Trump's Conviction Has Liberated the GOP

Loudly, angrily promising to be their worst selves in every way.

Donald Trump has been using the word “fascist” a lot lately, precisely because it’s something he is regularly accused of being. “We’re living in a fascist state,” he says, and regularly calls his enemies “the fascists.” It seems to be an effort to do with “fascist” what he did with “fake news”: seize control of a term used against him, so it comes to mean its opposite and he is free to continue doing the thing the term was originally supposed to call attention to. 

Republicans have long been intentional about manipulating language to their advantage, but this particular technique — a sophisticated version of “I know you are but what am I” — is a Trump-era innovation, at least in its ubiquity. Efforts to counter “fake news,” i.e. truth, are the real fake news. The counter to “fascism,” i.e. democracy, is the actual fascism. “Fraudulent elections” are those conducted fairly, the answer to which is to allow Republicans to overturn results they don’t like. “Weaponization” of government is the fair application of laws according to established procedures, the answer which is to gain control of government then use it for revenge against Trump’s enemies. 

And revenge has been very much on Republicans’ minds since Trump became a convicted felon. On one hand, the politicians and advocates who have made Trump their life’s cause argue that his conviction is proof of a corrupted legal system, one twisted beyond the bounds of fairness and justice it is supposed to serve. On the other, the solution they propose to this problem is to corrupt that system even beyond where they say it has come already. 

They are not, you will notice, arguing that Trump’s conviction shows that safeguards must be put in place to ensure that the legal system be free of political influence. Au contraire; the list of influential Republicans publicly licking their lips at the process of using that system for revenge is long and growing:

• John Yoo, former Bush administration lawyer, possessor of an endowed professorship at the University of California-Berkeley law school, and famed torture advocate, writes in National Review that "In order to prevent the case against Trump from assuming a permanent place in the American political system, Republicans will have to bring charges against Democratic officers, even presidents." 

• Don Jr. says “we don’t have a choice” but to prosecute Democrats in retaliation for his father’s conviction. 

• Mike Davis, a Republican lawyer reportedly in the running to be attorney general in the next Trump administration, tells Axios that Republican prosecutors should prosecute the prosecutors who are prosecuting Trump. 

• “Of course [Alvin Bragg] should be — and will be — jailed,” says Steve Bannon, referring to the prosecutor who obtained Trump’s conviction. 

• “I am going to encourage all of my colleagues and everybody that I have any influence over as a member of Congress to aggressively go after the president and his entire family,” says Rep. Ronny Jackson. 

• “After Trump’s Conviction, Republicans Should Do To Democrats What They Did To Him,” reads a headline in The Federalist; “I want to see lists of which Democrat officials are going to be put in prison,” tweets its CEO.

• “Donald Trump should make and publish a list of ten high ranking Democrat criminals who he will have arrested when he takes office,” says prominent right-wing podcaster Matt Walsh. “How many Republican DAs or AG's have stones?” asks far-right leader Charlie Kirk. “Indict the left, or lose America.” 

• Ghoulish Trump aide Stephen Miller tells “every Republican D.A.” to “start every investigation they need to,” because “every facet of Republican politics and power has to be used right now to go toe to toe with Marxism and beat these Communists.” 

And that’s not counting Trump himself, who continues to suggest he’ll prosecute President Biden as an act of revenge, or the legions of Trump fans trading fantasies online of the violent retribution they hope to take.

The purpose of government is corruption

Though Republicans talk about Trump’s conviction as a distortion of the true purpose of the justice system, they quite clearly believe the actual purpose of that system is to be a weapon you use to destroy your enemies; they’re just unhappy that it was wielded against their god-king. The solution to corruption is not integrity but more corruption, except on behalf of the right people. 

This is why this particular controversy is not at all isolated from the rest of the conservative project. They are engaged in a wide-ranging attack on institutions, in which they attack the institution for not living up to its values, then seek to seize control of the institution not so they can restore those supposedly lost values but so they can use the institution for their own ends. 

So they attack universities for not being enough of a forum for free inquiry and expression (when a few conservatives are shouted down), then attack it for tolerating bigotry and not protecting (certain) minority rights, with the hopes that they can discredit higher education or make it more hospitable to their own ideological agenda. They attack the election system for not being fair and transparent, when what they actually want is for their own friendly officials to overrule results they don’t like no matter what the voters choose. And they attack the courts so they can use the courts for their own ends. 

I want to draw a connection here between these efforts and one of Trump’s common moves, which is less a rhetorical tic than a guiding philosophy, one he seems to have convinced his whole party to embrace. Trump’s nods to anything resembling a moral principle — that government or politicians should be honest, that self-dealing is bad, that systems should be fair — are presented with a smirk and a laugh. When he is accused of wrongdoing, the denials he offers are tossed off with so little effort that it’s clear he’s barely trying to convince anyone: they’re all liars, it’s a frame job, I’m totally innocent, whatever. But that’s kayfabe, and all his fans know it. It’s the thing you say to keep the show going. They can’t say with a straight face that he won’t be corrupt, any more than they can say that he didn’t screw Stormy Daniels, pay her hush money, and falsify business records to cover it up.

The point isn’t that Trump is clean, it’s that everyone is dirty

The real argument is very different, and to illustrate it I want to recall a moment that crystallized things for me, one that came just before his second debate with Hillary Clinton in 2016.  Reeling from the release of the “Access Hollywood” tape in which he was heard bragging about his ability to sexually assault women with impunity, Trump held a media event with Paula Jones, Juanita Broddrick, and Kathleen Willey, three women who had accused Bill Clinton of sexual misconduct. The message was not that Trump was innocent; just the opposite. The message was: Everybody does it. 

This is what he wants us all to believe, and what he believes. Trump doesn’t argue that he is clean, but that everybody is dirty: Everybody cheats on their taxes, everybody cheats on their wives, everybody falsifies business records, everybody gives bribes and takes bribes. Everybody’s venal, everybody’s corrupt, everybody’s worst selves are their truest selves, and he’s the honest one because his worst self is his only self. 

The permission to be your worst self lay at the heart of Trump’s appeal in 2016. He didn’t use dog whistles or pretend to be a better person than he was; his bigotry, resentments and anger were right on the surface, and he encouraged his followers to be like him. Let your freak flag fly, stop being polite, grab ‘em by the pussy and tell those bastards what you think of them, right to their face.

His supporters learned that it was fun and exciting to let their ugliest impulses out into the open in a kind of exhibitionism of hate, with the shock and outrage of those who witness it an essential part of the thrill. And now, the whole party is asking Americans to be their worst civic selves, to discard their commitment to basic ideas about how institutions are supposed to work and whom they are supposed to serve. It’s just us versus them, and corruption in the service of getting ours and screwing our enemies over is not a vice but a virtue. 

The GOP offers this program of vengeance and corruption to the public without concern that a majority of us will recoil in disgust. They are not worried that we are too principled, too moral, or too committed to the democratic system to join them. They may be wrong about that. But it’s going to be a very close thing.