Republicans like House Speaker Kevin McCarthy and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis denounced former President Donald Trump’s indictment — for backwards reasons.
Donald Trump has been indicted — and Republicans are very upset about it.
“A dark day for the United States of America,” declared Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy, as he called for “every American who believes in the rule of law” to “stand with President Trump against this grave injustice.”
The indictment is a “weaponization of federal law enforcement,” said Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, Trump’s rival for the 2024 GOP presidential nomination, and “represents a mortal threat to a free society.” Even former Democratic Sen. Claire McCaskill said on this network that Trump’s indictment is not “a night for celebration for our country” and a “time to pause and really take in what has just occurred.”
In fact, the opposite is true. A former president being held accountable for criminal acts is the true manifestation of the nation’s founding creed that all Americans are equal under the law. Trump’s indictment is the realization of that ideal and a reason for genuine celebration.
As special prosecutor Jack Smith noted in his brief remarks on Friday, “We have one set of laws in this country, and they apply to everyone.” In practice, of course, this has never been true. The justice system in America works very differently if one is powerful and wealthy versus poor and powerless. Black and white Americans may nominally be equal under the law, but in the real halls of justice, there have always been two sets of rules.
Yet, to hear Republicans talk about the news of Trump’s indictment, one would think that the former president is the historically aggrieved party.
