New York has been in a strange fever this past week, awaiting the imminent arrest of former president Trump. Or at least we were told that it was imminent. Trump himself told his followers that he expected to be arrested on Tuesday. But Tuesday came and went and no arrest happened. The media was camped outside the state courthouse downtown, and on a street parallel to Trump Tower row upon row of police cars and security service vehicles loitered, waiting.
What were they all doing? Well, one explanation is that Trump called for his supporters to turn out and protest his arrest. Because nobody can think of a time when Trump called for his supporters to turn out to protest and anything bad happened, right?
But if the police were loitering for Trump supporters, they were in the wrong place. New York is not a Republican city and New Yorkers themselves do not have any special love for Trump. You could say that New Yorkers looked down on Trump long before the rest of the world got into the habit. They are pioneers in the field.
What seemed to be occurring was some kind of negotiation. A negotiation between prosecutors, the secret service who protect the former president, and the local New York police. What seems to have been under discussion is the manner of the arrest.
In a nation more than used to surprises, the details of this might still startle some. For instance, you might expect that Trump and his team would want to avoid any scene that humiliates the former president. But sources this week claimed that Trump actually wants to be handcuffed and for this to be caught on film. He believes that these images will rile up his base and help trampoline his run for the presidency in 2024. It is a high-risk strategy, but then Trump is a master of high risk.
What this looks like in the wider country is a wholly different matter. For some Americans, the idea that the former president could face a courtroom and perhaps even a jail cell over the Stormy Daniels scandal is preposterous. It is alleged that Trump paid hush money to the adult film star from campaign funds, whereas it should have been paid from his personal funds. “So what?”, many people think. Of all the things that might disbar Trump from running for office again, the idea that this should do for him seems bizarre.
Rumour has it that the local district attorney may be starting to worry about this himself. There is word that he is concerned about the strength of the case. And so he should be. For the only thing more disastrous for America than Trump being hauled to court in handcuffs would be for this to happen only for Trump to get off. His Left-wing opponents think – hope – that this is impossible. But it is eminently possible. And in that situation Trump can present himself not only as a victim of deep state enmity but as a martyr. Someone who has had to put up with efforts to unseat him from the moment he won the 2016 election.
He isn’t wrong on the political persecution. Whatever you think of Donald Trump, it is undeniable that political opponents within the system tried to destroy him from the moment that he broke the Republican Party machine and gained office. For the duration of his presidency, there were endless efforts to indict him and impeach him. These included the fabricated claims about Russian collusion and much more. Investigations showed that these added up to what Americans call a “nothing-burger”. But elements within the intelligence community, among others, looked like they were trying to do something deeply undemocratic.
That perception remains among Trump’s base. He is still ahead in the polls among Republican voters, and in part this is because they see him as a fighter – their fighter – against the “deep state”. These people recognise that Trump is no saint, but they believe that he is a bruiser and that the country needs a bruiser to take on the vested interests, the deep state and much more.
But if this seems mad, it certainly isn’t much madder than anything else going on in America at present. At the very moment that the Chinese Communist Party is ostentatiously trying to replace America as the global superpower, America itself is in a mess. At the local level, the quality of state governments and city governance is at an all-time low. San Francisco has fallen through the floor with drug problems, rife homelessness and more. But at this juncture the local authorities are seriously discussing the prospect of distributing reparations for slavery, which ended two centuries ago.
Entire states – notably California – are taxing themselves into poverty, chasing out the super-rich and slowly strangling the goose that laid the golden egg. The country’s intellectual class has largely been replaced by a type of noisy huckster pundit who throws out incendiary claims about the iniquities of the country and are well remunerated for doing so. Supreme Court judges cannot say what a woman is. Law students are walking out of the most prestigious law schools if they think they might hear an opinion they disagree with. And all of this is presided over by a president who is clearly, visibly, ailing but who is pretending that he is going to stay in office for another six years.
It is strange. Because on many measures – notably economic – America is doing considerably better than Britain or Europe. The authorities have brought down inflation, and fuel prices and other commodities with it. You might look at the nation’s spreadsheets and come to the conclusion that things are on track and maybe even normal. The problem is that in city after city you only have to look out of the window – or study the crime rates – to know this is not the case.
Through a bewildering number of techniques the world’s leading democracy is driving itself mad. The sub-text of the Trump indictment is whether it is also prepared to drive itself off the cliff.
Douglas Murray is the author most recently of ‘The War on the West’
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