Just after noon next Monday, Donald Trump will take an oath to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution, despite having, four years before, “engaged in an unprecedented criminal effort to overturn the legitimate results of the election in order to retain power.”
That is the conclusion of former Special Counsel Jack Smith’s investigation into Trump’s effort to interfere with the lawful transfer of power following the 2020 presidential election. Smith also found that Trump encouraged “violence against his perceived opponents” from Election Day 2020 to January 6, 2021, when a mob of Trump supporters stormed the Capitol, injuring more than 140 police officers.
The evidence amassed by Smith against Trump is overwhelming; any disinterested reader of the 137-page report will understand why Smith concluded that “but for Mr. Trump’s election and imminent return to the presidency … the admissible evidence was sufficient to obtain and sustain a conviction at trial.” (Justice Department policy prohibits the prosecution of sitting presidents.)
But the fact that the incoming president was indicted on charges that constitute the most serious attack by a chief executive against American democracy in our history may not be the most notable thing about this story. The most notable thing is that, already, more Americans seem to be discussing the Los Angeles fires, Babygirl, and Pete Hegseth’s nomination to be secretary of defense than Smith’s report. Within a matter of days, the report, which very few people will read, will be more or less forgotten.
I understand why. The central role Trump played in the effort to violently overturn the election has been known for four years, so the core findings of the special counsel’s report are hardly news. In addition, much of the public has been worn down by the relentless intensity of the Trump era. MAGA world may draw energy and meaning from incessant conflict; the rest of us do not. After a particularly crude and ugly campaign, most people want to take a break from politics, including those whose vocation is politics.
Nor are most Americans, including fierce Trump critics, particularly interested in relitigating the past. Trump was a known commodity to voters; his maliciousness and corrupt character were on display virtually every day. And yet, Trump won the popular vote—the first Republican to do so in two decades—and he easily won the Electoral College. Trump’s ethic represents the American ethic, at least for now.
It will be impossible for Americans to escape Trump over the next four years, but few of us want him to occupy more mental and emotional space than necessary. And to the degree that we do focus on him, it should be more on what he does and less on what he’s done. In the meantime, there are countless things worthy of our attention and our affections, things that are beautiful and fun and edifying.
“How small, of all that human hearts endure,” Samuel Johnson wrote, “That part which laws or kings can cause or cure. / Still to ourselves in every place consign’d, / Our own felicity we make or find.”
And still. Politics matters “because of its capacity, when benign, to allow all around it to flourish, and its capacity, when malignant, to make all around it wither,” the columnist Charles Krauthammer wrote. He added that “the task of merely maintaining strong and sturdy the structures of a constitutional order is unending, the continuing and ceaseless work of every generation.”
What Jack Smith’s report shows, for those who have eyes to see and ears to hear, is that the structures of our constitutional order were under assault by a man who is about to become president for a second time. A convicted felon, Trump called the attack on the Capitol “a day of love.” He leveraged the attack to his political advantage. He said that those in Congress who’d investigated his crimes should “go to jail.” He has promised to pardon rioters—calling them “hostages” and “unbelievable patriots”—within the first hour of his second term. And very few people seem to care anymore. Since his victory two months ago, we are witnessing an almost across-the-board capitulation to Trump, in one institution after another. Broken people approach the throne on bended knee.
In his 1993 essay, “Defining Deviancy Down,” Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan warned about the tendency of societies to respond to destructive and aberrant behavior by lowering their standards. Crimes that at one time would have shocked the nation were barely noticed at another. “We are,” Moynihan wrote, “getting used to a lot of behavior that is not good for us.”
That includes returning to power a president who “resorted to a series of criminal efforts to retain power,” in the words of the special counsel’s report. The fact that Americans are bored by this is a sign of weariness. But beware: Indifference to truth and honor and the rule of law has a way of catching up with a country.
The post No One Will Remember Jack Smith’s Report appeared first on The Atlantic.
