Which is the reason Cheung’s master keeps attacking the prosecutors who indict him for his attempts to overturn the 2020 election and the judges who preside over the trials for sexual assault, business fraud, violence against the Constitution, and other alleged crimes. Trump has projected an image of a baseball bat he is wielding near the head of one of his prosecutors. Trump blatantly attacks the judges, their family members and court officers who conduct the legal proceedings.
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Republican-appointed judges have had enough. Judge Reggie Walton told CNN: “When judges are threatened, and particularly when their family is threatened, it’s something that’s wrong and should not happen. It is very troubling because I think it is an attack on the rule of law.”
Judge J. Michael Luttig, one of the most respected conservative judges to serve in recent decades, was unequivocal. “The Nation is witnessing the determined delegitimisation of both its Federal and State judiciaries and the systematic dismantling of its system of justice and Rule of Law by a single man – the former President of the United States.”
Trump cannot stand being muzzled with gag orders imposed by the judges in his trials. Trump believes he has an absolute First Amendment free speech right to say whatever he wants to say whenever he wants to. Trump wrote on Truth Social, “This Judge, by issuing a vicious ‘Gag Order,’ is wrongfully attempting to deprive me of my First Amendment Right to speak out against the Weaponisation of Law Enforcement,” adding that the judge, “is suffering from an acute case of ‘Trump Derangement Syndrome’ and should recuse himself from the case.”
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More profoundly, Trump has asserted he has an absolute right to immunity from prosecution for any and all official acts he committed as president. “The president cannot function, and the presidency itself cannot retain its vital independence, if the president faces criminal prosecution for official acts once he leaves office,” Trump has argued before the Supreme Court.
In other words, Trump believes he is not accountable to the rule of law.
In recent months, Trump has become more extreme and erratic than ever. In recent weeks, he has invited Russia to attack NATO. He has compared himself to Alexander Navalny, murdered by Putin’s deep state. Trump has promised to conduct the largest deportation in American history. At a recent rally in Ohio, Trump predicted that American democracy would end if he lost. “I don’t think you’re going to have another election, or certainly not an election that’s meaningful.”
The Trump-approved image of Biden being forcefully bound and taken hostage and facing vigilante justice crystallises, as never before in Trump’s long line of extremist expression, the threat he presents to America’s democracy.
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In Australia, the Australian Electoral Commission would act immediately to expunge such an image. It would not be permitted to pollute our politics. There is no such immediate recourse in the US under the First Amendment. But surely the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court can publicly demand that Trump respect judicial authority. Surely the Attorney-General can insist that such an expression of violence by a candidate for president is not to be tolerated.
For each day of the next seven months, American democracy is on the line. Will Americans finally, truly see that this emperor has no clothes?
Bruce Wolpe is a senior fellow at the University of Sydney’s United States Studies Centre. He has served on the Democratic staff in the US Congress and as chief of staff to former prime minister Julia Gillard.
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