The New Republic's Greg Sargent believes that former President Donald Trump is preparing to embark on a massive crime spree should he win next year's election — and he's getting his voters ready to embrace it.
In his latest column, Sargent argued that Trump's declaration that presidents deserve "total immunity" from prosecution even if they "cross the line" into illegal behavior is actually his way of "priming his base to back wanton law-breaking if he wins back the White House."
Sargent then points to Trump's repeated demands to use the Department of Justice to criminally prosecute both his Democratic opponents and former officials in his own administration who have since turned critical of him.
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"Take those together, and Trump is relentlessly conditioning his supporters to expect a second term in which he will bend or break the law to wield the machinery of the state to persecute his opponents, perhaps on a mass scale — as he recently put it, to 'root out' the 'vermin,'" Sargent warned.
"Trump is telling his supporters that he will carry out their retribution, that he will persecute their enemies, that this is their due."
Robert Jones, the president of the Public Religion Research Institute, told Sargent that many in Trump's base are already eager to see him use his powers to stomp out their foes.
“Following Trump, large percentages of Trump voters and Republicans today now understand their political opponents as enemies of the country,” Jones said. “Everything is on the table when you’ve conceived of political struggle this way.”