All said and done, just what manner of twisted and ruined political legacy would Trump be leaving behind?
By Tiko Okoye
Two events occurred within the last seven days in the United States of America that portend a seismic shift in the odds of Donald Trump contesting the 2024 presidential election as the candidate of the Republican Party. One is what occurred at a Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) held in Texas over the weekend. The other is the unprecedented execution of a search warrant by the FBI on the residence of a former US President.
I can appreciate and understand why a vast majority of public affairs commentators would sidestep the former to concentrate on the latter. It goes without saying that Trump’s big lie about a stolen election has taken America to the precipice of social and political cliff-hanger like no other political figure has done in the history of the United States. Given that America is at a toxically inflammable period in time, the search warrant executed by the FBI on Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort would predictably feed the already-raging flames of conspiracy theorists and cancel-culture apologists.
As is quite typical of the egomaniacal character he is, Trump claimed that the US has been “decimated,” that crime is “out of control” and unemployment was “rocketing” simply because an election he believed he had won was stolen from him by the Dems and the “Deep State,” even as all this ‘conspiracy’ was happening under his watch and he didn’t win a single one of the nearly half-baked 70 lawsuits he instituted to upturn the democratically expressed will of American voters.
For a man to whom barefaced lying has become first nature, it isn’t surprising that the fact that recently released data actually showed that the unemployment rate of about 3.5 percent – what economists dub ‘full employment’ – is at its lowest level in about 50 years was completely lost on him and his MAGA choir. It is an open secret that Trump’s three lifelong interests are Trump, Trump and more Trump! Little wonder he tried everything possible – including organising a failed coup – to foist himself in the White House like the strongmen of Russia and North Korea he so loves to emulate.
At one point in his final remarks during the conference, Trump bellowed that “This is no time for complacency. We have to seize this opportunity to deal with the radical left socialist lunatic fascists (who) we have to hit very, very hard (and) it has to be a crippling defeat.” It is absolutely inconceivable that a former American president would for whatever reasons describe his fellow citizens in that utterly atrociously despicable manner simply because they share a different political affiliation in a democratic setting.
And it is all too tempting to dismiss this type of inciting violent conduct as vintage Trump, but is it really? To put things in their proper perspective for those Nigerian Trumpians who have primed themselves to see no evil, hear no evil and speak no evil, how would they react if the Buhari administration and the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) similarly decide that the opportunity must not be missed to “deal” with sympathizers and supporters of opposition parties in a “very, very hard,” with the sole objective of inflicting “a crippling defeat” on them? Shouldn’t what is food for the goose be equally fit to go for the gander?
READ ALSO: Serena Williams set to retire after 2022 US Open
But Trump wasn’t yet done. “The streets of our Democrat-run cities,” he announced to his MAGA audience, “are drenched in the blood of innocent victims. Bullets are killing little beautiful children who never had a chance.” Really? Trump and his gullible MAGA morons conveniently chose not to be confronted by the stark reality that the same very Republican-run state of Texas where they were cavorting had just witnessed the most heinous, gruesome killings of about 20 elementary (primary) school children!
But as surreal and dark as Trump’s remarks on that equally windless, hot evening in Dallas were, it was a gambit the MAGA sponsors of the conference hatched at the very end that made screaming headlines by backfiring. A kangaroo straw poll was conducted to determine who Republicans want to be their presidential candidate in 2024. Never mind that it is still more than 48 months away and a day in politics is said to be akin to an eternity. The thinly-disguised manoeuvre had only one motive: to take the wind out of the sails of closet GOP presidential aspirants by suddenly making them lose confidence and swagger, thereby handing Trump a locked-up early endorsement.
At the end of the day, Trump could only garner 69 percent of the impromptu ballot while Florida State Governor Ron DeSantis – the man building up to be his nemesis – scored 25 percent. If you can’t still tell why this is very bad news for Trump within a party he has recreated after his own image, then there’s very little I can add to the topic. Suffice to say that members of the GOP establishment earnestly crave to wash their hands off the ravaging cancer that Trump has become.
They just can’t say this publicly because the fear of reprisals by Trump’s MAGA fan base is the beginning of political wisdom for them. But l don’t rule out their nicodemusly huddling with Dems during late-night hours to push for ways the House Select Committee on January 6 and the Department of Justice (DOJ) can squelch any chances of Trump running in 2024, even as they continue to spew the right sound bites during daylight hours.
Now, it would seem that their wish is about to come true. FBI agents executed a search warrant of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago property last Monday reportedly seeking classified presidential papers he allegedly removed on his way out in January 2021. Not surprising, conspiracy theorists and those who read partisan politicking into every event completely miss the really, really big reason why the raid is a potential blockbuster in American politics. First, a typical search warrant is usually signed only when the judge is convinced beyond any shadow of doubt that a ‘probable cause’ does exist to justify it.
The US Presidential Records Act of 1978 requires presidential administrations to preserve certain documents. The National Archives and Records Administration – in a complaint lodged with the DOJ – called on the latter to probe whether Trump violated federal law in his handling of presidential records that include documents classified over national security concerns. One can expect that for the judge to tread the unprecedented and highly dangerous route of authorising a search of a former president’s property, the bar of conviction must have been raised to an unusually much higher threshold. That’s why I’m fully persuaded that the aim of the search warrant wasn’t just about the 15 boxes of classified documents FBI agents were said to have retrieved from Mar-a-Lago. No, sir!
The judge in question must’ve sighted one hell of a litany of convincing reasons to wish to discountenance the fusillade of verbal missiles and pyrotechnics that were bound to ensue. And it ought to be equally obvious that the DOJ had fully taken cognizance of the political ramifications of the search before finally deciding on it. I’ve reasons to believe that among the ‘evidence’ presented to the judge were recorded images showing wads of official documents Trump allegedly flushed down a toilet at the Oval Office – based on interviews Maggie Haberman, a notable columnist with the New York Times, had with him as detailed in her forthcoming book..
Those who are quick to accuse the Justice Department and the FBI it superintends of weaponizing politics must be reminded that America isn’t a banana republic. Trump himself had sought to weaponize the DOJ by diligently seeking out a string of Attorneys-General ready to do his bidding – all to no avail. The solid institutions and processes Americans have concretised over two centuries have served – and continue to serve – as against all forms of extremism, including when wannabe dictators brazenly attempt to thwart the will of the citizenry.
And while it may be true, as Trump stated just after the raid, that “nothing like this has ever happened to a President of the United States before,” it must be equally said that no former US president has brazenly carted away official government records on his way out of office. Leaving aside the truism that one man’s weaponization is another man’s accountability, nobody – including former presidents- should be above the law. And the embedded irony of the raid being executed on the eve of President Richard Nixon’s forced resignation on account of the Watergate scandal isn’t lost on many.
All said and done, just what manner of twisted and ruined political legacy would Trump be leaving behind?