Intelligencer political columnist Ross Barkan says President Donald Trump appears to be singing the same old tune from his first term.
“After spending much of the year on a sort of revanchist blitzkrieg that terrified the left and convinced many that his second term would far outpace his first, Trump has begun to genuinely fail,” said Barkan. “And the failure, for those who followed the last time closely, is familiar: Rising autocracy is headed off by rank incompetence.”
Barkan said the collapse of the indictments of James Comey and Letitia James speak to the ham-handed rot at the heart of the Trump administration.
“Lindsey Halligan, predictably, was found to be appointed illegally after her predecessor was driven out of office after rightly concluding that the cases did not have legal merit,” said Barkan. “The Senate never confirmed Halligan, and her interim appointment couldn’t be indefinite as a matter of law.”
In a fascist society with no rule of law, Barkan said it would not have mattered that the woefully underqualified Halligan was illegally appointed or that the cases were feeble.
“The dictator decrees his political enemies must go to prison, and they are marched off. MAGA was plainly hoping, on some level, this was true now,” Barkan said. “Trump would get his glorious revenge for his own state and federal indictments, cowing all the Democrats who dared to resist him.”
But Comey and James are safe by virtue of a U.S. court system that comes with judges and juries. If Halligan’s cases against Comey and James ever did reach a trial stage, her broken arguments would likely get nowhere with a real jury.
“Trump is free to pressure his sycophantic attorney general, Pam Bondi, to bring indictments against anyone he so chooses. He can prosecute through Truth Social posts. What he’s not entitled to, though, is actual legal victory,” Barkan said.
The president’s second term has been less internally chaotic than his first, with fewer leaks and firings but Barkan said old habits die hard.
“Trump is thirsty for revenge, and he has thrown off the guardrails of the first term during which plenty of conventional Republicans still functioned within his orbit. John Kelly, his chief of staff from 2017 to ’19, and William Barr, his attorney general in ’19 and ’20, were two powerful members of his administration who openly defied him. Those days are gone. The Justice Department completely belongs to Trump,” said Barkan.
“The weaknesses are now being made plain,” said Barkan. “With no one, at all, to discipline Trump, half-baked cases against his political enemies are concocted.”
But Trump gains nothing by having his indictments fail stupendously. And his margin for error is much smaller than it was last time around because now he is a lame-duck, second-term president with approval rating close to 40 percent. He’s also on shaky ground with voters who know he hasn’t tamed inflation as promised. Additionally, Republican politicians, however loyal, are thinking of their future.
“Trump will turn 80 next year,” said Barkan. “The odds of him violating the Constitution to seek a third term are remote and even if he did, it’s difficult to see how a four-time GOP nominee in his 80s with an underwater approval rating could defeat a standard Democrat who has triumphed in a primary. In the first term, Trump could always bounce back because there was the promise of tomorrow — another term, another campaign.”
“That’s all gone now,” said Barkan. “Trump is in twilight.”
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