Trump's defenders are willfully blind to the threat he poses

Dan Rodricks

Jun 10

I have read the indictment against Trump. You should, too. You can find it here.

While I had already concluded he was the worst president in American history, his conviction of the charges will forever end any doubt that he was also the most dangerous. Should Trump be found guilty — and we have to wait on that — no citizen of this country should defend him, much less vote for him.

Defending a convicted Trump would mean a person is willfully blind to the threat he poses. It means they are unable to discern a threat to national security; no person thus disabled should hold any position in the government. Certainly no member of Congress who defends Trump should have any kind of national intelligence clearance.

As for the predictable Republican defense of Trump you're hearing right now — that the Department of Justice under President Biden has been "weaponized" against the former president — that is rubbish.

For as long as I can remember — and I covered my first federal corruption trial in 1976 — defendants and their sycophants have always cried foul that the feds were after them for political reasons. A Republican U.S. Attorney in Baltimore prosecuted numerous Democratic officials, including the governor of Maryland. As I recall, all defendants at some point claimed federal prosecutors were "conducting a witch hunt" or "a fishing expedition," or they were "out to reverse the results of the last election." All defendants protested their innocence. I can only recall one high-profile case — that of the Democratic state's attorney of Baltimore — in which the defendants were found not guilty. Federal prosecutors usually only bring charges they have a high likelihood of proving in court.
The state prosecutor in Maryland, a deep blue state, prosecuted officials of both parties over the years.
In my experience — and we have had many corruption cases in Maryland — the defendants who uttered the loudest protests usually learned to shut their mouths about the motives of prosecutors. It was counterproductive to arranging good plea deals to limit the amount of time they'd spend in prison. Defendants and their defenders became very quiet, even humble.
Only recently, in the Trump era, have we heard accusations of sinister prosecutorial motivations expressed loud and long.
But I can almost guarantee you this: At some point in the process, the unpredictable politics of the 2024 election year notwithstanding, Trump's defenders are going to become very quiet. That's not wishful thinking. That's just human nature: Even fools eventually read the writing on the wall.
The only thing that would change my forecast would be Trump becoming president again. That would be a catastrophic development: A lawless president, a clear and present danger to the country.