During the Watergate scandal, a recurring question was asked: What did President [Nixon] know and when did he know it? Special Counsel Jack Smith’s January 6th-related charges against Donald Trump prompt a similar question, albeit one that is fundamentally unknowable. If he truly believed that Biden cheated him out of the 2020 election, his efforts to reverse the results were nothing of the sort, but merely his attempt to set things right.
What, If Anything, Did the President Think?
Ted Rall
Ted Rall is a syndicated political cartoonist for Andrews McMeel Syndication, WhoWhatWhy.org and Counterpoint. He is a frequent contributor to The Wall Street Journal, a graphic novelist and author of many books of art and prose, and an occasional war correspondent. He is, recently, the author of the graphic novel "The Stringer."
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I’m waiting for how — somehow — Trump will beat the charges but other people in his orbit won’t.
All I know is, even if Trump gets found guilty, the second he wins, his first action after finishing the oath of office will be to turn to his primary camera and deliver the first lines of his speech: “The crooked dems put me in prison. Well, I can’t run the country in a cell, so I have no choice, even though I’m innocent, but to pardon myself for a crime I didn’t commit. But you know who DID commit a crime? Hillary Clinton. That’s why I’m ordering her to be arrested. And that husband of hers, too. And Crooked Joe and his Crookeder son. …”
I wonder if this was how the Whigs spiraled into extinction. Weak, corrupt, scientifically illiterate short-term, small-minded party hacks. Sure covers Biden and Trump.
I have no doubt that Donald Trump has committed crimes for which he could be imprisoned, but I’m not comfortable with the possibility that the one he could get nailed for is “thoughtcrime.”
Who’s next?
And, although they apparently want us to ignore it, let’s not forget all the noise the Dems made about the results of the 2016 election being illegitimate because of “Russian interference,” a charge that is demonstrably specious, but that they nonetheless cling to.