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Just hours after he was indicted on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records, former President Donald Trump was busy painting himself as a victim. “The only crime I have committed is to fearlessly defend our nation from those who seek to destroy it,” he told supporters at Mar-a-Lago on Tuesday evening. “This is a persecution, not a prosecution.”
It was not a new message; Trump and his team had been hitting similar notes all week, spinning a narrative of a system rigged against him in the lead-up to his arraignment.
Earlier in the week, Trump shared polls showing that his followers thought the whole thing was politically motivated; alleged that District Attorney Alvin Bragg, who is Black, was racist, funded by George Soros, and acting on Biden’s behalf; and argued that Bragg was ignoring violent crimes in order to pursue his political interests. (That wasn’t the only poll he shared; he also posted informal ones that showed him performing better than DeSantis.)
These attacks—and his more concerning call, before the indictment, to “TAKE OUR NATION BACK”—led the judge to warn Trump on Tuesday afternoon not to incite any more unrest. That talking-to apparently wasn’t direct enough to warn Trump off accusing the prosecutors of being criminals themselves.
But while he struck a confident tone on social media, Trump is reportedly stressed that he’s facing criminal charges. His aides told the New York Times that his bravado seemed to be masking a deeper anxiety, and he did not look particularly happy or energized during his briefly televised walk through the hallway of the courthouse.
AdvertisementSo, when Trump made his way through a packed ballroom to Lee Greenwood’s “God Bless the USA” and took the mic, many were curious to see how the former president would present the developments of the day.
Advertisement Advertisement AdvertisementOver the course of less than 30 minutes, Trump packed in a litany of grievances and boasts. He promoted familiar lies about the election, social media censorship, and Hunter Biden. He complained that New York had become crime-ridden and terrible. He ranted about the various legal efforts against him, to boos from the crowd, and railed against the Soros-backed district attorney. (George Soros has donated to a PAC that funded a number of liberal candidates, one of whom was Bragg. The connection is indirect.)
AdvertisementRepeating a favorite phrase, he said the charges against him are “an insult to our country, as the world is already laughing at us.”
These are Trump’s usual talking points when he faces serious accusations. And none of this is very new—except, perhaps, his ominous rants about Biden bringing the world to the brink of “nuclear World War III” because the war in Ukraine is happening while he is president.
But there is a strategy connecting these rants. Trump’s legal team plans to hammer heavily the idea of political persecution by connecting all the various investigations into Trump’s potential wrongdoing, and portraying them as a unified, partisan crusade.
In his speech, Trump did this by running down a list of enemies, vilifying everyone investigating him. Bragg is a “criminal” who “should be prosecuted,” and Letitia James, the attorney general of New York (whom Trump called a “young lady”), is, along with Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, “another racist in reverse.”
Advertisement AdvertisementHe called Juan Merchan, who is presiding over the New York case, “a Trump-hating judge with a Trump-hating wife and family whose daughter worked for Kamala Harris.” Trump had gone after Merchan earlier in the week, but the attacks dialed up on Tuesday, after both Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump shared photos of Merchan’s daughter on social media.
AdvertisementAnd he repeatedly called Jack Smith, the special counsel investigating Trump’s efforts to overturn the election as well as his handling of classified documents, a “lunatic.”
In the days between the indictment and his surrender, Trump hit a number of related notes meant to weaponize his victimhood: The indictment was not just an attack on him but “AN ATTACK ON OUR COUNTRY THE LIKES OF WHICH HAS NEVER BEEN SEEN BEFORE.” It was also an attack on elections and showed just how corrupt our country has become. (“THE USA IS NOW A THIRD WORLD NATION,” he said at one point. “OUR COUNTRY IS GOING TO HELL,” he said at another.) No man had ever been investigated as much as he had, for such blatantly political reasons. (“THIS MUST MAKE ME THE MOST HONEST AND HONORABLE MAN ANYWHERE IN THE WORLD.”) And the sham investigation was particularly galling because authorities should instead be looking into Hunter Biden, etc.
Advertisement Advertisement AdvertisementThe day of the arraignment, before arriving at the courthouse to surrender, he had a particular complaint about the rigging of it all: “VERY UNFAIR VENUE, WITH SOME AREAS THAT VOTED 1% REPUBLICAN. THIS CASE SHOULD BE MOVED TO NEARBY STATEN ISLAND.”
But perhaps the most effective spin Trump’s team has put on the charges was that this political endeavor was a threat not just to him but to all of his good, honest supporters and their vision of America. In a post Trump amplified, Texas Rep. Wesley Hunt declared, “If they can come for him, they can come for you. Our judicial system is not blind or just, it has been weaponized by dangerous people hellbent on remaking our nation into something unrecognizable.”
AdvertisementIn his speech on Tuesday, Trump bemoaned that “I never thought anything like this could happen in America.” But even if he were miserable, he and his team were trying to use the moment to capitalize on his narrative. His campaign has been pushing “Not Guilty” T-shirts. CNN reported that Trump’s videographer was documenting the surrender behind the scenes, for use later for political reasons. An anonymous source told Rolling Stone that Trump was given the option to be arraigned over Zoom and opted instead for the dramatic moment at the Manhattan courthouse. And in his speech, he said he would not settle over his various charges, for obvious political reasons. “Our heads are held high,” he said. “I want no part of that. So here we are.”
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