There are several ways of looking at the events that occurred this week inside a Manhattan courtroom and later at Donald Trump’s home in Florida.
First, the indictment of the former president for illegally “conspiring” to win the White House in the 2016 election by paying “hush money” to two women and a doorman to keep secret behavior that could have adversely swayed voters at the ballot box: Even former Attorney General Bill Barr has said this is a “pathetically weak case.” George Washington University Law Professor Jonathan Turley called the indictment “A legal Slurpee, instantly satisfying, but there’s nothing there.” Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg said there is also an “underlying crime,” which he said he didn’t have to mention. How is that fair to Trump?
Second, Trump managed to do something no one else has accomplished. He united (most) Republicans, at least for now. Statements by former rivals and targets of his rhetorical attacks have come out in support of him and against Bragg. These include Barr, former National Security Adviser John Bolton, Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., attorney Alan Dershowitz, who said he would still vote against Trump given the chance, but deplores the 34-count felony indictment, and former Florida governor and presidential candidate Jeb Bush, who Trump once called “low energy.” Sen. Mitt Romney, Utah Republican, who voted twice to impeach Trump, expressed skepticism about the legal justification for the indictment, warning the prosecutor’s overreach sets “… a dangerous precedent for criminalizing political opponents and damages the public’s faith in our justice system.”
Third, the post-arraignment speech was typical of Trump. He blasted every adversary, including the Biden family, New York State Attorney General Letitia James, and the Georgia grand jury mulling Trump’s infamous phone call to Georgia Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, in which he pressured him to find more votes.
In his speech at Mar-a-Lago, which was shorter than his usual one hour-plus rants, Trump repeated his attacks on the intelligence agents who reportedly claimed collusion between Russia and Trump in the 2016 election, attacked the “radical left George Soros prosecutor Bragg,” claimed we are on the verge of a nuclear World War III, rightly noted the tighter relationship among Russia, China and Iran, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and said the lawful FBI search that found boxes of classified documents at his home is “a hoax” and that he had the right as president to declassify them. He tossed in high energy and food prices, inflation and an “open border,” all the fault, he said, of Biden administration policies.