How Trump wants to plunge America into chaos

Donald Trump’s closest circle of advisers still seem convinced that if the ex-president is actually charged, it will even help him to bind his loyal supporters even more strongly. Undeterred, his team announces that Trump will begin his first official campaign event next weekend in Texas.

Trump is expected to be arraigned in New York next Tuesday. A New York court is hearing hush money payments to porn actress Stormy Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford. She allegedly kept a previous affair with Trump secret so as not to jeopardize his first presidential candidacy in 2016 and was paid $ 130,000 for it, arranged by Trump’s then-lawyer Michael Cohen. Trump has once denied knowing anything about the payment.

While his team is now managing Trump’s third campaign, the ex-president seems to be panicking. “The all-leading Republican nominee and former president of the United States of America will be arrested next Tuesday,” Trump wrote on his own social network, Truth Social.

In his post on the page, he urged his supporters: “Go protest, take our nation back!” America is now a “Third World country” and is “dying” in the process. American patriots would be arrested and “held captive like animals.” A few hours later he stormed again: “We can no longer allow this. They are killing our nation and we stand and watch. We must save America! protested! protested! Protest!”

The impending indictment in New York and his responses to it throw Trump’s campaign into chaos before it even begins. Given the myriad of other cases against him, Trump’s tactics now appear to be a mixture of helplessness and calculation. However, the ex-president has influential supporters in the Republican party ahead of his reelection. Even if convicted, Trump could still become president.

Given Trump’s call for protests on January 6, 2021, his renewed call for anti-government demonstrations has a clear aftertaste: At that point, his call was followed by a storming of the Capitol in Washington, which left several people dead and countless people injured .

There is a danger that Trump supporters – again incited by him – will resort to violence again. This is probably one of the reasons why a spokesman for former US President Trump reassured that Trump had not written his appeal with knowledge of a specific arrest risk. Rather, it’s a general warning: “President Trump rightly emphasizes his innocence and the political instrumentalization of our injustice system.”

Trump’s tactics are yet another razor-sharp ride. Ironically, he has the support of the currently most politically powerful Republican, the new Speaker of the House of Representatives, Kevin McCarthy. “Once again – an outrageous abuse of power by a radical prosecutor who is letting violent criminals go as he pursues political vengeance against President Trump,” McCarthy wrote on Twitter, attacking New York City Attorney Alwin Bragg, who is investigating the hush money case.

“I direct the appropriate committees to immediately investigate whether federal funds are being used to undermine our democracy by interfering in elections with politically motivated law enforcement,” McCarthy wrote.

In fact, many observers are surprised that the Stormy Daniels scandal of all things could now be Trump’s downfall. Several other procedures, such as his meddling with justice, seem at first glance more dangerous for Trump. In the past, investigators had repeatedly refused to impeach Trump in the context of the hush money allegations.

The New York prosecutor’s office had actually closed the investigation in 2019 — the year before, Trump’s former attorney Michael Cohen had pleaded guilty to arranging the $130,000 payment for Stormy Daniel’s silence. However, prosecutor Alvin Brigg later decided to reopen the case.

Trump’s ex-lawyer Michael Cohen is now among those warning particularly vehemently about the ex-president’s calls: Trump doesn’t want peaceful protests, but “another violent clash in his name,” Cohen said in a televised interview with MSNBC . Trump’s comments “were eerily similar to his ‘war cry'” before the Jan. 6 riot, Cohen said.

He criticized the “fools” who would legally represent Trump as a “clown show of lawyers”. They would believe another violent riot would get him into the White House.

There is no legal automatism in the US that could prevent Donald Trump from running for president if he were actually accused of his numerous alleged crimes. Even if convicted, he could still run for president. The reason: There is no law in the US that prohibits a convicted criminal from holding this office. Theoretically, this also applies if the incumbent is in prison. Trump should know this and therefore seems to continue to ignite.

The hopes of his opponents rest largely on the assumption that Trump, as an accused or convicted criminal, would simply be politically unacceptable — both to his party and his electorate. However, Trump never cares about such unwritten conventions and social no-gos, which his supporters celebrate rather than decry. Most of all, they see his demeanor as evidence that he doesn’t appear to be a representative of the Washington establishment, which many of his constituents resent.

The following also applies to a possible indictment next week in New York: As long as Trump has enough supporters in his own camp, anything seems possible. Even a second term. In addition to his rants on his social network, Trump spoke for the first time on Friday on his Facebook profile, which had been blocked for a long time and was recently reactivated. “I’m back!” he wrote.

Trump’s current attorney, Joe Tacopina, has now revealed in several interviews what the defense strategy in the Stormy Daniels case might look like. When Trump claimed in 2018 that he was unaware of the hush money payments to Daniels, it was not a lie because he had not testified under oath. He also couldn’t have told the truth, which Tacopina said would have violated the non-disclosure agreement with Stormy Daniels.

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