Trump’s political impact in the United States
Despite Trump’s allegations of electoral fraud in the 2020 presidential election, it has been disconfirmed that it happened. However, Trump believes that exactly (that it has been disconfirmed) is part of a “conspiracy” to cover it up. It may seem like such a cover-up would require a “deep state” network so tightly knit that each and every member – even of the network’s periphery – remains silent; a clandestine network being an actual threat to democracy.
Who, however, is the most conspiratorical here? If Trump had solid, objective evidence that electoral fraud took place in 2020, he would have presented it. He is a free and resourceful man, and not known primarily for letting available means for the optimization of his own interests “lie unused”. It is an important question: What are the huge leads that Trump has to underpin his personal conviction of electoral fraud with?
On Jan. 6. 2021, two months after Trump’s loss in the presidential elecetion, the US Congress building was stormed by a street mob consisting of Trump’s “most faithful”. They wanted to obstruct a meeting where Biden’s victory was to be formalized. According to Congress’ own – bipartisan – investigative committee put together because of the incidence, it had unfolded as part of a 7-point plan by Trump to undo the 2020 presidental election.
The bipartisan investigative committee listed the following 7 points: Spreading of disinformation about electoral fraud and incorrect results; using the rest of the presidential term to try and replace people in the justice department with people who would support his allegations; pressuring vice president Mike Pence to reject certified vote results; pressuring state legislators to change electoral results; instructing republicans to submit alternative results; the storming of Congress and lastly, neglecting to use his presidential authority to ask the potentially dangerous mob to moderate itself in real time (truly like a “lame duck”).
The results of the 2020 presidential election were the hottest in the state of Georgia since the difference between the presidential candidates was only approx. 12,000 votes. At the time when Congress was stormed, however, Trump still seems to merely have been seeking justified reasons to claim that electoral fraud had happened.
That is because on the next day (Jan. 7. 2021), in the township of Coffee, Georgia, people from Trump’s apparatus illegally entered voting machines, illegally copied ballots, and illegally gained accessed sensitive material, but without finding anything later presented as evidence. Even if it would be a personal conviction of Trump that electoral fraud had taken place, someone else could think that at least solid evidence is required before desecration of Congress “lands” on the agenda. If justifiable at all, a feeling that electoral fraud must have taken place is not enough to justify it.
In 2023, lawyer Jenna Ellis pleaded guilty to making false statements and was sentenced for it. Her statements, passed on in the media, may indirectly have contributed to the storming of Congress. It seems likely that Ellis then took the “fall” alone for the actions of a larger number of individuals, including several more powerful than herself (one or the other type of “deep network?”). Later, in 2024, Rudi Giuliani was found guilty of being implicated and lost his NY law license.
A relatively more “conciliatory interpretation”, among other possible ones, is that Trump let his “most faithful” storm Congress because he privately experienced “disbelief” due to his loss of the presidency. Presidents and presidential candidates who lose presidential elections in the United States have not previously been known to experience “disbelief”. It might say more about Trump than it says about anyone else. What Trump “performed” (cf. “pulled”) in 2020-21 he found at least no 20th or 21th century precedent for in his own country.
The conclusion that not electoral fraud, but disinformation about electoral fraud took place, is not accepted by everyone as “the only truth”, because the intention of the courts and the media that assert this position are believed by many to be biased and politicizing. In the USA, there is talk about “democratic judges” and “republican judges”. One can argue that this is a problem of its own, a weakness up against the ideal of the threefold theory of governmental power and its “checks & balances”.
Are judicial decisions never politicizing? Americans may rightly ask “how to avoid this problem fully?”, since judges can’t be denied the civic right to a political affiliation, but some european democracies have customs that have at kept this problem either minimized for them, or off the radars. If european democracies have just put a cloaking lid over the same problem, they are not better.
When Trump, however, accentuates the here suggested problem by using that problem to “sow” an increased degree of distrust through – claims – of illegitimate politicization (fake news?), it becomes difficult over time, for new generations without long experience with american politics, to maintain credibility around a reality description where the judiciary is a “guardian of the constitution and the laws”. It may too easily be perceived as a means for party political actors holding high offices within the executive branch to “be given right” (cf. a public image of the judiciary as their loyal servants, so to speak, in thanks for the nominations to their positions). A public perception may arise in which the executive branch of government is somehow ranked rightfully above the judicial branch.
When it comes to the media, the “mainstream media” are being discredited, and”alternative news” are being trusted more by some even if they can be assumed to be politically impartial to an even lesser extent than “mainstream media” can be assumed to be it. One ceases to be interested in the hypothetical premise “if this can be trusted to be true” in favor of taking “lots of people think” as sign of truth. That is a bit like washing off muddy water on one hand with another hand full of thick mud.
“Once, one would have said: “Here, at least something must be true! The consensus of human kind proves the truth! Do we still talk like that today? Do we have the right to?” (Nietzsche, 1889: Twilight of the Idols, The Problem of Socrates, #1)
It is not a given that “outside perspectives” are more correct than inside perspectives, but maybe it interests some people in the USA how one outside perspective among America’s oldest, best friends in the “european west” quite often is: Trump first discredits the informal “fourth power” (the free press) and then uses the loss of trust he has helped to reinforce (a reduction of trust seems already to have existed before him) with “fake news “.
The fake news are proactive inputs that, in the next turn, no longer merely discredit the mainstream media, like in the first instance, but then also the political “state building” (cf. “our judiciary and the very bipartisan base of our democracy is barely trustworthy, if at all”). This dynamic can, in its structure, resemble processes where misleading propaganda creates a “coercedmistrust” of the system among the public, so that the fear (willently created on a false premis) similar to that often inherent to “states of emergency” morally justifies a change in the frame conditions for the political fight towards the normalization of harder and eventually even more authoritarian means.
Now, connotations to Hitler (even if pre WWII) is too harsh and unjust to Trump, a charicature used to exaggerate some patterns that subjectively to some may seem ill, and that may otherwise be overlooked. Trump is nowhere near being “a Hitler” personality-wise; not generally idealizing of violence and not ideologically extremist. Trump, apparently, does not want to “bring down the system”, but if he does not, he can still seem to many as though he is blind to the system’s unique and historical value “in itself” and to his own impact on it as a boundaryless individual.
Boundarylessly, he wants to enter other people’s marriages, illegally enter the Capitol via his “most faithful”, and illegally enter classified information after his resignation as president. Trump and his closest supporters claim that he is shedding light light on government corruption, as a “freedom hero”. Famous, widely recognized freedom heroes, however (for instance Martin L. King), are not characterized by their defaming of “opponents”, but by having a “contrastingly clean” slate or record themselves. Trump may easily be seen as leaning to that side where others are mainly being defamed.
Trump calls the free press, which is protected by the first amendment to the US constitution, and which for well thought reasons of protecting the democracy is nicknamed the “fourth branch of power”, an “enemy of the people”. He says that he wants to “punish them” and reduce their freedom. He also lashes out against the judicial branch of government as though it would be corrupt and illegitimately politicizing, and says he wants to weaponize the justice department’s prosecuting authority, politizising it to indict what he calls “marxist judges”. Politicizing a crime-fighting governmental authory (the justice department), however, would be an openly corrupt misuse of a democratic institution for partisan interests.
Concerns for predictability, makes it required of any serious political culture to let politicians and the public take statements or promises from political opponents literary, and not risk being ridiculed for taking statements too literary, overlooking tongue in cheek jargon as “the new normal”. “Marxist” means revolutionary communism. There are no judges from a marxist political party in the USA.
In the context of the cold war threat of revolutionary communism’s takeover of the world, McCarthyism suspected american citizens with a low threshold of having actual marxist affiliations, but it never calumniated the old-traditional, democratic party of the USA or its public office holders within the democracy as being marxist. It was intelligent in the service of democracy during a time of an immense, world wide threat of revolutionism that does no longer exist today.
A map is always simpler than the terrain and sometimes too crude to be useful, but a politician who makes the debate less nuanced compared to the actual landscape than the “debate map” has traditionally granted for, can be an expression of a person expecting the ears of others with too little experience to sustain the traditional level of competence that is expected for his/her wanted role. Opponents of that person may find it natural to ask themselves if the persons is blind to his/her own inexperience, causing him/her to demand equal stage room and even definatory power, despite of it.
If you would voluntarily play the role of “the dumb one”, overlooking possible tongue in cheek and taking everything maybe too literary, one would have to ask: Is “marxist” a word Trump chooses to defame opponents, create fear, and thus justify a later “authoritarian turn” to the people. Putin calls the ukraineans nazis, but we do not thereby believe that they are. If so, we could here talk about a seeming motion towards erasing the credibility that “the other”, old-traditional and mainstream political party depends on to be perceived as worthy co-manager of a co-owned, democratic system.
If Trump succeeds in “defining” for the US public that the democratic party – in screaming contrast to himself – is too corrupt for that, it would resemble processes that the USA normally associates with “banana states”, not with itself. The ultimate end point of such a process is a one-party state, which is the same as a non-democracy. The US system provides for, and depends on, valid and equal weight being given to judges from both of the mainstream, old-traditional and equally electable political parties of the USA.
With the same, voluntarily naivist attitude, you could ask: In order to indict “marxist judges”, does Trump want some kind of “executive court” (somehow similar to a military court) that stands above the judicial branch of the three-fold power? Does he, alternatively, trust that what he may perceive as “his judges” will allow him to use the “standard judiciary” in a cannibalistic manner? If the judiciary cannibalizes itself due to loyalty to the executive branch of power, the executive branch of power may end up as “the last man standing”.
As a main rule, it is childish to call others childish. It is “too easy” to resort to as a claim and as an “argument”; in practice often a “domination technique”, and whoever likes to patronize others does not thereby provide proof of their own supreme maturity. If, as an exception, one may claim that opponents are “child-like” (cf. displaying inexperienced/immature behavior to a role-compromising degree), one must give good reasons for it.
If you belong to the “type of people” who actually believe that Trump spreads lies in the form of fake new, it is possible to argue that the “structure” of what Trump does resembles a “child-like pseudo-cleverness”: “If you can’t prove that I’m lying, I can say ‘Jack is the one lying’ and thus be on the same ‘moral level’ as Jack despite my lies, or better, if I am believed”. What seems to be true in the eyes of others, not what the facts are, is what one’s own “advantage” is calculated to depend upon.
That type of people (who honestly believe that Trump is serial-lying) often perceive him as follows: He has been propagandist of “alternative news”, before he became president, and while he was it. In that regard, competitors for executive top positions have arguably not been anywhere near him. He has thus contributed to an impression in society that one cannot really know what is true. It may seem as though any claim is expected to be taken by the public as equally valid (equally potentially true) as any other.
Ultimately, this seems in effect to be an attempted means for Trump’s statements to be believed the most (believed as “sovereign”). He has accused others of lying by saying “that’s alternative news”. By calling what he claims to be lies by the term “alternative news”, however, Trump has indirectly admitted that “alternative news” are lies. As a propagandist of “fake news” there would be a double standard to the disadvantage of others if he was to be believed over others who have not spread “fake news” when he puts forth claims of electoral fraud.
Without claiming to know that electoral fraud did not take place in the 2020 presidential election, one can say that – if – electoral fraud did not take place (the seemingly probable alternative), unjustified allegations of electoral fraud that damage the public’s trust in one party are – in effect – to be equated with attempted electoral fraud in its own right. Generally speaking, having one’s own lies believed as premis for how things turn out is a form of cheating.
That is why this is a serious matter rightfully looked into with scrutiny by the courts. The fact that public proscutors has gotten work out of this issue does not look like a partisan (democratic party) misuse of the judiciary at all. Could it be that when Trump accuses others of electoral fraud, this is an attempt to win regardless of what is true? If it would be so, it would seem crucially important to democracy to find it out.
One can also choose to notice the “semantic structure”of Trump‘s rhetoric. He said in October 2023: “They only go after those who challenge the result of the election, they don’t go after the people who cheated”. He here said “…after the people who cheated”, not “…after the people who I think cheated”. It is, then, as if it should be raised above question that his subjectivity equals “being right”, that his subjectivity equals objectivity. This can be the case by crude inexperience or immature egocentrism.
The choice of the words “…. the people who cheated” is – in effect – haughtily arrogant, and if he gets renewed power, it will be “arrogant-in-power”. He can then, backed by the formal authority of the presidency, want to “define” truth to be that electoral fraud took place in 2020. He puts his own subjectivity above that of others in a prejudiced or biased way, seemingly even above others’ honest attempts to be objective rather than subjective. If candidates who “override” others’ attempts to be objective with their own subjectivity are “rewarded” rather than “penalized” after political debates, democracy may get weakened.
There is a risk if too many eligible voters interpret indictments against Trump solely as illegitimately politicizing abuse of power from within government. They can then sense that they have the right to fight government, with Trump, the way he seems to think he has the right to do so (the storming of Congress seems to have been an attempt to undo a democratic election).
What if, maybe contrary to one’s own assumption, one is wrong that electoral fraud took place and wrong that the indictments against Trump constitute an abuse of power? If there is any room left for doubt, the benefit of the doubt should be to the advantage of those accused. Trump accuses others of power abuse through the indictments against him. If it comes to trials where Trumps is indicted, any benefit of doubt should – then – come to his advantage.
The highest courts in the states of Colorado and Maine opted to prohibit Trump’s re-run for president before the 2024 election, with reference to the storming of Congress and the “insurrection clause” in the constitution. The US supreme court, with a six to three conservative majority out of which three judges were nominated for their positions by Trump himself, ruled in March 2024 that Colorado’s decision is invalid. Trump got to run for president.
The US supreme court stated that Congress, not the states, can disqualify a candidate due to the “insurrection clause” in the constitution. The focus was thus turned to where the authority to disqualify lies. Whether Colorado’s judgment reflected a correct interpretation of the insurrection clause was not addressed.
However, when Congress has the power to disqualify, and not the judiciary, the decision becomes neither politically trustworthy (the motives are easily slandered as politicizing, confidence in democracy and the democratic climate of cooperation can be enormously damaged) nor legally trustworthy (Congress lacks the judicial expertise of the judiciary. It is a legislative power, not a judicial one). If there is such a thing as a “guardian of the constitution”, it is the supreme court.
The US supreme court emphasized that the decision to disqualify a presidential candidate must be federal. Otherwise, one state can veto the will of the whole nation’s people. That is sensible and understandable. Would it not, however, be better if the conclusion that the decision must be federal meant that it gave the nation’s highest court the decisive role in clarifying the relevant question? If not, the question is ignored by a turning of focus.
Is it possible to imagine a case in which a criminal conviction is appealed to the US supreme court, and that the supreme court acquits the convicted on the grounds that the states lack the supreme authority to judge? The comparison is of course not a fully just one, in that it is concluded that Congress does retain the authority to decide on the disqualification of presidential candidates, but that can be criticized such as above mentioned.
Single states cannot have a veto right against presidential candidates but seen from the opposite side; from that of single states, the supreme court’s “turn of focus” can be interpreted as one degree “undemocratic”. Maine and Colorado must accept a presidential candidate suspected of criminal acts against democracy without getting a position-taking answer from the seemingly relevant federal branch of power (the judiciary) when they seek it. They may sense belonging to a union where they are obliged to accept presidential candidates suspected of crime against democracy. Even if the supreme court had taken stance pro Trump, Colorado could no longer say the same thing, because they would then have gotten a position taking answer.
Trump is still indicted in a criminal case, for disinformation that cast severe doubts among many eligible voters on the election results from 2020 and for his involvement in the storming of Congress. The date for a possible trial was postponed because Trump made a claim of presidential immunity to the US supreme court. If granted full “presidential immunity”, he would in the eyes of many seem to be above the well conceived and long admired “checks and balances” of the threefold power.
However, there is also a danger if Trump has to stand trial, but is acquitted, because a great deal of eligible voters could see such an acquittal, not as a weighing of proof against the requirement of burden of proof for guilt, but as a confirmation that election fraud did take place in 2020, and the judiciary may – in those people’s eyes – then have branded its own branch of governmental power as corrupt and illegitimately politicizing, precisely in line with Trump’s insinuations and claims.
This concern should never become a reason to convict Trump, that would be persecutory and oppressive in a manner not reconcilable with democracy, but it strengthens the argument that the way the US supreme court does not see it within their constitutionally granted authority to handle its insurrection clause as constituting a dangerous omission either on the part of the supreme court or due to the present wording of the constitution. Potentially, it may sharpen a domestic conflict.
On july 1. 2024, the US supreme court threw out a lower court decision that had rejected Trumps claim of presidential immunity. The supreme court ruled that a former president has full immunity for his official responsibilites as president, no immunity for matters unrelated to them, but “at least a presumptive immunity for acts within the outer perimeter of his official responsibility”, meaning prosecutors face a high bar to overcome that presumption.
The question after that decision seems to be whether Trump’s abetting of an uncontrollable, potentially violent street-mob to storm the house of the legislative branch of the threefold governmental power motivated by his own loss of power after a democratic election can be defined to belong to “the outer perimeter of his official responsibilities”. If defined as that, the courts are now directed to use a high bar to overcome the presumption of immunity.
Provided all of that has been interpreted correctly, however, the courts do not seem to be directed by the supreme court to use a high bar to overcome an assumption that his transgressions are unrelated to his official responsibilities. Hence, there may still be a criminal trial against Trump about the storming of congress, but due to the many rounds in different courts, it will not happen before the 2024 presidential election. Many, however, hedge doubts it will ever happen if he wins it.
“Project 25” is worked out by a group of republicans; not explicitly for Trump, but they support Trump before the presidential election in 2024. Large parts of the civil service / the state apparatus in WDC is allegedly to be replaced with loyalists faithful to a republican president. They assume the maximalist version of “the unitary executive theory”, which means that the president is to take absolute control over the executive branch of federal government.
Given this, maybe the people behind “project 25” have a bit of “bad luck” that Trump, and not some other republican candidate, has been nominated as the presidential candidate by the party’s membership. Trump, as a person who is privately implicated in multiple criminal lawsuits, who talks about punishing critics he calls “vermin”, about punishing judges he calls “marxist”, about punishing the media that are free by decree of the constitution, and about turning the justice department’s powers of prosecution into a political rather than a crime-fighting weapon.
The inuits in the arctic allegedly have 53 different words for snow, wet snow, a little less wet snow with bluish reflection, and so forth – because snow makes up such a dominant part of their life world. Trump uses various synonyms and part-synonyms for “revenge”; “retribution” – “vindication”. “Revenge”, however, does not seem fully “mentally balanced” to citizens who honestly believe Biden won legitimately in 2020. Trump’s “revenge” merged with “project 25” becomes something rather disturbing.
“Project 25” has allegedly – in advance – made lists of 10,000 candidates for the civil service / the state apparatus. The president shall, with these loyalists, take full control of the justice department. The fact that “western” foreigners may think that this resembles a completely un-american concentration of power in the hands of one individual is not the relevant point. That is whether it also gives either Trump or someone else as president the opportunity, more gradually and covertly, to either “control” or “override” the judicial and legislative branches of power.
It was already implied that it may seem to some as though the USA’s “checks & balances” have a relatively speaking “weak spot” when it comes to presidents’ nomination of supreme court judges. Furthermore, “project 25” wants to put the media under stricter public control (in the USA!). Responsible for this will be: The widely thought to be a fake-news-propagandist; Trump! Is it a good thing to replace the centuries’ old freedom of the press with Trump’s own “news” such as – freely – distributed from the white house? There is a word for that: Government controlled news. If he uses fake news, there is a term for that too: Government propaganda.
The US founding fathers based the US constitution on western philosophers of the 18th century “enlightenment era”, mainly from Britain and France, but also in Germany, where things should go so wrong much later, corresponding ideas sprouted. At the university of Jena, 18th century german philosopher Johann G. Fichte was an oral proponent for the modern type of freedom of expression and of the press. He reflected over the balance between freedom and responsibility and over the importance of such freedoms for natonal security (cf. that the lack of it constituted a threat to it).
Bright ideas before make up no guarantee that the same lights may not be put out later. The way the USA has been a lighthouse for enlightenment era ideals makes up no guarantee it must continue to be that way. Before Hitler, Napoleon of France constituted the first major defeat of the enlightenment era’s ideals. Britain always remained the european lighthouse for it, at least within the domestic and european settings.
Is putting the US media under stricter public control according to the intentions of the legislators (who gives the laws)? The legislative branch of the threefold power ranks level-headedly with the executive and the judicial branches. All three branches have different but equally ranked powers and domains of sovereignty. Is putting the US media under stricter public control in accordance with the constitutional anchoring of freedom of expression and speech?
“In all institutions into which the sharp air of public criticism does not blow in, an innocent corruption arises, like a fungus.” (Nietzsche, 1878: Human, All too Human, part one, 9th main section, #468)
The free press is thought of as the best means to keep fresh air of sharp criticism blowing through the corridors of power. Maybe “fungal infestation” under governmental power wielded by the democratic party has been a “red cloth” to the eyes of Trump and other republicans. For instance, it may seem that they tried to hide the truth about Biden’s age-related health condition. How is that different from lying? Pre-dement people should not always decide for themselves whether they are pre-dement. Such matters easen the efforts of some to claim that government is covertly ruled by a “deep state”, democratic party elite.
Maybe republicans think that the mainstream media have been selective, tendensious or even misleading in their critical focus depending on who was in power. That, however, is the reason that news senders such as Fox has grown big. Free media means all political viewpoints have the right to compete about news transmission. One would think that could make fake news superfluous.
With Trump’s absolute control over the executive branch of federal government and 10,000 “loyalists” (who have unlearned the american ability to question dictates?) in the civil service / the state apparatus, electoral fraud – might – become “relatively easier” both to arrange – and to hide, for instance by congressional elections affecting the legislative branch of government. “Fake news” can then, at the least hypothetically, be used as state propaganda to “ensure the public” that the executive branch of federal government only takes precautionary measures to guarantee against the other party’s “rigging” of elections. It might get branded “emergency powers”. Media that have been curtailed will not be able to expose it.
We do not even have to suspect Trump of wanting to do such things. Ultimately, all of this is about generally forestalling, reason-based, that the executive branch of government can (cf. has the chance to) deprive the other two branches of the threefold governmental power of their constitutionally regulated power by the means of how the political state is build structurally. Hence the crucial importance of the constitution. It is a well thought, intelligent instrument which operative existence has temporally co-incided with the USA’s world leading status – a mere coincidence?
It may be that Trumps is a better guy than he gives the impression among opponents, so it can be formulated as a general concern: Given the enormous trust to command the loyalty of the bipartisan democracy’s military, there is a risk if the executive branch of federal government which always represents only one of the two mainstream parties of the US democracy at a time, would arrogate to itself more power than the constitution intends at the expense of the other two branches, and where this power is also more person-based than the american tradition grants for. It would be uncannily reminiscent of Hitler’s “road upwards” and also of Moscow’s current “state of emergency”.