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Since my post last week for which I was explicitly not warned at that time, I thought I would address the particulars of the criticism, mainly that,
First, there is nothing stopping anyone from disagreeing, but I figure I should present and defend my thesis.
Donald Trump is guilty of winning the 2016 election, and for this crime he will be hounded by Democrats until the end of his days. The crime of winning in 2016 was the rationale for the Russia collusion hoax, it prompted the Mueller investigation (which produced nothing actionable), it was the reason for his first impeachment (not the appropriate anti-corruption measures he was taking against his likely 2020 opposition), and it is the reason he was indicted last week.
Plenty of people commit plenty of crimes, and I'm sure Trump is technically guilty of many things, but the same can be said of Obama, Bush, and Clinton, as well as she-Clinton and VP Biden, though not themselves Presidents. The same can be said of many, many people at all levels of the legislative and executive branches. Presidents are not prosecuted, and for good reason, until now, so the difference cannot be the scale of the crime, but must be some other factor. The obvious and clear factor, judging on the last seven years of evidence, is that Trump is unduly and irrationally hated by the powers that be, and that he is specifically marked for destruction in a way most others are shielded.
From Victor Davis Hansen:
VDH goes on to list six problems with this prosecution, before 20 examples of crimes that have gone unprosecuted, from the people I've mentioned as well as various spooks and spies.
If we look at the indictment itself, and the person responsible for it, Alvin Bragg, you see more evidence of my thesis.
Here's the kind of thing he chooses to prosecute:
This is the kind of anarcho-tyranny that one would expect when you view the world through a comprehensive lens that allows for understand my claim. That Alvin Bragg doesn't give a shit about the law, he's just there to settle scores and punish those he can find. The law is powerless to help, but boy can they punish when they get around to it. Alvin Bragg, for what's it worth, is another Soros-funded prosecutor. Soros at least gets his money's worth, as every single DA I've ever seen associated with him and his money is using their discretion is release violent criminals and prosecute normal citizens. The man has a type.
Everything about this perfectly fits the model that I've developed over the last seven years for understand what happens to people when confronted with Donald Trump. Trump engenders hatred and revulsion unmatched by anyone in my lifetime, the source of that hatred is his 2016 election win, and that people like Bragg can't help themselves but act on it.
Maybe one day events will not fit this model, but today is not that day.
For those of you who don't share this model, or don't share this view, how can you explain the lack of prosecutions of other executive branch employees in the past? How can you explain the two impeachments and long-lingering investigation? How can you explain the one-sided coverage by once-respectable media outlets? How can you explain anything that's happened since 2016? I didn't use to rely on this explanation, but after a certain amount of time, it becomes the simplest explanation, and I have stopped fighting it.
What's missing from your argument is an explanation of why Trump engenders unprecedented "hatred and revulsion." The explanation cannot be merely that he won the 2016 election, since many of the other people you mention (Clinton, Bush, Obama, Biden) also won presidential elections.
The standard pro-Trump explanation for why he's hated is something like "he's the only one who isn't corrupt and won't do what the deep state wants." The standard anti-Trump explanation is something like "Trump has shown a unique willingness to violate democratic norms, such as by calling on Russia to release hacked emails or stating that both the 2016 and 2020 election results were rigged."
It seems like the whole argument pivots around this "why is he hated" question. If Trump is in fact uniquely willing to violate democratic norms, it seems reasonable for his opponents to take issue with that and to argue he has forfeited the right to avail himself of those norms for protection. You and VDH raise good arguments for why the norm of "don't prosecute former presidents" exists, but many similar arguments could be made for why the norm of "presidents gracefully concede elections and don't challenge the results" exists. In game theory terms, if Trump consistently choses the "defect" option, it may be the optimal strategic choice for his opponents to do the same.
And this explanation is simply wrong. Trump has not shown a willingness to violate democratic norms. The norm violations were and are against him, starting from before he was elected with the FBI surveillance of his campaign. There's no norm that says "don't call on Russia to release hacked emails". There certainly no norm against complaining that elections are rigged, that's like claiming there's a norm against taking a dive in soccer. He talked big about an actual violation ("lock her up") but he never actually tried to do it.
There is no law. Just as there is no law that you have to release your tax returns.
I think it's more of a stretch to claim there's no norm against calling for a foreign entity to help you win the election.
There isn't now though, that's for sure.
Yet losing candidates are expected to congratulate their opponents and concede (it was noteworthy that Clinton didn't have a concession speech).
Again, less of an expectation with Abrams' thing + Biden pre-complaining about the midterms.
That was a joke. That was always an obvious joke. Vox even had an article saying it was only a joke in poor taste, and not a serious request, which was memory-holed two or three years later when the first impeachment began.
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The problem with most of these proposed "norms" is they either seem to have been made up entirely after the fact, or they end up being suspiciously gerrymandered to only cover Trump's behavior and not the very similar behavior of other politicians.
Just out of curiosity, which of those two buckets do you feel "don't ask enemies for political help" and "avoid calling elections rigged" each fall into?
Both of those are "made up entirely after the fact". The "don't ask enemies for political help" has the added issue of being obvious rhetorical flourish, not a serious request.
Given that the Russians did in fact hack and leak John Podesta's e-mails on behalf of the Trump campaign, why should I believe people who say he was joking when he asked them to do the same to Hillary Clinton? I think Henry II was probably joking when he said "Who will rid me of this turbulent priest?" but he doesn't get the benefit of the doubt after Thomas a Becket is murdered.
That's like saying Al-Qaeda did 9/11 on behalf of Bush.
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The first can be disregarded, as it was an obvious joke. If he had actually intended to ask a foreign enemy for political help, he would have done it secretly, they way Ted Kennedy did with the Soviet Union in 1984. As for the second, I dispute that "avoid calling elections rigged" has ever been a norm, as you can easily dig up counterexample throughout history. Hillary Clinton herself has repeatedly suggested that Trump's victory was rigged by the Russians, and as was pointed out to you, both of Bush's elections had their authenticity repeatedly and vigorously called into question. Stacy Abrams has practically made a cottage industry out of challenging the legitimacy of her gubernatorial loss, to widespread acclaim and media adulation. So, if one were to posit that such a norm did exist, it would have to be heavily gerrymandered to exclude all these examples.
The actual norm is that losing candidates do not challenge the transition of power with force, but of course Trump didn't do that, so that's not helpful to criticizing him.
This is "words have meanings" pedantry, but Hillary Clinton did not accuse the Russians of rigging the election. A "rigged" election is one where the declared result deliberately does not match the votes cast. The Russians tried to rig the election (by hacking voting machines), but failed - the Clinton campaign and affiliated left-establishment groups had conceded this by the end of November. Other people, notably including Jill Stein, continued to run with the idea after it became clear that it didn't happen, but Clinton did not.
What Hillary said, correctly, was that the Russians improperly helped Trump by hacking and leaking John Podesta's e-mails. This is "interfering" with the election, not "rigging" it. Hillary Clinton and people speaking on her behalf have always been quite careful about this distinction, even if the broader left have not. The distinction matters because calling an election "rigged" is an implicit call to change the official result to match the votes cast, but (at least in the US) a complaint about interference is a call to punish (either judicially or politically) the people responsible without throwing out the validly cast votes.
There was no attempt by the Clinton campaign or anyone affiliated with it to overturn the 2016 election on grounds of Russian interference. Jill Stein requested recounts in several key states in accordance with state law, and they didn't find anything untoward.
Politics does not work by the rules of criminal trials. In the ordinary English meaning of the word, Trump (among others) incited the Jan 6th riots, which were an unsuccessful attempt to prevent the orderly transition of power by force. He should not have done this, and no other Presidential candidate has continued to publicly challenge an election after exhausting his State-law remedies since Hayes-Tilden in 1876. The fact that we can't prove the causal link between Trump's incitement and the events of Jan 6th 2021 means he probably can't be prosecuted for it (and in any case, he would probably be protected by the 1st amendment), but it doesn't mean that he didn't do it. As I have said elsewhere, if the King says "Who will rid me of this turbulent priest?" and Thomas a Becket gets murdered, he loses the benefit of the doubt.
In any case, the argument that Trump sought to overturn the 2020 election by force is not restricted to the Jan 6th riot. Per the evidence gathered by the House Select Committee, Trump held a meeting in the Oval Office on 18th December at which he suggested rerunning the election under martial law. Michael Flynn made the same suggestion publicly on multiple occasions, and there is reasonable evidence that he was doing so on behalf of Trump. Again, probably not enough evidence for a criminal conviction, but enough evidence for the establishment to conclude on the balance of probabilities that Trump would have overturned the election by coup if the military had co-operated.
I think "The President does not conduct coup plots in the Oval Office" is, and always has been a norm of American politics that Trump violated.
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I think both proposed explanations I gave are wrong, or only partially correct at best. My point is simply that the degree to which hatred of Trump is legitimate, and the degree to which actions taken against Trump, such as this prosecution, are legitimate, in large part depends on the specific explanation for why he is hated and why the actions are being taken. This part of the argument can't simply be ignored or hand-waved.
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