

Three trials Trump faces are about committing crimes to fool voters.

Three of the criminal cases in which Donald Trump was charged involve attempts to fool voters to help him win elections or to overturn the elections he lost, and the charges are that he used criminal methods to do so.  These three were about election results, so yes, it is about politics.  All politicians try to spin their arguments to convince voters but few commit crimes themselves to do it, and only a few presidents get caught and face the music, Nixon and Trump. Only Trump has faced a trial for committing a crime and was convicted by a jury.  Nixon resigned to avoid impeachment.    far, Trump supporters have had one uniform defense: the trial was unfair. Chief whiner of course, was Donald Trump as he tried to spin the verdict with a series of lies. https://www.factcheck.org/2024/05/trumps-repeated-claims-on-his-new-york-hush-money-trial

 The hush money case was simply about  Trump's involvement in a conspiracy to cook the books to cover up evidence of Trump's extramarital sexual escapades just before the 2016 election.  Catch and kill was not the crime. A one-night stand with a porn star or a mistress on the side are not crimes. Paying hush money itself is not a crime. What the jury found Trump guilty of was cooking the books to keep it quiet to help him in the election campaign. Three of the four trials Trump faces are about committing crimes to fool and scam voters. The victims were the scammed voters deprived of the information about his character they needed to make a rational judgment about his fitness to be president.

What the hush money trial revealed: Trump, the owner of the National Enquirer, and Michael Cohen as the cut-out, go-between, detail operative, conspired to keep voters from learning that the Access Hollywood tapes were more than just p grabbing and locker-talking, but also about a mistress on the side and the one night stand with a porn star, damning last-minute news that might have cost him the election if it got out. Trump is appealing the verdict, claiming the trial was not fair and he was the victim of rigged corrupt politics, and in every instance, he is facing prosecution that is politically motivated involving "corrupt" officials, judges, and juries.

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 It is doubtful whether the federal case or the other state case in Georgia will go to trial before the election. The federal trial about Trump's role in the coup plot to overturn the 2020 election is awaiting the Supreme Court's slow-walk ruling on whether he is immune from being prosecuted for crimes he committed when he was in office then and in the future if he is elected in 2024. The other state case is about Trump pressuring Georgia officials to lie about the election results, which is currently on hold. 

The documents case facing Trump is also a federal case, is about actions that endangered national security interests while Trump refused to comply with the law. That one may never see a courtroom trial before the election if the Trump appointee judge continues working at a snail's pace. 

Today, the son of the sitting president, Hunter Biden, is facing the music for lying on an application to purchase a gun and is in a trial by jury in the midst of his father's campaign for re-election. The sitting president is not on trial and the outcome of the election is not the issue, but other laws are involved. The current GOP majority House of Representatives tried for the last two years to make the case that Biden benefitted from his son's business dealings and failed. 

Hush money takeaways. The jury was not taken for fools, nor should we

There is nothing more populist than democracy, a government which is ruled by the people, of the people, and for the people. It is rule by ordinary people, based on the rule of law. What Trump is asking us to do is to ignore that rule and make it the rule of, by, and for him.  The rule of law, of the people, for the people does not mean the rule of Trump's party, the law as he says it is, and the methods of enforcement that are to be ignored if they are not in his favor. Democracy's survival, of, by, and for the people, depends on respecting and abiding by the rule of law. On May 30, 2024, the rule of law and ordinary people won when he was found guilty of a crime by a jury of his peers in the hush money trial. The greatest lesson voters can take away from this is the threat of violence seen as his reaction to the verdict and a long record of inciting and advocating violence. Law and order do not apply to him. Part of that message is his self-serving pursuit with "his Supreme Court" for immunity from prosecution of crimes past and future while in office, including any violence he orders or incites others to commit on his behalf. 

His peers do not mean only those sworn to be loyal to him, but the only rigging acceptable to him is that only his loyalists sit on juries.,   His fellow New Yorkers were his peers, and they understood better than anyone else of people similar to him or who had a lifetime of tabloid Trump.  If New Yorkers have an attitude, they will not be taken as fools. (Members of my family and I have lived there; I speak from authority). It seems MAGA in response to the verdict, lost track of what Trump was found guilty of: Trump, the owner of the National Enquirer, and Cohen as the cut-out, go-between, and detail operative, conspired to fool voters that Trump was more than just p grabbing and locker-talking and then covering it up by cooking the books. ..damning last-minute news that might have cost him the election if it got out.. He set out to fool the voters, and he did . Voters were the victims, not Trump, of the crimes he committed. Trump continues to do so to this day. Trump's Repeated Claims on His New York Hush Money Trial - FactCheck.org

Ordinary people won this battle May 30, but the war is not won if more than half of the country buys what Trump sells. Here is what he selling you. The rule of law does not work for him, so throw out the system and let him substitute his.  Let me put it in sports terms if political science theory is not your thing.  He wants you to play a football game without officials, and after the brawl, the injured are carted off,  and his team still loses. So he moves to destroy the National Football League and put in place his like-minded with rules that guarantee he wins next time.  Failing that, he instigates riots by soccer hooligans. 

 Putting it in contemporary examples of the kind of rule of law in dictatorships, look at how sham "justice" works in the Russian trials of our/ basketball star, Brittany Griner, and the now dead opposition leader Navalny, a country and leader Trump so admires, or why so many from Venezuela fled to Miami and from the everlasting communist regime in Cuba.  The form of the rule of law is on paper in these countries, but the rest is how it really works regardless of the ideology, fascist, communist, or just craven lust for power led by a "strong leader."  In Central America, it is the rule of drug gangs or complicit tyrants. Once in power and in control of the levers of government, they are there forever.  Without the rule of law and the stability it creates, private enterprise and the economy cannot thrive, even if it is permitted. Instead, the enterprise that wins is the one who pays the most for protection/or campaign contributions or simply says "yes boss" even when the order that comes from above is stupid or harmful.      Trump only needs to be a dictator for day one to begin the process, using Project 2025,  turning the entire executive branch and the justice department into his instrument of power.  Note: in any of those countries Trump so admires, they at least do not have an immigration problem because no one is lined up at their borders; instead, the world seems to be trying to get into America.  Think about that and ask yourself why, MAGA.

So get a bit of New York attitude and don't be taken for a fool:

• He talks about a small government and states rights, but he plans to have everyone in the federal government pledge loyalty to him in action and in judgment calls. He would nationalize governmental power into a unitary federal system with no checks and balances, punishing states and politicians who choose other directions.
• When he talks about fair elections, it only is fair when he and those loyal to him win. Ordinary people do not count or get counted unless they vote for him.  Fair elections to him are only those whose voting systems and governance he or his loyalists control.  Ordinary people should not run elections unless they are loyal to him first.  Take a page from Russia: whether the communists or Putin are in control, 20% of the voters can vote no. Otherwise, for some reason, 80% always approve and vote for them. That shows they are a democracy, right? Go figure, ordinary people.
•  Abiding by laws, he acts like the dictator he would like to be. However, laws do not apply to him; they only apply to ordinary people. He has the right to disrespect, challenge, or ignore laws  and courts that refrain him, but ordinary people do not.
• No matter how ordinary people vote, he calls it stolen by fraud if he loses any election. If a court rules against him, the judge, the prosecutors, and even the jury are all corrupt...and he never presents evidence of it. He just demands ordinary people take his word for it as a test of loyalty to him. It is his excuse for past losses and an alibi for future losses. 
•  The judicial and political system is corrupt. Trump orates (when they oppose him), so the whole system is corrupt, so Trump says he does not need to abide by it. Heads up, ordinary people. The most corrupt governmental systems on this planet are authttps://www.newsweek.com/allen-weisselberg-may-helping-donald-trump-prison-1905935ocracies and dictatorships, which cater to their funders and oligarchs and throw enough crumbs at ordinary citizens to keep them quiet. 
• He seeks immunity from prosecution for criminal acts he has committed or plans to commit while in office. Ordinary people do not get that privilege. As we know now, too, even his loyal underlings do not get immunity.  Michael Cohen spent 3 years in prison for lies he made on behalf of Trump and was found guilty for the same charges that just snared Trump himself because both Trump and he caused the scheme to happen,. Trump's other loyalist, Allen Weisselberg, Trump organization exec,  is sitting in Rikers now, taking more than one for that gipper. https://www.newsweek.com/allen-weisselberg-may-helping-donald-trump-prison-1905935   Trump's trial attorneys themselves did not call him as a witness, nor did the prosecution, even when the judge asked them about it.
•  To ensure his control and amassing of power to become an effective dictator, he threatens political violence and a presidency devoted to taking revenge on his past opponents and disciplining any not loyal to him.
•  He talks about democracy, but it is not for ordinary people but only those loyal to him. Otherwise, in any authoritarian government or dictatorship of any degree, ordinary people just need to shut up and keep their heads down whether they like what is happening or not. The   authorities will tell you what is permitted to say

Hush money trial: example of the rule of law at work v the rule of an autocrat

 Update: 5/30/2024 This is the rule of law at work that allows juries of a defendant's peers to make that decision in every criminal case. The hush money trial could have gone either way. Today, Trump's fellow New Yorkers found him guilty of felonies.

This is why the rule of law is important and the key to American democracy. In an autocracy, the rule of law depends on the self-interest and judgment of one, and when the chips are down and the ruler has his appointees in place, the ruling and penalty are nearly always in favor of the ruler. The ruler depends on his power to stay controlled by a judicial system he controls. For how that works, Putin's Russia and how he has treated Navalny and Americans like Brittany Griner being held as hostages hoping to make deals in prisoner exchanges. The form of the rule of law is in Russia, but the use/abuse of it favors the autocrat.

Trump is already behaving like the autocrat he wants to be, refusing to accept any results of elections unless they show him winning, calling all judges and court decisions corrupt and the process rigged if they rule against him; and attempting to get "his" Supreme Court to rule he was immune from criminal protection when and if again he is in office and commits a crime. He has taken over his political party in total in preparation for 2024, requiring all those who think they have a political future to endorse him and to repeat the mantra: the 2020 election was stolen, or to resign or not run for re-election. . The question becomes, will he get away with it?

The warning to everyone else: If you think he was kidding about being a dictator on day one, he is already acting like one and making preparations to turn the entire executive branch into "his," replacing civil servants with loyalists per Project 2025, including the Department of Justice and the Defense Department brass, to use force or the threat of force to put down demonstrations who object to him.