Rally or rethink? Or both? This week has pulled conservatives, Republicans, and activists in multiple directions, and both Adam Baldwin and I are no exceptions. We discuss our initial knee-jerk reactions to the indictment of Donald Trump and then take a look at the longer and deeper view. In today’s episode, we discuss the motives driving this and the potential traps that lay ahead, while in Monday’s episode we look more specifically at the implications for the election cycle.
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Welcome back to my VIP video series “The Amiable Skeptics,” featuring my friend Adam Baldwin! Adam is well-known for his long and storied Hollywood career, starting with My Bodyguard, and especially for his roles in Full Metal Jacket, Firefly, its film sequel Serenity, Chuck, and The Last Ship.
First, however, we wonder whether Trump is up to the fight. “How Trump reacts to it is another important factor that we need to talk about today,” Adam says. “His speech at Mar-a-Lago on Tuesday night in my opinion, rhetorically correct. He talks a good game. It’s his tone that I worry about. His tone was dower, and he lost that happy warrior twinkle that I think we all want to see.”
Trump has good reason to be down, I point out, especially considering the stacked deck that awaits him in New York City courtrooms. I paraphrase Alan Dershowitz in arguing that “if you’re expecting the New York justice system to somehow summon its inner James Madison and strike this thing down with the wrath that it deserves, you’re very much mistaken.” The indictment is not just ridiculous but constitutionally offensive, amounting to “secret charges” in an arraignment. A court committed to the rule of law would have tossed it out after reading it. The fact that this will drag out to December for the next scheduled look at the case doesn’t sound terribly encouraging in that regard.
This brings us to the forces behind this indictment. It is not a question of making sure that “no one is above the law,” as Democrats claim, but the use of raw prosecutorial power to take out political opponents. And it doesn’t stop with Trump, Adam warns. “They’re fully emboldened now, they’re fully emboldened. Their revolution is in full active motion right now,” Adam says. “What Bragg is doing to Trump is what the Left is doing to the rest of individual liberty loving Americans. He’s a symbol, and don’t you dare step out of line. They’re going to come for you.”
This is the result of the Long March Through the Institutions, I argue, and what happened at Stanford Law last month shows just how far it’s gone. “That’s part of this long march, and this is where you get to the Alvin Braggs,” I explain. “Law schools stopped teaching the rule of law and they became activist colonies … and Bragg is just an activist who has a law degree, who sees the law as mere a means to whatever end he desires, rather than the rule of law being a principle in and of itself something to protect and to defend.”
All of that leaves us with the questions about what this means for 2024, and whether a call to rally around Trump is necessary to fight this — or a trap set by our opponents. Get ready for that conversation in the next episode, and join this one in our comments!
