The Former Guy belongs in prison! Think Nuremberg

Echo opinion published in The Capital Gazette, an Annapolis Maryland newspaper written by Richard Striner:

Former Guy Donald Trump, the seditionist, is still on the loose instead of being in jail where he belongs. 

In fact, the Justice Department should have indicted Trump months ago, for the felonious acts that he committed. But no charges are pending. Must we content ourselves with the small satisfaction of watching New York go after him for being a mere tax cheat?

Perhaps, but it’s a sad commentary on the shocking vulnerability of American democracy.

Look at the illegal things that Trump did: he told election officials in Georgia to “find” enough votes to put him over; he tried to use appropriated funds to bribe foreign officials; he used his office to enrich himself; he made federal workers break the Hatch Act; he broke campaign finance laws; and he obstructed justice. His attorney general, William Barr, found a mendacious way to get him off on that particular charge, but Barr’s action deserves to be reversed.

And then, after committing these despicable acts, Trump tried to overturn our democracy. He desecrated the foundations of our national heritage. And he is still doing it.

Former FBI Director James Comey said that Trump is like a mob boss. If the Justice Department will not take action, the crimes that Trump committed are precedents. Is that really what our prosecutors want?

Even U.S. Senator Mitch McConnell (R-KY) said that Trump’s disgraceful incitement of the January 6 insurrection — his brazen attempt to overturn a democratic election — should be handled by the courts. How about it, prosecutors? (Attorney General Merrick Garland!)

Granted, any capable prosecutor wants to build an airtight case — one that can stand up against the legal hitches that can let the guilty go free. But look at all the massive crimes that Trump committed. Are we really to believe it is impossible to make a good case against a monstrous offender like this one?

The stakes are even higher since Trump, like many of the people who used to be classified as “criminally insane,” is patently ... insane. A sociopath, he creates an alternative reality, which is to say he is delusional. And this is dangerous because his delusions are spreading. An appalling number of people believe his lies.

According to polls, roughly 80 per cent of Republicans believe that Trump won the 2020 election, notwithstanding the fact that all the legal challenges to the election results collapsed in court due to sheer lack of evidence. But that doesn’t seem to matter to these people. Nothing does.

A “fanatic” was once defined as a person who will not believe any evidence and whose evidence cannot be believed. By this standard, a majority of registered Republicans are now fanatics. Trump bit them, and they went mad.

It’s interesting to wonder what Ronald Reagan would think about the cult that has taken over his party. In his “Evil Empire” speech, he accused the Soviets of reserving unto themselves “the right to commit any crime, to lie, to cheat,” in order to perpetrate their system of tyranny. That’s exactly what Trump and his minions are doing to the Republican Party, but their agenda of course is not communism. It’s fascism.

Never before in American history has anything like this happened. For four hallucinatory years, the White House was in the hands of a creature whose appetites will never achieve satisfaction short of dictatorial rule. The key to his method is to spew brazen lies that flip reality inside out ; he accuses his victims of doing to him what he is obviously doing to them. The hellish satisfaction of this is what he lives for.

It isn’t just the fact that the things that he says are untrue; it’s the fact that almost everything he says is the reverse of the truth, and his expressions on his face as he undermines rationality — expressions that vary from belligerent snarls (his face convulses) to sleazy smirks (the satisfaction of a thug) — say it all.

Trump’s henchmen carry out all the orders that he gives them — they parrot every lie — for the most despicable of reasons: lust for power.

They are stalking our political landscape, having taken over a once-normal party. The enablers of Trump would be willing participants in an openly fascist state — they have shown that beyond any doubt — so we might as well call them what they are: out-and-out fascists.

https://www.newstalk.com/podcasts/highlights-from-moncrieff/the-history-of-the-nuremberg-trials

It is easy to imagine people like Sen. Ron Johnson, and Reps. Matt Gaetz, Marjory Taylor Greene, Louie Gohmert, Paul Gosar, and Kevin McCarthy standing in the docks at some future Nuremberg tribunal. If Trump should ever achieve dictatorial power, they would promptly carry out his orders — no matter how obscene. They are capable of anything.

Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was quite right to see a “Reichstag moment” in the brazen attempt to overturn a democratic presidential election last year — but the “moment” now stretches far over the horizon as the Trumpists consolidate power in the Republican Party and punish courageous Republicans like Rep. Liz Cheney who speak out against their betrayal of America.

What we urgently need is to pull the rug from under this fascist movement by putting Donald Trump behind bars. 

Hitler was jailed after leading the “Beer Hall Putsch,” but then he wangled his way out of jail. The rest of the story we know.

Could it happen here?

Richard Striner is a historian and the author of “Summoned to Glory: The Audacious Life of Abraham Lincoln.”