Trump is charged with 34 felony counts, pleads not guilty

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., claimed today that “Trump is joining some of the most incredible people in history being arrested today. Nelson Mandela was arrested, served time in prison. Jesus! Jesus was arrested and murdered.”

Let’s just stipulate that Trump is not like Jesus and focus on the other, slightly less ridiculous comparison.

Mandela was a freedom fighter, and not in the metaphorical sense of the word. He used what he called “properly controlled violence” against the racist South African government. At the most basic level, Trump stands accused of committing crimes in large part to cover up extramarital affairs. 

But perhaps the most important distinction is Mandela’s accountability. He engaged in sabotage, he said in a courtroom speech, not because he had “any love of violence,” but only after “a calm and sober assessment of the political situation.” He said a free South Africa was “an ideal for which I am prepared to die.”

Trump was well within his rights to plead not guilty today, but given his legendary mendacity, we can’t imagine him admitting to any accusation the way that Mandela did. Nor does he seem guided by any sort of higher principle — let alone appear willing to endure any kind of suffering for a cause.

It’s likely that there was almost nobody listening to former President Donald Trump speak at Mar-a-Lago who didn’t want to be there. But even his most diehard supporters may have found it hard to feign excitement during a predictable recitation of everybody who is corrupt and deserving of prosecution — except him. Lots of whining, little winning.

It was whataboutism stretched out across about 30 minutes, albeit arguably even darker than his “American carnage” inauguration address in 2017. Here, there were no great lines, to say nothing of punch lines. Just seething, but uninspired, grievance.

I’m going to be honest: I thought that was going to be a lot more painful to sit through. 

Don’t get me wrong, that speech from Trump wasn’t by any stretch of the imagination “good.” It was filled with the same old gripes as ever, attacked the judge presiding over the case, tried to paint Joe Biden as the real criminal here, made Trump look worse in several ongoing investigations, and was packed with so many lies as to make it nearly impossible to clock them all in real time.

But there was a forward thrust to the speech that almost resembled a narrative arc. There were words for him to read that he mostly read. And it was thankfully, blessedly short, something I thought would be entirely unlikely given his tendency to ramble when given the chance.

In what may be my most pure, uncut bit of Acela corridor punditry to date, I’m going to give that speech an “F” for content and a “D+” for delivery.

You may recall that earlier today Judge Juan Merchan declined to slap a gag order on Trump but warned him to “please refrain from making statements that would incite violence or civil unrest.” He also told Trump to “not engage in words or conduct which jeopardizes the rule of law, particularly as it applies to these proceedings in this courtroom.”

Of course, Trump did exactly that tonight. During his speech, he not only called out Merchan as a “Trump-hating judge” but also said he had a “Trump-hating family.” He then explicitly called out Merchan’s daughter for insult.

Beyond the physical security risk that Trump’s ire presents, throughout his speech the former president explicitly denounced the proceedings against him in a way that, from where I’m sitting, “jeopardizes the rule of law.” I eagerly await to see if Bragg’s office decides that Merchan might be amenable to a new motion to keep Trump from commenting from here on out.

Soooo … that Trump speech wasn’t all that great. Which is to say, it went as expected. 

To give you a sense of how off-the-rails Trump’s rambling got before he ended, I’ll have you know he touched on his alleged success with deregulation of the pharmaceutical industry. 

Specifically, he touted the fact that Americans are “able to get drugs now that aren’t approved.” (He’s referring to so-called right-to-try laws enacted during his administration, FYI.)

How does this relate to Trump’s Manhattan arraignment? Your guess is as good as mine.

Nonetheless, quite a statement from Trump out of Mar-a-Lago tonight: “My enemies are out to get me! Hooray for experimental drugs!”

Trump’s supporters have been so persistent in their claim that any investigation into the former president amounts to a political persecution that you could be tricked into believing that those supporters are opposed to political persecution.

But the facts have shown that they believe that they are the ones who ought to be doing the persecuting. The latest case in point is Fox News host Jesse Watters, who on his show tonight promised political persecution if Trump is elected again.

“If Donald Trump runs and wins, he’s going to indict Joe Biden and the entire Biden crew,” he said. “So, Biden might have to run and win because if he doesn’t, you know those indictments are coming. It’s not like Trump’s going to let this thing go.”

How does a president indict somebody? What crime would he charge? Those are all pesky details.

We know, though, that hypocrisy doesn’t matter to this crowd. There is no guiding political philosophy. There’s only the belief that everything that happens to Trump is an outrage. And that everything that happens to Democrats is just what they’ve got coming.

I’m not a lawyer, but it sure seems like a weird legal strategy for Trump to spend so much time tonight talking about the cases where he’s not yet been criminally charged — and potentially offering up incriminating statements in cases that have not yet been decided.

That’s especially true in the Mar-a-Lago documents investigation, one of two probes led by DOJ special counsel Jack Smith. Trump (again) insisted that he had every right to take the documents that were found at his residence last year. He did the same last week, when speaking with Fox News’ Sean Hannity, even as Hannity tried to get him to say otherwise.