Former President Donald Trump has never been good at keeping secrets. It’s a trait that’s vexed both his closest advisers and the U.S. military when he has appeared at times physically unable to prevent himself from spewing out his plans like a clichéd serial villain.
The latest examples came last weekend. First, NBC News reported, Trump told the assembled crowd at a campaign-style rally that he was firmly on the side of the Jan. 6 rioters:
“Another thing we’ll do, and so many people have been asking me about it, if I run and if I win, we will treat those people from January 6 fairly,” Trump said during a rally in Conroe, Texas. “And if it requires pardons, we will give them pardons because they are being treated so unfairly.”
This isn’t new behavior for Trump, whose abuse of the pardon power toward the end of his term should have warranted an impeachment inquiry. It also fits in with the pattern that special counsel Robert Mueller noted during the Russia investigation. While stopping short of charging the president with obstructing justice, Mueller noted several instances in which the promise of a pardon appeared to compel witnesses to withhold testimony from investigators.
There’s not much, in the immediate term, for the rioters who took part in the attack on the Capitol to gain from this promise from Trump. Given the average sentence we’re seeing so far, most of them will have served their time by the time Trump could conceivably have the power to make good on his offer. But it would still clear the federal convictions from their records, cutting short any potential terms of parole, as well. That’s a pretty substantial incentive for any recidivism on their parts.
Moreover, the promise that political violence will be forgiven is a dangerous green light for his loyalists to use whatever methods they see fit to get Trump back into the White House. This goes beyond his pledge to pay the legal fees for followers who attacked protesters at his rallies in 2016. Instead, he’s offering up the equivalent of a “get out of jail free” card to his backers in any future insurrection.
He also telegraphed his concerns about the investigations of him in New York and Georgia. In the former, his personal businesses are being examined for potential fraud. In the latter, a special grand jury has been impaneled to look into whether his efforts to overturn the 2020 election results in the state broke any state criminal laws.
“If these radical, vicious, racist prosecutors do anything wrong or illegal, I hope we are going to have in this country the biggest protest we have ever had in Washington, D.C., in New York, in Atlanta and elsewhere, because our country and our elections are corrupt,” Trump declared. Taken in tandem, the two statements are a blatant call to arms to his faithful should the state move against his crimes. In other words, any practice of the rule of law from this group of Black prosecutors should, in Trump’s eyes, be met with the rule of arms.
If that weren’t enough, the next day Trump issued one of his tweets-in-disguise press releases, railing against the potential reform of the Electoral Count Act that Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, is spearheading. In doing so, Trump spelled out more clearly than ever before what he wanted from former Vice President Mike Pence when the electoral votes were counted on Jan. 6:
If the Vice President (Mike Pence) had “absolutely no right” to change the Presidential Election results in the Senate, despite fraud and other irregularities, how come the Democrats and RINO Republicans, like Wacky Susan Collins, are desperately trying to pass legislation that will not allow the Vice President to change the results of the election? Actually, what they are saying is that Mike Pence did have the right to change the outcome, and they now want to take that right away. Unfortunately, he didn’t exercise that power, he could have overturned the Election! In the words of a 2019 Tim Robinson sketch: “Oh my god! He admit it!” This is Trump blatantly admitting in text that yes, the goal was to have Pence “change the outcome” of the election. Yes, President Joe Biden was the winner, he’s saying, but because of nonexistent “fraud” Pence should have just said otherwise. It’s the same point that the memos his legal advisers and others wrote to sway Pence into naming Trump the winner, just stripped of any pretense that doing so wouldn’t be reversing the election’s results. Trump explains in detail the elements of his plans like he’s Auric Goldfinger with 007 firmly in his clutches. In this way, Trump explains in detail the elements of his plans like he’s Auric Goldfinger with 007 firmly in his clutches. But Trump is worse than a Bond villain — he’s acting as though there’s no chance that the hero could possibly foil his plans when there’s still no absolute guarantee of success. In fact, Trump is basically the Bizarro version of “Watchmen” villain Ozymandias, having not, in fact, launched his plans 35 minutes ago before spilling the details. There are still months before the midterms could give his Republican allies in Congress a majority again and years before the 2024 election. This should be enough to rally action to block him. It’s clear what his goals are, given that his plans are all over every major media outlet. But there’s no sense of urgency from any of the institutions with the power to stop him. He’s scheduled to address the Republican National Committee’s top donors in March. The Justice Department is showing no signs of looming prosecution. And the Senate’s acquittal in his second impeachment trial gave him the all-clear to run in 2024. Even The Riddler doesn’t give Batman this many hints about what he’s got planned. There’s still a chance to stop Trump’s metaphorical giant laser before it becomes fully operational — for democracy, this is no time to die.
Hayes Brown is a writer and editor for MS NOW. He focuses on politics and policymaking at the federal level, including Congress and the White House. 
