CNN
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Donald Trump has used a break from criminal cases related to past elections to cast a familiar dark shadow over the upcoming election.
The presumptive Republican nominee declined to say whether he would accept the results of November’s White House race against President Joe Biden, saying in an interview with the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel on Wednesday that if the election If you aren’t honest, you are, he warned. We must fight for the rights of our country. ”
The former president had been campaigning in Wisconsin and Michigan before arriving in Manhattan on Thursday for the resumption of his first criminal trial on charges of falsifying business records to conceal a 2016 hush-money payment to a movie actress. He was scheduled to return to court. election.
His comments about the 2024 election were especially ominous given his refusal to accept his 2020 defeat based on false claims of voter fraud. They also recalled warning his supporters before the Jan. 6, 2021, mob attack on the U.S. Capitol that “if we don’t fight like hell, we won’t have a country anymore.”
President Trump’s warning is just the latest example of extreme rhetoric this week that suggests his threat to American democracy is unabated.
On Wednesday, at a sun-drenched airfield in Michigan, he appeared, his impossibly long red tie floating in the breeze, conjuring up a vision of a strong future America that would have horrified the nation’s Founding Fathers. Ta.
President Trump has cut an unrecognizable figure from the tough former president who daily plays a dirge of frustration over the hush money trial outside Judge Juan Melchán’s courtroom. And in an apparent defiance of prosecutors seeking to hold him accountable in multiple cases, President Trump on Wednesday held his most energetic rally in months, with his second term even more law-enforced than his first. He indicated that he would try it.
President Trump vowed, “When I return to the White House, I will stop the pillage, rape, massacre, and destruction of America’s suburbs, cities, and towns,” including mass deportations of illegal immigrants and crackdowns on the bureaucracy and higher education. etc. promised. What he called the “communists and criminals” of the Democratic Party. Earlier, in Wisconsin, he updated the national hellscape of “American carnage” and said the nation was under siege from “extremists and far-left agitators terrorizing college campuses.” he warned.
President Trump sought to capitalize on the protests that have spread to universities across the country, claiming that “New York was under siege last night” and praising the police who quelled the protests at Columbia University. “It was a beautiful thing to look at, the best of New York. You saw them putting up ladders and breaking windows to get in, it’s dangerous,” he said.
Since the hush money trial began last month, he has held fundraisers and local political activities, but has not held any formal rallies. (One event in North Carolina was canceled due to the storm.) But Wednesday, the former president and potential future president used his midweek vacation for his own criminal trial. , it was the first time he had driven through a battleground state that could be returned to whites. House. His raucous reception before a large crowd in Michigan was a reminder that days of potentially damaging testimony have had no impact on his appeal to supporters. .
Recent polls have shown that Trump has an even chance of winning the presidency, and a dynamic return to the stage where Trump, rather than Judge Murchan, wields authority is likely to occur during President Joe Biden’s second term. He emphasized his political threat to expectations. When it comes to specific issues, polls show Trump leading Biden on most issues, including the economy, immigration and the Israel-Hamas war. One of Biden’s few strengths is abortion rights. Vice President Kamala Harris drove home on abortion rights during a trip to Florida on Wednesday, highlighting the state’s new six-week ban and Trump over the Supreme Court’s reversal of Roe v. Wade. He criticized him 21 times. .
David Axelrod, a CNN political analyst and former senior strategist to President Barack Obama, said after days of media coverage of the court case that, in normal political times, would likely have forced Trump out of the race. I gave my frank opinion on Wednesday. “The question is, how is this whole thing impacting the campaign? I think there’s little evidence at this point that it’s impacting the campaign at all,” he said.
Axelrod acknowledged that the ruling could change course, but told CNN’s Erin Burnett: ”
Six months before the election, President Trump’s fiery campaign rhetoric is becoming more of a blueprint for a potential second term than an exercise in performative demagogy.
This is especially true in the wake of an interesting and sometimes chilling interview in Time magazine published this week. The 86-minute recording, which can be read on the magazine’s website, offers his most unflinching personal statement yet about how he plans to change the country in his second term. He proposes a brand of quasi-authoritarian leadership based on personal whims and a desire for retaliation, but the presidency is constrained by law, the Constitution, and a backlash from the Republican base against unrestricted executive power. They hardly acknowledge that it is a job that has been given to them.
In the past, pro-Trump think tanks and advocacy groups have discussed how Trump, as the 47th president, will eviscerate the administrative state, introduce strict immigration policies, and disrupt dozens of U.S. global leadership positions through a return to “America.” He has presented a policy manifesto on whether to break with years of tradition. First, use steroids. Trump’s aides have sometimes warned that no one speaks for the former president other than Trump himself. But in an interview with Time, Trump explains in his own words how the outgoing president who tried unsuccessfully to overthrow democracy would act if he regained power.
He said he would launch an immediate effort to locate, imprison and deport millions of illegal immigrants, and on Wednesday he renewed his pledge with the words “We will launch the largest domestic deportation operation in U.S. history.” has been updated. President Trump told Time that he is prepared to fire any U.S. attorney who does not carry out his orders to prosecute someone. President Trump also said he would consider pardoning hundreds of his supporters who stormed the U.S. Capitol to overturn the 2020 election, making it a means of political expression that would put a wrecking ball on the sanctity of democratic elections. justified the use of violence. He has threatened to deploy the National Guard to quell campus protests and participate in immigration crackdowns, and appears intent on breaking narrow exemptions for the use of military on the mainland. President Trump has described the Guard as his personal militia rather than a legally defined reserve force.
As the former president’s firm intentions become more apparent, his desire for revenge against his political rivals, who spend time in custody in a Manhattan courtroom, appears to be growing stronger. “Never forget that our enemies are trying to take away my freedom. I will never allow them to take your freedom,” Trump told an audience in Freeland, Michigan. , and denounced the four criminal indictments and several large civil court verdicts against him. However, the former president does not appear to have violated a gag order that prohibits him from targeting witnesses, court staff, or even the judges’ own families. He was fined $9,000 for the violation Tuesday and will have another hearing on the matter Thursday in Merchan.
His words carry more weight not only because the election is approaching and Mr. Trump’s strength in the polls. In an interview with Time, Trump appeared confident and determined to learn the lessons of his first term, which he claimed was let down by “bad” officials. And this all comes as the Supreme Court considers his efforts to establish near-absolute immunity from prosecution for acts committed by presidents while in office.
At one point, Time’s Eric Cortelessa asked President Trump why so many Americans were bothered by Trump’s past jokes about being a dictator for a day and abolishing the Constitution. I asked him if he was there and if he understood. In one of the most revealing yet disturbing answers of the entire interview, the former president simply replied, “I think a lot of people like it.”
He’s not wrong. Trump crushed his rivals in 2021 despite a disgraceful exit from Washington, two impeachments, and a legal quagmire that would be notable for any defendant, let alone a potential future president. , jumped into the race for the Republican nomination. His strength is that millions of Americans support policies that, if implemented, would likely destroy many of the safeguards to presidential power and test the rule of law. It shows. In short, Trump’s success so far in this election is not just a story of a singular political force, but a story of the emotions of millions of people in the most important democracy on earth at a tense political moment. There is also something to explain.
Trump always has a caveat. His first term was a tumultuous festival led by a president who was unfocused and often appeared at odds with his own administration. At times, Trump is surprisingly reluctant to take risks that could damage his popularity. Therefore, there is no guarantee that he will actually be able to implement his hard-line policies. The interview also served as a reminder that Trump’s presidency can come across as vacuous as well as dangerous. He often had a rudimentary understanding of policy and world realities. His potential approach to the abortion rights challenge to China appears to be based as much on personal hunch and prejudice as on his considered strategy. And if he implements his toughest policies as president on immigration and mass layoffs of civil servants, he will face a new showdown with the courts.
But Trump will not be coming to Washington in January 2025 as a rookie. He told Time magazine: “My advantage now is that I know everyone. I know people. I know good people, bad people, stupid people and smart people. I know everyone. When I first arrived in Washington, I didn’t know many people. I had to rely on others.”
This sense that things are suddenly getting serious was highlighted at the White House Correspondents Association’s annual dinner on Saturday. Mr. Biden recalled that Mr. Trump had made no secret of his “attack on our democracy” and emphasized his predecessor’s desire for “vengeance.” He added: “Eight years ago, we could have dismissed this as just another Trump story. But not anymore. Not after January 6th.”
Word from the two presidents is that only one of them can win a second term in November, but the stakes of the 2024 election are becoming increasingly clear.
