Dakuku Peterside’s ‘American Democracy’s Trump Test‘: A Rebuttal
By Achike Chude
As Africans in Africa, we, most times take the extreme of the sitting arrangements when issues of international politics is being discussed. After all, it does not directly put food on our table.
I was, therefore, amused at Dakuku Peterside’s brief treatise on the legal travails of former United States President, Donald Trump, as a manifestation or fulfillment of that country’s age old assertion that no one is above the law.
As with all things built on a faulty foundation, the premises on which he built his arguments were wrong. His conclusion was bound to be wrong and it was.
To be clear, Dakuku Peterside is one helluva of a writer – brains, articulation and all. One is therefore a bit nonplussed about a write-up on America’s present democratic space and trajectory that is completely at variance with the present political realities in that country.
Donald Trump as a disruptor to America’s long held political beliefs and ideals continues to be the central focus of present America’s political dynamism, creating new imperatives, challenging political and cultural norms and sending disquieting tremors in the establishment. His persona is such that no matter how much you hate him, you cannot ignore him. CNN and the mainstream media found out the hard way how important Trump was to the financial well-being of their networks. Their ratings were dependent on the number and degree of coverage they gave Trump. And yet, they were loath to cover Trump whether negatively or positively because it gave the former president unpaid airtime coverage worth billions of dollars. To do otherwise ensured that they lost millions of viewership. That’s why their ratings fell to an all-time low after Trump lost the 2020 election.
Contrary to Peterside’s flowing summation of the beauty of America’s democratic credentials, the exact opposite is the case – and broadly, Americans are agreed that the ‘persecution’ and prosecution of the former president by his political rival is the stuff that African, Latin and Asian dictatorships are made of. It is why Americans’ support for Trump remained almost unchanged after the now generally acclaimed bogus indictment following the manipulation of America’s legal system by Alvin Bragg and his D.A. henchmen with Judge Juan Merchant in tow.
It is very clear that if Trump had not announced his intention to run again for the presidency, none of the charges would have been brought against him.
Trump, previously a Democrat and a friend of the liberal left who toasted, dined and wined with them horrified his erstwhile friends when he made a play for the presidency in 2015. All hell broke loose as the whole apparatuses of mainstream media were deployed to stop him. Not satisfied with that, the Barack Obama administration instigated the FBI and intelligence agencies to go after him even as he became America’s 45th president. In the process, all manners of rules, regulations, and guardrails were broken such as the manipulation of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 (FISA). This was followed by a deluge of accusations of Trump being a stooge and asset of Vladimir Putin – resulting from a series of so called investigations fully paid for by Hillary Clinton who was Donald Trump’s political rival. This is the stuff that an unbiased and non-aligned Hollywood movie is made.
In certain parts of the United States, hatred for the Republicans’ presumptive 2024 nominee can guarantee political Eldorado for local politicians in blue (Democrat) states. So it was with District Attorneys Alvin Bragg, Fani Willis and Leticia James. Before they got to office, they had promised their electorates that they would get Donald Trump even before they ‘knew’ that Trump had committed crimes.
The late Soviet dictator Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin is reputed to have once declared ‘Show me the person and I will find the crime.’ Today’s legal travails of Donald Trump is patterned after that. Even the prosecution of Trump by Jack Smith for being in possession of classified documents follows the same trajectory. Obviously, Trump who still gets security briefings as a former president should have done more to cooperate with the National Archives, but the case with the incumbent president, Joe Biden is quite clear. He had classified documents while he was a senator. This was illegal and yet, the man who investigated him, D.A. John Hur said he could not prosecute because he was a sympathetic and forgetful old man.
Obama took classified documents when he left the White House. So did Bill Clinton. Remember Hillary Clinton who is accused of using a private server to run government business, some of which were top ‘secret’. Ironically, when Donald Trump became president, he let her enjoy her freedom even after promising in the election campaign to lock her up.
Remember Hunter Biden and the ‘laptop from hell?’. Everything was done to suppress the story by mainstream media as well as the administration. The FBI deliberately allowed part of his crimes to elapse following the application of the status of limitation simply because he is the son of the president. Before the 2020 election, about 40 former members of the American intelligence community claimed that the said laptop was Russian disinformation. They have not come out to apologize to the American people since the veracity of the laptop has now been authenticated. Hunter Biden would have gotten away with his crimes when the FBI prosecutors and Hunter’s lawyers then prepared a ‘sweetheart deal’ for Biden to give him a slap on the wrist, but push back by the Republicans in Congress scuttled the plan as Judge Norieka refused to budge.
America’s democracy is up in the air. It would seem that the democrats under Joe Biden have done and are doing everything, wittingly and unwittingly to undermine and destroy it. From the various attempts to stifle free speech through the control of social media, to having a practical policy of open borders that has seen an unprecedented influx of over 10 million illegal immigrants in three years their attempts to radically influence the present and future of American politics are known and Unraveling.
Sadly, some people have claimed that the only thing that matters to the democrats is power and they will do anything and everything to ensure an effective power grab.
The travails of Donald J. Trump has awakened a new consciousness in America. Even some democratic lawyers, analysts and social affairs commentators have said that the cases against Trump are steeped in partisan bias. Mind you, they hate Trump and his mean tweets, but they have cast their lot with preserving America’s long ‘cherished’ democracy.
And going after Trump is not one of the ways for doing that.
That is why his conviction has seen him rake in an unprecedented $141 million in a few days after he was convicted. It is why many of the billionaires who hated Trump are now flocking to him. It is why more Americans are joining the Trump train, including Blacks, Hispanics, Asian Americans as well as independents.
Trump’s political faith should be decided at the polls by the American people, not at the courts through lawfare.
