What's Left to Restrain Donald Trump?

Courtesy of Donald Trump, America continues its journey into the political twilight zone.

At an April 25 Supreme Court hearing, Trump’s lawyer D. John Sauer was asked by Justice Sonya Sotomayor, “If the president decides that his rival is a corrupt person and he orders the military or orders someone to assassinate him, is that within his official acts for which he can get immunity?” To which Sauer responded, “It would depend on the hypothetical. We can see that could well be an official act.”

Sotomayor emphasized that this hypothetical act would be done for personal reasons, not in furtherance of an official responsibility, nor to protect the country from a terrorist. “Immunity says even if you did it for personal gain, we won’t hold you responsible,” she said. And that is precisely what Trump’s legal team is arguing for: immunity even for acts of personal gain, including assassinating a political opponent. (For good measure, Sauer argued that a president would have immunity if he ordered the military to stage a coup or sold military secrets to a foreign adversary.)

That is no surprise. In January, Sauer argued at an appeals-court hearing that a president could order SEAL Team Six to assassinate a political rival and not face prosecution unless he were impeached and convicted first. (Trump lost the appeal unanimously.)

[David Hume Kennerly: The danger of a small act of cowardice]

“If someone with those kinds of powers, the most powerful person in the world, with the greatest amount of authority, could go into office knowing that there would be no potential penalty for committing crimes, I’m trying to understand what the disincentive is for turning the Oval Office into the seat of criminal activity in this country,” Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson said during the April 25 hearing.

This raises the question: Would Trump ever actually try such a thing? And if he did, would the Republican Party stand with him?

The answer to the first question is of course unknowable today, probably even to Trump, whose mental state seems more and more capricious and deranged. He is no Vladimir Putin, capable of coldly organizing hit jobs.

All the same, in his 2:24 p.m. tweet on January 6, 2021, Trump spurred on an already violent mob that sought to hang Vice President Mike Pence. (Immediately after his tweet, the crowds both inside and outside the Capitol violently surged forward.)

The former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson testified under oath that she recalls former White House Counsel Pat Cipollone saying to then–Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, “Mark, we need to do something more. They’re literally calling for the vice president to be effing hung.” And Meadows responded with something to the effect of, “You heard him, Pat. He thinks Mike deserves it. He doesn’t think they’re doing anything wrong.”

According to the January 6 committee’s report, several other White House aides also believed Trump’s tweet was an effort to inflame the mob. “It was essentially giving the green light to these people,” according to then–Deputy Press Secretary Sarah Matthews.

Additionally, in a recent CNN interview, former Attorney General Bill Barr—who’d previously said that Trump  has gone “off the rails,” is“manic and unreasonable,” and has demonstrated “erratic personal behavior”—admitted that Trump would “lose his temper” and talk about people who should be executed. “I doubt he would have actually carried it out,” Barr said with a nervous laugh. “But he would say that on other occasions?” the anchor Kaitlan Collins asked. “The president, I think people sometimes took him too literally,” Barr responded.

Perhaps Barr had the January 6 mob in mind.

So why would we assume that Trump—a man of sociopathic tendencies, who appears unable to even think in moral terms, who inflamed a violent mob to try to hang his vice president—would automatically recoil from having a political opponent assassinated if the opportunity presented itself?

In other words, although it may not be likely that Trump would order a political assassination—particularly if the Supreme Court rules that, as president, Trump would not have immunity—it is still possible. And that, in turn, raises another possibility, and maybe even a probability: Much of the Republican Party, including white evangelicals and fundamentalists, would line up in support of Trump even if he did order the assassination of a political opponent. If you don’t think so, you’re simply not familiar enough with the MAGA mind. You’re not listening closely enough to what Trump is saying to his supporters, and what they’re saying to one another.

It’s easy to anticipate just how their argument would unfold: first, deny that any amount of evidence could be amassed to prove that Trump tried to assassinate anyone; second, dismiss the allegations because they are being made by “haters” who suffer from Trump Derangement Syndrome; third, point the finger at the “Biden crime family,” whose corruptions far exceed what we see from Trump and his kin; and fourth, insist that even if the former president did order the assassination of a political opponent, it’s essential that Trump retain the presidency, because his absence would lead to dystopia. Unfortunately, for the sake of America, some people must perish. Or so Trump supporters would say.

[Isaac Arnsdorf: Trump has transformed the GOP all the way down]

Context is important here. MAGA world has stood with Trump—in fact, its support for him has deepened—through everything he has done, including encouraging the January 6 mob to kill his vice president and being found liable for sexually assaulting and defaming a woman. And those are just a fraction of his legal and moral transgressions. Yet Republicans have never been close to taking the exit ramp away from the former president. The closer we get to November’s election, the more emphatically they will defend him.  

The identity of MAGA world has fused with Trump’s; to turn on him would be to turn on themselves. They won’t admit to themselves, and they certainly won’t admit to others, the sheer expanse of Trump’s degeneracy. To do so would be self-indicting; it would cause enormous cognitive dissonance. They made a Faustian bargain, and they’re not about to break it. They will follow him anywhere he goes.

Where Trump might go in a second term is of course a matter of speculation. But if his actions track at all with his last months in office, with his rhetoric since his defeat, and with the actions his lawyers are saying their client might be legally immune for committing, we are heading to an exceedingly dark and dangerous place. We can’t say we haven’t been warned.