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We Have Been Warned
The Trump enablers attacking the judicial system outside the Manhattan criminal trial—led by House Speaker Mike Johnson—is chilling
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On Tuesday, Mike Johnson, speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives and second in line to the presidency, stood outside the Manhattan criminal courthouse and trashed the U.S. judicial system.
He trashed the presiding judge’s character and his ability to be fair. He virulently attacked a top witness testifying against the criminal defendant charged with 34 felony counts. He declared the defendant’s innocence while the trial is underway, choosing blatant political partisanship over his responsibility to protect the American judicial system and stand up for the rule of law, a central pillar of democracy.
“This is a sham trial,” Johnson asserted.
“All this nonsense and corruption,” he complained.
“No one should believe a word” that witness Michael Cohen says, he exclaimed.
“The judicial system in our country has been weaponized against President Trump,” he insisted.
“They are doing this intentionally to keep him here and keep him off the campaign trail,” he declared.
The sycophantic speaker blathered on for over six minutes before the cameras. But let’s not get lost in Johnson’s repetitive rhetoric and tired exhalations of a “partisan witch hunt” and “politically motivated trials” and his mid-trial declaration that “President Trump is innocent.”
We shouldn’t be surprised that Johnson and his fellow enablers—almost identically clad in the Trump uniform of red tie, dark suit and white shirt repeating almost identical talking points—were there to kowtow to Trump, break the gag order on his behalf and display rank partisanship over their sworn duty to serve justice. But we shouldn’t let these increasingly frequent (and sometimes ridiculous) public shows of subservience to their cult leader distract from the chilling reality that their behavior portends.
Note the appalling comments to reporters by Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz outside the courthouse yesterday. “This is a corrupt judge, these are corrupted witnesses, this is a corrupt prosecution that belies any sense of the facts or the law,” said Gaetz, who sits on the House Judiciary Committee. Later, in a disgusting reference to the extremist Proud Boys and Trump’s incitement, Gaetz posted on X a photo of himself behind Trump and these words: “Standing back and standing by, Mr. President.”
We should remember this week and particularly the House Speaker’s aggression against our system of justice. If the Republican Party expands its power and criminal defendant Trump gets back into the White House, this week will have been a notable harbinger of their commitment to destroy our democracy. To turn their backs on the norm of respecting court proceedings as government servants and as citizens. To end the independent judiciary and immunize their leader from accountability.
We have been warned.
Meanwhile, the MAGA circus performers claimed they were there to support “a friend” (presumably to fill in for all the Trump family who stayed away). In fact, their purpose was both more insidious and obvious: Many of them on Monday, Tuesday and Friday this week, including Johnson, Gaetz and more than a dozen other GOP showboats, aggressively attacked Judge Juan Merchan’s daughter, which Trump’s gag order disallows him from doing.
“Hopefully, we’ll have more and more senators and congressmen go up every day to represent him and be able to go out and overcome this gag order,” Alabama Sen. Tommy Tuberville said in a Newsmax interview after his courtroom visit Monday along with Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance.
Of course, this was all a delight for Trump. "I do have a lot of surrogates and they are speaking very beautifully," the criminal defendant crowed. "They come from all over, and they're highly respected and they think this is the biggest scam they've ever seen…Election Day cannot get here soon enough."
So far, as the trial heads toward its conclusion, Merchan has chosen not to weigh in on whether the “surrogates” have been directed by Trump, which the gag order specifically prohibits. For the moment, the mob-boss-cum-presumptive-GOP-nominee may have found another way to skirt the rules and thumb his nose at the rule of law.
But that doesn’t mean he’s done trying to force the courts’ hand. A five-member appellate court ruled Tuesday that Merchan “properly determined” that Trump's public comments "posed a significant threat” and the gag order is serving to keep the trial “free from threats, intimidation, harassment, and harm.” Trump’s lawyers already appealed the ruling so their client can attack anew.
Yet we should never normalize the egregious fact that a gag order is even necessary to protect this judicial proceeding from threats, intimidation, harassment and harm by a man seeking to re-occupy the White House. If only such an order could be fairly extended beyond the trial for the good of the country.
One other note: If you wonder sometimes why the fight for factual reality is so challenging and how the spread of misinformation and lies continues to cause harm, consider new New York Times/Siena College polls in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada and Wisconsin. These battleground state polls found that one in five voters think President Joe Biden is responsible for ending the constitutional right to abortion.
“Trump supporters and voters with less education were most likely to attribute responsibility for abortion bans to Mr. Biden, but the misperception existed across demographic groups,” the Times reported, including 12 percent of Democrats.
The explanation for this false notion? “Many voters who held Mr. Biden responsible said they simply didn’t pay close attention to politics or government affairs,” according to the Times. “For some, the confusion came from the fact that the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision happened while Mr. Biden was president.”
Don’t doubt that Trump and his MAGA backers will keep doing everything they can to misinform the public—on abortion rights, the judicial system, voting and the real meaning of “election integrity,” and more. Don’t underestimate the effort needed from all of us to provide factual information and advocate for education and democracy.
What are we up against? I leave you with this example from Speaker Johnson’s gaslighting this week outside the Manhattan courthouse: “I am disgusted by what is happening here—what is being done to our entire system of justice overall. The people are losing faith right now in this country in our institutions. They are losing faith in our system of justice. And the reason for that is because they are seeing it being abused, as is being done here in New York.”
There are 172 days until the November election. Much work to be done.
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