On November 5th, 2016, just days before the 2016 election, then-candidate Donald Trump made comments during a rally in Reno, Nevada that have not aged well.
“We could very well have a sitting president under felony indictment and ultimately a criminal trial,” Trump said. “It would grind government to a halt.”
The comment was in response to the FBI’s announcement that the bureau would re-open its investigation into Hillary Clinton’s emails, and her alleged mishandling of classified information.
Trump made Hillary and her emails a central theme of his campaign, where crowds often chanted ‘Lock her up,’ in reference to Hillary’s prospective incarceration.
“If she were to win, it would create an unprecedented Constitutional crisis that would cripple the operations of our government,” Trump said on November 3rd, 2016, from a rally in Concord, North Carolina. “She is likely to be under investigation for many years, and also it will probably end up – in my opinion – in a criminal trial. I mean, you take a look. Who knows? But it certainly looks that way.”
The hypocrisy
The problem of course is that now Trump is facing a criminal trial after being investigated for his own alleged mishandling of classified documents.
The symmetry is bizarre and poetic.
And the role reversal has left Trump’s previous comments to seem blatantly self-damning.
By Trump’s own 2016 assessment, if he were to win the 2024 election, he would create “an unprecedented Constitutional crisis.” Obviously, Trump’s tune has changed and his downplay of his current predicament leaves him sounding like a hypocrite.
But Trump isn’t the only one guilty of hypocrisy.
Recall how fervently Democrats downplayed Hillary’s email scandal back in 2016. Dems are still, in part, blaming the FBI’s investigation of Hillary for her general election defeat.
And during the campaign, when Trump’s fans were advocating for Hillary’s incarceration, Dems were quick to roll their eyes and dismiss the offense as trivial. But now that Trump has committed similar offenses, the Dems are jumping on MSNBC and CNN to talk about the severity of mishandling classified information, how our national security was threatened, and so on.
It’s not just Hillary Clinton.
President Biden was discovered to have classified documents in his personal office – an offense that appears, on paper, quite similar to Trump having documents at Mar-a-Lago. Democrats are of course defending Biden’s actions, drawing a distinction between Biden and Trump, saying that Trump committed a heinous offense whereas Biden’s was an innocent slip-up. The difference? Quantity and cooperation.
Trump had more documents and he failed to cooperate with authorities once his possession of said documents was discovered. Biden, meanwhile, had less documents and submitted to authorities once his possession was discovered. Tomatoes tomatoes. The offense is the same, the point being, that everyone is full of it, everyone is a political opportunist, from Trump to Biden to Clinton.
You can split hairs and try to discern between the cases but really, the cases are similar enough in principle that you should either care across the board or not care across the board. I wasn’t too worried about Hillary’s emails and I’m not too worried about Trump’s Mar-a-Lago documents.
Harrison Kass is the Senior Editor and opinion writer at 19FortyFive. An attorney, pilot, guitarist, and minor pro hockey player, Harrison joined the US Air Force as a Pilot Trainee but was medically discharged. Harrison holds a BA from Lake Forest College, a JD from the University of Oregon, and an MA from New York University. Harrison listens to Dokken.
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