[Donald J. Trump on Truth Social]
In a social media post (that may have been intended as a DM to the Attorney General of the United States), Donald Trump directs AG Pam Bondi to prosecute three political opponents immediately!
Complaining about the
“same old story as last time, all talk, no action. Nothing is being done. What about Comey, Adam “shifty” Schiff, Leticia??? They’re all guilty as hell, but nothing is going to be done.”
Trump demands, “JUSTICE MUST BE SERVED, NOW!!!“
Authoritarian Playbook
Well, not justice, actually. Retribution. As pledged during the 2024 campaign. “I am your voice. I am your justice. And for those who have been wrong, been betrayed. I am your retribution.” But, make no mistake, he’s speaking for himself. “I hate my opponent. And I don’t want the best for them,” he said yesterday at a memorial rally for Charlie Kirk. That’s been clear for a while.
The mainstream media has characterized Trump’s Department of Justice going after his political enemies as veering from DOJ norms established after Watergate. That was a half-century ago. But the norm for DOJ (and for presidents) goes much further back, as Jonathan Bernstein notes:
I’ve seen a bunch of people refer to Trump violating post-Watergate rules about interference with the prosecutions, but don’t be fooled by that. Those practices only formalized what people always thought was supposed to be happening all along. We know this because (1) Nixon hid what he was doing, and (2) when Nixon’s interference with the Justice Department was exposed, everyone basically freaked out.
Until this lawless president and the Roberts Court’s Republican-majority opinion (unmoored from well-established legal scholarship, judicial precedent, and a plain reading of the Constitution) in Trump v. United States, no one thought that DOJ or U.S. presidents operated this way. (In other nominally democratic countries, with autocratic leaders amassing control, yes.)
This is an unleashed wannabe authoritarian bullying our nation. We’ve never seen anything like it. Not in our country. Not on this scale. Not right out in the open. Not until Trump and the Roberts Court (and a supine Republican Congress) made it happen.