In banana republics, it is not uncommon for the government and those that control it to use the levers of power, including their corporate and media power, to persecute and prosecute their political enemies. Rivals are harassed by a judiciary which is entirely partisan, bogged down in endless litigation and criminal prosecutions, and ultimately thrown in jail to prevent them from being popularly elected. Welcome to America, circa 2024.
Donald Trump himself is Exhibit A of a highly popular political figure targeted by a government and attacked and abused at every level by his political opponents. From completely bogus “Russiagate” allegations to multiple prosecutions all over the country, the ruling elite are destroying our system of governance, and our system of justice in order to damage Trump. There’s no question about it.
And despite the argument we hear almost daily from Trump’s opponents that the former president is a dangerous fascist and a threat to American democracy, the ongoing legal escapades do not even pretend to prove any of that. Because the goal is simply to mire Trump in the process, preventing him from campaigning for the presidency. And there’s more.
The specific point of the Bragg persecution in NYC was to be able to label Trump as a “convicted felon” for the purposes of Biden’s campaign narrative. They have now accomplished that goal. And while the immediate victim is Trump, as Trump has said many times, he’s only a stand in for the rest of us: the “bitter clingers” and the “basket of deplorables.” We are the ones they really hate.
Don’t be fooled by the Left’s appearance of piousness about Trump violations of random business and expense reporting laws in New York; their actual objectives are two-fold…and far more sinister.
Number one, Trump’s opponents seek to prevent him from being popularly re-elected to the White House — just as they would in a banana republic. They do this both by keeping him from the campaign trail (Trump, who is in his prime when the camera’s lens is upon him, is deprived of the privilege of even being captured on video within the courtroom) and, ultimately, by locking him up. Having suffered defeat in 2016 and subsequently rigging the election in 2020 by altering election laws and through the collective dishonesty of the corporate media (putting aside the many instances of actual fraud), the Left is determined to prevent a second Trump term — even at the ironic expense of denying voters their democratic choice in the election.
Secondly, they seek to punish the everyday people who voted for Trump. As much as they hate the man himself, they hate his supporters even more; this is their way of flaunting their power. They are saying to the American people, “we will protect you from your own stupidity, by doing everything we can to keep Donald Trump off the ballot…and if we can’t do that, at least off the campaign trail.“
For nearly a decade now, Trump supporters have been subjected to a relentless string of attacks against Trump, all of which were intended to destroy the validity and respectability of backing the former president. Their motives were clear all along: make supporting Trump an unpopular, shameful position that only the “dregs” of society — the “deplorables,” the “bitter clingers,” and now the “poor souls” — would be willing to support — even if that means resorting to manufacturing stories about him (Russiagate), thus creating a dangerous historical precedent.
During the time of Joseph Stalin’s violent reign of terror in the U.S.S.R., Lavrentiy Beria, Stalin’s longest-serving and most ruthless secret police chief, reportedly coined the phrase, “Show me the man, and I’ll show you the crime.” Charged with the deaths of thousands of Europeans, this serial killer, rapist, and Communist mastermind boasted about his almost limitless power to persecute those who stood in the way. Today, this quote warns us of the dangers of a government that amasses enough power to ignore due process and pervert the justice system for political ends.
I am not suggesting that former presidents are immune to the law. Nevertheless, it appears to me that the Left’s drive to take down the president indeed constitutes a witch hunt — a banana republic-style operation to keep a well-liked candidate, surging in the polls, from ever holding office again. And, in my opinion, not to mention that of millions of Americans, that’s a far worse crime than anything Trump has ever done.
Mark Meckler is the CEO of Convention of States and former CEO of Parler.
