To say that Donald J. Trump was the most persecuted president in modern American history is an understatement.
As it turns out, the US intelligence community (IC) was weaponized against him by Trump’s predecessor, President Barack Obama, at the behest of Trump’s 2016 rival for president.
Claims that Trump was a Russian agent of influence were totally fabricated and were used as the basis for an endless war waged upon both Trump’s reputation and his presidency as a way to prevent Trump and the Republican Party from solidifying what should have been the most successful Republican presidency since the Reagan Administration.
Trump’s Sins
At the same time, however, Trump was far from a saint.
Long a fixture of the cutthroat Manhattan real estate scene as well as a top celebrity with bestselling books and a highly popular reality television series on NBC, Trump courted controversy at every turn in his long, public career.
It was what helped to catapult him to fame—and that fame was essential for his inevitable rise as America’s forty-fifth president.
Once in office, Trump could not prevent himself from continuing to court controversy. In fact, he tended to inflame existing political divides on his own and militated many important independent voters as well as political and business elites that he needed to stay on his side.
Even with all the investigations into Trump based on fabricated evidence, despite Trump’s various failures as president, Trump was coasting to reelection at the start of 2020. This was because the economy was going gangbusters under Trump’s stewardship.
The fact that so many Americans were doing so well materially during Trump’s presidency stunted whatever dislike the forty-fifth president may have engendered.
That all changed, though, with the arrival of COVID-19 on America’s shores. Trump mismanaged the greatest crisis in his presidency. The worst aspects of his personality were highlighted for all to see—with devastating effects on our country.
Once the Trump Administration implemented the national shutdowns, the economy collapsed. Trump’s greatest selling point for why he should have been reelected was erased.
This is why “Sleepy” Joe Biden, a man who had twice before run for the presidency and barely made it beyond the first round of the Democratic Party primary each time, suddenly became competitive against Trump.
As the 2020 election dragged on, Trump became viewed by far too many voters as unworthy of the presidency.
Once he lost the election, rather than admit defeat, and work to rebuild his brand and reputation so that he could more effectively run again in 2024 as the undisputed GOP nominee, Trump spent his final months in office engaged in increasingly desperate—and dangerous—attempts to overturn the election.
More than 40 legal challenges were mounted by the Trump Campaign in various courts around the country (with many of the presiding judges in those cases being Trump appointees or friendly Republicans).
None managed to secure for Trump the overturning he needed…because his legal team lacked the evidence to prove that the 2020 election was stolen by the Democrats.
Rather than walk away after the bulk of those cases could not be decided in Trump’s favor, he kept doubling-down on his unprovable claims. Trump refused to place the needs of the country ahead of his own wounded ego.
Ultimately, elements loyal to Trump would participate in the terrible January 6 riot. But even before that sad day, Trump interfered in the then-ongoing Georgia recount.
Donald Trump Needed 11,780 Votes…
Because his campaign had challenged the results of the Georgia election, the state initiated three different recounts.
During the final recount, Trump called down to Georgia’s Republican secretary of state (who was overseeing the recount), Brad Raffensperger, and demanded that he find for Trump 11,780 votes—enough to swing Georgia back to the Republican camp, and ensure Trump won that critical state.
To compound Mr. Trump’s problems, Raffensperger, who had been under increasing pressure from Trump to illegally sway the recount in Trump’s favor, recorded the conversation. That recording became the basis of a serious grand jury investigation into whether or not Trump’s recorded comments constituted election interference.
Given the nature of the comments and the fact that Trump was the most powerful political figure in the US federal government at the time of that conversation with Raffensperger, there is likely a strong case to be made.
In fact, it is believed that the attorney leading the Atlanta-based grand jury investigation into the Georgia election fraud claims is about hand out indictments as soon as August of this year. Should that occur, that will be Trump’s second major indictment this year and his third bad showing in a major legal proceeding.
Trump’s Massive Legal Woes
Trump’s previous indictment was for the Manhattan DA’s politically motivated investigation into alleged hush money payments Trump had made to pornographic actress, Stormy Daniels. His next trial date in that case is for early December. Trump’s other terrible showing in court derives from the civil suit that journalist E. Jean Carroll filed against Trump for purportedly raping her in a Bergdorf Goodman dressing room in the early 1990s. Trump was not found guilty of rape. Instead, the New York jury found Trump guilty of sexual assault—battery—and defamation.
Each one of these cases increases Trump’s popularity with Republican primary voters and radically lowers his popularity with the kind of independent voters who will likely determine the 2024 Presidential Election. In the case of the election fraud investigation in Georgia, Trump has little recourse.
The recording of his own words will be damning enough. It is yet another reminder that, no matter how unfairly Trump was treated by the power elite in America since he first announced his candidacy for president in 2016, the forty-fifth president is his own worst enemy.
Trump’s Motivations
Trump’s legal team will have a herculean task in the Georgia case: proving that Donald Trump truly believed that the election in 2020 was stolen.
Rather than perpetrating fraud, then, the case could be made that the former president was engaged in what he believed at the time was a genuine defense of the election.
Yet, there is eyewitness testimony that the January 6 Committee in Congress recorded in which members of Trump’s inner circle shared that Trump admitted to them immediately following the November 2020 election decision that he had, in fact, lost the 2020 election.
In order to disprove that eyewitness testimony, Trump will have to either take the stand or provide alternative evidence refuting the claims of the witnesses who spoke under oath to Congress during the January 6 Committee hearings.
What’s more, Trump would have to make a variation of the insanity defense—that he was detached from reality—which might get him out of the legal trouble he’s in with that particular case, but would certainly set Trump up for some political problems if he went on to battle Joe Biden for the presidency in 2024.
In other words, Trump is under serious legal threat from the election fraud case in Georgia.
At this rate, it should be clear that the only reason Trump is really running for reelection is not to save America. That’s, at best, an ancillary concern for him.
Instead, he is running to repair his wounded pride for having lost to such a terrible candidate, Joe Biden, and he is campaigning to be president so that he can inevitably pardon himself for whatever crimes he is being indicted for at present.
These should not be acceptable motivations for running for the highest office in our land. How can we trust his judgment, if all he cares about is saving himself?
What about We, The People?
MORE: The Collapse of Kamala Harris
MORE: Kamala Harris Is Falling Apart
A 19FortyFive Senior Editor, Brandon J. Weichert is a former Congressional staffer and geopolitical analyst who is a contributor at The Washington Times, as well as at American Greatness and the Asia Times. He is the author of Winning Space: How America Remains a Superpower (Republic Book Publishers), Biohacked: China’s Race to Control Life (May 16), and The Shadow War: Iran’s Quest for Supremacy (July 23). Weichert can be followed via Twitter @WeTheBrandon.
