The Next Big Lie
Trump and certain members of the GOP want us to believe the indictments against Trump are politically-driven efforts to punish an innocent man.
By now, we have all heard about the Big Lie.
That’s the oft disproven, false assertion—taken as gospel by a good portion of the American public—that the 2020 election was fraudulent and stolen from Donald J. Trump. He repeated that Big Lie as recently as Monday night in an interview with Fox’s Bret Baier.
Now we need to talk about the Next Big Lie.
Trump and certain members of the GOP want us to believe the indictments against Trump are politically-driven efforts to punish an innocent man. This includes the current indictments in New York and Florida and likely ones in D.C. and Georgia.
In Trumpland, the indictments are all part of a larger conspiracy—led by Democratic President Joe Biden in the White House—to jail his top political opponent. This is all happening even while his own son, Hunter Biden, is supposedly being let off with a slap on the wrist.
No matter that it was a Trump-appointed prosecutor who offered Hunter Biden a plea deal. No matter that President Biden assiduously avoided any interference into that case. No matter that the kinds of things Hunter Biden is being charged with normally don’t get charged criminally, especially when the back taxes have been paid.
Like the first Big Lie, this Next Big Lie is a very dangerous and destabilizing narrative.
The idea that the Department of Justice is conducting a witch-hunt against Trump not only has the potential to foment violence, but as with the false claims about the stolen election, it strikes at the heart of how our democracy functions under the rule of law.
A high number of citizens—largely within the Republican base—already falsely concluded Trump is really an innocent man who is being unjustly targeted all because he is a threat to Biden’s hold on power. This moves us even farther off the common ground rules for a stable and functioning democracy.
In rebutting any false narrative, the facts are important.
And the facts are these: Trump was indicted not by Joe Biden, or even Attorney General Merrick Garland. In both New York and Florida, Trump was indicted by a grand jury of his peers after presentation of the evidence by prosecutors, none of whom are under the control of the White House.
Alvin Bragg is the Manhattan District Attorney operating under New York state law. Jack Smith is the Special Counsel, shielded by law from interference precisely in order to answer and diminish claims of political bias or motivation.
But we cannot stop there, at the legal water’s edge.
The Next Big Lie about a politically-motivated prosecution of Trump is being coordinated from the top—while concocted and amplified as a conspiracy from the depths—just as we saw before with the Big Lie about the stolen 2020 election.
It falls to us—as our responsibility as participants in the discourse to follow—to call the lie out loudly and early.
Fanning the Flames
Predictably, and as we saw with the first Big Lie, the man who benefits most from the Next Big Lie is leading the charge.
Trump has been attacking the prosecutions and prosecutors non-stop:
Witch-hunt!
Election interference!
Weaponization of the FBI!
And once again, as we saw with the first Big Lie, Trump’s supporters in Congress dutifully repeat and amplify the false claim that the prosecutions are all politically motivated.
Missouri Republican Senator Josh Hawley, for example, tweeted last week:
“If the people in power can jail their political opponents at will, we don’t have a republic.”
Texas GOP Senator Ted Cruz put out a full statement on his podcast in support of Trump.
"Today is a very sad day in American history. We have never in over two centuries of our nation’s history had a new president who launched the entire Department of Justice, the entire machinery of justice on a vendetta to persecute, to attack, to investigate, to indict, to try to throw in jail the former President who, it should be noted, is also currently the leading contender on the Republican side to run against the current President."
The Fox channel is out there doing its part.
Last week it ran a chyron during a speech by Biden stating:
“Wannabe Dictator Speaks at the White House After Having His Political Rival Arrested.”
Perhaps realizing it could face further legal woes and monetary damages for promoting even more false conspiracies, Fox took the chyron down and fired the producer—who used to work on Tucker Carlson's show—who had run it.
But much damage was already done.
Indeed, the steady drumbeat is proving highly effective. In a recent Reuters/Ipsos poll, some 80 percent of Republicans and around half of all Americans now believe the prosecutions of Donald Trump are politically motivated.
Familiar Conspiracy Energy
Whether it’s a lie about a stolen election or one about President Biden driving the prosecution, the false narrative feeds upon the power of conspiracy. Such a conspiracy theory usually takes hold for a few reasons.
For starters, many simply want to believe this is a plot driven by globalists and the White House, and not that their guy is in fact a cheat, a criminal and a seditionist.
But more importantly, like any conspiracy theory, this one is hard to disprove.
How do we know Biden isn’t somewhere pulling the strings? How do we know the FBI didn’t plant the evidence? How do we know Jack Smith isn’t some deranged puppet of Barack Obama?
They want us to try and disprove a negative, but we shouldn’t take the bait.
Instead we should understand how such deceptions work.
The Big Lie about a stolen election took ordinary, innocent things and spun them into dangerous and untrue accusations.
The normal storage of ballots by election workers falsely became “suitcases” full of fake ones. Late-tabulated batches from heavily African American counties became “vote dumps” that put Biden mysteriously ahead in Wisconsin. Human error by a single clerk in Antrim County, Michigan blew up into nationwide, false accusations that Dominion Voting Systems had thrown the entire election for Biden.
None of this was election fraud and all of it was quickly debunked. But together, they sowed enough doubt and confusion to propel the conspiracy forward.
The New Big Lie Casts Trump as Victim of a Deep State Conspiracy
It tracks a similar conspiratorial narrative as the Big Lie, relying upon disconnected facts to weave a web of misdirection and innuendo.
Alvin Bragg received funds from “globalist” George Soros. Jack Smith’s wife was a producer on Michelle Obama’s documentary Becoming.
Joe Biden once claimed, as to Trump, he’s “making sure he, under legitimate efforts of our Constitution, does not become our next President.” That last one set Trump’s hair on fire and it quickly got twisted from a statement about electorally defeating Trump into a nefarious plot to jail him.
A No-Lose Argument
On top of relying on disconnected quasi-facts, the claim of political persecution also seeks to avoid answering the heart of the question at hand.
Did Trump commit the alleged crimes?
This is where GOP misdirection really starts to unravel, at least if we insist on pulling at those strings. Journalists ought to be calling the ultimate question during interviews with Trump’s supporters.
If the former President in fact committed crimes, should he be held accountable for them?
If the answer is “no” so long as Joe Biden is in the White House, then they need to show how this is a no-lose argument for Trump. In such a Bizarro world, Trump can commit crime all he wants and never go to jail for it because any effort to charge him is by definition too “political.”
But that can’t be the answer.
If Trump decided to shoot someone on Fifth Avenue, as he famously said, he indeed might not lose any of his followers, but he still ought to go to prison for it.
On this most Americans would agree.
That’s because if you commit a murder, no matter who you are, you should be punished. And the people who bring you to justice are who you might expect: prosecutors, grand juries, trial juries, and judges.
Willful violations of the Espionage Act are down the ladder from murder, but not by much.
When you’ve deliberately used your position and access to put our whole nation at risk, compromising and endangering the lives of our military personnel and members of our intelligence services, you go to prison for that, too, no matter who you are.
And the people who should see that process through are the same as in the above example: prosecutors, grand juries, trial juries and judges.
The GOP sure felt that people alleged to have illegally handled state secrets ought to go to jail for it.
Back when the MAGA minions chanted “Lock her up!” at every Trump rally, it was about former First Lady, Senator, Secretary of State and Trump's political opponent Hillary Clinton. Throughout the 2016 election cycle Republicans failed to cry foul about targeting a presidential rival.
Clinton was fair game even though she—just like Joe Biden and Mike Pence but very unlike Donald Trump—did not deliberately hold onto and refuse to return any government documents, let alone top secret, national defense information.
It was Trump’s own Justice Department that declined to seek further action against her because there simply wasn’t evidence she committed any crimes.
The same cannot be said for Trump and the GOP knows it.
What we are seeing and need the rest of the country to see is not some political vendetta, of the very kind Trump himself has sworn to pursue if reelected.
It is the system working precisely as it is supposed to.
In the face of evidence of such crimes, it would actually be the death-knell of trust in our system to give Trump a free pass. And yet this is the logical end of the argument of those who stand by him.
Pushing Back
There are growing voices within the GOP who have seen the ketchup on the wall and have refused to jump to the ex-president’s side.
Traditional conservative and highly respected jurist Judge J. Michael Luttig of the Fourth Circuit recently put it perfectly.
"There is not an Attorney General of either party who would not have brought today’s charges against the former president."
"He has dared, taunted, provoked, and goaded DOJ to prosecute him from the moment it was learned that he had taken these national security documents."
"On any given day for the past 18 months—doubtless up to and including the day before the indictment was returned—the former president could have avoided and prevented this prosecution. He would never have been indicted for taking these documents."
"But for whatever reason, he decided that he would rather be indicted and prosecuted."
"After a year and a half, he finally succeeded in forcing Jack Smith’s appropriately reluctant hand, having left the Department no choice but to bring these charges lest the former president make a mockery of the Constitution and the Rule of Law."
As we have had to do the past two years with the Big Lie about a stolen election, we are now summoned to do the same with the Next Big Lie about a politically-driven prosecution of Trump.
We must debunk and push back against this Next Big Lie until it has become the view of a decisive minority of Americans. That will take time, persistence, and education.
That process begins by identifying the false and dangerous narrative, by showing how it spreads and by allying with and uplifting voices within the GOP still willing to uphold the rule of law.
I believe that if there truly was a “deep state” there would be many MAGA big mouths disappearing in the night. Or falling out of high rise windows as in Russia.
George: This is the BIG takeaway from your excellent commentary: "Willful violations of the Espionage Act …… When you’ve deliberately used your position and access to put our whole nation at risk, compromising and endangering the lives of our military personnel and members of our intelligence services, you go to prison for that, too, no matter who you are.” It is difficult for veterans and current military members to argue with this point. I believe most reasonable individuals will concur with or acquiesce to the tenet you state.