(This blog post started as a YouTube video. You can see it here. I’m not sure whether I’m getting better at this, but I got a better light so I don’t look as pasty! Now I look a little sunburned, so don’t expect Hollywood-quality visuals! I have gotten really good at inserting images:)
Last week I talked about the bogus defenses that Trump Organization defenders are offered in the media after the Trump Organization was indicted. This blog post will build on last week’s. I plan to talk about the lies and why they matters.
In a nutshell, the indictment alleges that the Trump Organization and its chief financial officer, Allen Weisselberg, ran a fifteen-year, systematic, ongoing, tax fraud scheme. As part of the scheme, Weisselberg and other Trump Organization executives allegedly received “substantial portions of their salaries” under the table. The indictment listed 15 counts of tax fraud and falsification of documents.
It’s easy and sort of fun to mock the stupid legal arguments and bogus defenses offered by Team Trump. Trump usually loses in court. He lost all those elections cases. But he manages to win in the Court of Right-Wing Opinion, and that’s part of what makes him dangerous.
What I am going to do today is show how Trump defenders are spinning the indictment and why it matters. As always the best example of how Trump defenders are spinning the indictment is from Trump himself. About a week ago, Trump gave a talk. We’ll first take a close look at the spin and then I’ll talk why it matters. You can find videos of Trump’s speech here and here.
He said this:
First, notice the reference to “Democrat-run cities.” This is a standard, divisive tactic: He’s saying this isn’t about the Trump Organization versus law enforcement. This is about Republicans versus Democrats. He said, “You didn’t . . .” He wants it to be “us v. them.: He wants his supporters to feel that they too are being prosecuted.
The indictment actually says this:
There’s obviously a big difference between driving a company car and the company picking up the tab for your personal car AND your wife’s personal car. His supporters at that rally might identify with driving a company car, and they could think it was unfair to be prosecuted for not paying the taxes on the car. But the reality is that Weisselberg and his wife each got a personal Mercedes Benz car paid under the table in a way that allowed both sides to cheat.
Trump went onto say: “You didn’t pay tax on the car, or the company apartment.”
Regarding the apartment, the indictment alleged that:
Here’s what Trump went on to say: “You used an apartment because you need an apartment because you have to travel too far where your house is, and you didn’t pay tax..”
Obviously, there’s a difference between staying occasionally in a company apartment after working late and living rent-free in Manhattan for more than fifteen years. Moreover, Weisselberg lied and said he didn’t live in New York, so he avoided New York taxes. He lived all those years rent-free in New York without paying New York resident taxes.
Trumps then said this:
First, these are not fringe benefits. Second, nobody was indicted for “fringe benefits.”The charge was for tax fraud and falsifying documents.
It has been said about this speech that Trump appeared to admit to the allegations. In fact, Trump didn’t admit to the crimes alleged against his company; he mischaracterized the crimes as something they were not, and then admitted to those. It’s like being charged with stealing $1,000 from a bank vault and admitting to picking up a few dollars from a counter on the way out and arguing that picking up a few dollars is no big deal. An admission would have been something like, “Yes, for years we paid a substantial part of our executives’ salaries under the table to avoid taxes.”
Notice this phrase: I don’t even know. Do you have to pay? Does anybody know the answer to that stuff?
It’s been suggested that in this particular sentence, Trump was offering what’s known as a mens rea defense. What makes criminal cases hard to prove is that in almost every instance (there are a few exceptions) the prosecutor has the burden to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant had criminal intent. Different crimes require different levels of knowledge or intent. As everyone who saw Legally Blonde knows, the intention or knowledge part of a crime is known as mens rea.
But Trump wasn’t actually offering a defense because he mischaracterized the offense. A person accused of robbing a bank vault is not offering a defense if he says, “I didn’t know it was wrong to pick up a few dollars that were sitting there on the counter.”
Moreover, it would be hard for Trump to pretend ignorance of the tax code after bragging about how cleverly he manipulates it. He claimed in the 2016 debate with Hillary Clinton that not paying taxes made him “smart”. He also bragged that, “. . I have legally used the tax laws to my benefit and to the benefit of my company, my investors and my employees. I mean, honestly, I have brilliantly — I have brilliantly used those laws. . . .
I don’t think Trump was trying to offer a defense here. I think he was trying to hoodwink his supporters into thinking the charges were something they are not. Trump wasn’t the only one who gave this particular spin.
The question is: Was it successful? Well, one poll showed that 51% of the voters think that the prosecution of the Trump Organization was politically motivated.
It’s only one poll, we’re early in the process, but I want to talk about why the Court of Right-Wing Opinion matters. Let’s divide the right-wing into three different groups. The first group is what we might call the elites. These are elected Senators, governors, and party leaders. Another group is the hardcore Trump supporters. Think of these guys, or Evangelical Christians who want to live in a theocracy:
They don’t care if Trump lies or cheats or steals because they like what he’s trying to do. Some of this group actually like lawbreakers. Like the guys in that picture. Can you imagine them saying, “Trump is in trouble with the law, so let’s all learn to play nice.”
In fact, there is a myth out there on Twitter and I assume elsewhere that the reason people like Trump commit crimes is because they don’t face consequences. The implication is that if they do face consequences, they’ll stop committing crimes. I say baloney. Hitler was in prison and then went on to become Chancellor and commit horrific crimes. Anyone who voted for Trump in 2020 had enough evidence that Trump was a lawbreaker, but they didn’t care.
How people feel about their leaders being in jail or being indicted often depends on how they feel about the underlying crimes. That’s why Trump’s spin was so important. Think of Martin Luther King, Jr. in jail. Or Rosa Parks getting arrested. Henry David Thoreau was in jail—actually for not paying a tax. He didn’t pay the tax to protest slavery and to protest what he called America’s imperialistic war against Mexico.
So while it is important for Trump to face criminal consequences for lawbreaking, and I believe he will, that alone will not cause Trump to say, “I better stop criming.” It will not make the Trump wannabes say, “We better not break any laws.” But if Trump starts losing in the court of right-wing public opinion, that might doom him.
I mentioned dividing the Republican Party into three groups. The first group is the elites. The second group is the hardcore extremists who literally won’t care if he shoots someone on 5th avenue and is convicted of murder. A third group which is very small are people who have always identified with being a Republican and can’t yet let go, but something might push them. I don’t think it’s worth trying to persuade them. You’ll feel like you’re knocking your head against the wall, but there was a drop in GOP registration after the January 6th, insurrection as tens of thousands of people changed their registration from Republican presumably to independent. So there may still be a few persuadable people.
But the bigger and more important question is: What will cause the elites to stop propping Trump up.
There is a split of opinion out there over whether there will be more indictments against Trump Organization executives. I’m in the group who thinks there will be, for reasons I explained last week.
I also think there’s a difference between a rich man cheating (which is what it looks like right now to his supporters) and a crook who has wealth only because he cheats. There’s a difference between driving a company car and having a free Mercedez Benz cars for you and your wife. Depending on what comes out, it may get harder and harder for Trump to spin the indictments.
A few weeks ago, in a blog post called “How to weaken the Strongman,” I talked about Ruth Ben-Ghiat’s book, Strongmen: Mussolini to the present. She says that strongmen fall when the conservative elites stop propping them up. The Republican elites will stop propping Trump when it’s in their best interests to stop. If (or when) they do abandon Trump, the Republican Party will splinter. Why? Because there are not enough of these guys to win national elections:
Trump’s value to the party is that, before 2016, a lot of these guys didn’t vote. Now they are enthusiastic voters. If they stay home, the Republican Party will have a hard time winning elections. Because nationally, the Republican Party is a minority party with unpopular economic policies.
Dan Ziblatt, one of the co-authors of How Democracies Die talks about the Conservative Dilemma, which goes like this: How can conservatives win national elections with unpopular economic policies? We can see the way the right-wing in America is doing it: By stirring up culture wars so their supporters don’t think about (or notice, or care) that Republican economic policies are hurting them.
The reason people like Lindsey Graham did an about-face about Trump, initially saying:
and then in 2020, saying:
is because he sees that Trump turns out voters. In particular, he turns out these voters, and without them, the Republican Party sees no path forward:
In 2016, Graham didn’t yet know how motivating a force Trump would be for getting a radicalized segment of the population to the polls. Trump has also taught the Republican Party how to perfect the art of disinformation. He lies shamelessly and gets away with it. They find him freeing.
I often say there is no easy fix to our political problems, but one fairly easy way to get three steps ahead would be if something comes out in new indictments that Trump is no longer able to spin in the Court of Right-Wing Public Opinion, because if that happens, and the elites find they can no longer prop him up without other party members fleeing, the Republican Party will fracture because the radicalized elements simply isn’t going to vote for a mainstream candidate.
