Believe it or not, there was a time within living memory when the office of the presidency was considered so august that those who occupied it or sought it were obliged to observe a measure of personal decorum. One of the qualities presidents, therefore, sought in their surrogates — from the vice-presidential candidate on down — was the ability to issue political broadsides generally regarded as too sordid to come from the mouth of even a potential president.
America’s political evolution over the course of this century has eroded that tradition. Presidents and presidential candidates are no longer constrained by the bounds of propriety, but they are still compelled by law. The gag order imposed on Donald Trump in response to his unwillingness to refrain from attacks on the witnesses and court officers engaged in his criminal trial has imposed some belated discipline on the former president — his eleven previous violations of Judge Juan Merchan’s order notwithstanding. But Trump’s allies have rushed into the gap created by his silence, and they’re saying all “the forbidden stuff for him,” as the Washington Post put it. The willingness displayed by Trump’s surrogates to exercise their right to free expression has driven the former president’s detractors in the press quite mad.
“Trump surrogates push the line on his gag order,” read the Axios headline. Readers of that piece were likely disappointed to find that nowhere in the body of the text is any “line” established, much less the degree to which it is being pushed.
MSNBC’s Jordan Rubin clarified that Trump could expose himself to legal repercussions if his public comments suggest an effort to suborn third parties into violating the gag order on his behalf, but Trump doesn’t have to goad his allies into attacking the process that landed the former president in the dock. And yet, that shouldn’t preclude prosecutors from trying to saddle Trump and even his Republican accomplices with additional criminal penalties. “Prosecutors could try to make a case for Trump’s direct involvement in this apparent attempted end run around the gag order,” Rubin observed.
“If you’re a Republican elected official or high-profile GOP figure in Mr. Trump’s entourage, you can fire off social media posts from just feet away from the former president, his attorneys, the judge and jury,” the Independent’s Alex Woodward observed indignantly. To which the natural reply follows, “and?” But Woodward found no further exposition necessary. The outrage spoke for itself.
“House Speaker Mike Johnson is outside the NY courthouse right now and essentially helping Trump sidestep the court’s gag order by acting as his proxy by attacking the integrity of the trial and judicial process. He’s even targeting Justice Merchan’s daughter,” Bloomberg Opinion senior executive editor Tim O’Brien marveled. “Craven, lawless.”
The prospect of a contempt ruling that yields Trump’s arrest and imprisonment has proven too enticing. It seems to have compelled the journalistic class to lobby Trump’s prosecutors to go for broke. But when Republicans say things that most Republicans intuitively conclude about the president’s prosecution, it is not the full flowering of a vast conspiracy to undermine proceedings. Trump’s surrogates aren’t behaving in a “lawless” manner. They are articulating the basis of Trump’s argument for his candidacy, which cannot be divorced from the criminal allegations against him.
Trump’s criminal cases and his presidential campaign are inextricably linked. The former president’s allies believe they are obliged to promulgate the notion that the former president is being railroaded. What that fact says about the shameful state of our politics is another matter. Sordid though that reality may be, the attempt to criminalize Republican lawmakers’ efforts to defend the former president’s honor is no less vulgar.