THIS ELECTION IS A REFERENDUM ON THE RULE OF LAW

That scene in Judge Engoron’s courtroom yesterday, when Trump got up and let fly with all his rage and his bitterness and his lies and bullshit was a win for him. We fail to realize that at our peril. He was determined to make one more scene in his fraud trial, to create one more story of Trump the Winner, and he succeeded.

“There wasn’t one witness against us,” Trump shouted. He called the case a “political witch hunt” and said he was “an innocent man.” He said his financial statements were “perfect,” declaring “This is a fraud on me,” and then demanded Attorney General Letitia James pay him.

Trump’s outburst was not an attempt to sway the trial; it was a gesture of contempt toward the whole thing. Trump has never shown the slightest respect for the rule of law. The scene in cout was a physical embodiment of that disrespect, his contempt for the justice system and the rule of law made manifest inside that courtroom for the five minutes before he was silenced by the judge.

Over the past 50 years, Trump has gotten away with so much that of course he thinks the rules don’t apply to him. If he expected that the rules would somehow bend for him, he demonstrated his recognition that they did not when the judge declared a lunch break after his rant; when it was over and the parties returned, Trump was gone.

All of us have at different times been confounded by the inability of the legal system’ to rein him in. He has so far escaped any legal repercussions for behavior that even some Republican leaders have excoriated; now we live in a situation where that reckoning may never come.

To understand this requires that we see Trump as he has been since he first entered public awareness when the government sued him and his father for violating fair housing laws 50 years ago. His now what he has been through all those years: a legal combatant. Over those years, Trump has changed the very way we view the justice system.

When he and his father were sued racist rental practices in the apartments they owned, Trump was represented by the notorious Roy Cohn, who taught him to exploited as loopholes the legal system’s bedrock tenets, to see its integrity as its vulnerability, to make use of the sacrosanct honoring of the defendant’s rights, the deliberation of due process, to take advantage of the constant balancing act that relies on mutual good faith as much as written rules. Think of all his battles, where he has routinely turned peril into fuel, willing long rosters into something he can claim as a win - if not in the actual court of law, then in the court of public opinion.

Trump was at one of his weakest points politically before he was first indicted last spring. In the year since, his legal jeopardy and political viability have gone up, together.

His strategy is revealed in his tactics. Deny, delay and attack, always play the victim, never stop undermining the system. He doesn’t fight the system so much as he uses it. He fundraises off every step in the process and consolidates support because the system works the way it does. All of it has made him the most likely Republican nominee, the one the polls say is the odds-on favorite to return to the White House.

Trump doesn’t view the legal system as a way to obtain justice for all, he sees it as a tool to gain what he wants. A way to command attention and ultimately to gain power. Eric Swalwell has said of him that “There’s probably no single person in America, who is more, I would say, knowledgeable and experienced in our legal system - as both plaintiff and defendant - than Donald Trump.”

Legal conflict in courts is not for Trump a cost of doing business; it’s how he does business. He has attacked the judicial system and the rule of law his entire life.

He now wields this to retake power because democratic institutions cannot properly function if only part of the country believes in their legitimacy. It is now obvious that a not-insignificant part of the does not and will not accept and believe in any verdicts rendered by the legal system. Last August, all his “opponents” in the Republican primary raised their hands when asked if they would still vote for him were he a convicted felon by November 2024. The same answer is given with a roar at his Nuremberg Rallies.

Trump uses the legal system to tire people out. Whether being sued or being the one instituting a suit, he thinks it will be easier for him to bear than it will his opponent. It doesn’t matter to him if he spends more money than the other side will, that all the accumulated expenses are much more wearing on his opponent than on him.

By November ’95, the county’s attorneys told the county commission the Trump airport suit was going to cost the county perhaps more than $1 million. By April of ’96, the county’s attorneys and Trump’s attorneys were talking about a settlement. By September, it was official: Trump agreed to drop the suit. In return he got the right to lease at $438,000 a year — for at least 30 years, and up to 75 — 214 acres of untouched scrub land by the very same airport so he could build the golf course that is now Trump International Golf Club in West Palm Beach. To boot, the county promised to keep the planes from flying directly over Mar-a-Lago.

One of his most notorious battles happened in Florida back in 2006. Trump put up an American flag in front of Mar-a-Lago that was so big - 15 by 25 feet of the Stars and Stripes mounted atop an 80-foot pole - that it was against town code. It was bait and West Palm Beach took it. He was fined $1,250 a day for every day it was up. He then sued the city for $25 million, claiming his giant flag was constitutionally protected speech and his rights were being violated. His public argument was, “No American should have to get a permit to fly the flag.” Eventually, Trump and West Palm Beach settled; he put up a slightly-smaller flag and West Palm Beach waived the fines. It was his first beg political step toward the “patriotic” American Right, which proclaimed him both a patriot and a hero.

That Trump could win the presidency on a populist platform while preying on poor people is a confounding paradox. People are drawn to him because of his charisma and the image of success he projects; the result is always that those who love him the most, he hurts the most. It used to drive me to distraction during the 2016 campaign when he would read the words to “The Sanke” to his adoring crowds, the people who couldn’t see that he was the snake, and was telling tem what he would do to them.

The question of whether or not Trump will finally be called to account by the system, and that the successful application of the rule of law will prevent his political success, is The Question in this election. If it turns out that the greatest malefactor is untouchable, beyond the reach of the law, subject to a different set of rules — or no rules at all - it will be the Signal Event in the fall of the American Republic.

The Seething Inadequates, who Jennifer Rubin correctly pointed out in her column today in the Washington Post, are not “left behind,” they are not angry because they are misunderstood, ahd no number of visits by the otherwise-unemployables of the D.C. Press Corpse to talk to the aggrieved White working-class Americans about how democracy had failed them. As Rubin correctly pointed out, surveys and analyses constantly find that racial resentment and cultural panic, the complaint that they are not the ones on top as they should be since they are the “Real Americans” -not economic distress - is why they have an affinity for a would-be dictator.

In 1984, I had the opportunity to meet General Adolf Galland of the wartime German Luftwaffe, the man who led the Luftwaffe’s fighter force in its battles against the Eighth Air Force. He also was the only person I ever met who had many, many face-to-face dealings with Adolf Hitler. After we had talked for some time, I apologetically (“I’m sure many have asked you this question, sir...”) asked him, what was it about Hitler that allowed him to take power and do as he did? I’ve never forgotten his answer, and it only rings more sharply today: “People saw him as the one who gave voice to their frustrations.”

Reporters have noted that, at Trump’s rallies now, the most notable addition to the MAGA hats and vulgar Biden signs are the shirts with his “mug-shot” on them - Trump’s glowering face coupled with his message “NEVER SURRENDER.”

Never surrender. That’s what he has done since his 20s. It’s how he is now at the place where he is. And that’s because these people don’t trust a system they see as having taken their just place from them, and given that place to the undeserving Other. They trust Trump. Because he’s told them to for 50 years. He started doing this in the ’70s, with accusations of governmental “Gestapo-like” tactics and “smears.” He kept doing it, always playing the victim, claiming “they” were out to get him and were using the courts to do it. He’s told them the institutions can’t be trusted, and the system can’t be trusted, that he is free to go after the people who he says have gone after him. “”If you come after me, I’m coming for you.” As he sais, I am your retribution,” for those who feel that they - like him - have been treated unfairly, have had their reward stolen from them and given to lessers.

The justice system is particularly vulnerable. Yesterday, after having the day before denied Trump the opportunity to speak in closing arguments when he refused to agree to the same rules that govern the actions of any lawyer representing a client, when Trump’s lawyer told Judge Engoron that “President Trump would like to speak,” Engoron asked if he would respect the rules, giving him yet another chance to behave like a civilized member of society. Instead, Trump immediately launched into his campaign speech, the one he would quote to the Seething Inadequates, the one that would prove that he never surrenders, that he never backs down.

And that was when yesterday became a win for him, regardless if he only got five minutes before he was cut off. He’ll use those five minutes for the next six months, to prove to the Seething Inadequates that “I am your retribution.” Retribution against everyone who ever refused to open the glass door and let them in to take their rightful place, the one that was stolen from them.

As Judge J. Michael Luttig has said, “It’s of surpassing importance what happens, but that still doesn’t change the fact that he’s already laid waste to our democracy and to our elections and to the rule of law.”

The greatest danger is his undermining of the rule of law. Trump has a life-long history of creating chaos and successfully exploiting that chaos to get what he wants.

And that chaos, as Ruth Ben-Ghiat constantly points out, is how democracy falls.

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