What Are The #NeverTrumpers Saying About The Indictment?

Before we get into the actual NeverTrumpers, let’s look at how George Soros was responding yesterday to the anti-Semitic attacks on him from the far right— and from Señor Trumpanzee himself. In the e-mail his organization sent to his followers, Michael Vachon wrote that hoping to distract from his indictment, “many on the right are attempting to shift the focus from the accused to the accuser, DA Alvin Bragg. Because of George’s well publicized support for reform prosecutors, Republicans are alleging that George is behind it all. Several stories in the mainstream media have debunked this, but they persist!” Here’s an exchange between Soros and Steve Clemons:

The facts:

George Soros has never met, spoken with, or otherwise communicated with Alvin Bragg.

Neither George Soros nor Democracy PAC (a PAC to which Soros has contributed funds) contributed to Alvin Bragg’s campaign for Manhattan District Attorney.

Between 2016 and 2022, George Soros personally and Democracy PAC have together contributed roughly $4 million to Color of Change’s PAC, including $1 million in May 2021. None of those funds were earmarked for Bragg’s campaign.

George Soros has made numerous contributions in support of reform-minded prosecutors across the country since 2015. He discusses his motivations in this Wall Street Journal opinion essay last year.

I guess you can call Trump’s nice, Mary Trump, a NeverTrumper. On her podcast Thursday night, she said “[E]verybody get out your champagne, pop those corks, because there has been— after seven decades of waiting— an indictment against Donald J. Trump…” Later she was on MSNBC with Lawrence O’Donnell explaining why the indictment is both good, even celebratory, and bad (for the country):

Still, there’s no place better than The Bulwark to find what NeverTrumpers are saying. And who better than Charlie Sykes? He wrote that “Two things can be true at the same time: (1) The indictment of the former president on multiple felony counts is an historic vindication of the principle that no one is above the law, and (2) our democracy and legal system are about to face a dangerous stress test.” He also noted that “The gap grows between what’s good for Trump and what’s good for the GOP. The conventional wisdom thinks that the indictment will help propel Trump toward the nomination. What could possibly go wrong for Republicans going into 2024 for the third straight time with this guy as their leader? How far will the GOP truckling go? Trick question, I know. One after another, Republican officials— and even Trump’s GOP challengers— lined up to parrot the Trump script about the prosecutor and the indictment. Will they have the same reaction after indictments in Georgia? Or from the DOJ? The Florida governor managed to look simultaneously weak, hypocritical, and clueless when he declared last night: ‘Florida will not assist in an extradition request given the questionable circumstances at issue’ with Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg and his ‘political agenda.’ The question of extradition may be moot because the DA’s office is saying that they are in touch with Trump’s camp ‘to coordinate his surrender to the Manhattan D.A.’s Office for arraignment on a Supreme Court indictment.’ But DeSantis told us two things last night (1) he is deeply desperate to pander to MAGA base, (2) he’s utterly full of sh*t when it comes to the law and his constitutional responsibilities. Here’s Article IV, Section 2 of the U.S/Constitution: ‘A person charged in any state with treason, felony, or other crime, who shall flee from justice, and be found in another state, shall on demand of the executive authority of the state from which he fled, be delivered up, to be removed to the state having jurisdiction of the crime.’”

And then there were the former RepublicanTrump-haters at The Atlantic. Let’s start with Peter Wehner’s Accountability Arrives For Donald Trump— A Man Of Borderless Corruption Must Prepare To Face The Consequences. Trump, who is still plaguing the nation, “has added another shameful chapter in the life of this nation— the first ex-president to be indicted.

If the full ramifications of the indictment are impossible to know at this point, there are some things we can count on. One of them is that in the short term, the indictment will inflame our politics, further outrage the former president’s supporters, and create in them an even greater sense of grievance and vengeance. This will become their rallying cry; Trump will become their martyr.

Republicans will vow payback. Believing that the law has been weaponized against them, they will promise to weaponize it against Democrats. Our politics, already brutal and savage, will get more brutal and more savage still.

As unfortunate as this is, it may be the cost of accountability, something Trump has avoided his entire life. It has long been a source of pride for Americans to say that no person is above the law. And while that’s never been quite true, that aspiration is admirable, a kind of north star to guide our justice system.

If we ever get to the point where efforts to intimidate prosecutors and judges keep justice from being done— where threats of violence, promises of revenge, or mob rule influences the outcome of legal cases— we will have started down the path of lawlessness. Trump has acted like a mob boss in this case, and through much of his life. It’s important that he not avoid being brought to justice just because of his thuggish tactics.

“Whether the indictment is warranted or not, it crosses a huge line in American politics and American legal history,” Jack Goldsmith, a Harvard Law professor and former top Justice Department official under President George W. Bush, told the New York Times. And more are likely to follow. Of the four potential cases against Trump— including a Fulton County, Georgia, investigation of election subversion; a federal probe of presidential documents at Mar-a-Lago; and a federal inquiry into incitement on January 6— this is generally regarded as the weakest. Which tells us something important.

Donald Trump obsessively portrays himself as a victim; in fact, he is a man of borderless corruption. It has touched seemingly every area of his life. That would be bad enough, but as president, he did inestimable damage to the country, up to and including inspiring a violent insurrection and attempting to overturn an election. Now that some measure of accountability may have arrived for the least of his offenses, he will rage and storm, sensing that the long-delayed reckoning for his other misdeeds may also be at hand.

In his statement responding to the indictment, the former president said, “Never before in our Nation’s history has this been done.” But never before in our nation’s history have we had a president as dishonorable, as unethical, and as malicious as Donald Trump.

The whirligig of time brings in his revenges.

And then there’s former GOP operative, David Frum: Where Do You Stand? Trump’s Indictment Presents Republicans, And All Americans, With A Clear Choice. He wrote that he finds it “a solemn and sad moment,” and “also a fiercely just moment… More indictments by more states in more cases may be filed soon. Donald Trump is not an occasional lawbreaker. He incited the mob that ended the American tradition of the peaceful transfer of power— and that inflicted unnecessary injury and avoidable death both upon law-enforcement officers and Trump’s own deceived supporters. He tried to intimidate state-level election officials to manipulate vote totals to fraudulently preserve his hold on office. The jeopardy will only accumulate.

Trump may regard the present indictment and those to come as a political resource. He has surged in Republican polls since he announced the indictment was on its way. His leading party rival has deflated in the polls. Trump has raised millions of dollars on the news, and may in the next hours raise many more. There’s no denying that he’s now the overwhelming favorite to be the next Republican nominee, and therefore stands an excellent chance of winning the presidency in 2024.

Atop all the other questions on the ballot in that election, therefore, will be this: Crime and violence and Trump, or law and the Constitution— where do you stand?

Good God, where does his Republican Party and mine now stand? The wrong is overwhelming and the shame is crushing— but the only decent choice for the honest and patriotic American is now starker, purer, and more certain than ever.