President Donald Trump's escalation of interference into the Justice Department, into outright commanding it to go after his political enemies, is deeply chilling, wrote Stephen Collinson for CNN on Tuesday — but just as much so the way he has essentially silenced any impulse his own party might have had to question this state of affairs.
The latest escalation, he noted, is Trump forcing out his own hand-picked U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia after he failed to find the evidence to pursue a flimsy and politically-charged mortgage fraud indictment of New York Attorney General Letitia James, a longtime Trump critic who won a half-billion-dollar civil fraud judgment against him.
Further, wrote Collinson, "Trump’s weekend social media post calling on [Pam] Bondi to quickly start prosecuting his personal and political opponents was one of the most flagrant violations ever by a president of the supposed invisible wall between the White House and the Department of Justice. Had it emerged in a leaked report to a newspaper, rather than in a public post, it might have triggered a major scandal since it seems to be a clear abuse of presidential power and the justice system."
But even though "he looks increasingly like a tyrant in the making," any effort by Congress to investigate this will go nowhere with Republicans in charge, he wrote, because Trump has successfully instilled in his party that this kind of behavior is the whole reason he was elected.
"On Trump’s side of the aisle, supporters see him more as a victim of politicized justice than a perpetrator of it," wrote Collinson. "His success in portraying himself as a persecuted political figure amid his multiple indictments helped him revive his political career last year. His defiance explains why Republican lawmakers refuse to irk their base voters and constrain him, even though his actions often appear to threaten the rule of law and there may be no evidence to support his demand for prosecutions of his opponents."
Ultimately, he wrote, this all shows one thing clearly: "Trump always seems happiest, and most effective when he’s stirring his secret sauce: the anger of his supporters at perceived elites they abhor."
