Trump will be indicted. The GOP should cut him loose now

The handwriting is now, at the least, on the wall.

I know a lot of Tar Heels don’t want to hear this — but Donald Trump is, in the months ahead, going to be indicted. His lawbreaking is so habitual, so overt, so pervasive, so foundational, and so rule-of-law decimating, that it simply won’t be possible for the Department of Justice and law enforcement officials in Georgia and, likely, New York, to ignore it.

Perhaps Trump couldn’t help himself. Maybe it’s like his lying — a lifelong, all-consuming practice. He can’t shake it. Or even try. Old dog. Old tricks. He’s the don, not just The Donald.

And when the indictments come, what’s going to happen? Sadly, we know this too. Trump has opened his mind, or at least his mouth. He told conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt that “the people of the United States won’t stand for it.” Filing charges against him would lead to “problems in this country, the likes of which we’ve never seen before.”

When asked what he meant by “problems,” Trump explained in barely-coded language: “Big problems. Big problems. I don’t think they’ll stand for it.” As George Conway explained: “he’s saying ‘what a nice country you have here, too bad if something would happen to it’.” He called out the armed insurrectionists on January 6th. This’ll make that look like child’s play.

Now, I’ll concede some portion of Trump’s base will welcome the summoned bloodshed. I don’t know how big. Ten percent? Twenty-five? Larger? We’ll likely see. But I wonder about the rest. A USA Today/Ipsos poll last month found that “four in five Republicans (82%) believe Trump can win the next presidential election” and “three in five believe he should be the nominee in 2024.”

Liz Cheney famously reported a Republican House colleague saying, as he signed on to an attempt to overthrow the 2020 election, “the things we do for orange Jesus.” But how far will it go? Will they embrace armed revolt?

Will white Christian evangelicals remain so taken with their victorious efforts to produce a sectarian, gun-lionizing, racialized Supreme Court that they’ll discard the American democratic experiment to assure their (this-worldly) political power? Will the Wall Street, wealth-worshipping, big-capital folks run the risk of economy-destroying anarchy in order to assure a government regime that brutalizes poor people and gives a “deserved” permanent ascendancy to the investor class? Will a big portion of the libertarian crowd hang onto Trump and his friends in order to press their potently-subsidized version of liberty? Will “quiet” white supremacists show their actual colors rather than accept the implementation of pluralist democracy?

Or, will some, or most, disenthrall? Disenthrall now, before the onset of the nearing horizon’s violence?

Perhaps you think I overstate the peril. (I get that sometimes.) But do these various folks described above actually think that the other 60% or so of Americans will simply cower in the corner, surrendering their human rights and our nation’s long-declared meaning, because the MAGA coalition may be fueled by hatred and replete with arms? I wouldn’t bet on it.

There’s a lot more courage and commitment out here in the rest of the land than the Trumpists imagine. They make the same mistake Putin made about Ukraine. Democracy has its steel. Even if it’s hard to arouse.

Won’t it be easier, even if unnerving, for the Republican Party to turn Trump loose now, than it will be after he again summons the gun thugs?

This story was originally published September 29, 2022 at 1:37 PM with the headline "Trump will be indicted. The GOP should cut him loose now."