A federal judge ruled that former President Donald Trump probably committed a crime with his desperate attempt to overturn the 2020 election.
The judge called Trump’s myriad lawsuits, fulminations and efforts to foment an insurrection “a coup in search of a legal theory.” The former president’s desperate attempt to hold onto office likely constituted an obstruction of a legal proceeding — and not just any legal proceeding.
He was trying to stop free people from choosing their own government and their own leadership.
That’s MAGA-style patriotism for you.
Right on the heels of the judge’s ruling, the nation learned that more than seven hours of Trump’s phone records from Jan. 6, 2021 — the day insurrectionists stormed the U.S. Capitol, attempted to stop the certification of the 2020 election and tried to hang Vice President Mike Pence — were “missing.” The records that have vanished cover the hours when the mob roamed the halls of Congress, assaulted police officers and trashed the building that is the living symbol of Americans’ determination to govern themselves.
In the days and hours before the sacking of the Capitol, the former president and his allies urged the rioters to gather. Just before the attack on our temple of representative self-government, Trump spoke to the crowd and vowed to march with them to the Capitol. (He didn’t.)
More MAGA-style patriotism.
How did Donald Trump respond to these damning stories?
The way he usually does when confronted by any evidence suggesting he is a demagogue, conman and blowhard.
By pointing his finger somewhere else — anywhere else — and trying to redirect attention away from his own offenses.
In an interview, the former president begged Russian autocrat and butcher Vladimir Putin — you know, the guy who is slaughtering men, women and children in Ukraine — to help him.
After all, what’s more important — the death of thousands of innocent people or Trump’s political fortunes?
And why shouldn’t a former commander-in-chief cozy up to a tyrant who has made not-so-veiled threats to use nuclear weapons against the United States if he doesn’t get his way in Ukraine?
Again, MAGA-style patriotism.
Trump said he wanted Putin to cough up dirt on Hunter Biden, the wastrel son of President Joe Biden.
Let’s deal with this right way.
Hunter Biden’s alleged transgressions should be investigated.
In fact, they are.
Contrary to Trump backers’ feverish charges that everyone is ignoring the younger Biden’s unseemly activities, the Department of Justice has been and is investigating the whole mess. The investigators have been going through Hunter Biden’s records, interviewing his associates and even interrogating the man’s old girlfriends.
So far, no one in the Biden family seems to have called the investigation a “witch hunt” or invoked the Fifth Amendment, which protects one against self-incrimination, even once, much less hundreds of times — as Trump’s children and associates have when they’ve been questioned under oath.
If there is evidence that Hunter Biden has committed a crime, he should be charged and tried. If found guilty, he should suffer the consequences.
But this shouldn’t be an either/or proposition.
It should be a both/and.
If Hunter Biden did something wrong, that doesn’t mean Donald Trump and his cabal of family and cronies who tried to stop the American people from ruling themselves should receive a pass.
They, too, should be investigated.
And if there is evidence they committed crimes — as it appears there is — they should be charged and tried.
If convicted, they should suffer consequences.
Being president isn’t a right. It’s a privilege and a duty.
One of the responsibilities of the job involves putting the nation’s interests ahead of one’s own.
Doubtless, Joe Biden is not thrilled that the Justice Department is investigating his son.
But he’s not whining about it at every opportunity. He’s not complaining that any attempt to inquire into his dealings is a form of persecution.
And he isn’t begging foreign dictators and murderers to save him from being held accountable for his own actions.
That’s why Joe Biden never will stir either sympathy or respect from the MAGA crowd.
He’s not a MAGA-style patriot.
He’s just a patriot of the old-fashioned sort. You know, the kind who puts country ahead of self.
