Donald Trump Has Been Officially Indicted.
And in the most Donald Trump way possible.
When he was president, Donald Trump turned democratic norms and already bizarre political rituals into grotesque surrealist art, and he did so from his gaudy reality TV perspective. The picture of him in the White House dining room leering fudgily from behind stacks of rapidly cooling Big Macs is something from another dimension; to this day, nothing else sums up his presidency better than that triumphant and puckering image. But this photo of classified documents haphazardly and sloppily stacked in a bathroom with a chandelier comes remarkably close.
This is not a compliment by any means, but as a politician and a person, Trump did not allow the immensity and responsibility of the presidency to change him. The chastened fantasy that Trump would rise to the moment persisted in the elite echelons of mainstream media, even through a poignantly long series of entirely unmet moments. This was not so much misplaced as it was a category error. If Trump was ever awed by the power of the office at all, it was mainly in the same way that he would have previously been impressed with golden toilets, or driving a firetruck, or the number of models in attendance at someone’s party in Mar-a-Lago. His post-presidency has been similar to his actual presidency: He watches cable news and is fuming about what he sees, he gossips and gripes, he scarfs down some KFC and shitposts in syncopation with his midnight bowel movements. During the exhaustive and exhausting years that Trump was president, he really was as impervious as he always believed himself to be, which would necessarily make it more difficult for him to accept consequences when they arrive.
Over the years, many disposable memoirs of Trump’s presidency have been published by morally malleable retreads and aspiring genocidaires and off-brand Beltway reptiles whose paths have crossed with the Orange One during his time in power. These people, in varying ways and varying degrees, are striving amoral opportunists, but it was nevertheless amusing to glance upon the specific moments in which they would awaken to the fact that the person they hatched their personal agenda onto is as much of a blowzy putz as he appeared on TV. Of course, their accounts revealed the many ways in which Trump would disregard legal advice from his innumerable lawyers, and this context is only part of what makes this muti-count federal indictment such titillating reading.
Trump is simply not a guy who likes paying retail price, and there is a strange cosmic tension to watching him confidently and repeatedly attempt The Art of The Deal with increasingly unamused representatives of the FBI. His repeated and unambiguous violations of various federal laws are a continuation of his same blithe and instinctual disregard for the idea that any major national concern could matter enough to even momentarily inconvenience him.
The indictment notes that Trump told his lawyers to lie to the FBI and a grand jury, ordered his aide to hide various documents from federal law enforcement officers, and repeatedly suggested holding back or destroying various documents that he had brought from the White House to the Florida banquet facility in which he now lives. “The classified documents Trump stored in the boxes included information regarding defense and weapons capabilities of both the US and foreign countries, US nuclear programs, potential vulnerabilities of the US and its allies to military attack,” the indictment notes. Trump has also been caught on tape bragging about how he could’ve declassified these documents but didn’t for reasons that remain unclear. Despite the strident bemoaning of craven and mendacious MAGA grifters, this all sounds pretty damning. Donald Trump may really be in deep shit because his servile defenders in the conservative media have not called this a “nothingburger,” and have moved on to more existential dilemmas like, “What is the law?”
The indictment also revealed that Trump mostly used these highly sensitive documents—which he knew were illegal for him to possess—to impress upon visitors how important he was; most hilariously, he showed a classified military map to a member of his Super PAC but told him “not to get too close.” Boxes of paper were stored in various demeaning places. At one point, the aide who was indicted alongside Trump stumbled upon boxes full of folders marked “secret” that had fallen and spilled across a storage room floor, and sent two photos of the damage to a fellow aide, who replied, “oh no oh no.”
This indictment doesn’t undercut the significance of the criminality as much as recontextualizes it relative to Donald Trump doing the same things he has always done. Breaking laws in oafish, overt, seemingly arbitrary ways is some trademark Donald Trump Shit. But the indictment lays bare what Trump was doing with all those secret and confidential documents—showing off in weird ways and pursuing vinegary personal feuds—which is also some trademark Donald Trump Shit.
As part of his typically calm and very stable rebuttal he posted on Truth Social, Trump described the many such documents that “the Gestapo” discovered, and which he had spun as having “just ordinary, inexpensive folders with various words printed on them, but they were a ‘cool’ keepsake.” This is another way in which the presidency never changed Trump. The “various words” printed on these documents didn’t matter very much to him, because he considered them his to keep, to periodically wave around whatever Florida real estate barnacle he was aiming to impress at any particular moment.
In a broader context of many more elites getting away with billion-dollar crimes and foreign war boondoggles that carry an incalculable cost in blood, it is nauseating to indulge in the obnoxious—if not premature—#resistance lib fanfare about Trump’s imminent defeat and the triumph of the rule of law. Jeff Tiedrich is getting absolutely obliterated off aggressively snarky posts and CNN anchors are holding back tears while a small headline scrolls along the bottom of the screen that states, “Lockheed Martin Announces Partnership With OpenAI.” I can’t decide what would be more on-brand for Trump: Doing the perp walk peacefully and making a big show of it or having a standoff at Mar-A-Lago? It would be bleakly entertaining if Trump somehow won the Republican nomination from a prison cell and delivers his acceptance speech with cornrows and gang members standing in the background like they’re Secret Service. Hillary will tweet that he looks like an apex predator, which will garner 3 million likes and spike Trump’s approval by 6%. If Trump somehow faces consequences for this, I would like for him to be granted house arrest on the condition that he has to ditch Truth Social and go back to Twitter.
Is it too soon to politicize his indictments? Because if it is, I would like to offer my thoughts and prayers for him instead 😜. I want to emphasize my sarcasm behind this comment!