Republican Officials Seem Pretty Worried About Trump's Calls for Protests!

Donald Trump's Truth Social feed in recent days has steadily devolved into something like a Fox News Grandpa sending a telegram. "OUR NATION IS NOW THIRD WORLD & DYING," stop. "THE AMERICAN DREAM IS DEAD!" stop. "THE RADICAL LEFT ANARCHISTS HAVE STOLLEN OUR PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION, AND WITH IT, THE HEART OF OUR OUR COUNTRY," stop. Yes, these are direct quotes, caps and all. There are a lot of all-caps missives on the post-presidential Truth Machine these days, a platform where you have the option to "Expand this Truth," "Copy link to Truth," and "Embed Truth." The name remains incredibly apt for this man's approach to the whole concept, since anything on the platform becomes Truth as soon as he says it.

The paragraphs of caps have followed on a steady stream of leaks regarding his maybe-impending indictment in the state of New York for...one of the many crimes for which he is reportedly under investigation in a number of different jurisdictions. These are separate from legal proceedings relating to his eponymous charitable foundation (shuttered after a "pattern of illegality"), his eponymous University (gone, with victims paid $25 million in damages), and his eponymous Organization (still around, even after it was found guilty on charges of tax fraud, falsifying business records, and conspiracy). The murmurings now are that Trump will face the music for his alleged participation in the scheme to cover up his affair with Stormy Daniels through a payoff by Michael Cohen, though nothing is confirmed.

What is confirmed is that this guy is trying to organize another "protest," which ought to be cause for concern considering how the last one went. Here's a Saturday Double-Truth:

Yes, he really included "Page 2." And the next day:

This is the guy millions of Americans still think should be the world's most powerful man, by the way.

The key element here is Trump's conflation of his own interests—avoiding consequences for crimes he may soon be accused of committing—with the country's, a tactic that worked quite well for him over half a decade. That included the national disgrace of January 6, which came on the back of weeks and months where Trump repackaged his election loss as THEY ARE STEALING YOUR COUNTRY AWAY. He told his followers they "wouldn't have a country anymore" unless they fought to get it back, and we all know how that went. Thus was a project to save his ass rebranded as a project to "SAVE AMERICA," even if it culminated with a violent attack on the national legislature. That's what many have struggled to understand: Trump's election-fraud narrative was window dressing for the more visceral emotional appeal that the country itself had been stolen away from its rightful heirs. It's the latter kind of rhetoric that begins to pre-justify political violence.

The big guy's defenders will say that this is about defending the America we know and love because the charges are merely political persecution, and throwing ex-presidents in jail because you don't like them or their policies is a threat to a free society. This is true, that would be very bad, but it's a bit of a red flag that these folks are proclaiming it a politically-motivated prosecution before we've seen any indictment and the evidence therein. But the Russia investigation was a political witch hunt! they proclaim, a few days after The Guardian's Hugo Lowell reported that top executives at Trump Media—which runs Truth Social—grew concerned last spring about $8 million in loans with yet another Russian Connection. The Truth Machine's parent company is, according to that report, the subject of a federal money-laundering investigation.

Based on, well, all of the above, it's almost funny to witness the default mode of Trump's defenders: that there is no way prosecutors are basing a decision to charge him with a crime based on evidence they've gathered that he committed a crime. Mostly, these defenses begin at a conclusion: Trump did nothing wrong, WITCH HUNT! and backfill some stuff from there. It's hard to fully classify these as calls to place the former president above the law, since there's some veneer of questioning whether he committed a crime. Trump is also rolling out the witch hunt routine, but he has edged towards more direct illustration of the stakes. Not for the first time, he's sought to communicate that going forward with a prosecution against him will result in a backlash from his fans, and based on how they've been talking over the last couple of days, his fellow Republicans are concerned about what that might entail.

"I don’t think people should protest this, no," said Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy "And I think President Trump, if you talk to him, he doesn’t believe that either. I think the thing that you may misinterpret when President Trump talks—when someone says that they can protest, he would probably be referring to my tweet. Educate people about what's going on. He's not talking in a harmful way, and nobody should. Nobody should harm one another."

(Trump's Truth: "THEY’RE KILLING OUR NATION AS WE SIT BACK & WATCH. WE MUST SAVE AMERICA! PROTEST, PROTEST, PROTEST!!!")

"Do it peacefully," said Senator John Kennedy of Louisiana. "Don’t be a knucklehead and riot."

You don't have to be a mindreader: Republican officials are concerned about the effect Trump's words will have on sections of the public. Maybe they're having flashbacks to that day they now say wasn't all that bad.

Personally, if I was getting those Soros bucks as a prosecutor in some Democrat-controlled crime-infested urban hellhole—or, dare I say it, Soros himself?—I would not be pushing to indict on some of the charges you hear talk of in relation to the Stormy Daniels mishigas. If there really is someone pulling the strings, they ought to prioritize Trump's egregious post-election conduct in Georgia, where he threatened the chief elections official with consequences if he did not "find" the exact number of votes needed to make him the winner of that state. It's on tape! You can listen to it! No need to believe anything Michael Cohen says!

Maybe the inopportunity of rehashing an old scandal is evidence things are operating as they should, however. If the prosecutor gathers enough evidence you committed a crime, they're supposed to try and charge you—regardless of who you are and the politics, come what may. That's how the public can have faith in the law, and all of our equality before it, however rarely they might see it happen.

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