Opinion Trump’s rage at Biden has cornered his GOP rivals. That’s dangerous.
This might seem like a typical rhetorical straddle: It focuses primary voters on Trump’s vulnerabilities while speaking to their anger at President Biden and Democrats. But it has dangerous real-world implications: By endorsing the idea that this mass victimization is real, Trump’s rivals could help feed a widespread yearning for mass retaliation under the next GOP president.
This week, Trump angrily vowed to “appoint a real special prosecutor to go after” the “Biden crime family,” promising to “totally obliterate the deep state.” This was an explicit threat to turn law enforcement loose on political opponents as revenge for his indictment, which he and his supporters dismiss as wholly illegitimate.
Trump’s railing has cornered his rivals — even his less extreme ones — into humoring his depiction of Biden’s “deep state.” They describe his conduct as reckless and indefensible — and in some cases agree that he might have endangered national security — but they aren’t contesting Trump’s notion that conservative voters should understand the charges as an illegitimate attack on them.
Former vice president Mike Pence, for instance, acknowledged that the charges against Trump are “serious” while also lamenting “years of politicization” at the Justice Department. Nikki Haley, Trump’s former ambassador to the United Nations, admitted that Trump might have endangered American troops while insisting the Justice Department has “lost all credibility with the American people.”And South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott acknowledged the gravity of the charges while accusing law enforcement of “targeting and hunting Republicans.”
All three effectively told those within the GOP base they are right to suspect law enforcement of the worst designs possible. How did it become unthinkable for GOP presidential candidates to tell conservative voters the truth — that law enforcement is not engaged in their systematic victimization?
It’s a situation Republicans and right-wing elites have helped Trump create. For years, they relentlessly bombarded the GOP base with propaganda holding that all accountability directed at Trump has been irredeemably corrupt and, at bottom, about the deep state persecuting them.
This has been the case no matter how serious Trump’s misconduct — from his documented obstruction of the investigation into Russian electoral interference to his extortion of the Ukrainian president for nakedly corrupt ends. Meanwhile, GOP elites have spun hallucinogenic tales about alleged law enforcement campaigns against conservatives.
Remember when Republicans and right-wing media insisted the FBI was targeting conservative parents at school board meetings, a wretched lie? Similarly, even though many sentences for rioters who attacked the Capitol have been comparatively light, Republicans continue to cast efforts at justice as persecution of MAGA “political prisoners.”
Tales of supposed law enforcement bias against conservatives have also been buttressed with wildly absurd claims of pro-Biden coverups. This week, Republicans hyped a tape that supposedly showed the FBI turning a blind eye to a Biden bribe before admitting the tape might not exist. Such implosions keep happening, but they aren’t slowing GOP conspiracy-mongering in the slightest.
Take all that together, and Trump’s vow of retribution for his indictment — along with the straddle adopted by non-MAGA candidates — suddenly has deeply unsettling implications. As the New York Times reports, a movement is afoot among some right-wing thinkers to abandon the norm that the Justice Department operates largely independently of the president and to weaponize it unabashedly for the right.
Those thinkers justify this move by — again — insisting law enforcement has similarly been wielded by Biden and Democrats. But given that this is based so extensively on sheer invention, this movement’s true goals are inescapable: manufacturing a pretext for GOP weaponization of law enforcement later. As Georgetown professor Don Moynihan details, the party’s agitprop is now widely devoted to transforming this notion of mass-victimization-as-pretext into unquestioned party dogma.
It’s unclear how deep these tendencies run in the party. But the Atlantic’s Ronald Brownstein marshals convincing evidence that a large swath of the GOP base seems to have bought in to this understanding. And it’s sobering that Trump and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis — the two candidates leading national polls for the party’s nomination — both vow to undertake a project of retaliation.
In this context, if non-MAGA GOP candidates keep feeding these ugly fabrications about law enforcement, there could be severe consequences. This is something right-leaning commentators, even those troubled by the indictment of Trump, should be able to acknowledge.
One can make a reasonable argument from the right about law enforcement and Trump. One might note that the Russia probe was marred by serious irregularities — while acknowledging it was legitimately predicated. One might suggest keeping in mind the FBI’s long, ugly history of political persecution — while admitting that history isn’t remotely comparable to the present. One might insist that Trump’s prosecution absolutely demands sustained scrutiny — while acknowledging there are no meaningful signs it has been tainted.
Trump’s rivals might feel the need to play footsie with far-right depictions of the deep state. But reasonable right-leaning people should acknowledge that it’s dangerous and indefensible for those aspiring to the presidency to delegitimize law enforcement based on wild-eyed conspiracy theories — and demand better.
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