One of the key points in the unsealed legal filing presented by the special counsel Jack Smith in the criminal case against Donald Trump for conspiracy to subvert the 2020 presidential election is that both Trump and his allies were well aware that he had lost the election. The evidence, Smith says, shows that Trump knew he didn’t have a case. But rather than accept the verdict of the voting public, Trump led the effort to pressure officials to overturn election results.
“With private co-conspirators, the defendant launched a series of increasingly desperate plans to overturn the legitimate election results,” Smith’s prosecutors wrote. “The throughline of these efforts was deceit: the defendant’s and co-conspirators’ knowingly false claims of election fraud.”
Smith shows that Trump did nothing to stop the mob from forming on Jan. 6 and was indifferent to the safety of both Vice President Mike Pence, presiding over the Electoral College count at the Capitol, and members of Congress. Using evidence collected through interviews with people working in the White House at the time, prosecutors recreated a key moment during the chaos, when Trump was sitting alone in the White House dining room, watching Fox News.
“It was at that point — alone, watching news in real time, and with knowledge that rioters had breached the Capitol building — that the defendant issued the 2:24 p.m. tweet attacking Pence for refusing the defendant’s entreaties to join the conspiracy and help overturn the results of the election,” prosecutors wrote. “One minute later, the Secret Service was forced to evacuate Pence to a secure location in the Capitol.”
I don’t want to rehash the events of Jan. 6 here — although if JD Vance’s refusal to state the outcome of the 2020 presidential election is any indication, we have no choice but to rehash those events again and again between now and Nov. 5 — but I will say this: It is a misunderstanding of Donald Trump to say that he did this because he rejected his defeat at the hands of Joe Biden. It is probably better to say that Trump tried to overturn the election results because he simply does not accept the idea that voters should be allowed to defeat him.
We saw some of this in 2016, when he refused to say whether he would accept the election results, and we’re seeing it now, when Trump has openly said that whether he accepts the results is contingent on whether he wins. Of course, Trump’s allies in states such as Georgia and Arizona are also working incessantly to sabotage the process as much as possible and give the former president some basis for rejecting the results should he lose.
Which is to say that the basic problem with Donald Trump runs deeper than a contempt for the truth. Trump rejects the very basis of democracy or republicanism or whatever you want to call it — that the people are sovereign and the people decide. And if there is a single reason to keep him out of office, it’s that the kind of person who rejects the right of the people to choose their leaders is the kind of person who will not give up power when his term ends and the people say his time is past.
What I Wrote
I contributed to the Opinion post-debate roundup. Here was my main takeaway. On Vance, I wrote:
has spent most of his adult life selling himself to the wealthy, the powerful and the influential. He is as smooth and practiced as they come. He has no regard for the truth. He lies as easily as he breathes. We saw this throughout the debate. He told Americans that there are 20 million to 25 million “illegal aliens” — a lie. He told Americans that Mexico is responsible for the nation’s illegal gun problem — a lie. He told Americans that Trump actually tried to save the Affordable Care Act — a lie. If Vance had to sell the benefits of asbestos to win office, he would do it well and do it with a smile.
And my Friday column was on the economics of mass deportation:
I’ve been discussing mass deportation as if it’s actual policy — as if it’s just one option among many for tackling the nation’s many challenges. But that’s absurd. Whether or not it works to fix the problems at hand, and it doesn’t, the mass deportation of 20 to 25 million people — which is to say the forced detention and relocation of about 6 to 8 percent of the current U.S. population — is a human rights abuse. It would make the United States a pariah state. And it would violate the fundamental principles of the American creed, the core belief that “all men are created equal,” that they are “endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”
Now Reading
Meredith Shiner on Ta-Nehisi Coates’s new book “The Message” for The New Republic.
Rachel Kleinfeld and Brendan Hartnett on party realignments for Democracy.
Gabriel Winant on nativism, Springfield and the working-class for The New York Review of Books.
Rebecca Mead on Maggie Smith for The New Yorker.
Alan Sepinwall on John Amos for Rolling Stone.
Photo of the Week
Another photo from my stay in Cambridge , in the United Kingdom, this year. I took it on a morning walk through a 19th-century cemetery near the city center.
Now Eating: Three-Cup Chicken
I have no notes! This is a great recipe that is very easy to put together. Recipe from New York Times Cooking.
Ingredients
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3 tablespoons sesame oil
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1 2- to 3-inch piece of ginger, peeled and sliced into coins, approximately 12
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12 cloves of garlic, peeled
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4 whole scallions, trimmed and cut into 1-inch pieces
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3 dried red peppers or 1 teaspoon red-pepper flakes
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2 pounds chicken thighs, boneless or bone-in, cut into bite-size pieces
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1 tablespoon unrefined or light brown sugar
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½ cup rice wine
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¼ cup light soy sauce
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2 cups fresh Thai basil leaves or regular basil leaves
Directions
Heat a wok over high heat and add 2 tablespoons sesame oil. When the oil shimmers, add the ginger, garlic, scallions and peppers, and cook until fragrant, approximately 2 minutes.
Scrape the aromatics to the sides of the wok, add remaining oil and allow to heat through. Add the chicken, and cook, stirring occasionally, until it is browned and crisping at the edges, approximately 5 to 7 minutes.
Add sugar and stir to combine, then add the rice wine and soy sauce, and bring just to a boil. Lower the heat, then simmer until the sauce has reduced and started to thicken, approximately 15 minutes.
Turn off the heat, add the basil and stir to combine. Serve with white rice.
The post Trump Did Nothing to Stop the Mob appeared first on New York Times.
