Trump Is Running To Avoid Prison... If He Wins, He'll Wreck The Country
In terms of the criminal mindset and lifestyle, Trump has been walking on the wild side his whole life— and he has always gotten away with it every time he's been exposed. The first time he made it into the New York papers was when he was caught refusing to rent apartments to people of color after he had taken government money that was premised on a non-discrimination policy. He got away with it. He got away with everything, year after year after year, decade after decade.
Just yesterday, the Daily Beast reported that Trump was recently caught illicitly moving tens of millions of dollars around. He’ll get away with that too.
David Graham’s latest Atlantic column was devoted to how all Trump’s criminal activities are catching up with him— and have motivated this presidential run. “Trump,” he wrote, “is up to his ears in legal troubles that he’d like to make disappear, and winning reelection would likely allow him to dispense with at least the federal cases against him. Former Representative Will Hurd made this point last summer, when he was running against Trump for the Republican nomination. ‘Donald Trump is not running for president to make America great again. Donald Trump is not running for president to represent the people that voted for him in 2016 and 2020,’ Hurd told a crowd of Iowa Republicans. ‘Donald Trump is running to stay out of prison.’” And literally everyone in the political and media worlds know that. But it’s rarely talked about… and the MAGAts don’t know.
“Hurd’s point was good. Not only has reporting from Trump’s inner circle indicated that the fear of prosecution— and the power of a president to quash federal cases against him— has motivated Trump, but his defense attorneys effectively confirmed it in a filing this summer. A candidate who is running to potentially stay out of prison is a dangerous candidate. He is not just running for his own ideology or pride; he’s running for his very freedom. That warps his incentives, making him more likely to employ demagogic tactics, less concerned about the way history might judge him, and more inclined to use every avenue possible to win the election— even if it means bending or breaking the law.” Sound familiar? He’s always been a scumbag… he’s infinitely worse now than he’s ever been before, Infinitely.
The United States has never seen an election like this, largely because Trump is a sui generis phenomenon. Richard Nixon left office under threat of prosecution, but was quickly pardoned by his successor, Gerald Ford. Bill Clinton struck an agreement the day before leaving office to avoid prosecution for lying under oath, though he would have been unlikely to face prison time.
But examples elsewhere in the world show the danger of having leaders who fear that leaving office might imperil their freedom: Such presidents may alter their country’s system to remove checks and balances and weaken the rule of law in order to protect themselves.
In Turkey, opponents of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan have long claimed that he feels a need to stay in power lest he be locked up upon leaving office. Certainly, Erdoğan has faced several serious accusations of corruption over his many years in office. A 2010 WikiLeaks dump included diplomatic cables in which a U.S. ambassador to Turkey said that Erdoğan had Swiss bank accounts; Erdoğan threatened to sue. In 2014, leaked tapes appeared to capture him telling his son to dispose of fishy money. Erdoğan also successfully pressured the Trump administration to bring an end to the prosecution of a Turkish bank, which threatened to implicate Erdoğan himself.
Trump— who, like Erdoğan, made his fortune in real estate and construction— is a big fan of the Turkish president. When Turkey held a 2017 referendum that brought new powers to the presidency, in a vote marred by irregularities, critics condemned Trump for quickly congratulating Erdoğan.
Unlike Trump, however, Erdoğan has never faced a credible investigation. “I don’t think [Erdoğan’s] running to stay out of jail, probably because it’s unlikely, given how [he] has packed the courts and the prosecutors,” Steven Cook, a senior fellow who studies the Middle East at the Council on Foreign Relations, told me.
Another possible parallel is Egypt, where the past two presidents— Hosni Mubarak, toppled in the 2011 Arab Spring, and Mohamed Morsi— were removed from office and imprisoned. President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi is “determined that he won’t let that happen to him,” Cook said. To that end, Sisi has presided over a crackdown on freedoms and on criticism of his government.
When a leader acts out of this kind of fear, he has incentives to take actions that don’t just help himself but that can corrupt government systems well past his own term in office— or, for that matter, in prison. Taking either Turkey or Egypt as a model for governance would be a tragedy for the United States, and warning signs abound, such as Trump’s demonstrated hatred of rule of law. A system in which a candidate fears that electoral defeat might lead him to prison on flimsy pretenses is a sick one. A system in which a candidate who might rightfully belong in prison could win is an even sicker one.
Trump doesn't have to think about fellow crooks who could be arrested. He could think about national leaders who were executed like Charles I (England), Louis XVI (France), Maximilian I (Mexico), Nicolae Ceaușescu (Romania), or, one of his heroes, Benito Mussolini. Or he could think of national leaders who are currently serving time or who died in prison. There are dozens; here are just a few, who Trump would definitely know about:
Alberto Fujimori was president of Peru for 10 years, currently serving a 25 year term in prison
Slobodan Milošević- served as president of Serbia, died in prison in The Hague where he was being tried for war crimes
Charles Taylor, President of Liberia- now serving a 50 year term in prison
Najib Razak- Prime Minister of Malaysia- currently serving 12 years in prison
Manuel Noriega- President of Panama, died in a U.S. prison (age 83 in 2017)
Nicolas Sarkozy was president of France, currently serving a 1 year term of home confinement
Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva- served as president of Btazzil, served a prison term, currently president again
