As I write this, it has been about 36 hours since Donald J. Trump, leading candidate of an organization calling itself The Republican Party, declared he’d ‘be a dictator’ on Day One (‘only’). Kash Patel, on Steve Bannon’s Sept 5 podcast, as a potential Trump appointee to lead the FBI, talked about how the FBI would be used to ‘go after’ msm for ‘conspiracy to steal an election’. Or Mike Davis, a former staffer for Neil Gorsuch and Chuck Grassley, and potential Trump appointee as Attorney General, on “The Benny Show” podcast, saying how he ‘has lists...ready to go’ of people who are ‘going to get fired’, before going after ‘every last scum ball member of the Biden crime family’. They call it Project 2025. The rest of us call it full-on lawlessness.
And it’s also a lot of Big Talk, predicated on a lot of things going right for a can’t-shoot-straight squad of grifters, talking to a radicalized set of, what, 30% of American voters?
But their voices, taking up residence in the minds of millions of Americans not yet so radicalized, with no incentive to question the propaganda they’re being fed, are normalizing a captured constituency, following the siren call of partisan Loyalty into accepting the idea of a Lawlessness that will put them in charge, as supporters of Trump, presumably along with the violence that is sure to come in its wake. This is a psychological preparation analogous to the call, in December 2020, for MAGA to appear at the Capitol on Jan 6 (2021). And we saw what happened when institutions were caught flat-footed in the face of those “will be wild” calls to the Capitol.
Don’t be caught flat-footed, Judge Chutkan.
Trump, Jersey boardwalk shyster that is, welcomes the Fear and intimidation his recent comments on dictatorship generate the longer this is allowed to go on, figuring if it continues enough Americans will normalize the ‘apocalyptics’ on both sides, and vote for the ‘guy who wants it the most’, as the one who shouts the loudest. Alternatively, voters stay home out of a mistaken ‘apathy of inevitability’. Hannity played Good Cop to Trump’s Bad Cop, in his recent comment on ‘dictatorship (only) on Day One’. That mirage of Impunity needs to be punctured. It needs to be short-circuited at the first legitimate opportunity, even if duration is of a limited time frame. The precedent needs to be set.
If he crosses that line, Judge Chutkan, throw Trump’s ass in jail. In this court, the law is in charge.
When a defendant presents a clear reason to do so, in violating the letter as well as the spirit of the Law, in the form of a judicial order to refrain from harmfully prejudicial, if not downright intimidating, public rhetoric, and the defendant refuses to obey, it’s a direct assault on the rule of law that needs to show consequences, no matter the social consequences in the streets, no matter the reach of the defendant’s voice.
This doesn’t get better with time. Without the law, there is no society.
Be ready, Judge Chutkan. Trump will cross that line. He is building a resonant wave in the media echo chamber, bouncing between the msm and the MAGA-media, about who can be the better Fear-mongerer. There is a danger in that. It’s a false equivalency. At the present time, it’s safe to assume that it’s unlikely MAGA can bring the numbers into the streets that he thinks he can, or wants us to believe he can, were he to be locked up for a bail agreement violation. Welcome the attention it will generate, Judge Chutkan, forcing MAGA to engage a reality they do not control, and assumed they could dismiss.
If Trump provides the opportunity, it would be to the advantage of civil society to call Trump’s bluff before we get into the heat of the 2024 political season. Because otherwise, his lawyers will play for time, his rhetoric will become more provocative, and disrespect for the law will become increasingly pervasive, as the new litmus test of his MAGA base. Because Trump has nothing to lose.
America does have something to lose, Judge Chutkan. Trump knows he’s going to jail. His only way out is to delegitimize the entire system. Do not let him. If he provides the opportunity, call his bluff.
A judge’s concern in a case should be to support the primacy of the Law, and the integrity of procedure. Not to worry how the application of judicial authority plays out on the street. That is the concern of our elected public and civil servants, whose job it is to manage our communities. What is important is that a defendant — particularly one running for POTUS — not be seen to dismiss judicial authority. That plays in the street as a dismissal of the Law, and will be seen as the first step in a permission structure that will further radicalize and justify a wider disrespect of judicial authority.
Impunity before the Law plays to Trump’s theatrical instincts, and the longer he gets to cast that spell, the greater the hold on his cult. But we can imagine taking Trump ‘off the field’. A time out, if you will, for the most legitimate reasons possible in a nation of laws: A clear violation of a court order.
Now is the moment, Judge Chutkan, to prepare yourself to be the instrument that breaks the spell that is building in America today.
This doesn’t get better with time. The law has a duty to step into this maelstrom of dysfunction, as the one institution that every day Americans in their millions have personal experience with, sitting on juries all across the country, or watching real trial footage as a public record. They know, imperfect as justice is in America today, it is infinitely preferable to the horrors that could be visited on a nation that welcomes a dictator. Interjecting a shared reality into a fractured society can be a galvanizing event. Particularly as that reality will not compute with the MAGA dystopia they seek to project in their media silos: the mirage of Impunity before the law. Remind Americans what the law really looks like, in the harsh daylight of Facts.
Judge Chutkan, embrace your power, do your duty, and wait for your moment to uphold the Constitution and the rule of law, in the face of a true, psychopathic, menace to society, and the world at large.