Unproud Trump Threatens To Jail Political Opponent During Gross Mockery Of American Politics
Donald Trump isn't "going low." He's threatening our very system of government.
I’ve come to realize that any number of people, including but not limited to those who think Donald Trump should become president of the United States, think that what they saw in last night’s presidential “debate” was politics without the niceties of “political correctness.” There are people who think that this is what the “game” is always about: sexual innuendo, vicious threats, and enough mud that the candidates are indistinguishable from each other and a pile of steaming poop.
Last night, we saw what those people think they always see, stripped of what they think of as “the bullcrap.” But we didn’t see American “politics” on display. The bullcrap is what would have made it “politics.” Instead, we saw a rutting bull challenge a pride lion for the right to f**k America. David Attenborough should have moderated that thing: “Here, the challenger rubs his scrotum on the dais. It’s not meant to cause harm, he’s merely trying to show his dominance. In response, the matriarch ignores him. She knows that attention is all he seeks.”
In the wild, a successful challenger will kill or cast out the old leader. Some animals will eat the children of their rivals, to ensure the purity of their line. Donald Trump threatened to do that to Hillary Clinton, last night. He asserted that, should he be engorged with power, he would have Hillary Clinton hounded and likely destroyed. The “jail” threat seems like a normal if classless attack to people who think this is all some kind of game. It’s actually despotic degradation of civil society.
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That there are people on your Facebook feed who honestly can’t tell the difference should frighten us all.
An American president cannot and should not threaten a specific investigation into a political foe. A president cannot and should not interfere with an investigation headed by law enforcement. Either is a gross misuse of presidential power. Richard Nixon tried to order a special prosecutor to stop investigating, and his attorney general resigned.
The former attorney general went further.
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To be clear: Hillary Clinton has been investigated by the FBI. When Trump says “you’d be in jail,” what he’s saying is that if he becomes president, he will lock up a private citizen for a crime SHE HASN’T EVEN BEEN CHARGED WITH, much less convicted for. If that sounds like “politics” to you, you literally cannot tell the difference between American rule of law versus the whims of a tyrant. Some people think Hillary operates “above the law”; Trump is literally promising to do so if elected.
Other. Candidates. DON’T. Do this. You might remember that in 2008 there was a lot of heat on the left to charge George W. Bush and Dick Cheney with war crimes. Did Obama threaten to do that? No. Did he do it once in office? No. Prosecuting political opponents is something that hardcore partisans fantasize about. It’s not something that would-be leaders joke about.
That’s just the law of it. But if you still think that Trump’s threat against his political opponent wasn’t a big deal, that’s probably because you don’t anticipate becoming a political opponent of Tyrant Trump. You didn’t hear his message as, say, Paul Ryan heard it. Or Mike Pence. Or Ted Cruz. Or whoever might run against him in 2020. Or as an opposition columnist. Or as a Supreme Court justice. Or as a producer sitting on tape of Trump being a misogynist boor. Trump straight-up threatened to jail an opponent who hasn’t been charged with a crime. He said he would order a special prosecutor to “investigate your situation.” Today, it’s about Hillary. Tomorrow, it might be about you.
If you don’t care about the abuse of power, and you don’t care about the warning shot to future enemies, you probably just hate Hillary Clinton. And if you think that little of her, maybe you can see the ultimate problem with threatening your political opponents with jail time: what do you think a person does if his or her options are “Win or Go To Jail”? What happens when you no longer think you’re running for president, but instead are playing the Game of Thrones?
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Hillary Clinton is no Stark. Trump threatened her, and her family, with that Clinton women stunt, assuring her that a “loss” on November 8th wouldn’t be a mere political defeat but a familial destruction.
What would you be willing to do to save your family? What do you think Hillary Clinton would be willing to do? The reason we don’t threaten people with post-electoral personal destruction is because we don’t want politicians feeling like their very lives depend on the outcome. In countries where that happens, opposition leaders don’t plan swing-state ad buys, they plan coup d’etats. You tell somebody it’s “win or die” often enough, eventually they’ll believe you.
Donald Trump isn’t “going low.” He’s threatening our very system of government. He disrespects the notion of the peaceful transfer of power. He’s not showing you what politics is really all about, anymore than he’s telling you what guys really talk about in the “locker room.” Instead, he’s advocating a gross, dystopian purge of the social compact and civility itself.
It’s not okay, and it’s not politics. It’s all out war against the better angels of our nature.
Elie Mystal is an editor of Above the Law and the Legal Editor for More Perfect. He can be reached @ElieNYC on Twitter, or at elie@abovethelaw.com. He will resist Donald Trump even unto death.
