Ihe federal indictment notified to Donald Trump on Tuesday June 13 by a Florida judge would justify the use of one of the defendant’s favorite adjectives: HUGE – with the capital letters he abuses on his Twitter feed. But what is no less staggering, not to say just as “enormous”, is the confidence he continues to enjoy among Republican voters. Why this political immunity?
In a few months, even in a year or more, Trump will have to answer in court for the federal crime of which he is now accused: “Voluntary possession of documents relating to national security”. The charge potentially involves violation of espionage laws. It is accompanied by a few others, which range from obstruction of justice to false statements under oath. So many crimes related to the illegal transfer to his Hispano-Moorish mansion in Florida of a number of official documents, which, dating from his presidency (2016-2020), should never have left the White House.
What are we talking about ? Pentagon documents on the state of the US nuclear arsenal; the United States’ response to a nuclear strike on its soil; weaknesses in the country’s defense, according to the investigation by prosecutor Jack Smith. To take the political measure of the case, we must remember that the Republican Party wants to be the best guarantor of “law” and “order”, just as it carries high the imperative need for the defense of the country.
Cumulated, all the pronounceable sentences would represent more than four hundred years of prison. And that’s counting without the other charges that threaten the Republican: for attempted rigging of the November 2020 presidential election in the state of Georgia and for his role in the insurrection carried out on January 6, 2021 against the Capitol.
Eternal political virginity
However, the political landscape does not seem to be changing. Trump denies, insults the judges and the FBI, denigrates the institutions of the American Republic and lines up litanies of lies about each other. Trial or not, the Mar-a-Lago golfer is more than ever at the top of the candidates seeking the Republican nomination. He is at his best, arms outstretched and afflicted, more tanned and peroxide than ever, in the image of the martyr harassed by the “Communists” (the Democrats). The real Trump mystery is there, in the unshakable popularity that, within the Republican electorate, protects him from everything.
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