Running for Office While Under Indictment is What Strongmen Do; The Role of Co-Conspirators

And a roundup of U.S. and foreign reactions to the indictment

This week I participated in two events sponsored by the American Historical Association. Along with several peers, I spoke about the “crisis of democracy” to middle and high school teachers of history. It’s so important to support our teachers, and the field of history is targeted in many states right now for Republican interference.

I also gave some interviews about the indictment of former president Donald Trump. I had a great conversation with Anand Giridharadas, who is the author of The Persuaders. You can read “From the Trump indictment to an ‘anti-authoritarian age’” in Anand’s Substack The Ink here.

Here are my comments to the AP (picked up by ABC News) about the role of propaganda in preparing Trump’s supporters to see the indictment as more evidence of his persecution by “the deep state.”

And Semafor has a valuable roundup of foreign press reactions, including a piece by Chinese government publication The Global Times on how our whole situation merely proves the farce of “election-centered democracy.”

Trump’s mass deception of the American people was one focus of the indictment, which noted that he disseminated falsehoods to create “an intense national atmosphere of mistrust and anger, and erode public faith in the administration of the election." This builds on the essay I recently did for Lucid about Trump’s strengths as a propagandist and how he has pulled off something quite unique: convincing over 50 million people that he won the 2020 election while operating in a democracy with a pluralistic media environment.

You can read that post here, and one I wrote on the role of Fox here.

As for the arraignment, it was no surprise that Trump showed up in person at the E. Barrett Prettyman Courthouse in Washington D.C., traveling by “Trump Force One” and motorcade from his New Jersey residence. A Zoom appearance was an option, but where’s the victim spectacle in that?

And it was expected that he would plead not guilty to charges that he engaged in criminal conspiracies connected to trying to overturn the results of the 2020 election. Nor will this latest and most grave indictment have any bearing on his status as a presidential contender.

A protester outside the E. Barrett Prettyman Courthouse in Washington D.C., Aug. 3, 2023. Francis Chung/POLITICO

Who would Trump be if he withdrew from the race? A nobody —and a nobody with no protection from the law. The authoritarian playbook dictates that it’s precisely when you have serious legal problems that you are most motivated to run for office, so you can gain (or regain) power and domesticate the judiciary so your legal exposure will vanish. This theme runs throughout the corruption chapter of Strongmen.

With its reminder that Trump and his co-conspirators wanted to invoke the Insurrection Act on Jan. 6 against any protesters, the indictment brought us back to the awful hours when the coup attempt was in motion. Here is an essay on how Jan. 6 fits into the history of coups. which usually involve a broad section of elites. For every person bashing heads outside there are others in suits or uniforms directing the action.

If you’ve done your prep work correctly, you can even sit calmly while the attempt to overthrow democracy unfolds. That’s why Trump Chief of Staff Mark Meadows did on that day. As aide Cassidy Hutchinson testified to the House Jan. 6 Committee, when the violence started Meadows had little reaction and merely continued to scroll on his phone.

So here is a column on those conspirators by strategist and commentator Simon Rosenberg, who joined us last Friday for a stimulating Q&A, and here is one by lawyer Marc Elias on the role of lawyers in the coup.

The strongman is nothing without his enablers. One can note the multifaceted criminality of his co-conspirators between Nov. 2020 and Jan. 6 as they sought to assist their leader to stay in power illegally. That, too, is on display in this indictment.