Trump blasted the latest charges against him as "persecution of a political opponent" Thursday, after pleading not guilty to committing fraud in his bid to overturn his 2020 election loss to Joe Biden.
But, of course, he's wrong.
He's being prosecuted, not persecuted.
Persecution means "hostility and ill-treatment, especially on the basis of ethnicity, religion, or sexual orientation or political beliefs."
This is not about Trump's ignorant and twisted political beliefs. Each of the three cases brought against him are based on evidence that he violated federal or state laws.
"Trump is not the victim of political persecution," David Graham wrote in The Atlantic. "A bedrock principle of American law is that no one — not even the president, much less the former president — is above the law, and if they commit crimes, they must answer for them."
Nor have the indictments against Trump turned the U.S. into a "banana republic," as Rep. Andy Harris, Maryland's lone Republican in Congress and staunch Trumpie, tweeted Tuesday night. My column today is about how wrong Harris is about that — and how his own actions are more "banana republican" than anything we've seen from Jack Smith and the Department of Justice.
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