Trump made a mockery of American democracy. Why are Americans shrugging this off? | BY THE MIAMI HERALD EDITORIAL BOARD - eviltoast

Donald Trump faces four indictments, 91 criminal charges and hundreds of years of maximum prison time combined.

This is a former president who — according to the latest grand jury indictment in Fulton County, Georgia — participated in a “criminal enterprise.” Trump and 18 co-defendants are accused of trying “to unlawfully change the outcome of the election” in 2020. Among the 13 felony charges he faces is one count of violating the Georgia RICO (Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations) Act and two counts of conspiracy to commit forgery.

Most of those charges are related to a fake elector scheme by the Trump campaign in which a slate of “alternate” electors in Georgia would cast electoral votes for Trump instead of Joe Biden. The president of the most powerful democracy in the world allegedly tried to steal an election.

We can’t say it often enough: This is serious. Americans cannot shrug this off or normalize it, no matter how many times Trump gets indicted. Yet it feels like business as usual. Not only is Trump favored to win the GOP presidential nomination, he’s also neck and neck with President Biden in the 2024 general election, according to a July poll by the New York Times/Siena Poll.

MORE THAN A CULT

Trump’s support cannot only be explained as the product of the cult-like power he has over his MAGA base, which accounts for roughly 40% of Republican voters who believe those indictments are nothing but a conspiracy against him.

more: https://www.miamiherald.com/opinion/editorials/article278265068.html

  • WorldWideLem@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    A viral tweet stated that we are not a Democracy, we’re a Republic, and Republicans collectively nodded their heads in agreement.

    Aside from that, I think many Americans don’t believe American democracy is currently working in their favor, leading to apathy or outright hostility towards democracy itself.

    • notatoad@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      I think many Americans don’t believe American democracy is currently working in their favor, leading to apathy or outright hostility towards democracy itself.

      i think this is basically it. the intellectual left likes to say things like “donald trump made a mockery of our democracy” but the reality is that american democracy has been a mockery of itself for a long time. All donald trump did was make it a bit more difficult to ignore that. Not to say he’s not criminal, and treasonous, and should be in jail. but he’s really only marginally worse than Mitch McConnell. it’s not nearly as shocking as the newspapers want us to believe.

      • CitizenKong@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Yeah, he was just too stupid to not say the quiet part out loud. And to not be criminal all the time while being very bad at hiding it.