"I want to talk about Trump's alleged crimes for a second. He has not been indicted with incitement, we know that, right? So it's not a crime to tell lies. Being a narcissist isn't a crime. Hatching schemes to stay in office is not a crime. Claiming you won an election you know you lost is not a crime," said Fox News host Julie Banderas two weeks ago, just days after disgraced former President Trump was indicted at the federal level for his post-2020 election coup attempt and before he was charged along with 18 of his minions in Georgia as the leader of a RICO conspiracy for the same. As such it's a little stale of a clip but it sticks out as a solid example of the "defense" MAGA Republicans are putting up for their Orange God Emperor these days in their media hits and stupid Twitter posts.
It's one we anticipated in June 2022 when we put up a lengthy examination of what the case against Trump for his post-2020 defeat coup might look like in terms of his knowledge or belief of whether the election was indeed "stolen" from him. Sure enough, Justice Department special counsel Jack Smith's indictment of the fat bastard for his schemes directly addresses this, stating "the purpose of the conspiracy was to overturn the legitimate results of the 2020 presidential election by using knowingly false claims of election fraud to obstruct the federal government function by which those results are collected, counted, and certified." As in Jack Smith doesn't care if Trump actually believed or still does believe he truly won, he can prove that the means he used to try to overturn the election were corrupt and violations of federal statutes. It's something quite a few TV legal pundits have posed as scenario along the lines of "If you think the bank took $5,000 from your account improperly and you go stick up a branch for the same amount you're going to be arrested and charged with armed robbery whether you're right or wrong about the $5,000 missing."
Meaning a defense based on whether Trump really believed it is not going to fly in court. Especially not in DC where we would be surprised if Judge Tanya Chutkan would even allow it to be argued in front of the jury in the first place. So it's really a political argument meant to reassure MAGA voters that it's all just a witch hunt and these charges are political blah blah blah.
This is one of the most malicious criminal cases in the history of this Republic or any Republic. Its contents consist of repeated examples of Smith saying "Trump believed X, then Y person explained to him this belief was false." The complain doesn't mention where Trump got those…
- Charlie Kirk (@charliekirk11) August 1, 2023
"The complaint doesn't mention where Trump got those beliefs, who was telling him otherwise, or what evidence they offered. This case is literally claiming it's a crime that Trump chose to believe one person over someone else. Jack Smith is a rat," wrote small-faced MAGA influencer Charlie Kirk after Smith dropped the hammer, also hinting at but not quite truly nailing what Banderas is saying.
Lately Trump fans have also been running with "How is it a crime to do" this or that listed in the DC and Fulton County indictments, purposely minimizing what in a vacuum were non-criminal acts in furtherance of the conspiracy (listed as "overt acts" in the Georgia RICO case). Here's Tom Cotton just now on Sunday night making the same stupid argument on that little freak Mark Levin's show.
Like was it a crime for Jeffrey Dahmer to buy tools from a butchery supply store? To hang out at a gay bar to pick guys up? To invite them over to his apartment? No, but acts like that were sure as shit presented as evidence in the case against Dahmer, so maybe fanboys should switch it up.
To what, we don't know. Again, this is all political spin meant for Fox News and Twitter. We don't know what Trump's in-court defense will look like – though there is one report hinting that he might try to claim he was misled by his lawyers John Eastman, Rudy, the Kraken, etc. It's not that far off from the "messaging" that Julie Banderas and Charlie Kirk are pushing.
And when you drill down into it, they're effectively saying "Trump was too fucking dumb and deluded to know right from wrong in this situation where he tried to overturn the election. He really believed all those stupid bullshit stories about the Italian satellites and bamboo ballots because he's an idiot so shame on you for criminalizing his stupidity, you woke socialist fascist Marxist scumbags!"
That's their political argument. People who want to see him reelected in 2024 are arguing that their chosen candidate smart and savvy and morally decent enough to become once again the leader of the free world, to regain all the office's awesome power and responsibilities, but also got hoodwinked by Sidney Powell and fucking Mike Lindell so give him a mulligan on this one.