The almost 80 year old American President did NOT get over on Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg….
It hurts Donald…..
Getting his Justice Dept. to indict others will NOT make Trump’s conviction go away….
If the secret to understanding a strongman is to identify his greatest weakness, one place to start with Donald Trump is his obsession with his own eventual obituaries. Trump knows that they will mention his history-making presidencies, his ostentatious wealth, and his unusual charisma—but he also is aware that when he dies, people will remember his conviction on 34 felony counts, and that there is nothing he can do about it. Even now, White House officials have told me, Trump rages about how his guilty verdict is sure to be mentioned way up high in his obituaries.
Trump’s fixation on all of this leapt to mind today when I heard that he’d called for the arrests of the governor of Illinois and the mayor of Chicago—not just because it explains Trump’s psychology, but also because this obsession is one of the driving motivations of his revenge crusade, which is now escalating dramatically.
It bears pausing on the starkness of these facts: The president of the United States today demanded the jailing of two elected officials who belong to the opposing political party. Trump did not offer evidence that Governor J. B. Pritzker and Mayor Brandon Johnson had committed a crime, nor did he even suggest what charge either man would face, though the outburst presumably stemmed from their opposition to Trump sending the National Guard to Chicago to protect ICE officers.
This, of course, is hardly the first time Trump has urged the incarceration of his political foes. (This is the man who led “Lock her up” chants at his rallies, after all.) But what makes this moment so significant is what happened a short time later, in a courtroom just outside Washington, D.C. There, former FBI Director James Comey was arraigned on charges of making false statements to Congress. Trump’s threats are no longer bluster. The guardrails of his first term are gone. He is instead surrounded by enablers, including a pliant attorney general. The federal government is taking legal action against those whom Trump wants punished. Retribution is here.
White house aides scoffed to reporters in the first months of this administration that the talk of vengeance was an overblown media creation and that Trump was instead focusing on matters such as tariffs and resolving global conflicts. They acknowledged that during a signature campaign speech, Trump had flat-out declared, “I am your retribution,” promising his supporters that he’d strike back at those in power who they believed had oppressed them or curtailed their freedoms. He would simply right some wrongs, his aides claimed, by, say, pardoning the January 6 rioters—and yes, yes, all of them, including those who’d violently attacked police officers. Even as those around him, led by his aide Stephen Miller and others using Project 2025 as a playbook, began to challenge powerful institutions—such as law firms and universities—that they believed had long worked against conservatives, the president’s aides insisted that talk of revenge was just hyperbole….
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Trump has never much cared for the principles of the criminal-justice system….
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Trump has insisted that the Department of Justice under Joe Biden was weaponized against him, claims goaded on by aides such as Miller and Russell Vought, who also champion efforts to expand the president’s power over all facets of the executive branch. And Bondi’s appearance before the Senate oversight committee yesterday was defined by her refusal to answer basic questions about her work—including the Comey indictment—as well as an obsequiousness to Trump that suggested that she was indeed comfortable acting as the president’s personal lawyer.
“The firewall between the political side and the DOJ has completely eroded,” Senator Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island…
image….The Atlantic
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