Earlier this month, a federal judge appointed by President Trump in 2019, did the worst thing you can do to Trump in a court of law: She took him seriously. She read his words, found them disconnected from reality and acted accordingly.
For a very long time, Trump and his supporters have gotten away with a double game. First, they’ll cheer anything and everything that makes him a thoroughly unconventional president — from his bizarre social media posts to his extreme use of executive power — as necessary, absolutely necessary, to save the country and drain the swamp.
But when Trump’s unprecedented behavior meets with an unprecedented response, MAGA is aggrieved. How dare you treat him differently from other presidents, they say. The most obvious example is the sense of grievance around the former special counsel Jack Smith’s indictment of Trump for his role in trying to steal the 2020 election.
Trump orchestrated a fraudulent campaign to change the outcome of an election. Instead of admitting that extraordinary actions can lead to extraordinary reactions, MAGA was furious that Trump was the first former president to face a federal indictment.
Time and again, the pattern repeats. When Trump is on offense, he’s celebrated as a president like no other. But when he has to answer for his actions in court, he demands that he be treated as a president like any other.
Trump’s National Guard deployments represent another example. He’s posting wildly false statements about American cities online, and then he’s directing that soldiers be sent to cities governed by officials he sees as his political enemies, even though none of the historic circumstances that have justified military deployments in the past — like widespread unrest — are present.
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The post How a Trump Judge Exposed the Trump Con appeared first on New York Times.
