It was hardly the triumphant return to Washington that his camp had imagined. Donald Trump was back in the capital last week, not as president but an accused criminal. “Not guilty,” he pleaded in a hushed courtroom to four charges stemming from the effort to overturn his defeat in the 2020 presidential election.
Outside the court, not far from the Capitol where lethal violence erupted on 6 January 2021, a follower of the former US president waved a giant flag: “Trump or death .”
The former president is twice impeached and thrice indicted but his support base is holding firm. Indeed, each negative in a court of law translates into a positive in the court of public opinion.
"The more the indictments, the better his poll numbers, the easier the argument that it's two standards of justice and Donald Trump is persecuted and picked on," said Bill Whalen, a policy fellow at the Hoover Institution thinktank in Palo Alto, California.
"It's very funny, considering he's the pre-eminent bully in American politics, that no one plays the victim card better than Donald Trump." A whiff of criminality or scandal used to be career ending for politicians.
President Richard Nixon resigned over Watergate; Vice-President Spiro Agnew quit after being charged with bribery, tax evasion and conspiracy; Gary Hart's presidential campaign collapsed because of allegations of an extramarital affair; Anthony Weiner resigned from Congress after a series of sexting scandals.
Trump, on the other hand, has made state and federal charges - a combined 78 across three jurisdictions - against him a central plank of his campaign platform, casting himself as a martyr. He portrays the cases as an attack on his supporters as well.
Denne historien er fra August 11, 2023-utgaven av The Guardian Weekly.
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Denne historien er fra August 11, 2023-utgaven av The Guardian Weekly.
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Finn family murals
The optimism that runs through Finnish artist Tove Jansson's Moomin stories also appears in her public works, now on show in a Helsinki exhibition
I hoped Finland would be a progressive dream.I've had to think again Mike Watson
Oulu is five hours north from Helsinki by train and a good deal colder and darker each winter than the Finnish capital. From November to March its 220,000 residents are lucky to see daylight for a couple of hours a day and temperatures can reach the minus 30s. However, this is not the reason I sense a darkening of the Finnish dream that brought me here six years ago.
A surplus of billionaires is destabilising our democracies Zoe Williams
The concept of \"elite overproduction\" was developed by social scientist Peter Turchin around the turn of this century to describe something specific: too many rich people for not enough rich-person jobs.
'What will people think? I don't care any more'
At 90, Alan Bennett has written a sex-fuelled novella set in a home for the elderly. He talks about mourning Maggie Smith, turning down a knighthood and what he makes of the new UK prime minister
I see you
What happens when people with acute psychosis meet the voices in their heads? A new clinical trial reveals some surprising results
Rumbled How Ali ran rings around apartheid, 50 years ago
Fifty years ago, in a corner of white South Africa, Muhammad Ali already seemed a miracle-maker.
Trudeau faces 'iceberg revolt'as calls grow for PM to quit
Justin Trudeau, who promised “sunny ways” as he won an election on a wave of public fatigue with an incumbent Conservative government, is now facing his darkest and most uncertain political moment as he attempts to defy the odds to win a rare fourth term.
Lost Maya city revealed through laser mapping
After swapping machetes and binoculars for computer screens and laser mapping, a team of researchers have discovered a lost Maya city containing temple pyramids, enclosed plazas and a reservoir which had been hidden for centuries by the Mexican jungle.
'A civil war' Gangs step up assault on capital
Armed fighters advance into neighbourhoods at the heart of Port-au-Prince as authorities try to restore order
Reality bites in the Himalayan 'kingdom of happiness'
High emigration and youth unemployment levels belie the mountain nation's global reputation for cheeriness
